Every so often baseball repeats the same lesson about the irrelevance of momentum. Momentum is our own construct; we believe in it because we believe it can help us see into the future. We are and have always been terrible at seeing into the future. Last Wednesday, the Rangers lost to the Indians in extra innings. They had Thursday off. The Mariners didn’t have Thursday off — rather, they spent it orchestrating one of the very greatest comebacks in big-league history. The two teams were tied for first place, and now they are not, because the Rangers promptly swept the Mariners away, assuming sole possession of first place in the American League West, and in the American League.

Here’s one way to tell the tale:

For the first time, we now have the Rangers as the AL West favorites. And this is according to math that many people believe undersells the roster. The Astros’ lousy start opened the door, and though they’ve righted themselves, and though the Mariners sprinted out, now the Rangers are in charge. It’s a good position to be in, even if the draft is still in front of us.

Yet there’s something I can’t stop thinking about. See, it’s not just that the Rangers are back in first place. They finished in first place literally just last season. Where they are isn’t a complete and utter shock. What I find more astonishing is how they’ve gotten here. First place was the plan, but not like this.

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We are excited to have Corinne Landrey join the FanGraphs writing staff. She’ll be contributing here several times per week, and is going to be an excellent addition to the site. Below is her first post as a FanGraphs author.

If you know one thing about Cole Hamels beyond his profession or employer, it’s likely the fact that he throws a magnificent changeup. It’s the pitch upon which Hamels’ impressive career has been built from the moment he made his major-league debut as a 22-year-old kid. Like any successful pitcher, Hamels has had to adjust and improve over the years first by refining his curveball and later adding a cutter to his repertoire, but the changeup has been the omnipresent ace up his sleeve throughout his major-league career. Until now, that is.

For the first time in Hamels’ decade-long career, his changeup is no longer serving as his go-to secondary pitch. That honor now belongs to the cutter he began using in 2010 after watching his teammate Cliff Lee use the pitch with tremendous results down the stretch the previous season. Since then, the pitch has developed into Hamels’ preferred third pitch and now its usage has officially surpassed the changeup:

This year Hamels has gone to the cutter 202 times, or on 24% of his pitches, whereas the changeup has been used just 185 times, or 22 percent of the time. This usage shift, however, is not the result of a season-long trend. In fact, during the month of April, Hamels threw his changeup more than he threw any other pitch, fourseamer included. But after his start on April 20th, something changed.

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Baltimore’s Camden Yards opened to almost universal praise in 1992. The success of the park and its broad appeal spurred the development of new stadiums throughout baseball. Since the construction of Camden Yards, 21 of the league’s 30 franchises have received new stadiums, while eight others have undergone renovations (sorry, Tampa Bay). In Cleveland, they’ve seen both occur.

Averaging roughly one new stadium per year has been great for business, as attendance has gone up across the league and the old unsightly multipurpose stadiums have been retired. It would be reasonable to think, however, that such a boom in stadium construction would naturally result in an equally steep decline. There are, of course, only so many clubs for which to build new park. Reason isn’t always at play in such cases, however. Both the Braves’ relocation to a new home next year — and a recent announcement by the Rangers that they plan to build a new air-conditioned ballpark just 20-some years after debuting the old one — should solidify that notion for us. As long as they create profits for ownership, stadium building, renovations, and fights for public money will never end.

Baseball is a business, and franchise owners acts as corporate heads looking to extract money and increase profits wherever they can. Getting the public to fund a stadium is a very big part of that and most owners have been incredibly successful in this regard. Of all the news stadiums built in this era, only the San Francisco Giants privately funded their stadium, with the St. Louis Cardinals representing the only other club to account for a significant portion of their stadium’s expense. In most cases, we’ve seen public fights, with threats to relocate elsewhere — sometimes to another city and sometimes just to a neighboring suburb. We’ve seen this play out recently in the case of both the Braves and the Rangers — and, despite all of the new stadiums, we’re not done seeing it.

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The Rangers lost both Drew Stubbs and Shin-Soo Choo to injury over the weekend, leaving them relatively bare in the outfield. To fill the void, they’ve called up top prospect Joey Gallo, who’s perhaps one of the most exciting prospect in baseball due to his exceptional power. We’ve been here before. The Rangers called Gallo up last summer, too, but thanks to a .204/.301/.417 performance in the show, they wisely concluded he needed more seasoning in the minors. Most concerning of all was his 46% strikeout rate, which was literally over twice the league average.

Based on his recent performance, it seems Gallo’s gotten the seasoning he needed. Last year, Gallo hit .240/.342/.520 between Double-A and Triple-A, and struck out in a super-concerning 37% of his trips to the plate. This year, he’s slashed his strikeout rate to a merely mildly-concerning 23% in Triple-A. As a result, he’s hit a gaudy .265/.415/.639.

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After the scrum was gone, after he’d answered all the difficult questions about his punch heard around the baseball world, after he’d deflected and postponed and shrugged, after he slumped into his seat and sighed, Rougned Odor looked up and saw me coming. To his credit, he raised his eyebrows for the coming question, ready for another round.

He was relieved when I asked him about being sent down in 2015, and what he learned when he was down there. Relieved, even though I was asking him about one of the more difficult times of his baseball life. Well, difficult in a different way than the difficult time he’s experiencing right now.

