Rangers Will Benefit from Patience

Before their recent success against the Devil Rays, Rangers fans were already lamenting about the team’s lack of production. Texas scored only 7 runs against the Angels in their opening series, and dropped that total to 6 against the Red Sox later in the week. While you could argue their pitching has been more of an issue, as both Vicente Padilla and Brandon McCarthy are at about ½ of what their normal K/9IP rates are through their first two starts (they’re going to get better, don’t worry), I’d like to take a closer look at this offense.

A couple of days ago, Rangers’ GM Jon Daniels was on a local Dallas station (AM 1310, The Ticket) saying that, although they haven’t scored many runs (this was before the Devil Rays games, mind you), he was pleased at the number of pitches that his team had seen. I decided to take a look at the team by team splits this morning, and if I were Daniels, I’d like what I saw too.

As of today, the Rangers have seen 1,223 pitches this season, which is good for 3rd in all of baseball. However, this can be misleading due to different number of games, extra innings, etc. Indexing this to the number of plate appearances (PA) yields 4.03 pitches/PA. The only other team to average more that 4 pitches/PA is the Cleveland Indians (4.08 pitches/PA). Keep in mind that, due to the snow last weekend, the Indians have played about half as many games as Texas.

Of course, both of these are very small sample sizes, but that’s exactly what makes this statistic important. This stat reveals the process over the end result. These 8 games of the 2007 season have told us relatively little about what the Rangers will be, but do shed light on their approach. A good example of this can be found in last night’s Braves-Nats game; specifically 2 of Jeff Francoeur’s ABs (I mentioned these in last night’s post). Francoeur came to the plate twice last night immediately following a walk in cases where pitchers were clearly having control issues and had worked themselves into jams while putting multiple men on base. In these two ABs he went 1 for 2 with a three run homerun. The issue here, though, is that his ABs were over both times after the first pitch. The result was nice, but the process makes me want to throw something through my TV. This is what I mean about sample size: Francoeur isn’t going to SLG 2.000 in these situations, but you can bet that he’ll be hacking and making far more outs than a more efficient mindset would yield. These ABs reveal something about his approach at the plate.

This same thinking carries over to the Rangers. Blalock hasn’t been a very useful player since the 2004 season (except for at home in 2005, but he was even terrible there last year), Young’s reliance on AVG scares me, and watching Sosa swing at a breaking pitch is funny/sad; but they have guys to wear pitchers down and the more you see of a bullpen, the better off you are. Wilkerson particularly catches a lot of criticism but is a pitch siphon at the plate (4.29 pitches/PA career), still gets on base, and can even slug a little if healthy.

The Rangers probably aren’t going to the World Series…no shock there. But they do play in what I think is the second weakest division in baseball (NL Central being the first) and have a decent shot at taking the AL West. Their offense isn't going to lead the league in runs (obviously), but don’t look for them to slide to the 2.17 runs per game they averaged against the Angels and Red Sox either.