Thursday: Deep Thoughts . . . .

I don't really have a theme in mind for today's post. What I've mostly done is taken a few things that I've been thinking about this week and posted them all in one article.

1) According to Bill James Online, Ian Kinsler is the hottest hitter in baseball right now with a temperature of 104 degrees (for an explanation of temperatures, go here). Certainly not much of a surprise given his offensive play as of late, but to see that (according to this "temperature" system) he is the hottest hitter in the game, that's pretty cool. Following Kinsler are Victor Martinez, Ryan Braun, Matt Kemp, and Kevin Youkilis.

2) Jamey Newberg, in one of his patented newsletters, remarked about Kinsler in his recap of the Rangers 5-4 win over the Blue Jays: the game included "Ian Kinsler’s first opposite field home run since birth." Not knowing whether this was actual fact or a metaphor to articulate Kinsler's propensity for the left side of the diamond, I decided to check it out. Of course, Newberg is correct. Here is the career data for the location of Kinsler's home runs (chronologically from left to right, from 2006 to 2009):

Homers to Left: 12+19+16+4 = 51 total
Homers to Center: 2+1+2+0 = 5 total
Homers to Right: 0+0+0+1 = 1 total

(source: billjamesonline.com)

3) While it's a little bit too early to start playing the Pythagorean W-L game, the Rangers have scored exactly as many runs as they have allowed: 85. This gives them a Pythagorean record of .500 (which doesn't truly translate into a record if the team has played 13 games). Given the trouble that the Rangers have had on the mound thus far, to know that the team breaks even is a nice thought. Their 85 runs scored is 4th in the bigs, and their 84 runs allowed is 4th from the bottom. Symmetry seems to be the name of the game here, since the Rangers finished 1st in runs scored last year, and last in runs allowed.

4) Until I played around with baseball-reference.com this week, I had no idea how little players put the ball into play on a 3-0 count over their careers. I was looking at Marlon Byrd's page and saw that, over his 2,406 career PA and 111 PA with a 3-0 count, he's only put 1 ball in play. Less than 1%. I imagined the number being low, but not that low.

Perhaps, I thought, it's only because Byrd isn't a tremendous power hitter and doesn't get the green light on 3-0 from the dugout very often, and when he does swing he takes a big rip which is less likely to make good contact. A look at some of the other Rangers (which have decent, but not prolific power), as well as some prolific power hitters around baseball somewhat supports this theory (despite the lack of thorough research and my small sample size). My primary point, however, is that hitters (especially the listed bona fide power hitters below the list of Rangers) make contact on 3-0 a lot less than I thought.

Michael Young: 2 balls put into play in 60 3-0 counts (0 HR)
Ian Kinsler: 3 balls put into play in 30 3-0 counts (1 HR)
Hank Blalock: 4 balls put into play in 75 3-0 counts (o HR)

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Matt Holliday: 10 balls put into play in 61 3-0 counts (0 HR)
Ryan Howard: 12 balls put into play in 137 3-0 counts (1 HR)
Alex Rodriguez: 12 balls put into play in 271 3-0 counts (1 HR)

5) The Rangers are ranked 27th in walks taken in the majors. In 2008 they finished with the 6th highest walk total. The main culprits:

**Marlon Byrd has walked 0 times this year in 36 PA. Of course, no one cares when you are hitting .361/.361/.667. When this hot streak dies down, however, let's hope that Byrd remembers how to be selective (a great asset of his last year when he walked in roughly 10% of his PAs en route to a .380 OBP).

**Josh Hamilton has walked 3 times in 57 PA, but his struggles as a result of his lack of selectivity have been well documented.

**Jarrod Saltalamacchia, who took a big step forward in the walks category in 2008 (despite his lack of power), has only 1 walk in 39 PA

**Chris Davis, never one to take advantage of many free passes, is characteristically low in the BB column with 2 in 46 PA, and leads the league with 21 strikeouts. So he's been striking out (roughly) once every two times he steps up. Yikes.

6) Hank Blalock's middle name is Joe. Not Joseph, Joe. Weird.