The HWC column weekly stattracker

First of all folks, my apologies for last weekend's absence. I'm afraid I was a bit under the weather... watching this team this past week though has made for a nice cure, however. Good defense cures a lot of ills... just ask Darren O'Day.

I'm honestly not sure how much of a success my weekly game recaps have been though John Paul tells me they've done well... but honestly, their production has just been getting to be a bit much to handle (too much when you've got a fever and a freight train parked in your sinuses). So in the interests of keeping myself in rhythm every week, I've decided to look for some different directions to take my weekend posts, and today I'll be debuting the Hello Win Column weekly stat tracker.

As the title suggests, the idea was for me to keep an eye on the individual players instead of the games, and write about who's up and who's down each week. Since then however, I've come to realize there's a minor kink in the plan: Baseball Reference, home to the only sortable gamelogs I know of, doesn't update it's tables with the latest results until 5 am the next freaking morning. Which means every single one of these I would write is going to wind up being a day behind stat-wise. But hey, it can't hurt to experiment... so I figure I'll still do a few breakdowns of some select players this week who's recent results piqued my interest, and see how this goes - I don't mind being a day behind if my readers don't. So feedback's welcome... feel free to let me know if this is a feature you like (or hate, as the case may be).

Trending upward - Chris Davis

Overall line: .240/.298/.521

A lot of Ranger fans freaked over Davis's staggering strikeout totals and low contact rates that have pockmarked of a slow start to his sophomore campaign, but as was noted last week he's actually been pretty darned palatable since the first week of the season ended. Now, over the last week - in fact since the start of May, period - he's beginning to find his stride.

As of Friday, Chris is hitting .294/.333/.647 (15 for 51) for the month of May, with 8 of his 15 hits being for extra bases. 5 of those 8 XB hits are homers, and 4 of them have come in the last 7 days. And for those of you that dread the strikeouts, he's improved there, too: 19 strikeouts in 14 games on the month so far, as opposed to 34 over 20 games in April. That's lead to just three multi-strikeout games so far this month, as opposed to the staggering 11 he had April.

Bottom line is, Chris Davis' bat is finally coming around. And if he can keep socking homers to go along with the major league-leading 4.3 UZR he has at first base he's going to meet any rational expectations we could've had for him, strikeouts or no strikeouts.

Maintaining a torrid pace - Ian Kinsler

Overall: .318/.380/.622

After putting up a 1.422 OPS in his first 13 games of the season, it appeared Kinsler had cooled off in Aprils last week, OPSing just .477. Turns out that was just a temporary breather for opposing pitchers. Since May 1st he's hit .310/.373/.569 (good for a 942 OPS), and over the last week has shown some incredible patience (for a Ranger this year anyway) walking 6 times in 7 games (although 5 of those where split among 2 different games).

Overall, Kinsler has basically picked up right where he left off last year, and that's putting up near-MVP-type production - his 21.7 VORP is tied for 5th in major league baseball (with Marlins phenom Hanley Ramirez), which consequently means it's also tops among all major league second basemen right now.

The rookie surprise: Elvis Andrus

Overall: .275/.315/.412

I was absolutely stoked this offseason when we learned Elvis Andrus would be displacing Michael Young from shortstop - but I don't think even the most optimistic of us could've predicted that a 20 year old jumping from AA to the majors would be holding his own like this come mid-May.
Not only has Andrus been a defensive wizard at short, apparently ranking in the top 5 among shortstops in plus/minus according to Bill James online (to which I have no subscription, otherwise I'd give you more details than that admittedly vague endorsement) but he's shown more than just about anyone expected him to at the plate, so far blowing his .245/.299/.329 ZIPS projection out of the water.

And the thing is, he only seems to be getting better: after hitting .250/.288/.357 (645 OPS) in April (which honestly I would've been happy to see him simply maintain) he's rocking an 825 OPS so far in May (.304/.347/.478) and has been good for a .417 OBP his last 7 games. The result is his 4.2 VORP is currently first in the AL among all rookies with at least 50 PA's (and Elvis by the way also leads all AL rookies with 111 PA's).

Not to pull a Jim Knox moment, but if Elvis keeps icing the cake with that kind of unexpected offensive production... I think I might be in love.

I'm really not as clutch as I looked In April: Michael Young

Overall: .350/.393/.600

Okay, so maybe the above headline is kind of harsh for a guy who holds the third-highest OPS on the team and has hit a scary .442/.463/.615 in May. Don't get me wrong... I'm really impressed with what Michael Young has done this year (especially after two consecutive seasons of pretty mediocre offensive results). But as awesome as he's been so far, Michael Young was hitting 0.97/.200/0.97 with RISP as of Friday, and .220/.303/.475 with men on base overall. Which is... really odd, considering he's still money in a close game.

It's a nice consolation (a really, really nice one in fact) that he owns the team's second best OBP, which is great to have in that 2-slot... but the #2 guy still comes to bat in some of the games most important situations, and having a guy who's struggling this mightily to drive in runners in that #2 slot can't be helping this teams already meh efforts with men in scoring position this year.

