Rangers Defense Key To Early Season Success

Hopefully I’m talking as a baseball nerd and not as a frustrated Angels fan, but I’m still not ready to jump on the Ranger bus yet. They deserve credit for playing well so far, however, I just have too many questions about their ability to continue all season. They’re getting a lot of shoulder pats in the media, mostly because they’re in first place and they’re not the Angels. The media gets bored of the same team winning the division every year (remember all the Mariners hype at the beginning of 2008?). But in the 20 games since the Rangers swept the Angels in Arlington, the Rangers have gone 10-10, while the Angels have gone 10-9. I think what we’ve seen in the last few weeks is two mediocre teams playing mediocre baseball. That three-game series in Texas has made all the difference in the AL West so far.

As I see it, Texas has overperformed this year. When adjusted for park factors, Ranger pitching has done much better at home than on the road, and that just can’t keep up over a full season. Players who have played poor defense their entire careers, like Ian Kinsler and Michael Young, don’t suddenly become great defensive players for no reason either (although there is a reason for Young, he’s awful at short but decent at third). The Rangers didn’t bring in Omar Vizquel just for fun. Elvis Andrus committed 32 errors in 109 games in AA last year, UZR says that Josh Hamilton was the worst CF in the AL in 2008, and while Chris Davis has played a good first base, he’s not going to stay in the majors much longer batting .199 and striking out almost half the time. Young players can certainly improve, but when Josh Hamilton puts up better defensive numbers in CF than B. J. Upton over a small sample of innings, I’ll question the sample size first.

I’m not trying to pass out Kool-Aid to Angels fans in denial, but I’m just not worried yet. Give it another 50-60 games. I think we’ll see the Rangers allowing more runs. They’re starting to have injury problems of their own: Matt Harrison has been out, Josh Hamilton will be gone for 4-6 weeks, and Brandon McCarthy is hitting the DL. None of this will mean anything if the Angels don’t fix their own problems. I haven’t really seen defense as a huge issue, but the bullpen definitely is. They can’t sit around and wait for Texas to regress to the mean, because sometimes it never happens. Just look at last year’s Angels team, which overperformed all year. If they want to win the division again in 2009, they’ll have to take it.