Mark Teixeira is the top prospect of the decade for the Rangers. Congratulations to him. I'm sure he is ecstatic about receiving this honor.

A recap on the background for this top 10... BA just completed the NL Top 10 and now are doing the All Decade top 10 for each team. They ranked the players from their top 10 lists to compile an All Decade Top 10. It appears their All Decade lists are meant to rank top 10 prospects that have gone on to have careers in the majors. In other words, this isn't a list of the most highly touted prospects regardless of whether they made it majors.... of all the prospects on the Top 10 lists, these are the ones that have turned out the best. For example, Joey Votto is ahead of Jay Bruce on the Reds list, and Chris Young is ahead of Brad Wilkerson on the Nats list. If you wish to emulate BAs approach, whatever that is, go ahead. Vote in any way you wish, but it would be good to hear some of your rationale.

All of BAs Ranger top 10 lists.

I've added Justin Smoak and Travis Hafner. Justin, of course, has yet to play in the majors, and so probably wouldn't be on the list for BA. Hafner was never on a Rangers' top 10 list, and I'm interested to see if he -- or any other non top 10s I've forgotten about (list them if you think of any) -- was better than BA was willing to give them credit for in our collective memory.

Poll

Who is the Rangers #2 prospect of the decade (2000-2009)?

• Hank Blalock
• Carlos Pena
• Michael Young
• John Danks
• Adrian Gonzalez
• Neftali Feliz
• Francisco Cordero
• Chris Young
• Edinson Volquez
• Ruben Mateo
• Ian Kinsler
• Derek Holland
• Doug Davis
• CJ Wilson
• Gerald Laird
• Chris Davis
• Mike Lamb
• Ryan Ludwick
• Taylor Teagarden
• Julio Borbon
• Nick Masset
• Kevin Mench
• Laynce Nix
• Joaquin Benoit
• Travis Hafner
• Justin Smoak

  117 votes | Results

BA just completed the NL Top 10 and now are doing the All Decade top 10 for each team. They ranked the players from their top 10 lists to compile an All Decade Top 10.  It appears their All Decade lists are meant to rank top 10 prospects that have gone on to have careers in the majors.  In other words, this isn't a list of the most highly touted prospects regardless of whether they made it majors.... of all the Top 10 lists, these are the ones that have turned out the best.

 

I thought it would be fun to do a community one before they get to the Rangers, which will be a while, of course, and since we're all thinking about current prospects, it seems like a good time to consider all decade prospects (2000-2009). It doesn't matter that a prospect is in another organization. For example, Ricky Nolasco is a top 10 All Decade prospect for the Cubs (3) and Marlins (8). Also, again, these are prospects who have actually done things in the majors. So, for example, Strasburg isn't in the Nats top 10 all decade prospects.

 

In the comments, well comment, but also add folks you think need to be added to the list AND tell me who should comprise a list of Best and Worst draft pick. The picked player must have signed a contract with the Rangers.

 

Here is all of the BA Rangers' top 10 prospect lists.

 

A couple of notes....

Andrus is #9 on the Braves All Decade Top 10.  Adrian Gonzalez is #4 on the Marlins.  Nelson Cruz is #9 on the Brewers.  Chris Young is #2 on the Pirates and #4 on the Nationals.

Travis Hafner and Nelson Cruz were never ranked in the Rangers Top 10 lists.

Best draft pick list, so far:

Teixeira
Danks
Kinsler
Pena
Blalock
Hafner

Worst draft pick list, so far:

Meyer
Mayberry
Heard

 

The poll has 25 of the players from the 10 BA Rangers Top 10s of the decade that have done something in the majors.

Poll

Who is the Rangers' All Decade (2000-2009) #1 Prospect?