*****

A couple of quick unrelated notes as I close things out tonight: Saturday's win made it 6 straight for the Rangers - if they can somehow make it 7 tomorrow against noted Ranger killer Jered Weaver, they'll not only have a 4.5 game lead in the AL West, they'll be the only team in the division over .500. Trivia question of the week: when was the last time that happened?

Feel free to cheat on that one, I'm sure you'll need to - I know I do.

Hello Win Column, Win #22: Rangers Beat Lackeyless Angels 5-3

Story of the game: John Lackey, ejected after two pitches. Also of note: Nelson Cruz's double was the only extra base hit of the entire game.

Game boxscore

John Lackey, Angels Bumped in Texas from Halos Heaven

"The Texas Rangers play in the nation's 4th largest media market and it is obvious that MLB wants to get the ratings going to bring in baseball dollars amidst Footballville. They have the umps completely getting in the way of player's establishing their game and a first inning ejection of John Lackey was the most obvious indicator that baseball intends to hand a mediocre organization a competitive edge thru treachery in order to more firmly take on the NFL deep in the heart of Texas . . .

May the farce be with you, MLB, the Rangers are 6 games over .500 for the first time since steroids were banned by baseball and are one urine specimen and a Tim Donaghy-style investigation away from their rightful place... and that would be fighting for third with Seattle.

Lackey was ejected after hitting Ian Kinsler. The plate-crowding cheat ended up scoring that inning to tie the game 1-1."

Editor's response: I understand that the whole purpose of a blog is to write your own opinions, but the writer of this article just comes across as an elitist, sore-loser Angels fan. I don't doubt that MLB would love to have a greater media presence in the DFW area, but insinuating that the umpires are slanting the game the Rangers' way is just ridiculous (even commenters on the same site agree). Especially for the Lackey ejection: Kinsler hit two home runs yesterday, and then gets thrown at (twice) to begin the game. Anyone looking at that situation rationally would at least suspect that it was intentional. In my opinion, Lackey wasn't thrown out because he threw at Kinsler. He got thrown out because he was stupid and made it too obvious; he didn't give the umpire much of a choice but to do something about it.

Hello Win Column, Win #21: Rangers Dominate Angels (except for 9th inning)

Everything looked good until Derek Holland had a meltdown . . . .

Game box score, recap

Rangers Send Angels Deep in the Red from Halos Heaven

"Angels fans will tell themselves that It was just one of those games where nothing went right, and they better hope this is the case, because if the Texas Rangers are as dominant as they were Friday night at home, the division will be all theirs . . .

All Star Joe Saunders was lit up by the Texas bats and Texas Semi-Ace Kevin Millwood benefited from two of the three Angel double plays in the game. Saunders didn't have to worry about his pitch count as he was delivering meatballs on the first pitch to Texas hitters who mashed them into spaghetti RBIs."

Hello Win Column, Win #20: !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Believe it.

Game box score, recap

16-19, Game Notes from Lookout Landing

"Today's hockey games were good . . . .

Chris Davis, by the way, has the lowest contact rate of any regular in baseball. If ever there were a good time for Morrow to take something off of his heater, that was it. Instead he played right into Davis' hands, going to the same spot with the same pitch four consecutive times . . .

You can be as mad at Morrow as you want to be for effectively giving our season the ol' Tanya Harding. Keep in mind, though, that this heavily right-handed lineup managed all of two runs and five hits off of the mediocre left-handed Matt Harrison . . . "

Oh Baseball, You So Crazy! from Section 331

"I dated this guy for like 3 years. When we first met, it was all whirlwind and fun . . . Eventually, I found out that he had a HUGE meth addiction all along, and that was where all our money was starting to disappear to.

That was basically today’s game, in a nutshell."

That Was Far Too Predictable (Comments Section) from Bleeding Blue and Teal

"Morrow can blow 90% of the league away with his fastball, but the Rangers are loaded with prolific fastball mashers so he has to adjust his game plan."

Friday Foto: Separated at Birth?

Is it just me, or does Michael Young bear a striking resemblance to actor Carlos Bernard (a.k.a. Tony Almeida on 24)?

Hello Win Column, Win #19: Rangers 'Hammer' Through Mistakes in Walk-Off Win Over M's

Hank the Tank got in on the walk-off act. We beat the M's. We were able to overcome several key mistakes in the process. What a great win.

Game box score

Backbreaker from USS Mariner

"That’s a tough loss. Just like with Vargas last night, Washburn should get a medal for surviving Texas’ offense and ballpark. The offense was able to get a few longballs off of McCarthy, whose up-in-the-zone pitching style makes him the kind of righty we can actually score runs against, but the flaws of the offense got exposed late in the game.

Morrow… what can you say? His command sucks and he’s heavily dependent on the fastball. That doesn’t work against good hitting lefties, and the Rangers have a lot of good hitting lefties."

Washburn: no win, but no loss, either from Section 331

"The only thing that made the top of the 9th remotely inspiring was the fact that I like Darren O’Day; I can’t help it.

Morrow came in to face Texas’ finest, and while he was pitching fast, he was not pitching well . . .

I will be glad when we get out of Texas (which is something I have said pretty much every time I’ve physically been there, even). Even Felix starting tomorrow doesn’t instill confidence in me. Not today."