What's Wrong With Michael Young?
Yes, he's still our past, present, and future.[Editor's note: This originally went up late yesterday afternoon, but given the late publication date and last night's 0-for-4 showing, I felt compelled to bump this back to the top for one more day. All data still reflects Young's statistics before Tuesday night.]
Yeah, that's right. It's time for this post.
The keen and perceptive optimists among you will note that Michael Young isn't really mired in the most devastating of slumps, because he has cracked base hits in 12 of his last 15 games and proudly boasts a decent four-game hitting streak and is, at the end of the day, still throwing up a could-be-much-worse batting line of .288/.314/.397. They'll also note that the Michael Young we're seeing right now isn't nearly as bad or as conspicuous as the early-season Michael Young of two years ago, who batted .263/.295/.351 through May 5th and drove many of us -- including myself -- over the edge with his perpetually lacking defensive play.
They'll also note that Michael Young went 2-for-3 the night after I savaged Young in print form, and immediately embarked upon a scorching .414/.478/.657 run over the span of nearly an entire month that, for all intents and purposes, saved Young's pre-ASB numbers from what portended to be a terrible fate.
And maybe my desire to replicate that same blogosphere-fueled magic is part of what is driving this post. It's either that, or my stated penchant for being critical from time to time even when everything in our baseball world seems right. But I'm beginning to wonder about where this year's version of Michael Young is headed, and whether the deleterious effects of the offensive aging curve that he so bravely fought off last year are finally catching up to him.
Before diving any further into this, let's just go ahead and issue this acknowledgement: no, Michael Young isn't an above-average defensive player at, well, any position at this point. We already knew this to be the case several years ago, and barring an unexpected series of events whereby Young is retrofitted with range-bolstering implants, that aspect of Young's game isn't going to get any better from this point. And, no, starting him in the field in place of Ian Kinsler or Adrian Beltre doesn't behoove the Rangers' defense from the standpoint of a single game. But I'm at peace with what he is as a defender at this point, and I've accepted it, and if it all serves to alleviate a little of the wear and tear on the Rangers' starting infield alignment, I'm alright with it.
What's troubling me at this point, though, is where Young's underlying offensive tendencies seem to be headed, and where they were, in fact, headed even before he slammed into one of the nastiest slumps of his major league career. Since the conclusion of that stop-start Tigers series back on April 22nd, Young has amassed 88 plate appearances over 20 games, and produced an ice-cold .202/.227/.298 (.232 wOBA) batting line -- his worst 20-game stretch from a wOBA standpoint since April 13th through May 4th, 2007. There isn't necessarily any predictive value in such a degree of awfulness over 20 games, of course, and it should be noted in the interest of fairness that Young started the 2012 season with a brilliant, counterbalancing .403/.431/.532 run over the Rangers' first 15 games.
"So," you're thinking, "what's the point? Where are you going with this? What's really wrong with Michael Young? Or is there anything even wrong with Michael Young? Why do you hate Michael Young so much?" Since you asked, here are the statistical indicators that give me reason for such apprehension at the moment:
The 3.9 percent walk rate. Young's offensive value has never derived so much from his ability to draw free passes as it has from his ability to spray line drives to all fields, but we're now staring at a substantial drop-off from last season's walk rate of 6.8 percent, and that of the season before that (7.0 percent), and even his career-average walk rate (6.7 percent). You don't have to draw walks at a high rate to be a great player, but you're going to be hard-pressed to earn your keep as an everyday player -- and especially when the bulk of your playing time is found at the DH spot -- with a walk rate in the 3-4 percent range over the longer haul. This isn't the "longer haul" yet, but ...
The 39 percent chase rate. According to ESPN.com's Inside Edge scouting service, Young's rate of swings at pitches outside of the strike zone is good for eighth-worst mark in baseball out of 184 qualifying hitters, and is materially higher than his highest single-season chase rate (30 percent) during the 2009-11 window. That might serve to explain why Young's walk rate has decayed to the extent that it has ... but, then, swinging at out-of-zone pitches isn't necessarily a bad thing, seeing as how pitches down the heart of the plate and a couple of inches above the strike zone are still eminently crushable.
