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From their humble beginnings as the Washington Senators in 1961, the Texas Rangers churned through generations of fans who knew only pain.
When they first got close to the mountaintop in 2010 and 2011, they were agonizingly denied joy by a comic book villain: Mr. Freese.
At long last, though, there is jubilation in Arlington, as the Rangers finished off what has to be the most absurd postseason run in the history of professional sports. With the 5-0 victory over the Arizona Diamondbacks Wednesday night, they capped off a perfect 11-0 record on the road en route to their first World Series title.
Now, imagine reading that last sentence two years ago.
These same Rangers were a 102-loss dumpster fire.
Texas’ three team leaders in innings pitched in 2021 each had an ERA north of 5.00. The Rangers had three All-Stars that season, but they traded two of them away a few weeks later. The farm system ranked bottom top 10 in the majors.
It was a low point with no end in sight.
And all it took was a MASSIVE influx of cash to turn things around.
Right before the lockout began, the Rangers committed a combined $500 million to Corey Seager and Marcus Semien.
When they still finished 38 games behind the Astros in 2022, they threw another $185 million at Jacob deGrom and just kept stockpiling starting pitchers like Nathan Eovaldi with eight-figure salaries, eventually getting both their seventh (Max Scherzer) and eighth (Jordan Montgomery) such pitchers at the trade deadline.
That’s right, the Rangers had eight starting pitchers making at least $10M in 2023.
Throw in talking a three-time World Series-winning manager (Bruce Bochy) out of retirement, calling up an incredible rookie (Evan Carter) for the final few weeks of the regular season and, inexplicably, a Creed’s Greatest Hits album and you’ve got yourself a world champion.
“You want to create an environment that is going to bring out the best in the players,” Bochy said back in May. “Have them comfortable. Have them play with freedom, freedom that you need to play with to be the best that you can be. Not feeling pressure or anything. It’s a culture you want to have.”
Even after losing deGrom to a season-ending injury that evidently only Texas didn’t see coming, it was clear less than two months into the season that all the spending had worked and they had become the best team in baseball.
There were season-long (and even postseason-long) questions about the bullpen, but the slugging and the rotation were always going to give this team a real chance to win it all.
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To be sure, spending like there’s no tomorrow isn’t a foolproof plan. (See: New York Mets, New York Yankees and San Diego Padres.) Nor is it even a viable option for at least half of the MLB franchises. I mean, you try telling fans in Kansas City or Pittsburgh that it only takes about a billion dollars to fix your team in a hurry and see how well that line is received.
However, though the Rangers didn’t necessarily provide the universal blueprint for going from zero to hero in the span of 24 months, they did provide the hope, becoming just the third team to ever win the World Series two years after suffering at least 100 losses. (The others being the 1914 Boston Braves and the 1969 New York Mets. Hat tip to the legendary Sarah Langs of MLB.com for that note.)
And let’s not forget that the Rangers improving from 60 wins to 90 wins wasn’t even remotely the most drastic two-year turnaround.
That Arizona team they just defeated in the World Series? Suffered 110 losses two years ago, finishing dead last in the National League by a nine-game margin before improving by 32 games in two years.
And the Baltimore team Texas swept in the ALDS? Another 110-game loser in 2021 who had by far the worst run differential that season before improving by a staggering 49 games—and without spending like Texas did, to put it lightly.
Either one of those small-market teams could have won it all this year if they didn’t need to play home games against the Rangers in the postseason.
So even if your favorite team is down bad these days, this season provided plenty of shining examples of how quickly fortunes can change in this sport if just a couple of rookies pan out in a big way.
Now, with the way the Rangers are set up to run it back again in 2024, perhaps they aren’t providing much hope to teams who suffered 100 losses in 2022. They aren’t losing all that much aside from Montgomery and Mitch Garver, so if they happen to be the lucky ones signing Josh Hader in free agency and if deGrom is actually able to make it back from Tommy John surgery by August, mercy, Texas really should become the first back-to-back champs since the 1998-2000 New York Yankees.
But why couldn’t the Cincinnati Reds (100 losses in 2022) win it all next year if they at least do something to improve their pitching this offseason?
What’s keeping the Washington Nationals (107 losses in 2022) from riding their young core to a big year, if Cade Cavalli makes it back from Tommy John surgery or the highly touted outfield pair of Dylan Crews and James Wood is 2024’s dynamic first-year duo?
Even the Oakland A’s…well, OK, let’s not get carried away.
Hope springs eternal in the offseason.
And thanks to the Rangers (as well as the Diamondbacks and Orioles), there should be even more of it than usual this winter.
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