per Dewan

http://actasports.com/sow.php?id=211

There's a lot in this short article. 

Kinsler looking much better.  Andrus, of course, has been good.  Even Andruw Jones has looked good in the corners.

Young has looked awful at 3rd.  Not sure if that's surprising.  I don't think most expected him to look good, but passable D at 3rd probably wasn't out of the question.  His range sure seems poor even at 3rd.

http://mlb.mlb.com/media/video.jsp?mid=200901263774724

MLB.com has a number of video blurbs on the Rangers up.  Much of this comes from the MLB network and their Hotstove show.

Ben Sheets Info

Nolan Interview

Kinsler on 09 Infield

Rangers Breakdown

David Murphy Q&A

AL West Breakdown

Young's Move and on...

and on... and on... and on... and on... and on... and on... and on... and on... and on... and on... and on... and on... and on... and on... and on... and on... and on... and on... and on... and on... and on... and on... and on... and on... and on... and on... and on... and on... and on... and on... and on... and on... and on... and on... and on... and on... and on... and on... and on... and on...

If you haven't noticed, I don't post that often, in my or other posts, but when I do it's usually a Neyer generated Rangers item.  Sticking to that mo...

More non-Neyer stuff linked from Neyer's blog.

http://www.dailyfungo.com/2008/11/02/randy-smiths-losing-bet/#more-1608

...teams to never make a World Series.

Hardball Times via Neyer...

http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/october-countrys-refugees-part-1-of-2/

1999 Rangers: 95-67 (.586). Wait—the Rangers won 95 games in a season once? How can that happen? Ah well, that's what I get for not paying much attention to baseball in the late 1990s. The Rangers had a good stretch, but had the nasty habit of playing nail to the Yankees' hammer in the AL playoffs.

This was in Neyer's chat today.  Not sure if anyone will have much to comment on it, but here goes anyway.

Neil (DC): Is "pitching to contact" a legitimate strategy, or just something announcers say about a pitcher who doesn't strike anybody out?

 Rob Neyer: I don't know that it's much of a strategy, or even a tactic. It's better used (as you suggest) as a description after the fact. A few teams really have promoted it as a strategy, with predictably unfortunate results.

In case anyone finds it interesting.

http://insider.espn.go.com/espn/blog/index?name=neyer_rob

• The other day in my chat, I questioned whether the Twins' outstanding numbers with runners in scoring position are really not a fluke. Lone Star Ball's Adam Morris checked.

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http://insider.espn.go.com/espn/blog/index?name=neyer_rob&univLogin02=stateChanged

So Neyer has another post up about AAAA players: Other possible '4-A' players  I'll cut and paste some of the article at the end. 

Needless to  say before the article the following thought has popped into my head and many other Ranger fans over the years.

So is it just luck or just perception that the Rangers seem to be abandoning more than their share of high level minors players that end up being productive or better MLBers or is it reality?

Ludwick, Cruz, A. Gonzalez, C. Young, Laird, Botts, D. Davis, etc.  I'm sure y'all could add many names to this list.

Now I don't mean to start an argument over who should be on the list.  And yes, a lot of these players are very different from each other, but they all are guys who performed well in the upper minors even early majors for the Rangers who the Rangers seem to have misevaluated.

The most damning thing to me about this is that the Rangers have not had the kind of talent in the majors while this has gone on to make it difficult for these guys to get the proper look.  It'd be one thing if we were the Red Sox and just had no room for these guys, but obviously we haven't really had any serious road blocks in place.

So is it perception or reality that the Rangers have fared worse than most ML teams in this regard.  If they have fared worse, have they fared worse more than what random luck would predict?

From Neyer:

In response to Monday's post about Ryan Ludwick and his realness, a reader asks, "Any current '4-A' players you think fans should watch out for in the future?"

... And by the way, "4-A" belongs in quotes because I'm not entirely convinced that 4-A players actually exist. ... What I'm saying is that if you find a player who puts together a run of good Triple-A seasons, the only reasons he's not in the majors is usually bad management or bad luck.

Ryan Ludwick was one of those guys. ...

I'm convinced that Nelson Cruz is one of those guys, too. ...this season, he hit ... .342/.429/.695. ...he's been raking Double- and Triple-A pitchers since 2004. But in 442 plate appearances in the majors (before Monday night), Cruz hasn't hit for average. So, everybody sort of gave up on him.

Are there more guys like this [from the Rangers than any other team, my insert obviously]?

It's long been a truism among nerds like me that, at any one moment, there's plenty of free talent available.

OK, so I'm guilty of hyperbole just like the papers.

Rob Neyer has a blog post up: Ludwick rids himself of "4-A" label

http://insider.espn.go.com/espn/blog/index?name=neyer_rob

A few pieces of interest:

He's ... until this season seemed like a so-called "Quad-A" player: ...

...I believe that a significant percentage of supposed 4-A players would fare well enough in the majors if given a real shot to actually play in the majors. In 2002 and '03, Ludwick racked up 693 plate appearances in Triple-A -- essentially one full season -- and posted this slash line: .295/.367/.543. Granted, he was in a hitter's league. But he was also 22 and 23 (turned 24 in the middle of 2003, actually), and most 23-year-olds who can hit like that in Triple-A are plenty good enough to play in the majors. Ludwick did get 263 plate appearances in the majors in those same two years, but he struck out too often, which killed his batting averages and on-base percentages.

The next two years were mostly lost to injuries.

...But when he batted .340/.380/.642 in his first 29 games they brought him up, and he's been up ever since.

Ludwick's stats this season are sort of a fluke. But his career .273/.344/.508 line in the majors? That's no fluke. That's the hitter that Ludwick's always been. Fundamentally, he's no more a fluke than Carlos Peña.

Insider subsription required:

[url]http://insider.espn.go.com/espn/blog/index?name=neyer_rob[/url]

A snippet from Neyer:
What to make of all this? I don't know, except we should expect lots more where this came from. Aside from a few early adapters (like C.J. Nitkowski, baseball players haven't really kept up with the times. But today's young players and (especially) tomorrow's players have grown up with YouTube and all the rest, and if everybody else in the world is blogging, why shouldn't they?

"Danny Ray Herrera ... with a ... curveball right out of the 1940s."

What does that mean?  I've never heard anything remotely similar.

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Hating the minimum characters requirement...

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The Evolution of an Investor
by Michael Lewis  December 2007 Issue

http://www.portfolio.com/executives/features/2007/11/19/Blaine-Lourd-Profile#

Those who might not know he's the author of Moneyball and Liar's Poker (a Wall Street book).

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