Texas Rangers: 4 Reasons They Will Make a Return Trip to the ALCS

In 2010 the Texas Rangers shocked the baseball world by defeating the Tampa Bay Rays and New York Yankees to advance to their first World Series in franchise history. Riding the hot pitching of Cliff Lee, the bat of Josh Hamilton and even some claws and antlers, the Rangers became American League champions and instilled a winning attitude in Arlington, Texas.

In 2011 the Texas Rangers are actually on pace to finish better than that historic 2010 team, and that's without Cliff Lee. With the recent domination of the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, the Texas Rangers have opened up one of the largest divisional leads in baseball and have their sights firmly set on the playoff horizon.

Texas, along with the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees, have the best records in the American League and seem virtual locks to have post-season berths. If the playoffs did start today, regardless of who wins the AL Central, the Rangers would play the Boston Red Sox in the first round, but with only a half-game separating Boston and New York that's still a toss-up.

So why should you believe the Rangers can pull off another upset of the AL East superpowers?

Starting Pitching

The Texas Rangers have in their starting rotation stability, something that can not be said about the New York Yankees or the Boston Red Sox. The Rangers starting five have started every game but three, they all have at least ten wins and two of the five were All-Stars.

While the Yankees and Red Sox have legitimate aces at the front of their rotations in C.C. Sabathia and Jon Lester, behind them questions arise.

The Yankees are forced to make a choice between the old guys in Bartolo Colon and Freddy Garcia, the unreliable in Phil Hughes and A.J. Burnett and the youngster in Ivan Nova to pitch behind Sabathia. That's a long way from Pettite, Mussina and Clemens in their heyday.

The Red Sox are in a slightly better position. After Jon Lester you have Josh Beckett, a proven post season competitor. With the uncertainty of Clay Bucholz, however, behind Beckett is the incredibly under-performing John Lackey and the injury prone Erik Bedard. Should one of those falter, a very possible outcome, they would be left with Tim Wakefield.

The Rangers don't have the big names like the Red Sox or Yankees, but they do know who their guys are. A rotation of big post-season performers in C.J. Wilson and Colby Lewis, along with the surprising Alexi Ogando and Matt Harrison, is plenty formidable for a return trip to the ALCS.

A Complete Offense

The Rangers have been known throughout the years as sluggers and home run hitters. This is still true, but Ron Washington has tweaked it just a little bit. With his aggressive game plan, when the Rangers don't hit the ball out of the park they might possibly be even more dangerous.

This should be unsettling for the Red Sox, as they have given up the second most stolen bases in all of baseball. They have actually given up more stolen bases than the aggressive Rangers have stolen themselves.

In the opening series of the 2011 season, the Rangers put 26 runs on Red Sox pitching and swept the American League favorites to begin the year. We'll be able to see just how much better the Red Sox have gotten when the two play on Monday.

Against the Yankees, the Rangers have proven able to hit their starting pitching. They touched up Sabathia in the 2010 post-season for seven runs in ten innings and they also got to Phil Hughes for 11 runs in just over eight innings. They laid five runs on Bartolo Colon in four innings and the last time A.J. Burnett pitched against the Rangers he gave up five runs in a post-season game.

The ALDS should provide us with two of the three best offenses in the game and that's just fine with the Rangers.

A Revamped Bullpen

The greatest weakness on this Texas Rangers team was the play of the bullpen. With the acquisitions of Mike Adams and Koji Uehara, the Rangers have made this weakness possibly their greatest strength.

They are now looking at a bullpen that is setting up to look like this: Koji Uehara in the seventh, Mike Adams in the eighth and Neftali Feliz in the ninth. If you're going to beat the Rangers, you better do it in the first six innings.

The bullpen looks so strong that the second or third best reliever on the World Series team, Darren O'Day, might not have a spot.

The odds are that Scott Feldman and Derek Holland will be the long relievers. Yes, that's a 17-game winner just two years removed and the guy with four complete game shutouts on the year. Then you have Mark Lowe, Darren Oliver and Yoshinori Tateyama as your other middle-to-late inning options. That's a flame thrower, a veteran southpaw and a submariner. There's no Clay Rapada sneaking onto the postseason roster this season.

If the starting pitching plays as well as it has, all of these guys might be used very sparingly, meaning that teams have to face the three-headed monster at the back of the bullpen in order to win a game.

Great at Home, Good on the Road

The Texas Rangers are 39-23 at home this year, but to advance to the ALCS they will have to win games on the road in Boston or New York. A daunting task for any team, but the Rangers just might be up to it.

Their 33-29 record is good for the ninth best road record in baseball and their 3.09 ERA is tops in the league by 30 points. They also own the second highest batting average in road games with a .266 line.

In the 2010 American League playoffs, the Texas Rangers were 5-1 on the road including a trip to New York. They know they have what it takes to go out east and come back with at least a split of the two-game road stand.