Michael Young won’t go away.

He’s 34 years old. He’s a bad defender pretty much anywhere on the diamond. He doesn’t walk much or hit for exceptional power. His biannual off-season whining when he’s moved to accommodate a superior fielder has damaged his reputation. (Remember “misled and manipulated?” Good times.) But, still, Young keeps on hitting.

As Joe Pawlikowski recently noted, Young — and his 3.6 WAR (on the back of his .372 wOBA — has been key for the American League West-leading Rangers, who’ve endured injuries to Young’s third-base replacement, Adrian Beltre, and to outfielders Josh Hamilton and Nelson Cruz. His playing time didn’t directly replace Hamilton’s or Cruz’s, but Young’s surprisingly strong offensive contribution (his 132 wRC+ is his best since 2005) has helped make up for what the team lost. The Rangers aren’t a lock for the playoffs yet, but they’re getting close, and Young has been a big part of that.

Which is exactly why this post so untimely: What should happen with Young in the off-season?

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The Texas Rangers just can’t stop making trades. After acquiring Mike Adams and Koji Uehera (yes, another Oriole) at the trade deadline, the Rangers went out yesterday and traded for pitcher Mike Gonzalez from the Orioles for a PTBNL.

On the surface, this is a relatively minor move. Ooo, the Rangers add another veteran arm to help them shore up their bullpen down the stretch — not such a big deal, right? For some reason, though, this move has sparked off about 10 different simultaneous thoughts in my head. So if you’re looking for gratuitous, over-the-top coverage of relatively small baseball moves, you’ve come to the right spot today.

I’ll run through this team by team, to help keep my thoughts from becoming too chaotic. First the Rangers, then the Orioles, and then…the Angels?

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Lance Berkman reportedly cleared waivers last week. How he went through the waiver process unclaimed is befuddling.

Certain noteworthy players pass through waivers based on a few factors. Some prove too costly in salary or years. Some may make it known they intend to invoke their no trade clauses. Others are viewed as risky and injury prone. The remaining players aren’t great enough to justify the acquisition cost, especially with a mere month remaining.

The Big Puma fits none of these descriptions. Determining why no team submitted a claim proves to be quite the tall task.

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A little taste of success, when combined with an expanding budget, can make for an interesting off-season. The Texas Rangers experienced that in the off-season, first bidding nine figures for Cliff Lee, and then signing Adrian Beltre to a five-year, $80 million contract. Yet it’s one lesser move, and a non-move, that have really spurred the Rangers lately.

After the Rangers signed Beltre and essentially removed Michael Young from third base, the third position he’s played for them, he predictably requested a trade. Rumors of a Rockies trade abounded, but never came to fruition. Eventually both parties agreed to drop it, instead using Young at DH and wherever needed in the infield.

About 20 days after the Beltre signing, the Rangers swung a trade, swapping reliever Frank Francisco for Mike Napoli. The Blue Jays had recently acquired Napoli from the Angels, but decided that they’d rather have Francisco in their bullpen than Napoli as their DH and sometimes catcher. The Rangers, who were likely dismayed to have Francisco accept their arbitration offer, were glad to add Napoli’s bat, even if it would be tough to find him playing time.

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Justin Verlander is apparently dead set on making the rest of the 2011 season not that interesting. First, he decided to end any speculation about who might win the 2011 Cy Young Award by leading the league in nearly every pitching category you can think of, and then, he decided to help his team win enough games to make the AL Central race something less than a heated contest down the stretch.

Sure, there’s still more than a month of baseball left to play, but the Tigers have now opened up a 5 1/2 game lead over the Indians and White Sox, and recent injuries to the Tribe (most notably Travis Hafner’s potentially season ending foot problem) leave them looking like a bit of a long shot at this point. The Tigers haven’t won the division just yet, but assuming that they’ll join Texas, New York, and Boston in the playoffs is a decently safe bet at this point.

If we work off the assumption that those are the four likely playoff teams in the AL, then the interesting question becomes whether winning the AL East is a good idea or not. New York and Boston are currently slugging it out for the division title, but the loser is basically guaranteed the wild card spot, and so all they’re really playing for is home field advantage and the right to play the division winner with the lesser record in the first round.

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Jim Hendry has been relieved of his duties as general manager of the Chicago Cubs. We’ll have plenty of time to look back on his place in GM history, but for now, let’s look forward. Cubs chairman Tom Ricketts gave us the checklist today, when he said that he was looking for a candidate who had analytical experience in a winning front office and who would focus on player development. Time to rank the potential replacements using those requirements.

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Maybe there’s is a better way to predict how well a hitter is doing? Rather than glancing at his OBP and SLG and OPS or his wOBA and wRC+ and then mentally calibrating that number according to an inflated or deflated BABIP, maybe we can find a simple means of combining the key elements into a single formula.

Well, I believe I have stumbled onto just such a formula.

Th’other day, when I was trying to solve the mystery of the Tampa Bay Rays and their utterly broken run expectancy chart, I began ruminating about the relationship between walks, strikeouts, and an ability to create runs. You see, the Rays tend towards true outcomes: lotsa walks, lotsa strikeouts. So, for some strange reason — be it bad luck or bad hitter-type chemistry — the Rays seem to have an inability of reaching a standard run expectancy with the bases loaded.

Anyway, I began to investigate this trifle and produced an interesting comparison:

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Today, the Rangers traded Chris Davis and Tommy Hunter to the Orioles for setup man Koji Uehara. Some might balk at the asking price, but it’s become obvious that neither Hunter nor Davis were going to figure in to the Rangers’ future plans. And Uehara might end up at the cheapest way for the Rangers to upgrade their late-inning relief.

It’s true that there are a lot of years of control left on the young players that the Orioles acquired. Both can be free agents in 2016 at the earliest. But it’s also true that both players had muted upside.

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The Rangers are rolling on all cylinders these days. Their +92 run differential is fourth-best in the Majors, and they are 11 games over .500 since the start of June. As Carson noted the other day, they have received good production out of center field, and really that translates to every other spot in the lineup as well. And while the Rangers’ bullpen has pitched better during the past two months, it still remains the team weakness… perhaps the team’s only weakness. As such the Rangers have been linked to both Heath Bell and Mike Adams as potential bullpen reinforcements, though it is widely thought that Bell is more likely to be dealt, so let’s focus on him. Would acquiring Bell be the proverbial final piece of the puzzle for the Rangers?

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A few nights ago I flipped over to a Ranger-Blue Jays game just in time to catch a plate appearance by Rangers’ second baseman Ian Kinsler. Toronto’s announcers were talking about how Kinsler, despite doing well this season as the Rangers leadoff hitter, is not ideal for the spot. Whenever the phrase “ideal leadoff man” comes up, you know that Rickey Henderson’s name is about to come up, and indeed, it did. So even while complimenting Kinsler’s good season, the announcers somehow thought he wasn’t quite right for the leadoff job despite being a good baserunner and getting on base at a good clip. What are they talking about? What exactly is the “ideal leadoff hitter” if a guy who gets on base and runs well isn’t?

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