Posted by Rob McQuown on Tuesday, August 11, 2009 at 10:12 am

With Derek Holland’s sparkling performance Sunday shutting out the Angels, the 2009 baseball season officially entered the Twilight Zone.  Why?  Well, when the American League teams are sorted at baseball-reference.com now, Texas is last in “Runs per Game”.  “Ho hum”, you say?  Bandbox?  No, they are last when you sort in descending order… they LEAD the AL in run prevention in 2009!

There are other reasons to suspect something strange is going on this year.  The Angels lead the AL in run scoring (huh?), and the first reason to suspect something was strange was the odd league-specific SB stats:

AL: 1096 SB in 1559 team-games.  Pace of 114 SB/team

NL: 1013 SB in 1779 team-games.  Pace of 92 SB/team

Crawford and Ellsbury aren’t at hand for interviews, so the SB investigation will have to wait for another time.  Back to Texas, however…

The Senators skipped town in 1972 and started playing in “Arlington Ballpark”, of which ballparks.com notes,  “Like Dodger Stadium and the Roman Colosseum, the field is located below the surrounding parking lots. Before the upper deck was added in 1978, fans would walk in at the very top of the stadium. ” The original home of the Rangers wasn’t as harsh on the participants as The Collosseum, even for the pitchers:

For orientation, a high “Rank” on the graph represents a high ERA.  Through 1976, there were 12 AL teams.

Before 1989, when former President George W. Bush bought part of the team, the Rangers had had a very typical – albeit highly volatile – history of run prevention.  The last few years of the old stadium may have just been a foreshadowing of what was to come in the new one, so maybe the future President was getting out before the pitching got even worse (or maybe he just had more important things to do)…

The thing of note here is all that white space under the graph until 2009.  Not once in the new stadium – currently named “Rangers Ballpark in Arlington”, though to be sure of the name at any given time, a call to the Rangers PR department might be required, as the name changes so often -  have the Rangers been able to prevent runs better than 4th-best in the AL. That was 1996.  Harkening back to that “dominant” pitching staff (which allowed 4.90 runs per game), names like Ken Hill (3.63 ERA, 16-10), Darren Oliver (4.66, 14-6), Roger Pavlik, Bobby Witt, and Kevin Gross (all over 5.00 ERA) come up.  Mike Henneman was closing games, in theory.  His ERA was 5.79, and he was 0-7 to go with his 31 saves.  Offense was WAY up in 1996, though.  The Rangers were just 0.22 RPG away from leading the league, despite the uninspiring numbers mentioned.

1996 and 2005 were the best seasons – each with 4.90 RPG.  This is what Rangers fans have had to look forward to from their ballgame-watching experiences in recent years.   The ballpark inflates hitting numbers at the expense of the pitchers, and the team hasn’t done very well at keeping the right pitchers when making personnel decisions in recent years.  When this team leads the AL in run prevention in 2009, that’s big news!   They are doing it with 3 significant changes:

- Despite the Gold Glove award in 2008, Michael Young was never much of a shortstop.  But he’s a good, steady fielder with plenty of range to play 2b or 3b, and Brian Joseph’s recent series on defense shows that Elvis Andrus is good at shortstop, confirming what scouts have said all along about hi\m.  Anyway, pitching follows defense, and the Rangers have improved theirs.

- Only time will tell whether The Ryan Plan works any better than Tom House’s towel-tossing, or ideas Orel Hershiser suggested, but in the short term, it can’t hurt to have an esteemed voice like his essentially rallying his organizations’ pitchers against being “soft”, and showing lots of confidence in the arms.  If he’s able to rally the troops without too many more guys pitching until their arms fall off, it will be a resounding success.  Minor-league mavens will argue that the quality of arms now is better than the Rangers have had in the past.  It’s certainly true that they have some prize arms now, but they’ve had a lot of talent before, too… it’s just all spread out on other teams now.  Presumably, there won’t be any more trade debacles of the magnitude of those in recent history.   And there’s more talent in the pipeline, such as uber-prospect Neftali Feliz, who just began his apprenticeship in the bullpen last week.

- The OPS in the AL this year is .765.  Every Texas Rangers pitcher with 40+ IP has a batters-faced-OPS of .766 (Padilla) or lower, and some much lower.  (see BP’s awesome stats section for a complete list: http://www.baseballprospectus.com/statistics/sortable/index.php?cid=517769).  Having two dysfunctional offenses in the same division – both of which have home parks which suppress offense – more than makes up for the fact that the Angels are leading the AL in run-scoring.  The Angels pitchers have it even easier, obviously, since Texas’ oft-gaudy offense isn’t so pretty this season.

It’s amazing just how quickly pitching (or run prevention) can turn around.  The 2007 Rays had some of the worst bullpen pitching in recent memory, and that turned into a strength in 2008.  The Rangers have 3 factors all working in their favor in 2009 – defense, young pitching maturing combined with a new “pitching philosophy”, and weakened divisional offenses.  Will these be enough to overcome the home park disadvantage?  Stay tuned.

Please feel free to leave comments below. Questions for the author may be submitted to Rob McQuown at rmcquown@baseballdigestdaily.com or robmcquown@yahoo.com. Past articles for this author can be found under “Staff Writers” at the Baseball Daily Digest site.