Greenberg article on texasrangers.com

Durret with Greenberg

I am getting more and more excited about what Chuck Greenberg is going to bring as an owner besides the fact that a dead corpse that has been stabbed repeatedly by dirkatron would be better than Tom Hicks. I was just going to make a fanshot of this article, but there was also a really good interview that Durret did of him before Opening Day that I wanted to post. Greenberg seems like A.) a smart and reasonable guy who sees a good thing in Nolan and JD and B.) has a good, aggressive mentality to bringing this team back to the payroll level this market should have by doing what it takes to invest in both the team and the fan experience. If those two qualities mark his ownership, I'll be ok if he makes a few mistakes.

Since we are doing all the projections for all the pitchers and hitters, what are your projections for us defensively?

Some of it is obviously subjective as there is no perfect way to measure it, but why not give a predicted UZR or whatever other defensive measurement is your favorite on all the field players. Overall, do you think we can repeat our defensive performance from last year? Why or why not?

Here is the link to our defensive totals from last year on Fangraphs

Anyways, here is my position by position breakdown of this

Continue reading this post »

Im tired of not having thread

 and its Perez day!!

Hickory

Bakersfield

Frisco - 630 - Marteen apparently, last game of the year

OKC

Player page...

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8/28

ARZL: Ed Escobar - Tim Smith and Engel Beltre making second start

Spokane: Thompson - Looking sharp so far

Hickory: Brigham/Pimentel  - Pimentel sharp again

Bakersfield: King Richard the Blieinhearted - He's doing what he normally does, 0 BB, 4Ks, but again, playing in the cal league means your gonna give up runs, he's given up 5 in 6IP.

Frisco: Beavan - Pitched great, remember how young he is, he's doing just fine.

OKC: Corey - 4-2 loss, but hey, Smoak hit a HR

 
MiLB Player Page of the day

8/29

ARZL - 9 - Rijo

Spokane- 9 - Tullis

Hickory - 6 - Neil Ramirez - looking for more Dirk-Reversal magic

Bakersfield - 9 - Tatusko

Frisco - 7 - Poveda

OKC - 7 - Benson

MiLB Player Page of the day 12.1 K/9... who knew? 

ShRoOMs

 Chris Davis is actually a vampire, now, his vampiricism is more like the vampiricism out of Twilight, he doesnt get burned up in daylight, but instead, he's only slightly affected by it. Digging deeper into it, I discovered that he actually accidently drank the blood of Kiefer Sutherland prior to this season.

via towerweb.net

So, while not being a full vampire, he definitely felt the symptons earlier this year. I dug further into to it to see what in particular was causing his struggles. His performance on the road, where no one ever invited him, was just a paltry 223/.283/441. At home, where the brilliant Texas sun apparently had an extra affect on him and the female fans under 18 constantly grabbing his nuts distracted him, was noticeably terrible... .193/.243/.393. Now, what i found even more interesting is that his performance against pitchers who wore crosses (aka Left-Handed Pitchers) was extremely poor, .141/.202/.282... Yikes, it definitely seems like the crosses where doing their number on poor CD. All of those factors and the constant desire to suck all of the blood out of the young, sexy latino playing SS was really getting to CD. He needed some help, so Jon Daniels sent him to Oklahoma City where the Vampire Academy is located and where JD felt like Chris could get some real solid advice on how to deal with this.

When he arrived, he was immediately greeted by this really hot bad-ass chick who happened to also be a half-vampire.

via www.leninimports.com

Together they decided the best plan of action was just to go ahead and kill Kiefer and get rid of Chris' vampiricism in doing so. So, they went and found Kiefer's ass on the set of 24 and Kate, being the bad ass that she is, took her sword and sliced his head diagonally in half... From what i gather, the fight went something like this, but with Chris being the crazy half werewolf (he'd been bitten by MY who happens to be a werewolf) half Vampire and Kiefer being the bad dude:

(via ChaosSonic)

So, CD not only got layed by Kate, but also got freed from being a vampire (he's still a werewolf though, but he can control that). And as you can see by his performance in OKC the following days, he's gotten over it in fairly short order. My hope is that Chris can return to his 2008 form after overcoming this. I think there is good reason to believe that Chris is back and not even the cross wielding LHP are gonna own him.

Now, Hank Blalock is an entirely different matter

Continue reading this post »

ARZL: 9PM - Melo? - I see Melo as a mini-Font. His peripherals so far this year are eerily similar. Also, Tomas Telis, i like this kid, hitting 320ish, hopefully his walks go up to where they were in the DSL at some point, but the ability to square it up at 18 is nice.

Spokane: 830 - B Tullis - Alot to like about this Spokane squad, two good hitting prsopects (Mendonca and Velasquez) and three SP to watch. Tullis is one of them.

