Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 3: Thunder

Episode Date: July 20, 2012

It’s time to talk about the Texas Rangers.

Good morning, and welcome to episode three of Effectively Wild, the daily baseball prospectus podcast. At the western edge of Manhattan, where I'm keeping a close eye on New Jersey, I am Ben Lindberg. In his Honda Fit, in a garage in Long Beach, California, he is Sam Miller. Sam, it is time for that age-old question. What is your topic today? I was going to propose the Texas Rangers.

All right. And I was going to propose how the Nationals have handled and are continuing to handle the Steven Strasburg innings limit debacle. the Steven Strasburg innings limit debacle. Well, I was thinking earlier today that if we choose your topic again, that would be fine, but I think then we would officially be in the zone where we have to continue choosing your topic forever as a joke, like a Teddy Rook map- mascot race kind of a situation. So I guess the real decision we have to make today is, are we going to commit to a Teddy Roosevelt in the mascot race

situation? Or are we going to have some equity in this podcast? I think we should not have a Teddy Roosevelt situation because sometimes you're going to have better ideas. In fact, I think you already have had a better idea in the first episode that we just didn't talk about. I just misused the word equity, didn't I? Possibly. We'll move on from that. Okay. So we are talking about the Texas Rangers then in the interest of fairness.

We are talking about the Texas Rangers then in the interest of fairness. So the reason that I'm interested in the Texas Rangers today is I edit the daily hit list on the Baseball Perspectives website. And as far as I can remember, the Texas Rangers have been in the number one spot every day that we've done a hit list from the beginning of the year. And they have essentially been the major league's run differential leader every day. And for a long time, it was sort of absurd. They were dozens and dozens of runs ahead of the next best team. And they were, at one point, the owners of a Pythagorean winning percentage, that would have made them the greatest team in many decades. And that has slowed down a lot.

And going into yesterday's game, the Rangers were in danger of losing their run differential lead. They had a one-run lead over the Yankees. The Yankees lost yesterday, so now they have a two-run lead over the Yankees. The Yankees lost yesterday, so now they have a two-run lead over the Yankees. But it is quite possible that the Rangers are not, in fact, the best team in baseball. So this decline must have started right around the time you wrote your article about how the Rangers were the best team and someday would not be the best team.

the Rangers were the best team and someday would not be the best team. Yeah, it starts around that time. That's one way of saying it. Another way of saying it is it starts around the time that I wrote an article saying that the Rangers were the best team and seemed invincible and would almost always be the best team, almost mocking the idea of them not being the best team. So you can look at it as a bit of good timing or a bit of bad timing. But regardless, for the Rangers, it was not good timing at all.

And they are maybe, I don't know, maybe vulnerable. Do you think they're vulnerable? Do you think that there's any chance the Rangers are going to lose a playoff spot? No. I don't think so either. I think. All right, let's see. So they've got a six-game lead in the division right now.

Their playoff odds have been in the mid or high 90s for as long as I can remember, basically. So I wouldn't say vulnerable to missing a playoff spot. I mean, clearly it's much more of a race than it looked like it would be early. And I would think the Angels would stay within striking distance probably through the end of the season or just about. I don't know, though. There's not a whole lot of weaknesses you can point to, really. No, there aren't, especially now that they finally have gotten

almost their entire pitching staff off the disabled list. I think that it is sort of amusing to look back and see the sort of pitchers that they were throwing out there, considering how deep their staff is, both their starting rotation and their bullpen. And they had basically five, I believe, five key pitchers on the disabled list. Now they're down. I think O'Hara is either activated or about to be activated. So that will be just one, Feliz.

