Rangers seek World Series path with Royal blue clues at spring home

Players will begin showing up in force this week for Texas Rangers spring training, and they will notice some fairly significant changes from years past.

The local government approved funding last year so that the facilities at the Surprise Recreation Campus could be renovated for the first time since they opened in the fall of 2002.

Among the changes are a larger big league clubhouse and weight room, a multi-purpose room for meetings and a media workroom just off Rangers headquarters to save reporters from those grueling walks to the press box.

Here’s another change, one that had nothing to do with the Surprise City Council and one that is being made only on the other side of the campus where the Rangers’ spring partners do their season warm-up: A World Series title will be celebrated.

The Kansas City Royals are baseball’s reigning champs and won the race last season to bring a world championship to Surprise. The Royals were champs in 1985 when they and the Rangers trained in Florida at separate facilities.

In a what-have-you-done-for-me-lately world, the Royals are the team to beat and the model franchise — for a year at least. But the champs and the Rangers aren’t vastly different, and there are enough similarities that the Rangers can look across the complex and feel that much better about capturing a world title of their own.

“They’re the team that you want to beat and you want to play against,” shortstop Elvis Andrus said. “We are similar. It’s going to be fun from Day One. You always want to play against the best team. They are the best team in the major leagues.”

The Rangers will get an up-close look at the Royals on the field this spring with five games — March 2-3, the first two games of the Cactus League season; March 18-19 for Big League Weekend in San Antonio; and March 30 for the finale in Arizona.

Perhaps the one thing that stood out most about the championship Royals team, and the 2014 squad that forced a Game 7 before losing the World Series to San Francisco, was the bullpen and its ability to shorten games. All the starting pitchers and offense had to do was put the Royals in the lead after five innings, and the bullpen did the rest.

Last season, it was Wade Davis closing games after Greg Holland was lost late to Tommy John surgery. The Royals’ relievers threw hard and complemented their heaters with power off-speed pitches.

The same is expected of the 2016 Rangers bullpen. There are six relievers who could close games, and closer Shawn Tolleson might be the softest throwing of the bunch, despite topping out at 94 mph.

General manager Jon Daniels wouldn’t say that the Royals served as the blueprint for constructing the Rangers’ bullpen, but Kansas City was part of a long line of championship clubs that had dominating pieces at the back of their bullpen.

Tolleson, Sam Dyson, Jake Diekman, Tom Wilhelmsen, Keone Kela and Tony Barnette will be expected to copy the Royals’ bullpen success, albeit without the same level of postseason experience.

“You can dream it up to be a pretty powerful bullpen, and we have the luxury to shorten the game if we need to,” manager Jeff Banister said. “Our bullpen has an opportunity to be as strong a bullpen as there is in baseball.”

The Rangers’ rotation has the potential to be better than the Royals’ starting five with two premium starters, once Yu Darvish returns from Tommy John surgery in May.

Cole Hamels is better than any starter the Royals had last season or will have this year, despite a nice 2015 by former Rangers pitcher Edinson Volquez. And fellow left-handers Derek Holland and Martin Perez have dominated in spurts in their careers. Colby Lewis is healthy after winning 17 games in 2015 despite having torn meniscus in his right knee.

“We’re much more confident in what we have,” Banister said. “On paper it’s a better rotation than what we were going to start with last year. The names are more appealing and have a lot more experience.”

The offenses are similar in that they can score without hitting the long ball. Mitch Moreland and Prince Fielder tied for the Rangers’ team lead with 23 homers, and the Royals’ leaders tied with 22.

Both stole about the same number of bases and had nearly the same on-base and slugging percentages. The Royals struck out far less, but the Rangers took far more walks.

“You play from your strength,” Banister said. “Our strength is get on base, have speed, create and have occasional power.”

The biggest difference aside from potentially the starting rotation is the Royals’ superior defense. The Royals had three Gold Glove winners in 2015, and premium defensive outfielders Alex Gordon and Lorenzo Cain weren’t among them.

Aside from four-time Gold Glove winner Adrian Beltre, the Rangers’ defense can be hit-and-miss, and too often has been miss. The Rangers committed 31 more errors in 2015 than the Royals, allowed 12 more unearned runs, and their catchers didn’t do as good of a job controlling the running game as Kansas City Gold Glover Salvador Perez.

Kansas City led the AL with 56 defensive runs saved. The Rangers were eighth with five saved.

“The difference between them and us is that they handled the baseball better than we did last year,” Banister said. “We’ve got to focus on handling the baseball. Keep the baseball off the ground. Not making errors.”

Despite the defense, or maybe because of it, the Rangers just missed reaching the American League Championship Series and playing the Royals for a chance to go to the World Series.

No matter the similarities, including similar philosophies on developing talented players with high character, the Rangers believe they aren’t too far behind the Royals.

“I know what we have,” Moreland said. “I know I’m looking forward to playing ball with these guys and seeing what we can build on last year.”

This story was originally published February 12, 2016 at 3:50 PM with the headline "Rangers seek World Series path with Royal blue clues at spring home."