So, what's the real problem? To some extent, it appears to be Young's 17.3 percent swing rate at non-competitive pitches, or those pitches far beyond the parameters of the regulation major league strike zone that nobody aside from Vladimir Guerrero stands much chance of hitting with any kind of authority. To put that into the necessary context, the league-average swing rate on such pitches is 8.6 percent. Last year, Young swung at non-competitive pitches only 6.4 percent of the time. I don't know if this is a blip on the radar or if this is indicative of Young battling a pitch-recognition funk or if this is a function of frustration/desperation, but it's something that merits watching.
The 13 percent well-hit ball rate. This is something a little different from your standard-fare batted-ball classifications, in that "well-hit balls" appear to be the proprietary invention of ESPN, and is calculated by ESPN's own in-house video scouts. You'll probably notice that Young's line drive rate is actually higher than his assigned well-hit ball rate this season, so if that's the sort of discrepancy that engenders distrust on your part, you can disregard everything in this section. But batted-ball rates are still an area of considerable sabermetric debate, with each data provider identifying ground/fly balls and line drives in a different way -- and, if you think about it, a line drive isn't automatically commensurate to a "well-hit ball," as a dinky shot over the heads of the middle infielders technically qualifies as a line drive.
Anyway, I don't want to get bogged down in the definitions and technical language. What I do want to point out is a startling indicator of just how little good wood Young is putting on the ball right now, as I've listed Young's seasonal well-hit average to the right of each calendar year, and then listed where that ranks among all qualifying major league hitters in a given year:
2009: .266 well-hit average, 90th percentile
2010: .248 well-hit average, 83rd percentile
2011: .265 well-hit average, 80th percentile
2012: .130 well-hit average, 11th percentile
The consistently strong contact of years past has gone somewhere. I'm not sure where it has gone, and it is completely within the realm of possibility that it will come back at some point (we have, after all, only played out one-fifth of the 2012 regular season), but it's gone right now, and Young will continue to suffer for it until it returns. I could break down all down into an even more granular form (starting with, say, Young's horrific 9.1 percent well-hit rate on fastballs inside the strike zone this season, against a average 2009-11 rate of 37.3 percent), but I think I've made the point that needs to be made here.
So, Young is chasing more pitches than usual (especially bad pitches), he's drawing fewer walks than usual, and he's making less good contact than usual. Is it all derivative from nothing more ominous than an extended slump? Perhaps. It could all be a product of pressing too hard at the plate, which has a tendency to snowball into an even more substantial problem; after all, a mentally befuddled hitter is a dead hitter walking. But we're talking about one of the greatest, most consistent, most even-keeled hitters in the history of this franchise, so I'm not sure how much I buy into the notion that Young's offensive problems are all a product of his psyche's own making.
The explanation that could conceivably make some sense is that Young, at the age of 35, is finally losing a little bat speed, and has failed to adequately compensate for that loss of function yet; that's the explanation that would probably be the most troubling in nature, since it's a lot harder to compensate for lost bat speed than it is to clear a mental roadblock. With only one-fifth of the season in the books, though, I'm not prepared to totally commit to any explanation for the erosion in Young's offensive numbers. And, hell, he may go out there tonight and begin making me look like a damn fool, such as he did after I beat him down two years ago. I'm hoping he does, because I derive no direct pleasure from Michael Young not playing well, and a good Michael Young makes the Rangers better.
But I'm not so confident that he will. And that is what has me worried.
Post a Comment | in Analysis, The Season Colby Lewis, Ron Washington, And The Sweep
It's May 16th, the Rangers find themselves on the losing end of a home sweep for the first time in 22 months, and the natives seem surprisingly restless. Though, then again, maybe it shouldn't come as any sort of surprise, because I get that this is the age of heightened expectations, and that anything less than a split in any series is going to rile and/or incense this fan base. I don't necessarily agree with such an extreme response to regular-season games in mid-May, but I get it.
In this case, though, we're talking about back-to-back home losses to a sub-.500 Kansas City squad -- and not just losses, but fairly convincing losses, as the Royals were in control for the better part of those 18 total innings, and themselves doubled the Rangers' meager total of five runs in those two games. When something like that transpires, you can bank on somebody getting slammed with the blame. On Monday night, the criticism was very deliberately aimed towards the B-squad lineup that conjured up only a solo home run and, to a certain extent, the manager that decided to rest both Mike Napoli and Ian Kinsler on the same night. And on Tuesday night, the targets appeared to be ...
