The Texas Rangers have the best prospect in baseball, a 20-year-old shortstop named Jurickson Profar who the public projection systems think could be a league average player in the big leagues right now. He’s going to start the year in Triple-A, though, as neither middle infield position is currently available in Arlington, with Elvis Andrus and Ian Kinsler currently entrenched at shortstop and second base respectively. Kinsler is beginning the first year of a five year contract extension, and after posting the worst year of his career at age 30, he wouldn’t be particularly easy to trade at the moment. Thus, the presumption has been that Andrus was going to be the odd man out, especially since he’s represented by Scott Boras, an agent known for encouraging his players to get to free agency when they have the chance.

Well, apparently, we can throw that assumption down the drain, because Ken Rosenthal is reporting that the Rangers are getting close to signing Andrus to an eight year extension that would total approximately $120 million. Because it’s eight new years on top of the two he’s already signed for, the Rangers’ obligation to Andrus now runs $131 million over the next 10 years. It’s a long contract and a lot of money, but given Andrus’ skills and value, this is a deal worth doing for Texas.

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In Arizona, J.D. Sussman and I hit the back fields together to scout talent from the Mariners, Indians, Rockies, Diamondbacks, Rangers and Cubs. Each of us took notes, collected radar gun readings, worked angles and collected the best information we could.

Back from the warm weather, we decided to rank the 10 best prospects we scouted together to highlight differences in opinion and player preference. Scouting is an inexact science. Prospect followers tend to pit opinions of writers against each other, but of course there’s room for dissent and discussion even among friends and colleagues.

Here’s my top-10 of players I liked the most. J.D.’s list will follow in an hour.

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Unless you make it a habit to read FanGraphs only on Fridays (and if you do, what’s up with that?), you’ve likely read Part 1 and Part 2 of this series. So you know the score. We’re taking a look at team financial health as we head into the 2013 season. You also the know which teams are in the top tier, because you’re smart and can figure that out for yourself. But we’ve come this far, so we’re going to complete the exercise. We’re nothing if not true to our word.

The top tier teams, in alphabetical order by team name.

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Due to an unfortunate data error, the numbers in this story did not include park factors upon publication. We have updated the data to include the park factors, and the data you see below is now correct. We apologize for the mistake.

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What’s all this, then? For an explanation of this series, please read the introductory post. As noted in that introduction, the data is a hybrid projection of the ZIPS and Steamer systems with playing time determined through depth charts created by our team of authors. The rankings are based on aggregate projected WAR for each team at a given position.

Third base is a little deeper than it used to be, and only a handful of teams have little to no hope of being productive at the position. The devil is in the details at the hot corner, as there has been very little turnover among the top 20 teams here. Teams that have quality reserves or prospects coming up the pipeline see a bump here, as we’re looking holistically at the position and not just at the nominal starter. This is an important consideration across the diamond, but particularly so at third given how physically demanding the position is. Only six third basemen suited up in 150 or more games last year. Compare that to 13 at second base and 11 at first base and shortstop, and it becomes clear that depth is important at third base. Unfortunately, most teams don’t have adequate depth, hence the bump for the teams that do.

Let’s get on to the rankings!

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I’ve been a little tardy in picking up the ball for the fifth part of this series, and for that I apologize. I hope it was worth the wait. In case you’re new to the series, here are parts one, two, three and four.

Vetoed trade: December 2003, the Texas Rangers send Alex Rodriguez to the Boston Red Sox for Manny Ramirez and Jon Lester.
Completed trade: February 2004, the Rangers send Alex Rodriguez and cash to the New York Yankees for Alfonso Soriano and player to be named later (Joaquin Arias).
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When I originally published my findings around CLIFFORD — my metric for predicting players that are at a higher risk of experiencing a collapse in their wOBA (defined as a drop of at least .30 points of wOBA) — I presented a limited number of players for 2013. The list only included six players that qualified under the criteria. As a reminder, players that experienced a significant decline in three out of four metrics (Z-Contact%, FA%, UBR, Spd) were tagged as CLIFFORD candidates. These players had 3.4 times the odds of collapse (53% versus 25% for non-CLIFFORD players).

The single largest driver of collapse was change in Z-Contact% — the percent of pitches in the strike zone that a batter swings and makes contact with. Hitters who saw their Z-Contact% decline by at least 1.4% had 1.68 times the odds of collapsing than those that did not experience such a decline. Since there were far more players that qualified with their Z-Contact% than the full CLIFFORD criteria I thought it would be helpful to share that data with everyone.

Behold!

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Kyle Lohse is a free-agent starting pitcher, and the Texas Rangers are a good baseball team, so off and on there’s been talk about the Rangers potentially making an effort to sign Kyle Lohse. This has picked up in light of the recent Martin Perez injury, as Perez was the favorite to be the Rangers’ fifth starter. Lohse, though, remains unsigned, and it looks like the Rangers might be on the verge of going elsewhere for help:

Source: Rangers on verge of signing RHP Derek Lowe to minor league deal, but he will make club, probably in swing role. Story coming.

— Evan Grant (@Evan_P_Grant) March 6, 2013

It’s not done, but it’s probably close, if this is the report. It makes a certain degree of sense, too — Lowe could offer short-term services to the rotation, and then get bumped upon the return of Perez or Colby Lewis. Lowe pitched out of the rotation and bullpen a year ago, and he’ll be a cheap investment for a team scared off by Lohse’s price tag. Lowe would cost the Rangers something in the low seven figures, most probably, with some incentives, most probably.

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Not a whole lot of players were extended a qualifying offer at the end of last season. Those who were extended such offers were good baseball players, and Kyle Lohse was among them. Lohse is a good baseball player, and he turned down the offer, and he remains to this date a free agent. We’re at the point now where Lohse is waiting on a significant injury, because for months he’s been unable to find a new home. This despite the fact that Lohse is good at what he does, and is capable of helping a contender.

There was an injury to a contender over the weekend, when a player you might not have ever heard of broke Martin Perez’s arm with a line-drive comebacker. Perez was in the running to be the Rangers’ fifth starter, and many felt like he was out in the lead. Now the team hopes he’s back and ready to pitch in the majors around the beginning of May. That is, in other words, at least a lost month, and people are wondering whether the Rangers are now more likely to give in to what Lohse demands might exist.

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Part four. Live free or veto hard. You can find parts one, two and three here, here and here.

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We have had to deal with a lot of speculation about the Rangers’ infield this off-season. It is not as if the Rangers are in trouble, they have the “problem” of a looming logjam. Shortstop super-prospect Jurickson Profar is knocking on the door. The Rangers also have Ian Kinsler at second and under contract through 2017, and Elvis Andrus, who is only 24, at shortstop and under contract through 2014. Most teams would love to have this sort of problem. This is not going to be another post about what the Rangers should do with these players. Instead, prompted by Evan Grant’s discussion of how the Rangers might want to think about a long-term extension for Andrus depending on how he plays this year, I want to look at how Andrus’ bat might develop over the next few years by looking at similar players. They are actually rather scarce, as Andrus has a rather unusual combination of skills.

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