Grading Chris Young and the Texas Rangers front office at the season’s midway point
By Bill Felber
In his third season as the team’s general manager, Chris Young has the Texas Rangers atop the AL West. They hit the season’s halfway point Thursday night at 49-32 and five games in front of the defending World Series champion Houston Astros.
The intriguing thing about the Rangers rise is not what they’ve done, but rather how Young has done it. With particular reference to his personnel decisions since the conclusion of the 2022 season, the Rangers are holding steady in first with virtually no help from their chief executive.
Grading the Texas Rangers at the midway point of the 2023 season
What follows is a mid-term assessment of Young’s personnel decisions since the conclusion of the 2022 World Series with a particular focus on the extent to which those decisions have helped or hindered the Rangers’ performance.
The standard of measurement in Wins Above Average (WAA), a variant of Wins Above Replacement (WAR). For this purpose, WAA is preferable because unlike WAR, it is zero-based. That means the sum of all the decisions made by Young impacting the 2023 team gives at least a good estimate of the number of games those moves have improved (or worsened) the team’s status this season.
A team’s front office impacts that team’s standing in five ways. Those five are:
1. By the impact of players it acquires from other teams via trade, purchase or waiver claim.
2. By the impact of players it surrenders to other teams in those same transactions.
3. By the impact of players it signs at free agency or extends.
4. By the impact of players it loses to free agency or releases.
5. By the impact of players it promotes from its own farm system.
Here’s how Young stacks up by those five yardsticks.