And, of course, they've added Oswalt. So they are... They went dumpster diving for Oswalt. And now they're like, it's crazy. They have six they they arguably have six good starters and now they're all the rumors uh around them involve them adding another high-end starter so their ability to reload and stock up seems to be at this point better than you know almost any team in baseball they've they've got all the pieces in place, it seems like,

to make the trades they need to do or to make internal upgrades when they need to, which is what makes it so interesting that they've struggled for two months. I mean, in the past... What is struggling exactly? What sort of winning percentage are we talking over that time? The winning percentage over exactly two months is almost 600 they're 30 and 21 which is why they still have a six game lead over the angels who have been very good for the past two

months their run differential over exactly two months is plus two so they have been, for the past two months, a lot like the Baltimore Orioles. That's an inflammatory statement right there. Necessarily, credibly winning. I don't know. I don't know. You might remember that early in the season, Jeff Sullivan wrote a piece about how the Rangers were essentially in a season-long victory lap. They hit 100% playoff odds in our odds in April.

And so they have had basically the whole year to just sort of mess around. And I don't know if that's all they're doing is just messing around, but I think that it brings up sort of the same question for the team that josh hamilton brings up with his kind of insane start and cooler last two months where you wonder um how do we should we judge people and should we judge teams um uh more based on the recent history or on the overall product of their performance. And I think both the Rangers and Josh Hamilton, if you look at their overall numbers, are still very good. They still have shown that they are among the best and the Rangers may be the best. The Rangers may be the best, but if you believe that the past history is more indicative than the entire history, then you could say the Rangers have a lot of flaws.

Well, there is that old adage about the never being as good as you are or as you look when you're in a hot streak and never being as bad as you look when you're struggling. Not that they're exactly struggling. But yeah, I mean, I guess I'd be inclined to trust the last couple months. Well, you know, it's always a mix of the two. I would think they're a bit closer to how good they were early on than a 500 team, which their run differential might have said they were over the past couple months. So in that case, I would expect them to bounce back a bit from their horrible 30 and 20 record or whatever it is that you said they were over that time period. Well, it's 30 and 21.

Yes. Sorry. Feliz is rehabbing now, is that right? Is he in a rehab assignment or is he – he should be back sometime soon-ish? I'm actually not sure. Yeah, I guess – I do – I mean, I's he's not he's not out forever so he'll be by the time i'm at i mean one way or another the rangers are going to get a

postseason spot i think they they the question is whether they're going to win the division whether they're going to have the best record in the league uh but they will get a playoff spot and i imagine felice will be in that playoff rotation. If he comes back and the Rangers have six or seven other starters, are we going to start hearing about Feliz back to the bullpen after we finally left that behind us? Oh, gosh, I hope so. I mean, there's always...

It's annoying to have to hear that every year, but there's always some logic to it in that if you have a strength in one area and a weakness in another, it might make sense to shore up the weakness. And obviously his stuff works in relief and he's coming off an injury, which maybe makes you want to be more cautious. But I'd hate to go back to that yearly will he or won't he start after we seem to finally put that question to rest this year. Yeah, that would be the most merciful thing that could happen, I think probably think twice about just casually recommending

that a guy switch from one to the other now, just sort of seeing what that can do to a guy, possibly mentally, psychologically, and not being able to predict that beforehand with any sort of accuracy, it seems. Ben, what do you think the Yankees should do with Jabba? It's funny that Jabba is on the verge of coming back after it seems like a few months ago, stories had him basically bleeding out after his trampoline accident, and suddenly he's back already after it seemed like

that was supposed to be a career-ending injury. But I think that is one starter-reliever question that has finally been answered. So now the question is whether he can be anything at all. He's throwing 98. Well, that's encouraging. It is. He's staying away from trampolines so have we come to the end i've come to the end of my knowledge i think we might have actually come in around the time that we're aiming to come in around for these things possibly this time

may i sneak in one quick factoid you may the third highest ops plus on the texas rangers want to guess hamilton beltray and uh i'm just saying it's not cruise oh craig gentry that's right my man cra, Craig Gentry. Your man. How many plate appearances do you have that handy? Like 140, something like that. Well, I like to see that. He's quite a defensive wizard, and he's hitting well. 174. All right. So that's Episode 3, and we will be back on Monday with more from this weekend.