That the Cubs have the best winning percentage in baseball at .636 isn’t surprising in the least. We just covered how great the rotation has been, and it’s not like their offense has been a problem either, what with them leading the NL in fWAR. None of that is big news, because the Cubs were expected to be this good.

On the other hand, the team with the second best record in baseball is a bit more of a surprise. The Rangers are cruising with a .645 winning percentage and a ten-game division lead over the Astros, which is pretty much the opposite of what people were expecting going into the season. The Rangers’ best player is a bit of a surprise, even though maybe he shouldn’t have been.

We covered the Rangers’ signing of Ian Desmond this offseason when we were checking in on the state of the qualifying offer system. At that point, it was pretty clear that the Rangers were getting a great one-year deal on Desmond’s services at $8 million for the year. What wasn’t clear at that point whether Desmond would make the switch from shortstop to the outfield successfully or whether his hitting would improve after a rough 2015. Well, we’re almost halfway through the season, and it looks like Desmond hasn’t had any issues on either front.

Players converting from shortstop to the outfield has been a subject of recent controversy, after the Hanley Ramirez experiment with Boston last season. Since shortstop is the hardest position to field other than catcher, we generally assume that a defensively sound shortstop shouldn’t have any problem moving elsewhere. Obviously, there are plenty of players who make position changes seemingly seamlessly and players who struggle and end up out of the game. The moral of the story is that you can’t ever assume that a player will be able to do it, even if he is a shortstop.

Looking at his fielding stats, we’re going to look at outfielders generally. Although Desmond was signed to play left field, which in itself was going to be an experiment, that experiment went well enough that Texas had the luxury of sliding him over to center to help address various injury issues in the outfield. All in all, he doesn’t seem to be having any issues anywhere in the outfield. His 7.0 Ultimate Zone Rating is good enough to make him the 9th best defensive outfielder in MLB. His 3 Defensive Runs Saved is less impressive, as he drops into the mid-20s, but he’s still adding positive value defensively in the outfield.

Even if Desmond was merely league average in centerfield, he’s hitting well enough that he would be OK. His .322/.373/.525 slash line is the best of his career, good for a 132 OPS+ and 134 wRC+, both career highs were the season to end today. It’s not just that he’s hitting better relative to his past self, either. He’s all over the American League leaderboards. 9th in bWAR, 5th in AVG, 8th in OBP, 10th in OPS, 4th in stolen bases and 7th in stolen base success rate.

You want clutch? Desmond is leading MLB in Win Probability Added and is the clutchest in the league. While those stats don’t really tell you much about what is going to happen in the future, they do tell you how important Desmond has been to getting the Rangers where they are in the standings currently. It’s probably a tad unrealistic to assume that Desmond will continue to be so clutch or that his .389 BABIP will continue. While his career BABIP of .327 is higher than the average player, that .389 is probably due to come back to earth. After all. he’s currently sitting in 4th place in MLB for BABIP and it certainly looks like he’s been the beneficiary of some luck. Then again, he’s corrected the hole in his swing that was a problem last year, so we can’t just chalk everything up to luck here, either.

Add it all up and you have the Rangers’ best player by fWAR (3.7 for Desmond and it’s not even close, 2nd place is Adrian Beltre with 2.1 fWAR) and by bWAR (3.2 for Desmond with Beltre in 2nd with 2.7). So, yeah, it’s safe to say that Desmond has already earned his $8 million for the year and that the Rangers are probably OK with punting a draft pick for him, given their location in the standings. Of course, as with Dexter Fowler, who is also having an amazing year (although he has just been placed on the DL), this of course raises questions about what’s going to happen to Desmond after this season.

If Desmond keeps this up, it’s unlikely that a qualifying offer will keep him from getting a multiple-year deal somewhere, but it’s still going to be interesting to see what happens and whether we’re going to see any changes to the qualifying offer system during CBA negotiations this offseason. Regardless of what happens, it’s certainly interesting that a couple of the best players in baseball this season are two of the players who couldn’t land longterm deals last year thanks to qualifying offers.