MVP.
The initial All-Star Game balloting numbers were released a couple days ago, with the top five American League vote-getters revealed at each of the nine offensive positions (actually, 15 outfielders without specific positions), for a total of 45 players among the 15 AL clubs.
There were zero Rangers.
The AL West-leading Rangers, that is, whose 31-22 record is a half-game short of the league’s best.
Maybe that’s not a shocking thing, given that the two most likely (or at least deserving) All-Star participants from Texas are probably a player who didn’t have a team until half a month after spring training started and another who began the season in AAA and, if not for unforeseen circumstances, might still be in a Round Rock jersey rather than back-to-back recipient of AL Rookie of the Month honors.
But Ian Desmond and Nomar Mazara are both outfielders, and neither is among the top 15 in the vote.
Baltimore Rule 5 pick Joey Rickard is.
Desmond and Mazara aren’t.
Now, I’ve never cared much about the All-Star vote and don’t now.
I bring this up to make a different point.
The Most Valuable Part of the 2016 Texas Rangers, a third of the way in, is this team’s depth. The vertical length of the roster (and beyond) that Jon Daniels and his crew assembled going into the season has been indispensable.
Shin-Soo Choo, the club’s best player as it made its second-half run to 162+ last summer, goes down within this season’s first week.
Mazara comes up and is known as the youngest player in baseball for about 10 minutes, after which his bullet points start to change entirely.
Delino DeShields regresses. Desmond — signed despite zero outfield experience when it didn’t look like Josh Hamilton was going to be able to give the team much — takes over in center, and has been one of baseball’s best players for the last month and a half. Ryan Rua (.811 OPS) settles in as the primary left fielder.
Rougned Odor gets suspended for a week. Jurickson Profar steps in and doesn’t just keep the club from skipping a beat. He adds a new dimension, and a really interesting conversation.
Robinson Chirinos breaks an arm in the season’s fifth game and Chris Gimenez can’t shake a leg infection coming out of camp.
No sweat: Relatively anonymous Rangers catchers Bryan Holaday, Bobby Wilson, and Brett Nicholas, none of whom is on the 40-man roster until the day before the club breaks camp in Surprise, combine for a MLB-high .287 batting average at the position, and a shared AL lead with 30 RBI, playing solid defense.
Keone Kela gets hurt, and Shawn Tolleson and Tom Wilhelmsen struggle.
Career minor leaguer Tony Barnette shows up from Japan and Matt Bush shows up from Golden Corral.
Remember the name Jose Leclerc — it might take only short-term memory — and at some point lefthander Michael Roth, whose non-roster deal didn’t even include an invite to big league camp, could help.
And then there’s Sam Dyson.
Since taking over for Tolleson in the ninth: nine strikeouts and zero walks in 6.2 innings.
Twelve ground balls and two fly balls.
Three hits and four saves.
Yu Darvish can’t go out of the gate, but Texas goes 7-2 in starts made by non-roster replacements A.J. Griffin and Cesar Ramos, who post a collective 2.88 ERA as starters in Darvish’s absence.
Darvish joins a rotation that has the American League’s best starters’ ERA (3.39), the Rangers’ best such mark through 53 games in 40 years.
The Rangers’ ace goes tonight against a Mariners club that staged an incredible comeback win in San Diego last night that resulted in a tie atop the division and a flight putting them in Texas just before the sun came up.
Three with Seattle, and the Rangers have a shot at a ninth straight series win at home (a Globe Life Park record), and an opportunity (3.0, 1.0, -1.0, or -3.0) to reclaim sole possession of the division lead.
It’s a remarkable thing, given that Texas has had to rely meaningfully on depth in the rotation and in the bullpen and at catcher and at second base and at all three outfield spots already.
Meanwhile, only Boston has a better AL win-loss mark, by half a game.
The Rangers haven’t looked to depth at first base or DH in spite of Prince Fielder’s and Mitch Moreland’s extended labors. But they could. Joey Gallo (a triple, a single, and a walk last night, now up to .294/.438/.676 in 130 AAA plate appearances) awaits, productively.
The Profar question persists, as Odor is set to return to action after tonight’s game. Could he remain on the roster, at least until Choo and Drew Stubbs return? Texas presumably won’t ask him to play the outfield (his arm hasn’t been conditioned for it), but could Texas roll with both Profar and Hanser Alberto on the bench for now?
Depends largely on the blueprint for getting Profar in the lineup. It’s not reasonable to expect Odor, Adrian Beltre, and Elvis Andrus to sit, even once a week each.
As Ben Rogers and I talked about yesterday while recording the latest Spitballin’ podcast episode, comparing Profar to Zobrist is more convenient than it is fair. In all those Rays and A’s years when Zobrist was earning MVP votes while playing all over the field, he was shuttling between positions manned otherwise by Eric Sogard, Mark Canha, and Sam Fuld, or Logan Forsythe and Sean Rodriguez and Elliot Johnson and Matt Joyce and Ryan Roberts and Reid Brignac and Akinori Iwakuma and Gabe Gross and Jason Bartlett.
That’s not the same as Odor and Beltre and Andrus and Fielder.
Profar needs to play.
He’s got nothing left to prove (well, aside perhaps from his arm strength from the left side of the infield). He has hits in all six games he’s played for Texas, with multiple hits in half of them, and has scored in the last five of those six games out of the leadoff spot. He’s made all the plays at second base, and he’s been big running the bases.
He sports a .929 OPS.
Jurickson Profar is a winning baseball player.
But he needs to play, whether that’s in Arlington or, for now, in Round Rock.
Daniels told the Ben and Skin Show yesterday that the inner circle is “still talking about ways” to keep the 23-year-old on the club once Odor returns.
Jeff Banister told MLB Network Radio that Profar “sure makes our club good,” and said to the local beats: “[Profar has] shown great energy [as] a guy who loves to play the game, and resilience after being away so long. I’m assuming what I’m seeing is what everybody else saw in the past.”
Yes.
Someone in the middle infield has to move.
Not this weekend — that’s no longer a slam dunk, because of the dimension Profar has brought in his week up here — but while he has an option remaining in 2017, he clearly won’t need it. The Rangers are going to need to capitalize on his value no later than this winter, unless they move Andrus or Odor to make room for him here.
While procedurally he can, the dynamic Profar is not going back to AAA next April. He’s just not.
Someone’s gonna move.
That’s a conversation for another time. A conversation that will have added depth as the summer unfolds.
But not the same kind of depth that, two months in, has been this club’s MVP, pretty much carrying this team in the absence of any one or two players doing so themselves, a point driven home by something as pedestrian as the early returns on the All-Star vote.