Texas Rangers

Power Rankings

Date	Ranking	Previous
01/26/2012	2	2
Good business: Sure, Yu Darvish cost them $107.7 million between the contract and the rights fee, but he was the only high-upside play in this year's market. Plus they'll defray the costs by placing a pun jar by the door. By imposing a 25-cent fine for every "clever" Yu-related headline ("Yu Got It!," "It Had To Be Yu!"), the Rangers should be in the black on his deal by March 2014. Bad business: Joe Nathan cost $14 million for two years and Ryan Madson cost $8.5 million for one. At least they didn't misread the market as badly as the Phillies and Marlins did. Prognosis as of 11:14 a.m. GMT on Jan. 26, 2012: Assuming they can put up with all the armchair analysis -- "Oh, if only they could slap a Band-Aid and some ointment on Game 6's psychological scars!," etc. -- they're poised to contend for the next half-decade.
10/31/2011	2	3
2011 eulogy: Oh man. I'm sorry. Wow. Offseason to-do list: Attempt to focus on Ron Washington's winning personality rather than his lineups and in-game management. ... Elevate Mike Napoli a few slots in the batting order. Right now. Don't wait until April. ... Affect an attitude of practiced indifference towards C.J. Wilson. If he wants to stay at a reasonable price, great. If he wants to chase riches and fame elsewhere, that's OK, too. ... Re-reverse-convert Neftali Feliz back into a starter. As the Rangers saw up close this season, bullpens are far easier to bolster mid-season than rotations. Odds of achieving Cardinals-like glory in 2012: Not that it's much consolation now, but they're set up as well as any World Series bridesmaid in recent memory. They're built for today, tomorrow and the day after that.
09/28/2011	3	3
What went right: Mike "Effin Awesome Van Halen" Napoli, baby! Whooo! ... Along those lines, while pundits fell over themselves to say nice things about the Detroit offense during its early-September explosion, the Rangers were putting up a .900+ team OPS for the month. When they're whole, they're a terrifying team offensively ... C.J. Wilson pitched as well as any left-handed starter not named Kershaw or Lee. Put this one in the short-term-gain category, though, as any number of lefty-needy teams will try to poach him come December. What went wrong: Good question. The bullpen started off shaky, but Jon Daniels righted it at the trade deadline ... I dunno. Maybe they could've looked into surgically reinforcing Adrian Beltre's hamstrings or something? Regular-season epilogue: They're great now and they're set up to be great for seasons to come. These are better days.
09/20/2011	3	3
It's dangerous to engage in playoff-matchup engineering, especially before you've clinched a berth. But the Rangers should do everything within their power, including but not limited to crank-calling the houses and hotel rooms of Tiger players in the middle of the night, to ensure that they meet the Red Sox in the first round. The Sox are weak from the right side of the plate nowadays and the Rangers have lefties in glorious, biblical abundance, at least compared with the other AL playoff teams. This is their edge -- though, ironically enough, it won't help against the lefty-pounding Tigers. Anyway.
09/13/2011	3	5
Frankly, I think it's awesome that Ranger fans are panicking about the team's lag in claiming the AL West. Hey, they finally care enough to throw reason out the window and stay up late monitoring the Angels/A's score. Congrats on getting to that sad, wonderful point, Ranger aficionados. "You all" are alright in my book. ... Here are three ways to calm the nerves: First, examine at the remaining schedule (six games against the Mariners, three each against the A's and Indians). Second, fix your gaze upon the Angels' non-pitching roster components. Third, check Baseball-Reference.com to confirm Mike Napoli's current professional affiliation. That oughta do it.
09/06/2011	5	6
I keep hearing that nobody should "sleep on the Rangers." Fine. But who's doing this? We've already handed them a playoff berth, despite a mere two-games-and-change lead in the division. If anything, we're wide awake on the Rangers, or at least overcaffeinated on them ... It's hard to imagine anyone trumping the Rangers and wonderboy GM Jon Daniels for front-office/executive/magical movemaker/whatever of the year honors. Even if you discount offseason masterstrokes like the Mike Napoli deal, the trade-deadline wangling to create a bulletproof bullpen clinches the title. They're pretty much playing six-inning games from here on out; the quartet of Adams/Uehara/Gonzalez/Feliz renders moot all worries about rotation depth. Who gets the car? They get the car!
08/30/2011	6	5
Rangers-Angels has evolved into one incredibly entertaining rivalry. Forget about Yankees-Red Sox -- it trumps Cards-Reds, Patriots-Jets and Dave Matthews Band-moldable ear plugs as well ... My imagined reason for the Rangers' mini-slide (through Sunday, they had lost 7 of 11): They got cocky. They started staying up late, hanging out with the neighborhood toughs and secretly exchanging their boysenberry smoothies for milkshakes. Get it out of your system before the October SATs, OK? ... At this point, the best healing option for Nelson Cruz might be enforced convalescence on a mattress of ice packs. Hypothermia, shmypothermia.
08/23/2011	5	4
We might be getting a bit too excited about the pitching. As with the Yankees, the 1-through-17 (or however many pitchers we're keeping around nowadays) staff is far better in practice than it is in theory, plus there's lots of low-rotation depth. But it lacks power arms/bat-missers. ... Which, of course, might not matter much due to the outstanding defense. I might be overthinking this just a bit. ... As if Mike Napoli's slugging doesn't render him awesome enough on its own, his given first/middle name combo is "Michael Anthony" -- just like the dude who used to be in Van Halen. Everybody wants some -- well, except the Angels and Blue Jays.
08/16/2011	4	4
The Rangers haven't played good teams back-to-back since mid-June, when they went 2-4 against the Yankees and Braves. The payback arrives now, with a 23-games-in-24-nights stretch against the Angels, White Sox, Red Sox, Angels again, Rays, Red Sox again and Rays again. Sooner or later, it always catches up with you ... The Powers That Be may have muted Logan Morrison, but here's hoping they never get around to slapping a gag on C.J. Wilson's yapper. His anti-A's rant was one for the ages: "I hate pitching there. The mound sucks. The fans suck. There are no fans there. The fans who are there are really adamant, but sometimes you'll go there and there's 6,000 fans. I just wish the fan base supported them a little more." Clarity in interpersonal communication is underrated.
08/09/2011	4	5
I've decided to create a narrative for the boring AL West, because "eventually the Rangers will pull away" doesn't ring up page views. From here on out, we'll go with "the Rangers were just outs away from entombing the Angels, but then they farted away a five-run lead on that fateful July night. That gave L.A. hope and confidence, and turned an easy trot into a slog." Like it? I've already secured movie rights ... Neftali Feliz's good days/bad days ratio is getting into the same scary-person territory as his K/BB ratio ... Y'all can do the "great player, greater human being" thing with Michael Young on the occasion of his 2,000th hit, but I'm more inclined to rhapsodize about the team defense and baserunning. The Rangers do these things better than just about everyone else. It seems worth noting, anyway.