Target A: Colby Lewis, who shredded his competition during five starts in the month of April (32.2 IP, 4 BB, 29 K, 4 HR, 1.93 ERA), and is currently campaigning hard to make us forget all about those positive contributions, as Tuesday night marked his third consecutive start where he allowed at least six runs to scoot around home plate. Ron Washington was quick to deflect some of the blame from Lewis in asserting that five of his runs allowed would not have scored if not for his two throwing errors (logical errors ahoy!), but the reality is that this was still Lewis in his ugliest form, because the Colby Lewis who's beset by deficient fastball velocity/command and who's sailing 87 mph meatballs up in the zone is nothing short of unwatchable. That was dreadful.
But, hey, rough patches happen, right? He'll get it figured out, right? In theory, yes; I've compared everything from Lewis's BABIPs to his pitch frequency heat maps to his swinging strike rates between the months of April and May, and nothing really stands out other than that whole getting-homered-to-death thing. If you drew a gun on me and demanded that I tell you whether Lewis will be okay over the long haul or not, I'd side with the former over the "not." But it's also worth noting that his average fastball velocity seems to have fallen another tick (this time, into the 87-88 mph range), and that this isn't the last time we're going to get burned this year by his increasingly thin margin of error.
One caveat: if the root cause of his recent struggles is something more sinister than your standard-fare rough patch, such as, say, his degenerative hip condition taking another turn for the worse ... then, yeah, all bets are off.
Target B: Ron Washington, who benched those aforementioned two starters on Monday night, and then rested both Elvis Andrus and Nelson Cruz on Tuesday night -- moves that didn't prove terribly popular with the fan base at large, as they helped feed the perception that Washington wasn't taking these games as seriously as he should, or that he was basically "punting" the entire series. There was also some grousing over Washington's pinch-hitting management in the anticlimactic ninth inning of Monday night's affair, and then some assorted carping over Washington leaving Lewis in for one batter too long, seeing as how Lewis's final batter of the night raked a two-out, run-scoring double.
So, yeah. It's the year 2012, the Rangers are still -- as of this moment, at least -- on pace to win 100 games, they've claimed back-to-back American League pennants, and Ron Washington is still catching considerable flack for his decisions. Tough crowd. Speaking as someone who has been a pretty vocal critic of Washington's in-game management of years past, I do still understand where most of the fan frustration comes from, and I get that Washington is never going to be regarded or accepted as a saber-savvy manager. (I think you could make a compelling argument that the marked increase in defensive shifts and the particulars of the Rangers' baserunning philosophy qualify as saber-friendly strategies, though there will certainly be those that disagree.)
It's a little strange, though, that Washington still faces such difficulty in getting any kind of benefit of the doubt with some people. Sure, I'd prefer that the Rangers rest one of Cruz/Andrus/Napoli/Kinsler on four separate days as opposed to resting two of that group on back-to-back days -- but I have to imagine there was great reluctance on Washington's part to rest any starters during either the Angels series or the forthcoming Athletics series, and so two per game it was. Or maybe Washington saw that all four players needed that breather as soon as possible, and adjusted accordingly. I get the frustration, but I'm not prepared to question Washington's judgment on a matter that he's better equipped to make the right decision on than any of us.
I'm not saying that anyone should treat Washington's maneuvers as gospel, or ignore blatant managerial mistakes. Hell, you don't even have to like Washington as a manager. But if you are going to rail on him, make sure your contention can be supported by good, objective evidence ... and after you've done that, retake stock of the good that Washington has done over his tenure in Texas, and ask yourself if it's really worth it to press forward with that point against Washington that you're yearning to make. Sometimes, it will be. But not every time. That's all I'm saying.
