Sunday morning Rangers things

I still haven't watched a pitch of any baseball game since the Rangers' Wild Card loss. I don't think I will today, either. Maybe Monday.

Not watching yesterday meant I missed an epic Jose Valverde meltdown, as well as Derek Jeter breaking his ankle, an injury that will keep him out of the rest of the postseason.

Evan Grant runs down his ideal scenario for the 2013 roster, which includes signing Zack Greinke and Nick Swisher as free agents, and trading Ian Kinsler and Justin Grimm (while paying half of Kinsler's 2013 salary) to Toronto for Ricky Romero and J.P. Arencibia.

The problem with that is that Arencibia isn't very good -- he's 26 and has a career .222/.275/.433 line -- and Romero is basically a #4 starter. (Don't be fooled by his 2011 sub-3 ERA, which was driven by a .242 BABIP and a 79% strand rate). Unless you believe that the Kinsler contract extension was a mistake that the Rangers need to get out from under, there's not any reason to make that deal.

Gerry Fraley has a blog post talking about how Prince Fielder got a runner home from third with less than two outs 22 times in 29 opportunities in 2012, a 75.8% success rate, and then gives the success rates for many of the Ranger hitters to shame them for not getting runners home 75% of the time.

Now, first of all, Fielder didn't have 29 opportunities with a runner on third and less than two out -- he had 35 opportunities. That's a 63% success rate. My guess is that he walked 6 times, and they didn't count the walks on TBS.

Regardless, the Rangers weren't particularly good at scoring runners from third base with less than two outs last season. They were successful 51% of the time, with the average in the A.L. being 52% of the time. But I think it is a little misleading to have a post about the runners inability to get runners home from third with less than two outs without providing some context in the form of what the league as a whole does.