Both the New York Post’s Joel Sherman and ESPN’s Jerry Crasnick tweeted yesterday that they believe the Texas Rangers are the most — or, at least, one of the most — active teams in pursuit of the excellent, and likely available, Carlos Beltran.

In a vacuum, acquiring Beltran makes total sense. Despite concerns about his knee (not something to be overlooked) and the possible limits it’s placed on his defensive range (which appears to have declined from “excellent in center” to merely “good enough for right”), Beltran remains an offensive force. In fact, so far as the numbers indicate, Beltran is having the best offensive season of his career, his line of .289/.389/.514 (.309 BABIP) good for a 151 wRC+ in this season’s deflated run environment.

In the context of the Rangers, however, the pursuit of Beltran is a bit puzzling. If we assume that the optimal use of deadline trading is to improve a team’s present talent as much as possible (something that’s accomplished most easily by addressing weaknesses) then the Rangers stand little to gain by adding Beltran — or any outfield-type, really. Last year’s MVP Josh Hamilton is healthy again and manning left field. After dealing with his own injuries, Nelson Cruz is back, too, and ensconced in right. Michael Young, meanwhile, has basically locked down the everyday DH role, hitting .333/.369/.494 (.361 BABIP) with a 135 wRC+.

This, of course, leaves center field.

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Whence we last examined yonder batting orders, we came away with several expected observations (Jose Bautista plays baseball like a video game, the Oakland Athletics do not care much for scoring runs, Rick Ankiel and Ian Desmond are not feared hitters, and so forth) as well as a number of curious findings (the Cubs lead-off combo was tops in the majors, the 7th hitters on AL teams were worse than the 9th hitters, NL managers effectively managed the bottoms of their lineups, and such).

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Realistically, for Brandon Webb, Wednesday’s news was probably less a matter of “if” and more a matter of “when,” as it appears Brandon Webb’s recurring shoulder injury will shut him down for the remainder of the season. This just adds to his depressing injury history, going back a mere two years:

May 14, 2011 Transferred from the 15-day DL to the 60-day DL (right shoulder surgery).

March 31, 2011 Right shoulder surgery, 15-day DL (retroactive to March 22).

November 2, 2010 Missed all 162 games (right shoulder surgery).

April 17, 2010 Transferred from the 15-day DL to the 60-day DL (right shoulder surgery).

April 4, 2010 Right shoulder surgery, early September.

April 12, 2009 Right shoulder injury, early September.

April 8, 2009 Right shoulder injury, day-to-day.

Webb’s swift collapse under the burden of injury serves as yet another reminder of the fragility of the athlete, and even more striking, the fragility of the pitcher. Webb was among the pitching elite ever since winning the 2006 Cy Young award, a season in which he posted a 7.0 WAR thanks to a 3.18 FIP and a similarly excellent 3.10 ERA. After posting two similarly excellent seasons in 2007 and 2008, it looked like the Diamondbacks had themselves one of the games’ most consistently great pitchers. That is, until opening day of the 2009 season, where Webb only managed four innings and would throw his last pitch in the Major Leagues to date.

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Josh Hamilton thinks his eye color is the cause of his hitting problems during day games, and at least one optometrist agrees with him. After initially thinking it was just talk, the idea that there could be some scientific explanation that explained his problems made this story more interesting. So, the next natural step was to look at some data.

On Friday, we asked you guys to come up with blue-eyed players, and you responded with enthusiasm. Over the weekend, I went through that thread and looked at all the nominated players, compiling a list of guys who might make for a useful comparison to Hamilton. I left out players who played a significant part of their career in a dome, for instance, and left out guys who were noted sunglass/tinted contact lens wearers, as we wanted to measure the performance of light eyes in day light with as few compounding factors as possible. Overall, I came up with 25 players who fit the criteria. It doesn’t sound like a huge number, but those guys combined for over 47,000 day-time plate appearances and over 100,000 night time plate appearances in their careers, so sample size shouldn’t be a problem.

The results? Well, you probably won’t be too surprised.

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The following data is current through 5-30-2011.

If you, dear reader, are like me, then you agonize unnecessarily over every lineup on every team in every game. Aaron Rowand leading off?! Yargh! No! Carlos Gomez batting second for the Brewers?! WRONG. Aaron Miles batting anything?! Unforgivable.

Holding egos constant, inefficiency is the greatest enemy of success. With regards to lineups, however, teams can really only lose a handful of runs over the course of full season, but a handful of runs, in real terms, can mean the difference between the division or a boring October. So it’s a dicey proposition. A mismanaged lineup on the Royals team does not mean a whole lot because they will lose the division by several trillion runs. A few lost runs for the Rays, Yankees, or Red Sox, though, can mean the season.
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Padres outfielder Will Venable was sent to the minor leagues today. Amazingly for a 28-year old with a .224/.293/.291 line and a neutral-looking .300 BABIP, it’s actually worth wondering if he deserved this fate. His case may help us understand something about focus and areas of improvement — because Will Venable has actually made some improvements this year, but perhaps not in the right areas.

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Last night, Neftali Feliz blew his second save of the season, giving up a run to the Royals in the ninth inning of a game that the Rangers would eventually go on to lose in extra innings. Because the run he allowed was charged to Derek Holland, his ERA actually fell to 1.26, so on the surface, it would seem like there’s not much to worry about.

Once you put ERA aside, however, it’s clear that not all is right with the Ranger’s closer. His BB/9 has jumped from 2.34 last year to 7.53 this year, and perhaps more worryingly, his K/9 has plummeted – he’s struck out just eight of the 62 batters he’s faced this year. Feliz is a power pitcher who succeeds by throwing the ball past hitters, and right now, he’s just not doing that.

However, diagnosing the cause of Feliz’s problems is somewhat complicated, because, well, just look at this:

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It happens every year. A manager gets an itchy trigger finger early in the season and buries a guy before he even gets a chance to earn the faith the manager put in him to start the season. This year is no different, and with an idea sparked from Eric Seidman’s piece yesterday on Brad Emaus — an article that the Mets completely ignored when they waived him today — I present the 2011 Brad Emaus All-Stars.
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On the Monday evening ESPN SportsCenter, Dave Winfield was highlighting the big plays of the afternoon tilt between the Rangers and the Tigers. Since Michael Young went two-for-four with a big RBI double that broke open a tied, scoreless game in the seventh inning, Winfield was right to attribute much of the offensive glory to the longtime Ranger. He was the offensive WPA champ of the game (+.184) on the revamped box scores.

But maybe Winfield went a little too far when he said “Michael Young is the Derek Jeter of the Texas Rangers.” Derek Jeter still plays shortstop and owns all those rings! Then again, we might find with a little uncovering that the description was apt.

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Since the last time we spoke about Alexi Ogando a few things have changed. The biggest concern about Ogando in the rotation is and was durability. The outfielder-turned-fireballer pitched a career-high 72.1 innings last season between the minors and major leagues. With that in mind, it seems unlikely he could handle a workload over 150+ innings in 2011.

In the original Ogando article, I briefly mentioned the Rangers might start Ogando in the rotation with the intention of moving him back to the bullpen once Brandon Webb or Tommy Hunter was able to take his turn. Soon after we went live on FanGraphs, the Rangers announced that the move was indeed a temporary one. Even though the long-term durability issues were erased, there were concerns about how much endurance the righty would have on a start-to-start basis.

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