Post a Comment | in Analysis, The Season Monday Afternoon Rangers Notes: Mo' Money, Mo' Problems
Some stuff floating around out there this afternoon of Rangers note:
● Jeff Passan conferred with several executives and assessed the potential landing spots, and has set the odds of Josh Hamilton going to one of these 12 teams as follows: Orioles at 100-to-1, Blue Jays at 50-to-1, Angels at 50-to-1, Phillies at 40-to-1, Nationals at 30-to-1, Red Sox at 20-to-1, Yankees at 18-to-1, Giants at 15-to-1, Mariners at 15-to-1, Cubs at 12-to-1, Dodgers at 5-to-1, and the Rangers at 5-to-4 (Yahoo! Sports)
● Ken Rosenthal proposes a risk/reward-balancing package from the Rangers that pays Josh Hamilton $100 million guaranteed over the next four seasons, and cautions that there's little reason to believe that Hamilton will be amenable to such provisions as voidable years on the back end of a deal (ala the sixth year on Adrian Beltre's deal) or option years; he further explains that the inclusion of contract-voiding drug and alcohol provisions probably wouldn't matter, because the players' union views such provisions as unenforceable (FOXSports.com)
● Per CBSSports.com's Jon Heyman, Robbie Ross was part of the Rangers' offer for Carlos Beltran during last summer's trade deadline festivus, but the Mets saw more upside in right-handed pitching prospect Zach Wheeler, and given that and Beltran's reluctance to waive his no-trade clause to go to Texas, Ross remained a Ranger
Post a Comment | in Analysis, Rumors, The Season The Best Team In The World: Part Something Or Other
It was touted as a potentially defining early-season stretch for the defending American League champions -- 27 games in 29 days, including 17 games on the road, against what figured to be the bulk of the Rangers' serious competition for this year's league pennant, including an extended run through a landmine-rigged AL East and stops against the two most dangerous teams in the AL Central: the Tigers and Indians.
And it was all supposed to climax with this past weekend's three-game set, which found the Rangers playing host to trendy pre-season World Series pick Los Angeles -- the team that one national scribe hyped as the best team in baseball just five weeks ago, and that another claimed "may be the first team ever to have too many good players." The difficulty level during those 29 games was further amplified by a pair of rhythm-disrupting doubleheaders, with the latter necessitating an insane 48-hour stretch where the Rangers played two games in Baltimore, embarked upon a 1,000-plus-mile return trip to Texas, and then played two games in Texas ... all within a 48-hour span. Throw in a gimpy Adrian Beltre for good measure, and you've got one hell of a litmus test for how the 2012 season as a whole will play out.
The Rangers began this stretch of games boasting an 8-2 record and a runs scored-to-allowed differential of 45-to-24. They exit this stretch of games boasting a 23-12 record and a runs scored-to-allowed differential of 207-to-127. During an entire month where the Rangers were short on rest but heavy on miles traveled, and where the Junior Circuit threw its most formidable adversaries at its two-time defending champion, the Rangers won at a .600 clip (or a 97-win pace) and plated 162 runs against only 103 runs allowed. Think about that. In an aggregate sense, Texas blitzed the best that their entire league could muster over the span of an entire month.
During the nationally televised finale of that 27-game stretch, the Rangers found themselves showered with plaudits and best-team-in-baseball proclamations by the media contingent that couldn't sidestep or deny what it now knew to be the irrefutable truth, and during that final three-game set against the Angels, the Rangers swiped two games and executed a runs scored-to-allowed beatdown of 25-to-13. They've pushed just a hair under 700,000 fans through their turnstiles in just 16 home dates, and find themselves on pace to draw more than 3.5 million fans. The money is pouring in. Their talent is stratospheric. Their chemistry is, by all accounts, beyond compare.
This probably sounds a little hard to believe on the surface, but it's tougher to write about a team like this than a team plagued by discernible flaws and gaping holes and clubhouse discord. There's the unconscious influence that stems from a generally greater reader response to critical articles, of course ... but as far as this team is concerned, there's the thing where you feel that there are only so many ways to say "this team is ridiculously f'n good" before you sound redundant, and where even the most laudatory things you can possibly conjure up don't feel like they do this team enough justice. This team isn't perfect, but it's playing its best baseball right now during what promises to be its greatest season, and regardless of how hissed off you might be at the fact that the Rangers can't win every game, that's the overarching thing you should keep coming back to: this team really is ridiculously f'n good.
