How Rangers evolved from disarray to division leaders
With a few key changes, team rises from bottom to title within months.
— The Rangers’ American League West championship is a testament to how far a team can evolve over the course of just one season.
They were a 95-loss team a year ago. They had the league’s worst record at the end of April. They were a losing club at the All-Star break. And they were still five games out of first place three-quarters of the way through the season.
At each point, though, they picked up something that helped them take another step forward. And though the Rangers surged at the end, that rush to the top of the division was built on the flexibility the club left itself at the beginning of the year and on-the-fly fixes as the days unfolded.
“We knew we had a lot of questions coming into the year,” said general manager Jon Daniels, whose club will open American League Division Series play Thursday at Toronto. “We had questions about our veteran guys with injuries, questions about what can we really expect out of our younger guys, questions about our pitching staff and bullpen.
“At the same time, we hedged our bet a little bit,” Daniels added. “We wanted to (get answers), as well. That’s the reality. We believed in this club for a lot of reasons. At the same time, you were realistic, pragmatic. We weren’t going to go right back into the offseason like we did the year before until we saw some things develop.”
With resources more limited, the Rangers didn’t dedicate every available dollar to free agents over the winter.
They had Yu Darvish and Derek Holland to front the rotation and Colby Lewis to anchor the back end. They thought one additional starter could give them an upper-tier starting staff, and that’s why they added Yovani Gallardo via trade with Milwaukee as their biggest offseason addition. The rotation was their surest thing, but it blew up when Darvish tore a ligament in his elbow in spring training and Holland tore a muscle in his shoulder in his first start of the regular season.
There were bushels of arms with bits of 2014 experience with which to stock the bullpen, but they didn’t have enough of a résumé to determine whether they were late-season mirages or full-fledged finds.
The lineup had been wrecked by injuries in 2014. The Rangers had no idea what they might get from Prince Fielder, ShinSoo Choo and Mitch Moreland, all of whom were coming back from injuries. They had a bad contract on hand in Elvis Andrus and an enigma in center field in Leonys Martin. They had a need for a right-handed hitter in the outfield but had a prospect in Ryan Rua, who’d flashed hot in September 2014.
The Rangers were pretty sure they’d get some positive responses to some of the questions. What they needed, though, was to get good answers to all of them.
“There were a lot of things that could go right, but we really needed them to go right,” Daniels said. “And they didn’t all go right, at least right away. When the offense slumped early, it just kind of exposed some of the other issues we that had.”
The Rangers dug out of the depths initially with internal fixes. They inserted Delino DeShields at the top of the lineup to nudge the inert offense along. They sent Rougned Odor down to find his edge.
They called up Chi Chi Gonzalez to patch the leaky rotation and moved Shawn Tolleson into the closer’s role. The ship righted enough to put the Rangers back on the fringes of contention.
And then, when the division refused to run away from them, Daniels had more definitive answers about his team and still had enough resources to add to the bottom line with trades for Cole Hamels, Jake Diekman, Sam Dyson, Will Venable and Mike Napoli.
“The (resources) were part of it, yes,” Daniels said. “But it also allowed us to hold on to our best young players and, maybe more importantly, gave us more time to evaluate. What’s the right deal to put them in? And which guys are we willing to put in? And which guys are going to be Rangers?”
As the flaws and fixes revealed themselves, he was able to adjust.
And the Rangers were able to evolve.