Left off.
This one’s not about Matt Harrison, whose big league debut was seven years ago today but whose start in Arlington tonight may be nearly as huge emotionally, or about Martin Perez, who went a crisp 6-7-2-2-0-6 last night in a rehab start for Round Rock and whose march is steady.
It’s not about Robbie Ray, whose 7.2 innings last night against Texas were a career high. At least not specifically.
But it is about lefties.
Prince Fielder. Shin-Soo Choo. Mitch Moreland.
Leonys Martin. Rougned Odor.
Josh Hamilton.
Joey Gallo. Nomar Mazara. Nick Williams.
They won’t all be here in 2017.
Well, Fielder will be.
Choo is under contract to be, but it’s starting to seem more likely than not that by then he’ll be elsewhere.
Moreland will be a 31-year-old free agent when the 2016 season ends.
Martin will likely have two remaining arbitration-eligible seasons, and he’ll be 29 when the 2017 season begins.
Odor: We’ll get to him in a minute.
Hamilton will be under contract for something in the neighborhood of $26 million in 2017, about $2 million of which Texas will be responsible for. He’ll be almost 36. Be my guest if you feel you have a bead on whether he’s still playing baseball two years from now.
Gallo (who will be 23), Mazara (21), and Williams (23) will be ready.
Baseball Prospectus rolled its mid-season Top 50 Prospects list out on Monday, pegging Gallo and Mazara at 5th and 6th in all of baseball, with Williams coming in at 21. They’re the 3rd, 4th, and 12th best position players in the minor leagues, according to BP.
Baseball America’s own mid-season list, published yesterday, has Gallo at number 3 and Mazara at number 34, with Williams missing the group of 50 but earning mention as a “helium” player whose “significantly better plate discipline” has redefined his profile, which until 2015 had been marked by “blazingly fast hands and [a] loose left-handed swing” but a distaste for working counts and waiting on his pitch.
They won’t all be here, either, and it’s not because Jon Daniels has an itchy trigger finger.
It’s because you just can’t be that left-handed as a team. The danger of that has shown itself in ugly fashion lately, as the Rangers (according to the folks on the radio postgame show last night) are hitting .197 against southpaws over the last 40 games.
You can look to Jorge Alfaro and see where he ultimately fits, and perhaps Lewis Brinson and Ryan Cordell as well. You can’t write Ryan Rua off, of course, and perhaps Michael Choice’s recent resurgence is meaningful. Leodys Taveras is years away at best, even if Andy Ibanez (signed out of Cuba for a reported $1.6 million yesterday) is closer. There are right-handed-hitting options to put up on the 2017 whiteboard.
But the Rangers, heavily left-handed at the big league level (and susceptible to left-handed pitching), are heavily left-handed at the top of their minor league hitting depth as well.
Odor brings something I strongly feel Texas needs long term — but unless you believe he’s the most valuable asset in baseball, it makes no sense to refuse to consider what he’s worth in trade. (Because of the intangibles, my sense is he’s probably worth more to the Rangers than he would be on the trade market, but I could be wrong.)
Gallo brings something this club (and most clubs) need as well, majestic power that plays, but he’s not the best player in baseball and not its number one property. Gotta listen. Don’t have to act. But gotta listen.
Martin’s defense is one of my favorite things about this team, but the other side of his game is maddening, especially since it doesn’t appear that it’s improved over the years, and in fact may have gone in the other direction. Do you sacrifice his center field weaponry for someone with a better offensive approach? Have to consider it.
BP obviously likes Mazara and Williams a ton. A ton. Do you try and find the teams out there who see one or both the way Baseball Prospectus does — as two of the absolutely elite young hitters in the game — and see how you might line up with those teams to redefine your own?
Does it make sense not to check?
Jon Daniels will check.
Almost certainly, he already has.
Ken Rosenthal (Fox Sports) believes the Rangers could trade Choo this winter, though it would probably require them to “include significant cash, attach prospects, take back expensive talent, [or] all of the above.” There are reasons to explore that idea even if the lineup weren’t so left-handed and even if Choo (.854 OPS against right-handed pitching, .471 against lefties) weren’t the poster boy for the imbalanced production.
Man, I wish Texas was somehow able to get in on November’s Josh Donaldson trade.
Or the next one of that sort, whoever it involves.
There’s no telling whether another young, extremely controllable, MVP-level right-handed hitter will be made available this month or (more likely) this winter.
And there’s no telling which of the Rangers’ top assets, many of whom — perhaps too many from one standpoint — hit from the left side, will be made available on this end, though I suspect in the right scenario none of them would be untouchable.
The idea of this team becoming even more left-handed going forward just doesn’t work.
Look at those nine names at the front of this report. They won’t all be here in two years.
Some of them may not be in five months.
There’s a reallocation that needs to happen, and a really healthy farm system serves more than one very important purpose.