Sometimes, though, you get hissed off by the fact that the Rangers can't lead during every inning of every game, and that not everything can go right during every inning of every game. The grumblings quickly commenced after Mark Trumbo blasted a tape-measure shot off Neftali Feliz that put the Rangers in an early 2-1 hole ... but Feliz recovered beautifully, finishing with six frames of two-run work while amassing five strikeouts. The grumblings continued when Mark Lowe failed to maintain his brilliant early-season run out of the bullpen and got clobbered for three runs on five hits and a walk in just two-thirds of an inning ... but he escaped with the lead intact, the Rangers compensated with three runs of their own, and everything worked out. Bad things happen during games to great teams, and those bad things have a tendency to provoke an excessively passionate response, and I get that it's all part of what being an emotionally invested fan is about ... but it does seem to go a wee bit far at times.
Do, however, go ahead and revel in the throttling of Jered Weaver, and his concurrent dugout temper tantrum. Celebrate the grand slam that, as part of a monster 4-for-5 effort, may signal the beginning of Nelson Cruz's rebirth. Find some measure of joy in the fact that Josh Hamilton went 2-for-5 with a single and a double, and yet somehow managed to lower his triple-slash AVG/OBP/SLG line across the board. Marvel at the otherworldly 15-for-23 showing between the five hitters that span the No. 7-9 spots in the batting order and then wrap around to the No. 1-2 spots. And take comfort in the reality that this game had its rough spots, and that the Rangers still blew the Angels out of the water.
C.J. Wilson won the skirmish on Saturday, but the Rangers won the three-part battle, and they're handily winning the war, and they're positioned to keep on winning the war. I've still got the itch to write something critical because, hey, you don't do this for this many years without developing that itch to some extent, but that's an itch that's going to be left unscratched for the moment. Because at this precise moment in time, during the very early hours of Monday morning, it's just not worth it to go there. Maybe it'll be worth it as early as tomorrow or the next day, but at this moment, this is the best team in the world, and everything in the world seems a little more right because of it.
Yu Darvish: 1. C.J. Wilson: 0.
"Yeah, I hate to say this, but if they resume this game tonight, Yu Darvish [and] C.J. Wilson aren't coming back." - Joey Matches on Twitter, 7:34 p.m. CDT Friday
I was half-wrong. I'm not fond of being wrong, but there it is. Maybe I was half-wrong because I underestimated Darvish's capacity for overcoming adversity (both physically and mentally, in this case), or because I figured the precipitation might never stop falling, or because I believed the Rangers would play things as conservatively as possible with their most luminous young pitching star. Maybe I just wasn't capable of suspending my disbelief at the thought of Darvish pitching on both sides of a two-hour rain delay, seeing as how the stakes of this single game were relatively low, and seeing as how injury/performance concerns typically culminate in a rain-delayed starter being knocked out after just 60-90 minutes of downtime.
But at 9:00 p.m. sharp, Darvish emerged from the Rangers' dugout and began the several hundred foot excursion to the Rangers' bullpen. C.J. Wilson, the Rangers hero-turned-nemesis and primary antagonist in this long-building Rangers vs. Angels rivalry, never emerged from his respective dugout. He was not seen again for the rest of the night; his first-inning mess was entrusted to emergency long man Jerome Williams, who failed utterly in his efforts to clean it up, and then suffered through 6.2 miserable innings of his own in a game that was effectively over by the fourth inning.
C.J. is only the 13th starting pitcher in the last five major league seasons to yield four or more earned runs while recording one or fewer outs. He'll seek redemption in a few hours with what will be his second start in about 17 hours' time, and he might achieve the winning outcome that he's assuredly seeking ... or he might become the first starting pitcher to lose consecutive games for his ballclub since Wilbur Wood in 1973. The latter possibility is delicious, but I dare not speculate too hardon it. All I know is that C.J., whether by his own choice or that of Grand Poobah Scioscia, decided that a post-delay restart was not in the best interest of his health and/or his team, and that was the end of that.
And, heck, maybe going down that cautious path was completely justified. Here's the thing: the fact that Darvish returned -- albeit not before some intense debate on the part of the Rangers' coaching staff, and an apparent false start where Scott Feldman actually began warming up -- where C.J. didn't return makes for a nice, convenient juxtaposition of seeming warrior vs. weakling. It does a sensational job of solidifying the pro-Darvish, anti-C.J. narrative. The fans love this. They eat it up. I get it. But there's a good reason why you generally don't see starting pitchers pick up from where they left off after protracted delays, * and I'd be lying to you if I said that the initial sight of Darvish returning to the bump after such an extended layoff didn't turn my stomach over a few times.