• Mark Teixeira
• Carlos Pena
• Michael Young
• Hank Blalock
• John Danks
• Adrian Gonzalez
• Neftali Feliz
• Francisco Cordero
• Chris Young
• Edinson Volquez
• Ruben Mateo
• Ian Kinsler
• Derek Holland
• Doug Davis
• CJ Wilson
• Gerald Laird
• Chris Davis
• Mike Lamb
• Ryan Ludwick
• Taylor Teagarden
• Julio Borbon
• Nick Masset
• Kevin Mench
• Laynce Nix
• Joaquin Benoit

  108 votes | Results

I really don't understand all of this gnashing of teeth over how the moves yesterday are saturated with the stench of the Rangers' financial woes. It's very weird. Right now the Rangers have a better #1 than going into last season. They have a better DH than going into last season. They have lowered the payroll while getting better in those two areas. That sounds like win-win-win.

The Ace... The Rangers are now 1.5 Aces behind Yankees/BoSox. They are 0.5 Aces behind Seattle, for the moment, and they are 0.5 Aces ahead of the A's and Angels. Unless you think Ken Hill was an Ace, the Rangers haven't had one since Nolan Ryan.

It wouldn't be better to have Harden-Millwood than Harden alone, IMO. Millwood is league average. Yes, his ERA+ was 127 last year. He relies on the Rangers defense, which isn't a bad thing anymore, but it adds an element of luck to his performance. The Rangers have enough competent young pitchers that league average from a veteran is superfluous at best and blocking the development of more talented pitchers at worst. Even if the Rangers had Harden-Millwood, I would very much hope they would be actively trying to upgrade on Millwood, because Harden isn't enough, and my point is that Harden-Millwood also isn't enough.

The DH... Not excited about losing MaxRam, mostly because I want to believe his inner Edgar Martinez will become a reality sometime before he's 35. However, there is a much, much higher likelihood that Lowell contributes a great deal at DH this year than there is that MaxRam will ever look like Edgar Martinez. Again, Lowell is an upgrade over Hank at DH. Sounds like a step forward to me.

The throw ins.... The Rangers get a once highly promising pitcher, who is still young. And, they improve their chances to pick up another bullpen arm in the Rule V draft. This has expanded the pool of bullpen candidates, which could have the effect of allowing them to move Feliz into the starting rotation. This is what good organizations do with bullpen arms. They stockpile interesting ones and hope a few have big years.

To sum up, the Rangers improved their veteran pitcher while reducing his hit to the payroll by 2.5 M (6.5+3 is 9.5 which is 2.5 less than Millwood's salary). They added an interesting bullpen arm at the cost of his arbitration value. They upgraded their DH without adding a penny. In the end they lost one prospect who's calling card is his hitting but he's had wrist injuries. That's AWESOME... IMO.

What they didn't do... They didn't reduce the uncertainty of the team's performance all that much. You can take it to the Bank that they'll get more out of the DH spot. The sum total of Harden + injury replacements is probably only a little more likely to produce better results over the course of the season than Millwood, because with Millwood's reliance on defense, he could've had ground balls and line drives that happened to be within reach. I really don't see this as much of a reason at all to get all sourpuss on these moves, however.

What else they didn't do.... They didn't overpay for Johnson or Vlad (in years as much as dollars), and they didn't settle for an Andruw Jones (or maybe it's Delgado this year) resurrection; They didn't bring back a clubhouse cancer; They didn't overpay on Lackey.

What they can do next.... They can still upgrade at SP. If Roy F. Halladay would just agree to pitch in Texas, they could improve the rotation in a heartbeat. There are still other options out there. Trading for Harden doesn't make it any less likely that they could trade or sign another top-tier pitcher. Removing Millwood actually makes it more likely they can do that. They can still bring up Smoak. If the Rangers really, truly are convinced by mid-season next year when Smoak is tearing up AAA that he would produce more than either Lowell or CD, the Rangers can bring him up and unleash him. Why? Because they got Lowell for free! Since Lowell would cost another team ZERO dollars, the Rangers likely would be able to flip Lowell for what MaxRam was when the Rangers first acquired him (low-level, defensively challenged, high-upside prospect hitter) or maybe more. Of course, CD has options.

