The Disappearing Offense

Texas Rangers Offense By Month

In both July and Sept/Oct, the OBP has dipped to alarmingly low numbers at .309 and .304. My extra obvious observation is that It is very hard to score runs when your hitters are making outs instead of getting on base.

Texas Rangers Hitters - Last 14 Days

The only Rangers hitters to put an OBP higher than .308 over the last two weeks are Michael Young and Adrian Beltre. Mike Napoli and Nelson Cruz have provided some power to offset not getting on base, but other than those four players the rest of the Rangers' hitters are well below average.

Particularly destructive is the 1-2 punch at the top of the lineup with Ian Kinsler and Elvis Andrus with sub .300 OBP and even lower SLG numbers to go with it.

In the 3 spot Josh Hamilton is... Josh Hamilton, looking terrible at the plate with regularity but still punishing occasional mistakes with magical ability to hit baseballs very hard.

At the bottom of the lineup, David Murphy has fallen into a funk and with career highs in PA and games played it's possible he's starting to run out of gas after becoming an every day player.

On that same note, as a team the Rangers had 7 players with at least 145 games played. Evan Grant noted that this is the first time a team has done that since the 2007 Seattle Mariners. No team has played as much baseball as the Rangers have the last three seasons, the accumulation of all that playing may be taking it's toll and Ron Washington has ridden this team very hard.

On the other hand... this is still a very talented team that has lead of baseball in scoring this year so it's not hopeless that they'll start performing like they are capable, but if it's going to happen, it must happen now.