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Yesterday, we tackled the best final seasons for pitchers. Today, let’s tackle the position players, so we can get to the heart of the question of just how good David Ortiz needs to be to crack one of these lists. The rules and breakdowns are the same as before, so I would encourage you to read yesterday’s post to peep those. Once again, big ups to Jeff Zimmerman for data help.

30-39 WAR

Best Final Season, Position Players with 30-39 WAR

Player	Final Season	Age	WAR	Career WAR
Roy Cullenbine	1947	33	4.4	33.8
Chick Stahl	1906	33	3.7	33.1
Tony Cuccinello	1945	37	3.0	32.2
Gil McDougald	1960	32	2.8	39.7
Joe Adcock	1966	38	2.5	34.2
Elbie Fletcher	1949	33	2.4	30.7

The guys on this list are definitely not household names, but there are some interesting, if also tragic, stories here. Let’s deal with the tragic first. There are six players here because one of them, Chick Stahl, committed suicide during spring training of the 1907 season. He had been named the Americans’ (Red Sox) player/manager over the winter, and something drove him to take his own life. This was surely a big loss for the team, as they had been counting on him to help lead them. He was the fifth-best hitter in the game just a couple years earlier in 1904.

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Sunday, in what was undoubtedly one of the coolest moments of his career that no one remembers, Ian Desmond slugged a lead-changing and eventually game-winning home run. Desmond homered off of a horrible pitch, and then he flipped his bat, which is funnier now.

I’m not convinced there’s anything to learn there. Most hitters would be able to punish a hanging two-strike curveball. Desmond last year probably would’ve been able to punish a hanging two-strike curveball. That being said, Desmond only saw a hanging two-strike curveball because he’d stayed alive in the at-bat. The previous pitch:

One pitch is one pitch, no more and no less. In isolation, it’s a normal-looking foul ball, and maybe Desmond fouls off the same ball a year ago. But a year ago, and even before, Desmond struggled against high fastballs. A year ago in particular, Desmond struggled against plenty of things. That’s why he wound up signing a one-year pillow contract toward the end of the offseason, but a month and a half in, now, Desmond is looking like a total success. Ian Desmond has helped the Rangers scoot back into first place.

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You’d rather have the Rangers’ problem than the Braves’ problem. See, the Braves problem is that they just don’t have enough competent players to field a competitive major-league baseball team. The Rangers problem seems to be that they’re soon to have too many competent players. An embarrassment of riches isn’t necessarily a problem, per se, but it’s something of an inefficiency, and it’s the kind of thing that can result in at least one deserving employee feeling less than pleased by his role in the workplace.

Nomar Mazara wasn’t supposed to be in the big leagues this soon, but Shin-Soo Choo’s strained right calf accelerated Mazara’s timeline, and now that the 21-year-old rookie is here, it doesn’t seem like he’s going away any time soon. In Mazara’s first game, he homered. Through his first 17, the preseason consensus top-25 prospect has run a 127 wRC+, showed a knack for controlling the strike zone, impressed scouts with his ability to adjust, and even made an impact with the glove. The Rangers are in the business of competing for a World Series championship this year, and when a team is in the business of competing for a World Series championship, it does so by fielding a 25-man roster comprised of its best 25 players. Nomar Mazara is one of those players.

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A.J. Pierzynski has played baseball for a very long time. He’s one of the few players to predate not only the PITCHf/x era (2007-present), but also the Baseball Info Solutions era (2002-present). He’s one of just six active players who played in the 1990s — the others are Carlos Beltran, Adrian Beltre, Bartolo Colon, David Ortiz and Alex Rodriguez. They are all well celebrated and beloved players. Pierzynski does not fit in that group.

If you’re familiar with Pierzynski, you likely know that his opponents generally have not been all that fond of him. A Google search for “A.J. Pierzynski hate” turns up plenty of results. Rather than focus on that, I thought it would be fun to find some nice to things to say about Pierzynski.

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Time catches up to us all, but Adrian Beltre seems to have secured a fairly sizable lead, leaving time a little further behind than for most 37-year-olds. Beltre debuted with the Los Angeles Dodgers in the shadow of the Mark McGwire–Sammy Sosa home-run race during the 1998 season. Eighteen seasons later, the only players active during that season who’ve also recorded an appearance in this one are Carlos Beltran, Bartolo Colon, David Ortiz, A.J. Pierzynski, and Alex Rodriguez. Beltre was just 19 years old at that time and, after signing a two-year contract extension with the Texas Rangers worth $36 million, he’s in position to outlast all of them.

No discussion of what Beltre will do is complete without discussing what he has done. Beltre signed with the Dodgers at 15 years old for just $23,000 (improperly, as it turns out) and debuted in majors at age 19. At the time, Beltre was one of just four players (Ken Griffey, Edgar Renteria, and Ivan Rodriguez were the others) in the previous decade to record at least 200 plate appearances at age 19 or under. It would be more than a decade before any player would do it again, as Bryce Harper and Manny Machado both reached that mark in the 2012 season.

Since making his debut, Beltre has always been a good player. His 41.3 WAR figure through his age-30 season is identical to the mark produced by Derek Jeter through the same age. What has differentiated Beltre’s play over the last half-decade is his refusal to slow down and it has made him a surefire Hall of Famer. After Beltre’s contract with the Seattle Mariners ended, he was forced to re-establish his value with a one-year deal with the Red Sox. That one-year deal turned into a five-year deal with the Texas Rangers, including an option for this season that the Rangers happily exercised.

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