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Texas Rangers
Scouting Report
By the Numbers | Players To Watch | Projected Roster
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The Rangers need a super year from superstar Rodriguez to
help compensate for their pitching
deficiencies.
(Stephen
Green)
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The
Rangers have all the distinctive markings of a late-1990s
contender: star players, big salaries, a retro stadium
brimming with fans, flush ownership. Everything but the
championship banners. Performance has lagged behind
payroll, which, at
$55 million, ranks them fifth in the majors for 1998. General
manager Doug Melvin says, "If we're the
fifth-highest-paid team, then we should be one of the top five in
the game," a statement so eminently reasonable in this
wins-per-dollar era and so
lacking in self-pity you wonder that a baseball man has the
courage to say
it.
There might not be a bona fide
No. 1 starting pitcher in Texas, but there is no weasel either.
"If I ever told our fans we had a five-year
plan," Melvin says, "as a fan I wouldn't buy a
ticket for the first four years." He expects the
Rangers to draw close to three million and compete
for a division title every year, even though they have won
just one in their 26 seasons in Texas. No excuses. Now, a
World Series is a serious reach—everything would have to
go exactly right, including two or three players having
career years and maybe a
surprise contributor from the minors—but if the Rangers are
good enough for long enough, maybe, like John Elway, they
can finally win a championship.
There can be no U-turns for a franchise whose payroll in
the past decade has increased 500% from $10.9 million,
especially since Tom Hicks reached an agreement on Jan. 7
to buy the Rangers for $250 million, pending major league
baseball approval. Hicks
has an open-wallet reputation—the payroll of his NHL
Central Division-leading Dallas Stars has gone from $18
million to
$31.7 million since he acquired the team in December '95.
"People figure that in July [before the trading
deadline] we'll go out and get a player to help,"
Melvin says. "My preference would be that we're five
games up, and [Hicks] can save his money and we
can save our prospects that teams always want in those deals.
Yes, he wants a winning team, and he doubled the Stars'
payroll. Of course if he doubles our payroll, that's $110
million. That's not going to
happen."
If Melvin had ever wanted to shed salaries, he had a
glorious opening last summer when the injury-ravaged
Rangers (14 players spent 642 man-games on the disabled
list) fell out of contention. Instead he retooled for this
year, not the millennium. Melvin
signed All-Star catcher Ivan Rodriguez through 2002, traded
streaky slugger Dean Palmer for speedy leadoff hitter Tom
Goodwin—a deal that also cleared a starting spot for third
base prospect Fernando Tatis—and swapped pitcher Ken Hill
to Anaheim for
catcher Jim Leyritz, who then was flipped to Boston for starter
Aaron Sele and backup catcher Bill
Haselman.
The Rangers could have lost five free agents—Rodriguez,
Palmer, Hill and starters Bobby Witt and Roger Pavlik—and
gotten virtually nothing back, but Melvin either re-signed
them or got something significant in return. "Our
problem wasn't lack of
performance but key guys out of the lineup the majority of the
season," says second baseman Mark McLemore, who hurt
his hand breaking up a double play on Opening Day and wound
up playing in just 89 games. "They recognized that and
gave us a chance to go out and
prove we can do
it."
Manager Johnny Oates says this is the best Texas team he
has managed, deeper and more versatile than the 1996
American League West winner. The return of free-agent
shortstop Kevin Elster should stabilize the position, the
bench is formidable—Luis
Alicea, Roberto Kelly and Haselman all have been regulars—and the
starting pitching can't be worse than the group that was
49-66 with a 5.11 ERA in '97. "Of course you'd like a
Randy Johnson, but not everybody can have one," Oates
says. "That said, I've got
six guys who could win 15
games."
Like any team in the high-rent district, the Rangers are
star-driven. Rightfielder Juan Gonzalez has won an MVP,
Rodriguez might be baseball's most indispensable player,
John Wetteland is a superb closer, and leftfielder Rusty
Greer plays so well and so
hard in a gritty, 1950s sort of way that Wetteland has
nicknamed him the Baseball
Player.
The Rangers will need more baseball players, upper and
lower case, if they hope to do a full Elway this year. They
aren't ready just yet, not even to raise a hand and
proclaim, "We're No. 5." Ah, $55 million just
doesn't go as far as it used
to.
—by Michael Farber
Scouting Report | By the Numbers | Players To Watch | Projected Roster
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