Quick, name the player that leads the American League in Batting Average (.337), is slugging .548, has 23 stolen bases, and – oh yeah – plays second base.

Give up?

Unless you’ve been paying particularly close attention, or have been frustrated all season by the guy in your league that owns him, you might not be terribly familiar with the Lone Star dynamo that is 26-year old Ian Michael Kinsler. Hailing from The Old Pueblo – sunny Tucson, Arizona – Kinsler was drafted by the Diamondbacks in 2000 (29th round) following an exceptional high school career (and again in 2001 in the 26th), but opted instead to continue with college, which included stops at Arizona State and the University of Mississippi. He was then drafted 496th overall by the Rangers following his 2003 season at Missouri (.335/.416/.536). He was taken as a shortstop after pretty much every team had grabbed one at some point in front of him, but switched to second base in 2005 at AAA Oklahoma (Pacific Coast League). The 6′0″, 200lb Kinsler never looked back, and in 2008 has firmly entrenched himself in the leadoff spot for the league’s premier offensive ballclub after signing a 5-year, $22 million contract this past February that keeps him under the Rangers’ control through 2013.

Going from 17th-round selection to veritable first-half MVP in 5 years is no small feat. He leads the majors in both hits and doubles, has cranked 14 homers, and is on pace to score 144 runs. Nicknamed “lettuce,” apparently because his hair sticking out the sides of his helmet reminds more than a few ballplayers of patches of the leafy plant, Kinsler has in his third full season made his first All-Star team, is the #2 ranked player on Yahoo! Fantasy Baseball, and has begun establishing for himself a reputation as one of the league’s premier young infielders. He hasn’t been doing a ton differently at the plate this year: making a little more contact, trading some ground balls for fly line drives, and the like. He’s a definite pull hitter, and all of his 14 home runs have been to the left field. He’s hitting .356 with runners on base, and .419 with runners in scoring position.

The biggest knock on Kinsler this year has been his flippant ground-ball boxing around the second base bag. His 16 errors and .970 Fielding Percentage are both worst among Major League second basemen, though those figures don’t really tell the full story on Kinsler. He’s also dominating all other Major League 2Bs in assists and putouts, and his 5.71 Range Factor (putouts and assists per 9 innings) is a full .34 ahead of the second place entrant, Placido Polanco. It’s difficult to say how much of this has to do with the Rangers pitching staff (guys like Gabbard and Millwood induce a lot of grounders) and how much of it has to do with Kinsler’s ability to convert balls hit at him to outs. For what it’s worth, Kinsler also lead MLB 2Bs in Range Factor last year (5.69), and Michael Young is third among MLB shortstops at 4.72. It’s also interesting to note that Kinsler’s Zone Rating, as measured by STATS Inc, is not great at .813 (11th among MLB 2B). His Revised Zone Rating, according to THT, is .796, which is decidedly substandard.

Joey Matschulat at MVN recently took a brief look at Kinsler’s defense in 2008, and pointed out that his “range” – or his ability to be mobile and get to difficult grounders – may have taken a step backwards in 2008. According to THT’s Statistics, Kinsler got to 53 balls last year that were out of his zone; as a percentage of his putouts and assists, those out-of-zone grounders made up for 7.4% of his chances. In 2006, they made up 3.125%, and in 2008, they’re making up 3.25%, so yes, he’s taken a step backwards range-wise in 2008. Right? This has not been caused by Kinsler fielding more grounders than usual. His Total Chances per 9 Innings have been very similar for the past 3 years: 5.73, 5.82, 5.88; essentially, he’s only getting one more ground ball every 2 games than he did in 2007. The lack of out-of-zone grounders he’s fielded is very striking, but it might be premature to say that he has in fact taken a step backwards. There is much baseball yet to be played.

There’s one quirky figure in Kinsler’s stats that deserved some exploration. As a percentage of his team’s total chances, (Total Chances/Team Grounders), Kinsler’s rate has increased over the past 2.5 seasons, including a weird spike in 2008. His “Chance Share” from 2006-2008 has gone from 30.16% to 34.22% to 42.37% in 2008. Neither Michael Young nor the Rangers’ 3B carousel has experienced any sort of matching trend. By comparison, Mark Ellis, who is viewed by many as the top defensive 2B in baseball, has participated in 39.30% of his team’s ground balls.

How is it that a player has had as many Chances Per 9 Innings as he’s always had, but he’s got more Chances per Ground Ball than he’s ever had? The answer would seem to have something to do with double play opportunities. Kinsler has had a TON of them this year – 24% more than 2007, to be exact -and he leads baseball in both double plays started and double plays turned (Michael Young is 3rd and 5th, respectively). Robinson Cano was 2007’s DP/9 leader at .882. This year, Kinsler is at 1.04. I’m not aware of any studies on the matter, but it would seem to be clear that double play opportunities are (at least partly) out of a fielder’s control. Sure, they have something to do with the number that they convert, but save for a few really acrobatic twin killings, it’s pretty much a function of runners being on base. This meshes well with the fact that the Rangers pitching staff is absolutely horrible, and there are pretty much always runners on first (they lead the majors with 395 walks allowed).

