The Ranger offense since the All Star Break

is really carrying this thing. Geez.

Difference between batting average and on base percentage is just amazing. I didn’t realize he was walking that much since the break.

He came on really strong in the second half at Frisco last year, and it looks like he might be getting pretty comfortable against ML pitching now. I still think there is more in the bat than what most people were describing as he was coming up.

and Nellie Cruz bats 6th or 7th?

Thats why i don’t think a guy like Nick Johnson would help that much. Cause we don’t have guys who can string together hits to bring that walk around to score. Sure once or twice he may get brought home on a HR but most likely all it’ll do is create more men left on base which frustrates me more than seeing guys K.

11-5, for a sweet .688 winning percentage.

Suck It, Hater!

I think it’s Bill James related….

Chris Davis dug out a ridiculous # of balls in 09….24 in 70 games…leader is Pujols with 32 in 101.

Good stuff cheap right there.

Just throwing it out there bc I had seen a lot of folks questioning how many balls he’s dug out this year…I guess they now are keeping track of it?

1st Bourbon
2nd MY
3rd Murphy
4th Cruz
5th Druw
6th Salty
7th Hank
8th Omar
9th Elvis

Hamilton batting 5th in OKC. Oh, and Ian keeps the 8th spot when he gets back until he learns his lesson.

Is straight up raking it right now. The bottom half there is pretty brutal. I’m wondering if Hamilton needs to swap places with Davis for a little while.

Between Kinsler and Hamilton, this has been a tough stretch to watch.

Encouraged by Salty lately? I haven’t been watching many games lately, but simply by looking at the numbers he seems to have begun turning things around since the ASB. If he can get his act together and become anything close to the All-star catcher we thought we were getting, one of the biggest problems with this thing is solved for a long, long time.

If the Rangers make the playoffs, how much of a case does MY have for MVP? What if he continues to play like this or even at a .050 lower clip in each category?

is actually happening when the hitters are up there swinging is two-fold:

A) The worst fault is what pitches we are swinging at. Not only do we swing at too many pitches outside of the zone, but also, we swing at pitches out of the zone in hitter counts and we swing at too many pitcher’s pitches that are in the zone when ahead in the count. Swinging at pitches outside of the zone when down in the count happens, its just the nature of hitting, some hitters have a better trained eye more naturally developed to see when a pitch is a strike or a ball, but essentially, swinging at bad pitches happens when down in the count. But swinging at bad pitches in a 0-0 count, 1-0 count, 2-0 count and 3-1 count, is a failure of approach alot of times, yes, sometimes the hitter is just plain fooled, but alot of times, we have swung at a 2-0 pitch that was more likely to be called a ball than a strike. The fact that this happens kills a players leverage in an at bat, hitting that pitch in play is going to lead to a greatly reduced batting average of balls in play in a count where the BABIP should be higher while also cutting out the chance of taking a walk despite being in a count where a walk is still has a very decent chance of happening. This to me, is the number one failure in the way we approach are at bats, many times, the hitters that are most responsible for the misery of an on base % that we have (Kinsler, Hamilton, Byrd, Blalock, all pretty good hitters naturally) tend to be decent enough at making contact which in turns hurts them even more when they swing at these bad pitches in hitters counts, if they swung and missed, they’d still have a higher % chance of getting on base than if they actually put the ball in play. If they would simply focus on the pitch they swing at in these counts be a fastball in a certain zone, then alot of this would be eliminated. Taking the pitchers pitch in these counts is always the better thing to do and is something that i feel like is much easily marginalized by a more focused approach. Watching this offense this year, the lack of discipline in hitters counts/first pitch has been the most frustrating thing to watch for me.

B.) The HR swing, its a pretty much commonly stated complaint, but it cant be overstated enough. We hit tons and tons of flyballs and flyballs that dont go as HRs are more likely to be outs than Line Drives or groundballs. If we want to help our on base out, we can start by staying consistently square on balls. This isnt as big of a deal to me as the swinging at bad pitches, but it still has alot to do with the low BA thus lower on base.

The offense is bleak but there’s some bright sides with this team:
1. Our pitching has been the best in the league in July and since the AS break—9 points above everybody in ERA, 11 points in WHIP.
2. Our bullpen has been, hands down, the best in the league and probably the best in MLB, with a WHIP around 1.00
3. We’re hitting HRs! Second in the league since the break. I don’t see the problem as too many HRs—let’s have more.
4. We’re still above the league average in Runs Scored, although not since the AS break—I say if we just replaced Josh and Hank with average major leaguers, we’d maintain our position above the league average.
Basically, we’re an above average Earl Weaver Oriole Team—great pitching, great power, mediocre BA and OBP