Evidently, the Texas Rangers feel the key to getting back to the postseason for the first time since 2012 is to reunite with as many members of that team as possible.
And given the names they’re reuniting with, that’s actually not a bad idea.
The first player from 2012 the Rangers renewed acquaintances with was left fielder Josh Hamilton, whom the club acquired in a late-April trade with the Los Angeles Angels. Now it’s first baseman Mike Napoli‘s turn, as MLB.com’s T.R. Sullivan reported Friday, the Rangers have acquired him from the Boston Red Sox:
According to Jon Heyman of CBSSports.com, Texas isn’t taking on the remainder of Napoli’s $16 million salary. The Rangers are paying just $1.5 million—a bargain price.
Granted, one look at what Napoli—who spent 2011 and 2012 in Texas—has done this season won’t convince you that this “bargain” has any actual value. After averaging an .868 OPS and 24 home runs a year between 2011 and 2014, Napoli has just a .693 OPS with 13 homers this season.
In other news, Napoli is also another first-baseman/designated-hitter type. In Mitch Moreland and Prince Fielder, the Rangers already have two of those. Why oh why would they go after a third?
Short answer: Because this one is hot and because he can help push the Rangers toward October by fixing one of the only weaknesses their offense has.
Napoli has spent most of 2015 in a bad cold spell, sure, but the Rangers are picking him up at the right time.
The 33-year-old slugger has looked much more like himself since the All-Star break, hitting .281, with a .931 OPS over his 17 games. Not so coincidentally, FanGraphs can vouch that he’s been hitting the ball with a lot more authority. His hard-contact percentage has jumped from 26.7 before the break to 40.0 since.
But the real reason the Rangers wanted to acquire Napoli’s bat? The guy who made the trade didn’t keep any secrets when speaking about that.
“Napoli is a guy who has always hit left-handers,” said Rangers general manager Jon Daniels, via Sullivan. “He has been very productive against them this season. That’s something we have struggled with. … There will be a minimum transition period. He gives us presence and power against left-handers. It made sense for us.”
Daniels isn’t kidding. The Rangers have indeed struggled to hit left-handed pitching. Heading into Friday’s action, the bottom 10 in MLB in OPS against lefties looked like this:
The Rangers aren’t all the way down there, but they’re down there. Such is life when you have the kind of lineup they have.
The team really doesn’t have an impact right-handed bat outside of Adrian Beltre and tends to skew left-handed with Moreland, Fielder, Hamilton and Shin-Soo Choo playing every game. This isn’t an issue most days, but it’s obviously an issue when a southpaw is toeing the rubber.
This brings us to another thing Daniels is right about: Napoli can definitely hit left-handers.
This has been true even in what’s been a down year. Napoli’s .845 OPS against lefties this year is below his career average of .904 against southpaws, but FanGraphs can show that what he’s doing this season makes it nine out of 10 years that he’s been an above-average hitter against lefties.
If nothing else, that gives the Rangers just the guy they’ve needed to platoon with Moreland at first base. And with that taken care of…well, there really aren’t many complaints left to make about the Rangers offense.
It’s been a strong unit all season, ranking sixth in the AL in OPS and fifth in the AL in runs scored. It’s also been the driving force in the Rangers’ 11-4 showing in 15 games heading into Friday, which has pushed them to 54-53 and three games back in the AL wild-card race. In this stretch, the Rangers have been averaging a touch over six runs per game.
Even before the team acquired Napoli, the projections were expecting the Rangers offense to keep up the good work. FanGraphs was projecting the unit to score 4.42 runs per game the rest of the way, good for MLB’s sixth-highest mark. Now that it has Napoli to help it handle left-handers, that number will rightfully be going up a little bit.
Mind you, this shouldn’t be taken as a guarantee that the Rangers have a return to October in their immediate future.
As strong as its offense looks, it’s still hard to know what to make of Texas’ arms. Cole Hamels was a fine addition at the deadline, but he’s part of a pitching staff that ranks dead last in the majors with a 5.74 ERA over the last 30 days of play. If the Rangers are going to keep their playoff push moving for the season’s final two months, their pitchers need to do better.
If they can, however, then there’s no reason Texas can’t nab a wild-card berth or even spring a sneak attack on the AL West title. Maybe its pitching won’t be great down the stretch, but it only needs to be good enough to ensure the club makes the most of what now looks like an elite offense.
The Rangers riding an elite offense to a postseason berth? Oddly enough, I believe the last time we heard that one was somewhere in the year 2012.
Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com and FanGraphs unless otherwise noted/linked.
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