Tim MacMahon says the Rangers' problems aren't all pitching related:
The other -- efficient offense -- is just as much to blame for the Rangers being tied with the Royals for the worst record in baseball.
The Rangers are 2-22 when they've failed to score at least four runs. That means, as bad as the pitching has been, the Rangers are a well above .500 team when they get average or better run production.
So the Rangers offense is just as much to blame as the pitching, because the team doesn't win much when they don't score many runs?
Huh?
Evan Grant responds, taking issue with the 4 run divide because the average A.L. team scores almost 5 runs per game, and points out that the team is averaging more runs per game (offensively) than the average team, while allowing a lot more.
Here's the other thing...
One could argue that the Rangers' offense is to blame for scoring fewer than 4 runs 24 times. That seems like a lot.
Here's a chart that spells out the number of games with under 5 runs for each A.L. team, along with their record in those games:
| Team | Games | W-L |
|---|---|---|
| Cleveland | 19 | 5-14 |
| Boston | 24 | 8-16 |
| Detroit | 24 | 5-19 |
| New York Yanks | 24 | 3-21 |
| ChiSox | 25 | 7-18 |
| Anaheim | 26 | 10-16 |
| Seattle | 26 | 8-18 |
| Toronto | 27 | 6-21 |
| Baltimore | 28 | 5-23 |
| Tampa Bay | 28 | 6-22 |
| Minnesota | 28 | 7-21 |
| Texas | 31 | 4-27 |
| Oakland | 34 | 9-25 |
| Kansas City | 37 | 9-28 |
So you can knock the Ranger offense for being a little too feast-or-famine...while they are middle of the pack in terms of offense, they are 12th in the A.L. in number of games with 4 or fewer runs.
But the bigger issue is the team's terrible, terrible record when scoring so few runs. They have the worst record in the A.L. when scoring 4 or fewer runs, and only the Yankees have fewer wins in that situation.
Update [2007-5-31 16:39:22 by Adam J. Morris]: -- MacMahon has backed off his earlier assertion, making this whole post moot. But I spent a lot of time working on this chart, so I'm leaving it up.
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