Yesterday was a great day. It would've been a great day even if the Rangers didn't have their financial woes.

With not all that much to talk about right now, I'm putting out some ideas of where the Rangers might look to fill their three holes: a LHP-mashing hitter, TORP, lefty bullpen specialist. I hope you all will add others to the list to make it more comprehensive and something to reference as the offseason progresses.


FA Lefty Mashers
Mark DeRosa
Jermaine Dye
Adrian Beltre
Mike Cameron
Gabe Kapler
Jason Bay (Type A FA)

TRADE targets for RH Lefty mashers
Jorge Cantu
Matt Diaz
Josh Willingham



TORP FA
Ben Sheets
Erik Bedard
Rich Harden
John Lackey (Type A FA)

TORP trade targets
Roy Halladay
Ricky Nelasco
Roy Oswalt (His name always comes up on our board, but I doubt he's ever available)


LOOGY
Scott Eyre
Joe Biemel
Ron Mahay
LaTroy Hawkins (type A)
John Grabow (type A)

LOOGY trade targets
Dusty Hughes
George Sherrill
Randy Choate
Tyler Clippard (oddly, not a LHP)
Pedro Feliciano

Internal options for LHRP, not necessarily just a LOOGY
Matt Harrison
Derek Holland
AJ

LHRP Rule 5
John Gaub

Other RP of Interest, recently granted FA
Tony Pena Jr.
Wilfredo Ledezma



One-stop shopping
Royals: Greinke-Butler-Hughes for Cruz-Hunter-Salty-Smoak-Perez-NeRa
Marlins: Nolasco-Cantu-Meyer for Cruz-Hunter-MaxRam-Beavan-Moreland

The two main themes that have been voiced for improving the Rangers offense from this years disappointment have been voiced by Ryan and Wash:

Said Ryan: "We were all disappointed in the number of strikeouts and the lack of walks. We felt like for us to move forward, that was an area we had to stress with the hitters, like maybe have a different approach on two strikes. [Rudy] was in agreement with that.

Manager Ron Washington mentioned situational hitting as a big concern. The Rangers were 20th in the majors in runs scored and RBIs with runners in scoring position.

Does the past performance of the offense align with the perceived areas of needed improvement identified above? Basically, I'm looking at the road ahead that management has voiced as their desired path rather than trying to diagnose Rudy's influence in the past. A simple way to look into this is to look at runs scored versus the components of OPS which are OBP and SLG. I've used team OBP, SLG, and runs for the past decade (2000-2009) for the all ML teams as a start.

via sites.google.com

The plot above shows Runs on the vertical axis and OBP on the horizontal. The median is 0.337, and for some reason unknown to me the vertical grey line for the median did not transfer to the PNG. The correlation between OBP and Runs is 0.854. The Rangers have been on either side of the median OBP, but they score more runs for a given OBP, especially OBPs below the median, than is typical of other ML teams. In other words, they have fewer baserunners but have made the most of what they had.

via sites.google.com

The plot above shows runs on the vertical axis and SLG on the horizontal. The median is indicated by the vertical grey line, and its value is 0.423. The correlation between Runs and SLG is 0.897. The Rangers are sluggers, of course, but the appear to produce fewer runs for a given SLG than similar sluggers. Clearly this is due to their lower OBP, but how completely the OBP deficiency is offset by hyper SLG can only be seen in a joint plot, which is shown below.

via sites.google.com

The plot above shows SLG on the vertical axis and OBP on the horizontal with color coding of symbols by number of runs. The Rangers are plotted as a big circle, and all other teams are small squares. Teams that produced more than 900 runs have blue symbols, 850-900 have red symbols, 800-850 have black symbols, and 600-800 have light blue-grey symbols. Two odd things stand out about the Rangers:

(1) Almost no other team has been able to score 800-900 runs when having an OBP in the 0.33 to 0.34 range. The Rangers get more with less than just about everybody. However, if the Rangers can increase their OBP to the level of other high SLG teams, the Rangers would very likely be right around or above 900 Runs much more often.

