Because I am bored at work today, I decided to take a look and see how this Rangers team stacks up against the good rangers (we can't call them great since we got beat by the yankees in 4 or less games each year) teams of the past.
I did a quick analysis of our 2005 team vs. the 3 ranger teams that made the playoffs (1996, 1998, 1999) http://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/TEX/
1996 -- BA .284 / OBP .359 / SLG .469 Team ERA 4.66
1998 -- .289/.356 / 462 Team ERA 5.00
1999 -- .293 / .362 / .479 Team ERA 5.07
2005 thus far -- .264 / .326 / .456 Team ERA 4.52
It looks like our current team most closely resembles the 1996 team. Those 1998 and 1999 teams leaned very heavily on the offense and not surprisingly struggled mightily in the playoffs. That 1999 offense was really stacked (huge years from Juan-Do, Pudge, and Raffy) combined with some uncharacteristic huge years from the role players (Lee Stevens and Zeile).
Going back and looking at it, the 1996 team really did give the yankees a good run in the playoffs and predictably that team had a much better pitching staff than the 1998 or 1999 teams. If you look at the '05 team, this pitching staff looks even better than the 1996 team, so that is a good thing. Unfortunately, I don't think we will even approach the 1996 team as far as offensive production unless we add a big bat at DH or Laird gets called up.
One area where you can tell more offense will come is at home. If you look at our home splits so far: .263/.321/.480
You have to figure that the BA and OBP #'s will increase as the temps continue to rise, and our offense definitely has the potential to reach that of the '96 team. Anyways, not sure if anybody cares about all this. It was fun for me to go back and look at those old clubs since I was partying like a rock star back in high school when the rangers used to be good. Ok, not really.
T
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