A new year. New resolutions. New hope. The Rangers enter 2023 with a fully rebuilt rotation and with determination to still do a little more touching up on...
before spring training starts next month. Only one question will guide them: Have they done enough to make themselves playoff contenders for the first time in seven years?
2. Bruce Bochy: In close games, managers are bigger factors. Bochy’s teams have a .535 winning percentage in 1,216 one-run games. Only one team had a better one-run winning percentage over the same 25 years: The New York Yankees. This manager makes a positive difference. 6. Pitchers practicing fielding works: Simply put, Rangers pitchers have badly bungled opportunities to help themselves. Over the four seasons in which Chris Woodward managed, the team was -26 in defensive runs saved from the pitching position, 29th in the majors. They were 23rd in 2022. Teams work on pitchers’ fielding all spring training. The Rangers have got to spend more time on this detail, even if it bleeds into the regular season.
9. Less work: It’s a symbiotic relationship. A starting rotation is only as good as its bullpen and the bullpen only as good as the rotation. The goal would be to get less work for the bullpen as a whole. A largely inexperienced bullpen worked 641 innings in 2022, sixth most in the majors, and faced 2,711 hitters, seventh most. A 10% lowered workload would have put them in the top half of the league in “freshest” bullpens.
12. A productive farm system: A couple of years of selloffs and high draft priority has pushed the Rangers to the cusp of the top five in organizational talent rankings. Now all that’s left to do is for those guys to graduate to successful big-league careers. There is a larger group of advanced-level pitching that are better positioned to step in, if needed. To wit: Owen White, Zak Kent, Cole Winn, Yerry Rodriguez, Chase Lee and Avery Weems.
14. Fewer strikeouts: The best thing that happened during Jung’s three-week big-league preview tour last year? He struck out a ton: 39 times in 98 at-bats. Why is that good? Presumably because he learned the strike zone and will cut that down significantly in his first full year. It’s something the Rangers need to trim across the board. They struck out 24 percent of the time last year, the sixth-highest rate in the majors.
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