Another Rangers season is in the books. The organization continued to make strides up and down the ladder, but Major League teams are ultimately judged by wins and losses. The Rangers didn’t win enough games to be considered a success, but they improved by 4 games in the span of a year. There is no major milestone like a division championship, but progress is progress. The season was full of success and failures at the pro level. With a losing record the successes were clearly outweighed by the abysmal failures. Luckily though the failures are very fixable for 2009.

2007 left the Rangers with an outfield in shambles. The outfield was arguably the strength of the team in 2008. The trade acquisition of Josh Hamilton coupled with the signing of Milton Bradley took care of a significant amount of the offensive deficiencies the team had in the OF and DH in 2007. Hamilton carried 95 RBI into the break and as expected struggled in the second half of his second full season of professional ball. It takes time to build up the stamina to play pro sports. He’ll get there. Bradley was an absolute beast as well. He led the league in OBP and SLG for quite a while after signing on for 1 year and 6 million in the offseason. If he leaves Texas will receive one or two 1st round picks. If he remains the offense will look relatively similar in 2009 as 2008. I would also be remiss if I didn’t mention the destruction Nelson Cruz rained down on the Pacific Coast League and American League this season. He Hamilton Byrd and Bradley look to form the core of the 2009 outfield as of now.

2008 brought the first wave of potential young impact talent to the majors from the surging farm system. Chris Davis destroyed the Texas and Pacific Coast leagues with a .333/.386/.643 minor league line which carried over to a .285/.331/.549 line in the majors in 295 AB. The 1B vacancy created by the Mark Teixeira trade is now effectively filled. He needs to turn some of those strikeouts into walks to get that OBP up, but theres no doubt he can rake in the majors at only 22 years old. His potential is massive. The catching surplus also reached the majors in 2008. Taylor Teagarden, Max Ramirez, and Jarrod Saltalamacchia are all now at the point in their careers that they need at bats. These 3 and Gerald Laird will no doubt be at the center of trade discussions this offseason.

But, oh the pitching failures. The 2008 bullpen was an absolute disaster. The 2007 pen era was a sturdy 3.71. It ballooned up to 5.15 in 2008 on the shoulders of the failed seasons of Jamey Wright, CJ Wilson, and Joaquin Benoit. The only really positive steps forward about the pen this year were the promotion of live-armed Warner Madrigal and the solid production of Frank Francisco.

Props need to be given to Matt Harrison and Brandon McCarthy though. McCarthy had some rough spots after coming back from injury, but he was solid. Matt Harrison was inconsistent, but after winning 9 games as a rookie LHP he appears trustworthy. His K/BB rate improved dramatically over the course of the season. In his first 7 starts Matt permitted as many or more walks than strikeouts in every game. In 7 of his last 8 games he only did that once while sprinkling in an 8k 0bb and a 7k 1bb performance. All you can ask for at this point is improvement. Baby steps.

Speaking of baby steps, how about that defense? Miraculously the Rangers pitchers, catchers, and second basemen committed 62 errors. That’s about twice as many as every playoff team except the Dodgers, and it would be twice as many as the Dodgers with Jeff Kent’s 11 taken out . This should come back to earth naturally. Its unfathomable that those 3 positions can possibly reach 62 errors alone again in 2009. The theory of the Rangers has been that fly balls in this park get hit a long way. I’m not going to argue against that, but I will point out that according to Baseball Reference, Rangers Ballpark has been a neutral park for the last 3 years. However getting groundballs isnt a bad idea. The problem lies with having bad defensive players at second, catcher, and pitcher. If the team had a good defensive 3B this could be covered up some, but Texas 3B committed 23 errors themselves. The majority of the groundballs will go to these 4 positions. Bad defense on the left and up the middle plus groundball pitchers equals disaster.

2009, in a nutshell, isn’t already a lost year. Shoring up the pen and improving the defense will take this team a long way. The Rangers allowed 107 unearned runs. Cut that in half and this team wins 85 games with no other improvements.A starting pitcher or two wouldn’t hurt either though. 2008 was a year of improvement. The emphasis wasn’t on the major league level. The emphasis was on getting kids closer to contributing at the major league level. 2009 and 2010 are the years where the kids will start producing for this club as long as they have proper instruction. In the next post I’ll look at the possible candidates for the Rangers pitching coach vacancy as the Rangers look to find that guiding voice to help Nolan Ryan get some good pitching to Texas. In the mean time don’t look at 2008 as an abysmal failure. Just look at it as a slight failure.

 

joshlile@sportstalkbuzz.com   <— I have an email. Whats up?

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