With the Rangers' surprising season in the books, let's take a look at the season on a position-by-position basis.
2015 left fielder
The guy: Josh Hamilton
The experiment: Mike Napoli
The forgotten: Ryan Rua
The "guy": Will Venable
As the season wore on, and the Rangers began to turn things around after their awful start, just about every position on the field was nailed down by someone. Left field, however, was a different story?
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The Opening Day starter, Ryan Rua, was injured in the home opener and missed significant time before going back to the minors. The Rangers traded for former AL MVP Josh Hamilton in April hoping he could find his old groove from his first Rangers tenure, and while that didn't happen, he kind of became the Rangers' starting left fielder by default.
However, Hamilton couldn't stay healthy, and that led to the wheels-off experiment of playing veteran Mike Napoli, a first baseman and catcher by trade, in left field — after having never played outfield in his entire career. And when that happened, the Rangers used defensive replacements to pull Napoli after the team built a lead. That was usually Will Venable. There was also Ryan Strausborger and Delino DeShields before he took over in center.
As you can see, it was a revolving door, and as a whole, it was easily the worst position on the field for the Rangers, getting an overall grade of C.