[* And while I'm still going on about this, let's be clear about something -- the cluster of storm cells that stopped down the entire game after only four outs was on a clear southeastern trajectory for the Ballpark more than 40 minutes before first pitch. Everything did ultimately turn out for the best, but I wasn't on board with starting the game on time because of what was looming nearby and because of the clear and present danger of losing both starting pitchers after just 1-2 innings, and I'm hoping that if a similar situation arises in the future, the parties responsible for making these sorts of decisions do a better job of erring on the side of caution. That was a mess that nearly blew up into a gigantic mess.]
But even with such well-intentioned concerns, the thing that left you feeling okay about Darvish's reentry was that you simply couldn't imagine the Rangers taking an undue risk with his health and pushing ahead with anything less than complete confidence in his physical well-being ... and while the end result of it all wasn't Darvish at his sharpest, it was pretty close to being Darvish at his most entertaining, with a refreshingly engaged sellout crowd furnishing a major assist in that regard. The weekend crowds tend to get a bad rap for not grasping some nuances of the game (e.g. cheering every ball hit into the air as if it were an impending home run), but this crowd was electric, hanging on Darvish's every triumph as though he were in the process of crafting a perfect game and punctuating every strikeout with a booming repetition of his first name. I wish we could bottle and save that crowd for a rainy day.
And what of Darvish himself? The box score isn't suggestive of a great performance (5.1 IP, 3 H, 3 ER, 7 K, 3 BB, 2 HR, 93 pitches), but given the adverse circumstances of the night and the fact that he had to try and stay loose for more than two hours, I was good with where it went and how it turned out. Since April 23rd (a period spanning four starts), Darvish has produced a strikeout-to-walk ratio of 37-to-11 over 26.2 innings, has produced the fourth-best swinging strike rate out of 114 qualifying starting pitchers, and has managed to induce one "chase" for every three pitches outside of the strike zone, which is the third-best rate among those same 114 pitchers over that same period. He hasn't quite achieved monster status yet, but he's not that far away at this point.
I've run this nearly 1,000 words deep, and haven't touched upon one single Rangers offensive accomplishment from the night. That's a damn shame. I haven't gotten around to Josh Hamilton's two homers (which rendered him only the third player in history to clout 17 home runs in his team's first 33 games, a feat not even Barry Bonds in his 73-homer campaign replicated), or Mitch Moreland's upper-deck shot, or Adrian Beltre's one-kneed double, or Mike Napoli's bizarre second triple in as many days), or even the unusual distinction of this being the rare home game to run past midnight ... but, then, maybe that's for the best, because we have to do it all over again in a few hours.
And the crowd that induced so many goosebumps with its ravenous late-game "WE WANT CEE-JAY!" chant will have its wish granted at high noon, as the pitcher in question braces for a second chorus of vocal disapproval in less than 24 hours, and tries to avoid induction into the Wilbur Wood club nearly 40 years after its foundation.
Post a Comment | in Analysis, The Season Today's C.J. Wilson Poll Of The Day
When I asked this same question five months ago, a two-thirds majority of nearly 1,200 respondents said that, no, they would not boo C.J. Wilson upon his return to the Ballpark. There's the baseline.
So, let's go back to the well one more time:
Post a Comment | in The Season And The Beat Goes On: May 11th
This isn't going to be the only post of the day leading up to the potential ratings-busting series opener against the Angels, nor is it the post I wanted to write after a twin bill ... but I'm a bit worn out, and so this is what you get for the moment:
T.R. Sullivan recaps yesterday's Game 1 and Game 2, with the first being notable because of Colby Lewis becoming the first pitcher in major league history to allow five home runs and amass 10 strikeouts in a single start, and the second being a nice bounceback win in spite of a horrific three-error second inning.
Richard Durrett writes about Robbie Ross attempting to live down a wrong-jersey moment late during Game 2, which necessitated an emergency uniform retrieval.
Randy Galloway says that C.J. Wilson doesn't deserve the torrent of boos that will almost assuredly be rained down upon him tonight, and ties the Metroplex's disdain for Wilson together with its disdain for Mark Teixeira and Alex Rodriguez.
