At the risk of being beaten back into the shadows after engaging in a little shameless self-promotion, I wanted to call some much-deserved attention to two of the more interesting stat-driven articles written recently by two of the better baseball writers anywhere.

Last Friday, David Brown wrote at length about the enormous success of the Rangers' rookies and provided a year-by-year breakdown of the average player's performance curve:

http://www.bbtia.com/home/2009/9/18/recognizing-the-rangers-rookies.html

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One of the great things about productive rookies is that they typically become even more productive in their second and third seasons. The table below shows the average WAR for players from the 2003-2008 seasons who were in their first, second, third, fourth, fifth, or sixth year using the 2003-2008 seasons. The list of players was restricted to those who had not played in the major leagues prior to 2002 and who had pitched at least 20 innings or had at least 100 at-bats in the major leagues in a given season. The sharp increase in production during an average player's second and third seasons results from increased playing time and effectiveness:

Assuming the Rangers' current rookies enjoy annual improvements that are similar to major leaguers from the past six years, the team will benefit from having seven players who combine for 14 wins above replacement in 2010 and 20 wins above replacement in 2011. If this year's rookie class yields three starting pitchers, a starting shortstop and a starting center fielder, then that level of production seems entirely possible.

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And on Saturday, Scott Lucas published a fantastic breakdown on the downside of the Mark Teixeira trade, that being the Rangers' performance at first base since the deal went down:

http://www.rangers.scottlucas.com/archives/2009/09/the_downside_of.html

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On July 31, 2007, Texas traded 1B Mark Teixeira and lefty reliever Ron Mahay for catchers Jarrod Saltalamacchia, shortstop Elvis Andrus, and pitchers Neftali Feliz, Matt Harrison and Beau Jones. Would the Rangers make that trade again? Yes, unquestionably. Despite the frustrating lack of development from Saltalamacchia, easily the most advanced prospect at the time of the trade, the Rangers are already at the cusp of surpassing Atlanta in terms of value at the MLB level for the players it received. As of the July trade deadline, Texas trailed Atlanta by 1.3 wins above replacement (using Fangraphs methodology), 4.0 (using Win Shares), or 5.9 (Baseball Prospectus). Furthermore, the Rangers have had and will have their players under cost-effective control for several seasons, while Atlanta -- having traded Teixeira for Kotchmann for free-agent-to-be LaRoche -- will have (almost) nothing from the trade in their employ in two weeks.

That said, more than two years since the trade, the Rangers have failed to find Teixeira's replacement. Chris Davis certainly looked like The Answer during the tail end of 2008, but 2009 has been disastrous: .202/.256/.415 with a 41% strikeout rate before a demotion to AAA, a better but still inadequate .263/.299/.438 with a 30% SO rate since his return. Roughly, I'd say he needs a .625 slugging percentage to adequately offset his season-long .262 OBP; to achieve that, he'd need 39 homers instead of his present 19.

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