Rangers win the West
11:26 AM Posted by Sabermetric Baseball Sim
Arlington, TX -
The Texas Rangers won the inaugural AL West Division pennant the old fashioned way: pitching and home runs.
Texas pitchers paced the league with 3.71 ERA despite a pedestrian defense. Texas relievers as well as starters led the league, while the defense allowed a mid-pack .308 batting average on ball in play. Strikeouts were a feature of the Rangers pitching attack, but it was stopping the long ball that converted a third place in hits allowed to a first in ERA.
On the other side of the plate it was the home run that propelled the offense.
Texas led the AL with 256 HRs, but Texas hitters finished in the bottom half in every offensive statistic that does not factor in home runs, including a 14th in stolen bases and an 11th in AVG. Unsurprisingly, for a team maximizing power and minimizing small ball, the Rangers finished middle of the pack in runs scored.
The Rangers twice attempted to remedy their lack of small ball capabilities with trades, bringing in Lou Whitaker and Mike Kingery midseason.
Both trades have to be called failures for the Rangers. Whitaker immediately adopted his predecessors methods at the plate batting a mere .209 and losing over 100 points in SLG after the trade.
Likewise Kingery, brought in to back-up the powerful but thin outfield corps, hit much less than expected. A solid .280 hitter in Kansas City Kingery dropped to .230 in what was an unexpectedly curtailed role as no significant injuries took major time from Rangers this year.
Playoff hopes are high. The Rangers were 4-2 in the regular season against the wild-card Brewers who feature a much more balanced team approach than the long-ball and pitching oriented Rangers.
The Texas Rangers won the inaugural AL West Division pennant the old fashioned way: pitching and home runs.
Texas pitchers paced the league with 3.71 ERA despite a pedestrian defense. Texas relievers as well as starters led the league, while the defense allowed a mid-pack .308 batting average on ball in play. Strikeouts were a feature of the Rangers pitching attack, but it was stopping the long ball that converted a third place in hits allowed to a first in ERA.
On the other side of the plate it was the home run that propelled the offense.
Texas led the AL with 256 HRs, but Texas hitters finished in the bottom half in every offensive statistic that does not factor in home runs, including a 14th in stolen bases and an 11th in AVG. Unsurprisingly, for a team maximizing power and minimizing small ball, the Rangers finished middle of the pack in runs scored.
The Rangers twice attempted to remedy their lack of small ball capabilities with trades, bringing in Lou Whitaker and Mike Kingery midseason.
Both trades have to be called failures for the Rangers. Whitaker immediately adopted his predecessors methods at the plate batting a mere .209 and losing over 100 points in SLG after the trade.
Likewise Kingery, brought in to back-up the powerful but thin outfield corps, hit much less than expected. A solid .280 hitter in Kansas City Kingery dropped to .230 in what was an unexpectedly curtailed role as no significant injuries took major time from Rangers this year.
Playoff hopes are high. The Rangers were 4-2 in the regular season against the wild-card Brewers who feature a much more balanced team approach than the long-ball and pitching oriented Rangers.
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