Jeff Wilson notes that Adrian Beltre is just about ready to return to the Rangers' lineup on a full-time basis, and says that Ron Washington is leaning towards starting Mike Napoli behind the plate tonight.
Post a Comment | in The Season The Rangers Are 21-11
That was a strange Rangers doubleheader.
But not as strange as the last Rangers doubleheader in Baltimore.
Post a Comment | in Analysis, The Season Post a Comment | in Gameday, Live Chat, The Season Josh Hamilton Contract Crowdsourcing
It's been a while since I've done one of these (I guess this still qualifies as a thinly disguised ATBGO post), but here's today's house jam that you've (a) never heard of and (b) will either love or hate, as I can't imagine there being much middle ground on a song like this:
So, yeah, the Josh Hamilton contract talk may have reached its apex, and we're still six-odd months away from free agency. Here's what we've got out there today:
● The USA Today's Bob Nightengale spoke to five "major league talent evaluators" about Hamilton's next contract, and they agreed across the board that he will pull down at least $20 million per year over five years. One American League assistant manager predicts that his eventual deal will look something like Prince Fielder's nine-year, $214 million deal before all is said and done.
● Randy Galloway flip-flops from his previously conservative stance, and says that the minimum bid for Hamilton should start at six years, $160 million, while also saying that he'd go above and beyond that to keep Hamilton here. There are also some remarks from Nolan Ryan about not knowing how much he'd throw down for Hamilton right now, and then there's also this:
Just a guess, and it's only a guess, but at the end of Arizona spring training, a mere six weeks ago, Josh probably could have been signed for his terms of six years, $150 million, all guaranteed.
The Rangers, at the time, would have been considered nuts for investing that much into demons and injuries unless there were "out" clauses for the club after each season.
At the moment, of course, that number would probably be a bargain, even at 25 mil a year guaranteed.
hahahahahahaHAHAHAHAHAHAH
● Hamilton talks to SI.com's Tom Verducci about his situation, and says a lot of good things about the Rangers' organization while reaffirming his desire to say here ... but he also says that it's going to be okay if he doesn't end up staying in Texas. Of course, I wouldn't expect him to say anything to the contrary. I don't think Hamilton saying "Actually, I'm going to relapse repeatedly and hard without my Texas support system" would be in the best interest of his financial situation.
● Ben Rogers writes that Hamilton's asking price is only further escalated by the fact that he's the transcendent kind of player that people will actually pay money to come and watch, and has evolved into a brand all by himself.
● And Jon Daniels updates the Hamilton contract talks by telling everyone that there's nothing to update.
Now that we've rummaged through all of that, let's see how these two crowdsourcing polls turn out. They'll close 36 hours from now. Please answer both polls as truthfully as you can, and keep in mind that I'm asking for your maximum bid in terms of dollars per year/years, and not how much you think he'll actually get.
Post a Comment | in Analysis, The Season The Rangers Are Postponed
The rain never lifted over Baltimore, and, as a consequence, we're looking at an afternoon-evening doubleheader tomorrow, with Colby Lewis going in Game 1 at 3:05 p.m. CDT, and Derek Holland kicking off Game 2 somewhere around 7:00 p.m. CDT. This probably isn't an ideal outcome from an exhaustion standpoint, as the Rangers don't get their next off day until May 24th, and are currently slated to play four games during a 48-hour stretch spanning late Thursday afternoon through early Saturday afternoon, but it is what it is. The Rangers aren't slated to return to Baltimore this year, so this was more a case of now-or-never than the result of a conscious decision on both teams' parts.
Expect Scott Feldman to assume spot-starting duties during next Monday's series-opener vs. the Royals, because if the Rangers relied solely upon their starting five and eschewed bullpen aid, one of Lewis or Holland would have to go on three days' rest next Monday.
It's possible that things could become even more complicated over the next 48 hours from a scheduling standpoint, as an incoming storm system could conceivably rain out Friday night's series opener against the Angels (yeah, the much-anticipated Darvish/C.J. tilt). See, none of this would be happening if this team would spend some money and get a retractable roof up in here. *
[* if you mistake this snark for seriousness on my part, I'm just going to break down and cry]
Post a Comment | in The Season