ESPN Chalk's Joe Peta is sharing his season win total projections for every MLB team, including a reason for optimism and pessimism.
Plus, he recommends an over/under play, or a pass. This is the entry for the Texas Rangers.
Texas Rangers
Reason for optimism: Ron Washington is no longer in charge of in-game strategy.
Reason for pessimism: Injuries, a huge factor in last year's collapse, has already taken out the biggest name on the team.
The demise of certain teams is well telegraphed. Aging and poor roster management by their respective front offices made recent multiple last-place finishes inevitable for last-decade playoff teams like the Houston Astros, Minnesota Twins and Chicago Cubs. Currently, the Philadelphia Phillies are firmly in control of that blueprint. However, no one could have predicted that the Texas Rangers, with lots of highly rated prospects and coming off a third-straight playoff appearance in 2013, which included two American League pennants flying above their Arlington ballpark, would be staring at a second consecutive last-place finish entering the 2015 season.
Yet here we are, as the team with the worst record in the American League in 2014 and the worst run differential in all of baseball, enters 2015 quite possibly in worse shape than they were in 2014.
In an effort to improve that rotation, the Rangers will lean heavily on a return to form from Derek Holland, who looked good in a September cameo after missing the majority of the season with knee surgery. Additionally, after eight years in Milwaukee, Yovani Gallardo will attempt to transition to the American League, where he will have little chance to improve on his 12 career home runs as a batter. With a consistent history of 30-start campaigns and an ERA habitually below league-average, Gallardo is a solid No. 2 starter, but would be much more valuable as a No. 3. And that's really why Darvish's injury hurts the Rangers so much. It's not that they can't tread water on a year-over-year basis with Holland, it's that Darvish's projected 2015 innings are going to be taken by exactly the type of starter that doomed the Rangers in 2014. In Colby Lewis, Nick Tepesch, and Ross Detwiler, Texas will be trotting out three starters of that quality all season.
Behind those starters, most of the 2014 bullpen returns, which is not a good thing. The Rangers' pen was 26th in K percentage, 16th in BB percentage and 29th at inducing ground balls. That's a bad combination, and it's why improvement over last year's 4.02 ERA performance isn't assured. Simply stated, you just can't win games 7-5 anymore in the MLB run environment of 2015.
In any event, the Rangers don't have an 800-run talent lineup anyway, and as last year's squad -- which scored the fewest runs since 1988 -- demonstrated, they weren't even close to a 700-run team in 2014. Having the normally durable Prince Fielder for 678 plate appearances instead of 178 will help, but Fielder is now on the wrong side of 30, and his power has dropped noticeably since signing with Detroit after the 2011 season. Adrian Beltre will turn 36 soon after the season opens, and it seems unrealistic to continue to rely on him to post five WAR seasons on offense. The Rangers are desperately hoping for solid seasons from Beltre, Fielder and Shin-Soo Choo, while the rest of the young lineup develops. It almost certainly will be better than the 2014 campaign, but with a patchwork rotation, a declining defense and a questionable bullpen, a .500 campaign is more likely a ceiling rather than the floor it had been for five straight seasons starting in 2009.
Probably owing to their recent history of success, oddsmakers never really adjusted to how bad the Rangers were last season. (Their day-to-day lines had them priced like an over-.500 team 121 games into the season despite a 47-74 record at the time.) That changed with the release of this season's win totals; Texas opened at 78.5 wins in Vegas. However, there still appears to be some denial, as that figure currently sits at 77, representing just a 1.5-game drop since the announcement that Darvish was lost for the season. Even if you're bullish on the Rangers, you have to think one of those prices is wrong. In an era in which nine runs equals a win, you can absolutely be guaranteed that either Detwiler or Tepesch will give up 14 more runs than Darvish would -- possibly in April alone! This is an attractive "under" play.
2015 projection: 71-91 (fifth, AL West)
Bet recommendation: Under