(2) OBP and SLG go hand in hand to some extent, except for the Rangers. The linear relationship is evident here, and the correlation is 0.728. The Rangers are nearly the only team that has put up a season (and the Rangers have multiple such seasons) in which low OBP guys exhibit a great deal of power.


It's not quite this straightforward to figure out how efficient the Rangers are at clearing the bases. I've estimated the number of baserunners as hits minus HR, plus BB, plus IBB, plus HBP, minus GDP, minus CS. GDP and CS removes a player from the bases. GDP might remove two, but in that case the hitter becomes a runner. I have not included runners reaching by fielding error, fielder's choice, dropped third strike, fielder's obstruction, or catcher's interference. Fielder's choice is a zero sum game, so really the only overlooked category that could cause problems is fielding errors.

The efficiency of scoring baerunners is posed as the question: what fraction of baserunners score? That number of scoring baserunners is the number of runs minus HR, since the hitter of a HR was not on base when the HR was hit. Number of runs minus HR, divided by baserunners is the fraction of baserunners that score, given the caveat of not including runners via fielding errors.

via sites.google.com

The plot above shows Runs on the vertical axis and fraction of baserunners that score on the horizontal. The median value is 0.333, and the correlation of Runs with fraction of baserunners that score is 0.788. It is clear the Rangers are a team that has been above average at getting their baserunners home. Baseball-reference has something similar (BR and BRS statistics*), and the Rangers in 2009 were about league average.

Bringing this back to Ryan's diagnosis (lack walks; need better two-strike approach) and Wash's diagnosis (lack situational hitting), I think both are offbase to some extent. The lack of walks is making the offense less productive than similar level SLG offenses. However, everyone knows it is extremely hard to get a hit or on base when a hitter has two strikes. The flip side is that it is much easier to hit with a 3-0 or 2-0 count. According to BR for 2009, the Rangers had the fewest 3-0 and 2-0 counts in the AL. Ryan is half on track and half going down the wrong track.
If by "situational hitting" Wash means getting a hitter's count, I would agree with his idea. However, the idea that the Rangers aren't scoring more because they don't move runners along is completely off base. The Rangers are average or better by mare than one measure at getting runners home, even if Wash's eyes tell him they aren't very good at producing so-called productive outs. And, if they actually aren't, their power more than makes up for it.

What the Rangers primarily need is more baserunners. Screw small ball. Power has been working. They just need more baserunners.



* BR and BRS are similar to what I did above except they add together the baserunners for each AB, if I understand correctly. This means if three runners were on base for consecutive ABs and one scored in the second AB, BR would be 6 (two AB times three runners during each AB) and BRS would be 1. BRS/BR is 1/6. The way I computed it would simply be three baserunners and one score: 1/3.

This might be a lame-ish post in that it doesn't involve analysis or pointing out some idiotic decision. But, the offseason has been pretty lame (except for the excellent collapse by Papelbon) and, I've been thinking about what palyers I, as a baseball fan, would enjoy seeing win a world series. The guys I really could root for and who could keep me invested in the playoffs. For example, ARod, not so much. Same with Lackey, even if he's a Ranger. I would love to see the Rangers win it, of course, but it would be a little bit of a downer to me if Lackey were the winning pitcher in the deciding game. So, here are a few of some of the better players in the league that off the top of my head I would absolutely love to see win a world series (or another):
Josh Hamilton (even if I weren't a Rangers fan, he'd keep my interest up)
Zack Greinke
Joe Maurer
Pudge
Elvis
Pujols
Tulowitzki
Ben Sheets
Roy Halladay
Jamie Moyer
Johan Santana
Roy Oswalt
Adrian Gonzalez
Beltran


The opposite, a few of those who force me to turn the channel:
ARod
Papi
Papelbon
Lackey
Pettite
Fielder
Drew (both of them)
Jeter

Although the 2009 season is essentially over, it is, without a doubt, the best season the Rangers have had since their 5-year peak in the late 1990s. Here are a few things I can recall over the past decade. Feel free to add in your remembrances and significant events of the past 10 years.

