Reason for optimism: Full seasons from Jonathan Lucroy, Shin-Soo Choo and Carlos Gomez, plus the addition of Mike Napoli, makes the Rangers much better than they were last year when they won 95 games.
Reason for pessimism: They could be a lot better than they were last year and still win significantly fewer games.
That's the same "reason for pessimism" as last year because, much to the delight of their fans and the irritation of the sabermetric community, the Rangers once again far outperformed their underlying production. Of course, these days you don't have to be a sabermetric devotee to know that when a team sets an all-time record for winning percentage in one-run games (36-11, .766) as the Rangers did last year, they're probably not as good as their final record suggests.
In fact, you can make a very strong case, once you adjust for cluster luck (+1 game) and Pythagorean luck (+13 games), that the Rangers merely played to the level of a .500 team last year -- not a team that had the best record in the majors at the 81-game mark (Cubs fans, that's not a misprint) or a team that had the No. 1 seed in the American League playoffs. That reality allowed for a measure of sweet redemption for data-inclined bettors when the Blue Jays, as +125 underdogs, knocked off the Rangers in the ALDS.
There are two historical comparisons that point to trouble for Texas.