Again, I don’t know how much influence fielders have over their own ability to participate in double-plays, but if we assume that they don’t, how much is Kinsler’s 5.70 Range Factor influenced by his situation? If we take the average Double Plays per Inning for all qualified second basemen and “normalize” their Double Play numbers, Kinsler’s range factor comes down to 5.36: this still leads the majors, but guys like Polanco (5.27), Utley, and Cano (both 5.20) are closer to him. The double play quirk doesn’t really help us pinpoint the cause of Kinsler’s errors. He attributes them to his “energetic” playing style; others wonder if he’s still playing shortstop in his mind.

Ian Kinsler is not a gold-glove second baseman. However, he’s not exactly Dick Stuart either. He gets a ton of ground balls, and muffs some of them. He also makes a few too many bad throws. From looking at his numbers, one gets the impression that his defensive shortcomings are somewhat exaggerated. Defense remains a difficult skill to evaluate, and Kinsler is no doubt conscious of his high error totals, but I’d be much more comfortable disparaging his defense if this were 2009 and we were still talking about him leading the league in errors.

But it’s not all negatives outside the batter’s box. In addition to Kinsler’s bat-wielding proficiencies, he is also a fantastic base-stealer. Kinsler’s success rate of 95.83% (23/1) is second only to Jimmy Rollins (24/0) and Chase Utley (10/0) in terms of efficiency, and Chase isn’t really in the same league as those two. Using the same method I did to lampoon Hunter Pence’s miserable baserunning, here’s the MLB Baserunning Leaderboard (min: 10 attempts):

RK PLAYER TEAM SB CS ATT SB% OPS BRRV
1 Willy Taveras COL 39 4 43 .907 0.598 4.957
2 Ichiro Suzuki SEA 34 3 37 .919 0.737 4.549
3 Jimmy Rollins PHI 24 0 24 1.000 0.778 4.2
4 Ian Kinsler TEX 23 1 24 .958 0.945 3.558
T-5 Juan Pierre LAD 35 7 42 .833 0.644 2.856
T-5 Jacoby Ellsbury BOS 35 7 42 .833 0.714 2.856

For the first half of 2008, Kinsler hasn’t been a good baserunner, he’s been downright elite. I included the OPS column in this table to give you an idea of how special Kinsler’s blend of speed and power has been thus far. For those curious, there are 5 other guys in the top 30 of the Baserunning Run Value standings with a .900+ OPS: Sizemore (#7, 22 SB), Rodriguez and Holliday (T-#11, 13 SB), Utley (#13, 10 SB), and Berkman (#16, 15 SB). Kinsler is having a special season: since 1901, only 65 players have registered seasons with 40+ steals and a .900+ OPS. The last 5 to do it? Hanley Ramirez (2007, .948/51), Alfonso Soriano (2006, .911/41), Carlos Beltran (2004, .915/42), Bobby Abreu (2004, .972/40), and Beltran again (2003, .911/41). Ty Cobb did it 8 times, Honus Wagner 6 times, and Rickey Henderson did it 4 times. His pace has him set to steal 39; if he has the chance to steal 40, one has to imagine he’ll take it. Kinsler’s Marcels projection has him slipping considerably in the second half: .842 OPS the rest of the way, which would land him at .898 on the season. He’s right on the cusp, and if his first half has been more “manifestation of improved skills” and less “lucky out of his mind,” he’s got a pretty good chances of 40/.900.

Baseball Prospectus’ Joe Sheehan wrote the following of Kinsler after pegging him as a “breakout candidate” this past January:

Kinsler made small improvements across the board in ’07, hitting more fly balls, walking a bit more, stealing more bases at a better rate and playing better defense. Given a full season—Kinsler has missed 74 games in two seasons—he could put up Dan Uggla’s numbers, with much better defense and a higher OBP.

Questions about Kinsler’s defense aside (Sheehan also predicted a monster season from Francoeur, oops), fans who jumped on the Kinsler bandwagon early have been greatly enjoying his (apparent) breakout season. It’ll be next to impossible for him to keep his pace up: his .365 BABIP will come down, and his 45% fly ball rate will have plenty to do with that. Of interest is the fact that while his OPS has climbed each month this year (.754, .881, 1.091, 1.186), his stolen base output may be falling (7, 8, 5, 3 in July). Kinsler pretty much idolizes Michael Young, and has stated on numerous occasions that he uses the shortstop as a model of consistency and focus on and off the field. From 2005-2007, Young has upped his batting average by 16 points in the second half of the season; Kinsler’s supporters are certainly hoping that he’s taking Young’s tutoring to heart.