In North Texas, the end of football season signals the start of the football off-season; the end of baseball season means everyone can turn their attention back to football.
For one day each year, however, baseball is allowed to reign supreme. That day was Monday, and after the Rangers’ 9-1 Opening Day win over the Cleveland Indians, many fans in the metroplex will turn back to the never-ending circus surrounding the Dallas Cowboys. Local fans can’t be blamed for this; the Rangers haven’t made the playoffs in a decade, often floundering in last place with an array of disastrous pitching staffs.
Pitching is and always will be an issue for this club, but the 2009 Rangers are happy to have something they haven’t had in recent memory – a legitimate (and healthy) five-man rotation. With a young, powerful lineup and the No. 1 minor league farm system in baseball, Texas has a chance to avoid the same catastrophic start that has plagued Ron Washington in his first two seasons as manager.
In 2007, the wheels fell off early enough for the Rangers to turn a trio of trades in which they dealt veterans Mark Teixeira, Eric Gagne and Kenny Lofton in return for prospects now part of the big-league ball club. Last season, a 10-18 record in April nearly cost Washington his job. He was saved only by a summer-long run back to respectability, fueled in large part by rookies expected to play key roles in their sophomore season.
First baseman Chris Davis powered his way through the minor leagues before being called up in June. The Longview native hit 17 home runs with 55 RBI in fewer than 300 at-bats. Left-hander Matt Harrison, acquired from the Atlanta Braves in the Teixeira trade, went 9-3 last year and is penciled in as the club’s fifth starter. And catcher Taylor Teagarden, a Carrolton Creekview product, played just 16 games in 2008 but impressed with six homers and 17 RBI.
All three are part of the Rangers’ Opening Day roster, and the club hopes they can join All-Stars Josh Hamilton, Ian Kinsler and Michael Young as part of a youth movement expected to put up a fight in a depleted American League West division.
“This team’s going to be really good really quickly. I mean we just have too much talent,” Young told WFAA-TV’s Joe Trahan. “It’s a matter of everybody hopping on the same page and thinking about winning.”
Perhaps the biggest offseason story was Young’s move to third base to make room for 20-year-old prospect Elvis Andrus at shortstop. While Andrus unquestionably has better range than Young at short, his youth may be a liability as he adjusts to major-league pitching. Andrus, also acquired in the Teixeira trade, has never played a game above Double-A, which is why the Rangers signed 11-time Gold Glove winner Omar Vizquel (who has played more games at shortstop than anyone in big-league history) as his mentor and backup.
Hamilton still stands head and shoulders above the rest in the Texas outfield. In 2008 – his first full season after years of dealing with off-the-field issues – he wowed all of baseball with a .304 batting average, 32 home runs and 130 RBI. He is flanked in center by a revolving door of outfielders including David Murphy, Marlon Byrd, Nelson Cruz and offseason pickup Andruw Jones.
One big factor will be which Cruz decides to show up this season – the power-hitter who has proven himself a star at Triple-A or the free-swinging strikeout specialist who emerges when on the big-league stage. Another will be how well Jones rebounds from an injury-riddled stay with the Los Angeles Dodgers. He hit 51 home runs with 128 RBI while with the Braves in 2005; last season with the Dodgers, Jones mustered just three homers and 14 RBI.
Since mid-February, Hamilton has held to his premonition that the Rangers will finish 10 to 15 games above the .500 mark (between 91 and 96 wins). This seems a bold prediction for a club that has won 90 games just three times in its 37-year history. But he may just be on to something. Keep in mind that Baseball America ranked the Rangers’ farm system No. 1 for the first time in 20 years; in 1989, Texas boasted minor-leaguers like Juan Gonzalez, Ivan Rodriguez and Rafael Palmeiro. Say what you will about how steroid use may have helped these three put up monstrous offensive numbers, but each played an integral role during the Rangers’ string of late ’90s playoff runs.
In addition, the New York Yankees were able to win four World Series in five years thanks in large part to their loaded farm system and George Steinbrenner’s willingness to deal his prospects for proven veterans. Ranger fans have a bad taste in their mouths after general manager Jon Daniels traded away prospects such as Adrian Gonzalez, Chris Young and John Danks in what turned out to be one-sided deals, in favor of the other team. But Daniels has been smart enough recently to hang on to guys like Davis and Teagarden, not to mention top pitching prospects Neftali Feliz and Derek Holland.
It is way too early to tell how Texas’ commitment to young players will affect their record and ultimate destiny; we still have 161 games to watch that unfold. But the consensus within the Rangers front office seems to fall somewhere between cautiously optimistic and soberly realistic. The team scored more runs than any club in major-league history in 2008, this while the pitching staff – which remains mostly intact this year – gave up the most runs in all of baseball
No matter how the Rangers fare in 2009, they will be forgotten soon enough. Opening Day has come and gone, and with Jerry Jones’s new super-stadium set to open across from the Ballpark in Arlington by summer’s end, baseball will return to the backburner of local sports media in a matter of no time.
Happy belated Opening Day, fellow baseball fans; it’s just another 12 months ’til we get our day in the sun once again.