Hickory: 6 -N. Ramirez - Already through 4IP, 4Ks/1BB 0 ER and now 5Ks in 5 IP as i post this... and once again the Dirkatron Reversal is in play.

Bak: 9 - Tatusko - Meh, i only really like following Bake when they have Gomez or King Richard on the hill.

Frisco: 7- Ballard - ugh, not much to see here

OKC: 7 - Benson - yuk, ok this thread sucks now

Shroom

MILB

Player Page of the day

For those who dont know, the LAA/MIN game is on Fox (at least in Dallas it is)

Here's a link to the LAA/MIN gameday if you'd like to follow along:

http://mlb.mlb.com/mlb/gameday/index.jsp?gid=2009_07_25_minmlb_anamlb_1&mode=gameday

I helped clutter the last trade discussion thread with a ton of talk about Josh Willingham. So i figured i'd start a new one with some talking points to go along with a prayer meeting to call upon God to throw the Angels out of the baseball heaven they've pretty much enjoyed the last 6 years or so.

Halladay:

"the Phillies are now balking at the Blue Jays' asking price, which was formally presented Thursday as J.A. Happ, Kyle Drabek and Dominic Brown. It's believed they're hoping to substitute Carlos Carrasco for one of Happ or Drabek, particularly Drabek."

and now:

the Phillies have formally rejected the Blue Jays' proposal.  Philadelphia is reportedly opposed to giving up both Drabek and Happ. (If i where the Phillies I wouldnt deal both of those guys either, but id do everything around that to make it work)

the Angels have "intensified their bid" for Halladay. The Jays are said to be asking for one player from the Halos' major-league roster and "another who could make an impact in 2010."  (Ugh)

Willingham:

Newberg's Proposed trade idea:

Poveda+ Moreland for Willingham... I dont think that would be enough, but I do think if we added another mid teens level pitching prospect, like a Moscoso or Boscan we could likely do it. The Nats want young pitchers and I think we could interest them enough with some of or mid level pitchers to get a deal done.

Willingham's numbers: .288/.408/.553 for a .415 wOBA this year, Career: .269/.367/.483 for a .370 wOBA

He's upped his BB% to 13.7 over his career 12.0. His ISO is up about 50 points to .265. Anyways, whether or not he's the .370 wOBA hitter over his career or the .400 wOBA hitter this year, he's a valueable player and could be a useful hitter down the stretch for us. He's under team control through 2 more arbitration years after this year.

Interesting stuff...

and as i made this post the Twins go up 2-0 on the Angels.

I found this snippet from Joey at BBTiA rather interesting:

MLB.com's Daniel Pauling recently lauded the Rangers' basestealing prowess thus far in 2009, which has manifested to the tune of the best team stolen-base percentage in the American League at 84.8 percent (67-for-79), but modern sabermetrics enable us to penetrate beyond the surface statistics and evaluate other aspects of baserunning -- and it is in this regard that Texas is not excelling, but rather floundering.

According to team baserunning statistics devised by former Baseball Prospectus author Dan Fox (now working as the Pirates' director of baseball systems development), that lofty basestealing success rate has amounted to a theoretical 4.53-run edge above what would be expected given the number and quality of the Rangers' basestealing opportunities (the best mark in baseball, and worth nearly half a win), but Texas actually grades out at minus-4.04 runs once the other team baserunning components are added to the mix. Why is this?

Basically, the Rangers have been a bottom-tier team in terms of generating additional runs by means of baserunning advancements on ground balls, fly balls and base hits; they have particularly struggled in that final category, grading out as the worst team in baseball in terms of advancing on base hits (minus-5.53 runs), and the baserunning numbers available at Bill James Online support this assertion, with Texas successfully advancing from first to third base just 10 times in 73 opportunities (or 13.7 percent of the time, the ballclub's worst seasonal mark since at least 2001) and from first base to home plate just 10 times in 45 opportunities, which is also the ballclub's lowest success rate since 2001.

 

I know i've loved our aggressiveness and effeciency when it comes to stealing bases. It seems like we have a well prepared, smart team when it comes to stealing bases, and while we arent the fastest team in the league, we have some guys that can move. However, the loss of advancement on hit balls is disturbing, we've lost over 8 runs in baserunning advancements on balls hit in play according to Bill James. And with the way we've failed miserably at scoring runners from 3rd with less than two outs, I think the runs lost b/c of not scoring from 1st on 2bs and 2nd on 1Bs is likely worse. Thats the difference in at least 2 wins, maybe more... and it could certaintly be the difference in a pennant. To me, I think a ton of this falls on the lack of aggressiveness by our 3b coach. I know there have been several times where i was pretty much screaming at the tv b/c we didnt send a guy home when he could have seemingly easily scored... Im not sure exactly where the entire disconnect is between the aggressiveness in stealing bases and the lack of aggressiveness in taking the extra base is, but I think a ton of it comes in the form of Dave Anderson, our 1st time 3B coach. I dont know much about the guy, but i do know that it certaintly seems like we have definitively lost runs because of his inability to send runners when they need to be sent.

