Could Oneil Cruz or Jarren Duran help save the Rangers offense?

KRLD-FM / 105.3 The Fan

The Rangers have one of the best rotations in baseball, but they’re still struggling to win games. RJ and Bobby break down why the elite pitching hasn’t translated into more success and explore trade targets that could help turn things around. Bobby believes Oneil Cruz could boost the Rangers’ offense, while RJ makes a case for Boston’s Jarren Duran.

Transcript

00:00Aaron Duran was RJ's trade target Bobby has his all right so I know that the word out of

00:20Pittsburgh is that they are not going to trade O'Neal Cruz who has become the exit velocity god

00:26used to be Ellie De La Cruz now it's O'Neal Cruz he is the one that is just mashing the baseball he

00:31set the uh what a couple weeks ago he set the stat cast record for the highest exit velocity

00:36in the stat cast era on a I think it's just like a line drive to ride or whatever but he is he smokes

00:41the baseball now one of his problems in recent years has been the fact that he's got a a bad

00:48chase rate he doesn't walk very much it's kind of like the adultly symptoms we've seen in the past

00:53that he'll chase some stuff and he'll walk I think his walk rate was like seven percent heading

00:58into this year well over at fan graphs they've done a breakdown of the subtle shifts that O'Neal

01:04Cruz has gone through that now I look at and I go okay this is a guy that I think project you can

01:10project out and say this is somebody that the Rangers should target if they want to buy if they

01:14want to say we're buying in on this pitching staff this is somebody I'd be willing to sacrifice capital

01:17for so they talk about how his numbers have have jumped he's doubled his walk rate basically his

01:25chase rate is way down he was 27th percentile I think last year he's like 62nd this year so his

01:33approach has changed and they were trying to figure out over at fan graphs all right what is the most

01:37significant thing we can see in his stat cast data that'll tell us something has shifted it's this

01:42slight tweak it's this very small tweak that he's made where he's changed his swing path subtly on

01:49the lower zone and so the attack angle on his on breaking balls is up from 13 degrees to 16 degrees

01:56basically just means contact point has moved farther out front

01:59in the lower zone

02:02you

02:08yeah

02:09yeah

02:11yeah

02:18yeah

02:19yeah

02:20yeah

02:22yeah

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