3 Keys to the Texas Rangers making a playoff push in April
By Jack Lindsay
The Texas Rangers have made some serious moves this offseason but none of that is going to matter if the Rangers can’t execute during the season.
This is the time of the year for optimism, though. Every team has the same record and equal chance at the playoffs. Anything can happen.
The key is starting the first month on the right track, above .500, and ahead of your competition. It’s a 162 game season but that first month tells us a lot about where a team is headed come September. Here are 3 keys to success for the Texas Rangers keys in the first month.
The Texas Rangers finish above .500 against the division
Fourteen of the club’s first twenty-one games of the month are against all four divisional opponents, including a four game series against both the Angels and Astros. The series against the A’s should be a sweep even with it being an away stint.
The other three teams that we have to worry about will be straight up dogfights, but it will prove to both the division and the Rangers that Texas has what it takes to compete with a pretty tight race.
If they exit this stretch with a losing record it can indicate how the season will unfold. I will be keeping a particular eye on both the Mariners and Angels series. Those teams stand in the way for the quest for a Wild Card spot (assuming the Astros have the AL West locked up). Each win that we can take away from them is going to be huge.
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Texas Rangers Team Chemistry
This roster is going to be vastly different than it was when the season ended. There are 5 new guys in the starting lineup and two in the starting rotation. There’s leadership in Semien, Calhoun and Carpenter (assuming he gets called up). This is going to be a young team, so leadership from experienced players will be crucial. There’s a lot of new pieces added to the puzzle so it will be interesting to see how this new group gels. Especially with newly acquired stars in Semien and Seager.
And finally, how reliable will the Texas Rangers bullpen be this year?
The bullpen will be a concern for the Rangers and the first month of the season will show us a bit on how well they can perform. Most guys in the ‘pen had an ERA above 4 and almost all of them have under three years of service time, excluding Greg Holland who might be on his last limb at age 36. The key will almost certainly be found in Scott Barlow, the man in line to be the closer with an excellent 1.55 ERA and 3.45 FIP.
Every championship team has four to five guys in the pen that can simply get it done in the late innings. Looking at the roster, the Rangers really just don’t seem to have that. That doesn’t mean that they are not capable of it but it is certainly not a good sign of things to come.
Having Barlow lock down at least four saves plus our setup guys like Brett Martin or Matt Bush to get some holds in those divisional games will definitely give me a jolt of optimism for the remainder of the year.
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It is a long season and if not all items listed here pan out, the season is far from finished. But if these do come to fruition I think that the team building process will be moving far quicker than we would have anticipated. But hey, it’s a brand new season, a lot can and will happen. This first month will be exciting and especially with the end of the lockout, this year is going to feel extra special.