Five players from the Texas Rangers.

Coming down the stretch, we have only 2 teams left after the Rangers. This looks like another difficult team to write about as players have either gotten enough coverage from this or other sites (Hank Blalock), or are just boring and not worth mentioning (Frank Catalanotto). So here goes…

Ben Broussard He has been given the full-time job, which could lead to his first ever 500 AB season. Even though he’s sucked versus lefties, Ron Washington seems perfectly content to let him suck in more ABs against them this year. This might hurt his season average but the extra plate appearances will of course increase his counting stats. Last year Broussard was really off, as his PX dipped below 100 and his HR/F dropped from 16% to 10%. I’m not exactly sure what caused this drop in performance, but chalking it up to being a bench player and only receiving 240 ABs, it might just be a sample size issue. He’s shown good power before, and in a good hitter’s park, he’s a nice AL-Only purchase.

C.J. Wilson Assuming he’s healthy, I think he’s good enough to keep the closer job all year. He gets lots of groundballs (49% last 2 years), and has had K/9 rates over 8 the last 2 seasons as well. His control is spotty, but he’s put up xERAs in the mid-3’s the last 2 years, so he’s no fluke. It doesn’t seem like the team has any interest in putting Joaquin Benoit back into the closer role, you can’t possibly count on anything from Guardado, and Kaz Fukumori wasn’t even good in Japan, so I doubt he’ll enjoy much success in his first year here.

Kevin Millwod What a crazy career Millwood has had. His skills have generally remained fairly consistent but his luck has been all over the place causing wild fluctuations in his ERA. Last year his walks jumped and strikeouts dropped, but his xERA was still .67 runs lower than his actual, thanks to a 35% hit rate and 69% strand rate. I know the thought of drafting Millwood might cause one to throw up a little in their mouth, but that just means you could probably purchase him at a bargain price in an AL-Only league.

Jarrod Saltalamacchia At first, I was going to say how starting the year in the minors might be a good thing for keeper leaguers to buy him on the cheap. However, after checking out his career minor league stats, it’s very possible he’s just not as good as once thought. His OPS’s by year, starting in 2003 are: .766, .779, .913, .733. That .913 OPS in 2005 clearly sticks out. Now of course simply looking at OPS and ignoring everything else isn’t the best way of looking at a player, but he gained top prospect status because of that 2005 season. I also just realized he’s never played in AAA. It will be interesting to see how he performs this year at that level for the first time.

Kasey Kiker The 112 strikeouts in 96 1/3 innings made the decision on which prospect to include easy for me. Sure it only came at single-A and with 41 walks, but a 10.5 K/9 at any level is quite impressive. I have to admit, I don’t know anything about this guy other than the stats I see, but reading Matthew Pouliot’s (from Rotoworld) scouting report on him, it sounds like he has excellent stuff but with command issues, like many young pitchers. He’s also a lefty, for whatever that’s worth. He posted a nice GB% of 48% in 2006, but that dropped to only 41% in 2007. For him to be successful in Arlington, he might need to raise that GB% back up to his 2006 levels, unless he’s able to significantly improve his walk rate. On the whole, he’s someone to tuck away in keeper leagues and continue following.

Questions, comments, criticisms, praise, expert league invitations? Email me at FBGeneralsMike@gmail.com.