To make MLB playoffs, Texas Rangers will have to make history, so don’t expect that
Not since 1883 would have been considered current events has a Major League Baseball team come off a 100-loss season to make the playoffs the following year.
But between the investments the Texas Rangers made in the offseason and MLB’s expanded postseason field, the mission in 2022 is to just get close.
The goal isn’t the playoffs. The goal for the Rangers is to entice their fans to care again.
With MLB’s lockout over, spring training has sprung, and the Rangers’ cleanup process is already underway.
“We’ll take the field every day looking to win,” Rangers GM Chris Young said on Friday from the team’s spring training complex in Surprise, Ariz.
This is actually a new twist. For the last two years, at least, the Rangers took the field knowing a win was gravy.
“As we look at the roster, we are not a complete roster,” Young said. “I don’t feel like we are a championship team yet. Jumping from 60 wins to 100 wins is unrealistic, but the playoffs, we’re not ruling anything out.”
MLB has expanded its postseason field from 10 teams to 12, but pegging the Rangers for the playoffs still feels like a prayer.
No team in this area has done more damage to itself more than the Rangers, and while signing a bunch of pricey free agents helps, they can’t afford another toilet season.
They cannot afford to do what this club did in 2001, the last time they re-set the free agent market with sexy contracts.
The Rangers are not making the playoffs for the first time since 2016, which was the last year the team had a winning record.
They just need a winning season, but those odds are terrible, too.
Starting in 1961, MLB’s big expansion year, to 2020, there have been 64 teams that lost 100 games, and not a one reached the postseason the following year. In fact
Thanks to the good people at Elias Sports Bureau, we took this a step further.
In major league history, 16 teams have lost 100 games and posted a winning record the following year.
The first was the 1889 Louisville Colonels, a scrappy club that finished 27-111-2. The following year, they finished 88-44-4, and tied the World Series.
The best record for 100-loss teams that next season is 87 wins, accomplished by the 1989 Baltimore Orioles and the 1967 Chicago Cubs.
If you’re looking for the ultimate prayer, the 1987 Minnesota Twins are the model.
In 1986, they finished 71-91. The next season, they won the World Series.
This is the history the Rangers are dealing with as they start the new campaign. They finished last season with a mark of 60-102.
The additions of free agents shortstop Corey Seager, second baseman Marcus Semien, outfielder Kole Calhoun and starting pitcher Jon Gray should make this team at least 15 wins better than last season’s steaming pile of boring. The Rangers spent more than half a billion dollars between those four players.
At a minimum, the additions make the club interesting, and relevant. But interesting does not mean they’ll win.
The last time the Rangers took this route, it blew up. In the offseason of 2000, then Rangers owner Tom Hicks set a record by signing Alex Rodriguez to a 10-year, $252 million contract. Hicks also added free agents Ken Caminiti, and Andres Galarraga.
In A-Rod’s first season, the Rangers lost 89 games, followed by years of 90 and 91 losses. They didn’t have a winning record until 2004, by which time A-Rod had been traded to the New York Yankees.
From 2001 to 2008, the Rangers had one winning season, at which point their overhauled philosophy to build their team through young players finally hit.
It’s been more than 20 years since those “interesting” times and both the team, and the sport, have changed dramatically.
The concept of spending big on free agents, however, remains the same. It’s done because the team has a bad run of producing their own top tier players.
The Rangers’ youth movement to build the team around Jurickson Profar, Rougned Odor, Joey Gallo, Nomar Mazara, Chi Chi Gonzalez and Ronald Guzman, among others, is why the team spent so much this offseason.
Rangers primary owner Ray Davis finally let team president Jon Daniels and GM Chris Young spend some real money, for one or two reasons.
Davis recognizes this market is disinterested in supporting another boring team stuck in a rebuild that had no plausible end, or he wants to dress the team up to tell his majority stake.
Either one fits.
The Rangers have been so bad for the last five years that it is fun to finally see them be relevant.
MLB history says the Rangers are not making the playoffs this season, and they probably won’t have a winning record, either.
At this point, we don’t need either as much as we just need a reason to care about the Rangers again.