I dont have a subscription to bill james online unfortunately, but id be very interested to compare these numbers to the #'s from last year to see if with nearly the same baserunners (Salty, Nelly, and Andrus for Vasquez, Laird and Bradley is probably most of the difference in runners) if we had better results on advancements on balls in play. I know from looking at Baseball Reference that Ian was one of the best at advancing last year. I dont necessarily want us to become uber aggressive like the Angels, but when you are losing that many runs b/c of lack of advancement on balls in play, you are being way too conservative. No matter what, those numbers are unacceptable and need to be improved upon,because this is something that seemingly could be improved upon simply by sitting down and having a chat with the team and especially with Dave Anderson.

Just to get this up there.

Full night of games tonight, here is what we got:

AZL - 9PM

Spokane - 9 PM Thompson - 2nd start

Hickory- 6PM Boscan - already throwing a shutout through 3 IP

Bakersfield - 9 Tatsuko - eh

Frisco - 7PM Beaven - fun, i always like watching his starts

OKC - 7PM Lizard - eh, hope to continue to see improvements from Max and Borbon

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Lots and lots of games today. The Arizona Rookie League stats today, I really have no idea who is on that roster so it will be fun for me to read those box scores to find out who's on that squad. 

A quick run-down of the games today:

ARZ 9PM: Alvarez? - Im guessing this is Richard Alvarez, I dont know alot about him, but i bet Shroom or someone else could tell you.

SPK 8PM: Matt Thompson - I like what i've heard about him over Fall instructs and spring training. It sounds like he has a nice CB/FB combo to start with, of course command will likely be the key for him.

Hickory 2PM Box: Perez/Brigham - the famous duo has been somewhat less dominant recently, although Perez's last outing could have been amazing if it hadnt been cut short. Even though Perez's ERA has crept up to 3, he's still showing incredible perpherial #'s

Bak 2:30 Box: Gomez - eh, this is the one team that i dont have much interest in following right now, besides the pitchers that is.

Frisco DH starting at 4 (first game): Nippert, Ballard - not really an exciting tandem, of course, Smithy and Moreland are igniting this Frisco offense again, and dont look now, but Lemon's avg has crept back up to .300 almost

OKC 4: Feliz - the star hopefully will shine today... Im also hoping for a 4 HR game today for Max and a reason for him to take CDs spot on the 25.

Also, Im a big US soccer fan, so feel free to chat about the Egypt-US game... I need to see something positive today from them.

Lots of minor league action, including a Hickory double header.

Here's what we got:

4:00-  OKC Box - Corey - Bleh, at least we get to see if Maxram can continue to come out of his extended hitting slump. The main thing is for his power to come back, it could be that he's been  hurt and thats been hindering his power, I hope thats the case and he proves in the second half that he is what he's always been, a ~.300/400/500 type hitter.

4:00- Hickory, Game One Box, Nam - Hmm, should be interesting if he can dominate as a starter like he has been as a RP. According to Announcer, Nam in the 1st working at 88 MPH, usually works in mid 80s

Game 2 Box, Hickory - Font- I hope Font can get his walks down.

7:00 - Frisco Box- Beavan! - Debut for C-Wun, against Midland, should be full of awesomeness. We shall see what Beavan does from here on out, by promoting him this early, I get the feeling that Beavan might have a shot at working his way into the 2010 rotation at some point next year... We shall see, he seems like the type of pitcher who can adjust to the Show better than most young pitchers, keeping his walk rate under 3 per nine will be the big thing for me to watch. Of course, Id love to see him striking out 8 or 9 guys per 9. But even if he doesnt ever get his stuff back to that level, I think we can reasonably expect him to become a solid mid-rotation guy with his exceptional command if it continues to play at the higher levels.

A quick comparison:

http://www.baseball-reference.com/minors/player.cgi?id=porcel001ric

http://www.baseball-reference.com/minors/player.cgi?id=beavan001bla

Eh? both in high A, of course Beavan is in the Cal League likely inflating his ERA a little bit, but the Ks and BBs look suprisingly equal. Beavan can be a solid starting pitcher in the show even if he never strikes out that many guys

Oh yea,

9:00 - Bakersfield Box- Tim Murphy - Poor guy is getting shelled in the Cal LG. I wonder if its time to move him back to being a RP?

and if you havent seen this, BBTIA has a great, great breakdown of MiLB performances at the halfway point:

http://www.bbtia.com/home/2009/6/15/rangers-minor-league-review-the-60-game-mark.html

Really cool stuff, feel free to discuss that as well.