2000
Rangers enter the millenia as best in the West and cede that position within the year. Juan gone for Justin Thompson, Francisco Cordero, Frank Catalanotto and others. Pudge has his greatest season in just over half of a season, but the Rangers fall apart shortly after his thumb is broken when it collides with Mo Vaughn's bat.

2001
A New Era is announced with the signing of ARod, potentially the greatest player of his generation, as Hicks intends to reshape the Rangers in the mold of the large payroll Yankees.

2002
ARod's True Ranger MVP Year, likely the finest short-stop year of the PED era. Just another losing season for the Rangers.

2003
ARod's MVP Year. The next George Brett arrives. However, the New Era comes to an end with the trade of ARod, who does not want to play with "24 kids" and feels betrayed that the team isn't chock full of veterans (ironic, considering his spoken promise to Hicks that he wouldn't take steroids is now publicly admonished by Hicks as a betrayal). Hart announces the team now needs "financial flexibility" in order to remain competitive.

2004
The Fighting Showalters. Second best season of the decade, thanks to surprising seasons from Drese, the Gambler, Mayday Mahay, Brian Shouse, and Coco. Also, the team appears to be on the verge of having the best infield in baseball with young, potent hitters at 3B, SS, 2B and 1B: Hank, Young, Soriano, Teixeira.

2005
Fighting Showalter. Lots of front office jockeying behind the scenes. Some grumbling from the players. A risky trade after the season sent Alfonso Soriano packing and brought back Wilkerson, Armando Galarraga, and Terrmel Sledge.

2006
Firing Showalter. A late-season sweep by the Devil Rays is generally believed to have been a mutiny, but, perhaps, Showalter's push to acquire Adam Eaton prior to the season at the expense of Adrian Gonzalez and Chris Young was really his undoing. However, a risky trade was made after the season, sending John Danks to the White Sox for Brandon McCarthy. Ironically, Showalter and at least Jim Reeves loudly complained it wasn't the manager but the lack of pitching that was the problem. The trade appears to confirm this opinion.

2007
A player's manager was brought on board, but it seemed to have little impact on the field. A massive haul of talent is brought into the minor league system through the trade of Teixeira for Harrison, Salty, Beau Jones, Elvis, and Neftali along with June draftees Beavan, Main, Borbon, Hunter, Mitch Moreland & Tim Smith (now in KC with Danny Guetierrez a Ranger), and July international FA signees Martin Perez, Tomas Telis, Ezequiel Rijo, Edwin Garcia, Guillermo Pimentel, and Juan Grullon. Oh yeah, the Rangers final Draft and Follow signee was inked this year: Derek Holland. On Dec 21, the Rangers acquired Josh Hamilton in exchange for Edinson Volquez and Danny Herrera.

2008
Spectacular minor league seasons from Holland, Feliz, Chris Davis, Elvis, Max Ramirez, Martin Perez, Tommy Hunter, and others carry the Rangers minor league system to the top ranking. Rangers add Smoak, Robbie Ross, Richard Alveraz, Joe Weiland, Richard Bleier, Tanner Roark, Edwin Escobar, and Esdras Abreu.

2009
A New Hope. Best season of the decade, by far, stemming almost entirely from drastically improved run prevention, initiated by the offseason move of MY from SS to 3B, accelerated by the spectacular in-season growth of Elvis Andrus into a ML SS, and fortified with contributions from young pitchers Holland, Harrison, Hunter, Feldman, and Feliz. Rangers' farm graduates Holland/Feliz/Davis/Elvis and replaces them with Scheppers/Perez/Smoak/Profar/Sardinas. Other notable June draftees and July signees include Braden Tullis, Robert Erlin, Braxton Lane, and Ruben Sierra Jr, whose father unretired from baseball in 2000, joining the Rangers and posted a nice comeback year for the Rangers in 2001.