The Resilient Texas Rangers Are Back To Terrorizing The American League

Tilt your head just so. Squint a little. And maybe you can understand how the Texas Rangers are just one game behind the Chicago Cubs for the most wins in baseball.

Ian Desmond, the broken shortstop who pissed away nine-figure money, begrudgingly took the team's one-year pillow contract and has since reinvented himself as a plus defensive outfielder coasting toward a 20-20 season. Nomar Mazara walked into the lineup three weeks before his 21st birthday and has racked up a .288/.333/.440 slash line and cemented himself as the future anchor of the order. Jurickson Profar is back, Rougned Odor never left and Adrian Beltre keeps ticking along like the metronome he is.

The rotation has successfully treaded water while waiting for the return of Yu Darvish – who resurfaced from Tommy John surgery on Memorial Day weekend, only to return to the disabled list with a setback on June 8th – mostly thanks to Cole Hamels and his staff-leading 2.88 ERA. Last year's bullpen, quietly among the game's elite down the stretch, nearly splintered after an elbow injury felled Keone Kela, and Shawn Tolleson's changeup absconded into thin air. But Sam Dyson has ranked among the game's best relievers ever since the Rangers acquired him last offseason and told him to emphasize his brutal sinker, while Jake Diekman is a sneakily devastating power lefty, and Matt Bush – yep, that one – is enjoying the best stretch of his professional career and throwing 99 mph in the eighth inning.

So everything's coming up Milhouse in Texas, and that's before surveying the buffet of horse dung that encompasses the rest of the American League West. The competition has been hysterically incompetent (the Angels), bewilderingly underachieving (the Astros), terminally mediocre (the A's) and frustratingly snakebit (the Mariners), leaving the Rangers to dart to a 10 game division lead, by far the widest gap in baseball next to Chicago's in the NL Central. It's a sliver too early to call the race, but it's also safe to say the Rangers are baseball's first non-Cubs team who can start thinking about the playoffs.

It's a return to form for an organization that opened the decade as the great terror of the American League, racking up back-to-back World Series appearances in 2010 and 2011, followed by two more 93- and 91-win seasons. There were no signs of relenting, not with front office smarts and a mega-market budget and barrels of talent in the minor leagues.

So naturally the club cratered in 2014, with a 67-95 record that was third-worst in the major leagues. 2015 figured to be more of the same, and the Rangers were below .500 as late as August 3rd. You know the rest: A late season tsunami propelled them to the AL West crown on Game 162, only for that memory to be washed away by the fevered drama of the ALDS collapse against Toronto. Heading into 2016, it was easy to see in 2015, the Rangers' true selves: hardly the disaster of a year earlier, but still not back to their pennant-winning apex. Instead, the All-Star break is looming and Texas is six games ahead of the next best teams in the American League (Baltimore and Cleveland, obviously).

So did the Rangers actually crater as an organization? Or were the last three years just the product of horrendous injury luck? 2014 was the nadir, with virtually every starting pitcher missing time plus Profar and Prince Fielder—the right side of the team's infield—succumbing to season-ending injuries. But 2015 was brutal in its own way. No Darvish, no Profar and long stretches without Derek Holland, Martin Perez and Matt Harrison (prior to trading him to Philadelphia). There has been no respite in 2016. Shin-Soo Choo missed a month and a half, Robinson Chirinos lost two, Kela is likely out until August and Josh Hamilton didn't even pick up a bat in spring training before eventually being ruled out for the year.

They've survived on resourcefulness, jury-rigging the pitching staff and swapping out position pieces. Organizational arms like Nick Martinez and Nick Tepesh have held as occasional rotation ballast, while Rule 5 castoff Delino DeShields Jr. sufficed as last year's leadoff man. Profar, a shortstop by trade, has played every infield position in his first healthy season in three years. Bench bat Ryan Rua, a corner outfielder, has wedged himself into first base and center field. Desmond thrived in left field despite never playing the position at the major league level. Now, with DeShields demoted, he's doing the same thing in center.

There are still plenty of ways for this to come apart, which is where the Cubs parallels end. Chicago's weaknesses are of the "a left-handed reliever would be nice, I guess" variety. The Rangers have concerns up and down the roster.

Elvis Andrus, still only 27, is barely passable as a starting shortstop, which would be concerning even if he weren't chained to one of the worst contracts in baseball. Fielder has, at last, bloated his way into total ineffectiveness, while Mitch Moreland's encore after a career year in 2015 involves hitting .231. No one can reasonably expect Choo to replicate last year's second half, when he outhit Mike Trout and Josh Donaldson.

Meanwhile, Jeff Banister is burning his bullpen to the ground and strutting over to the gas station for more kerosene: Dyson has pitched the most games of any reliever in baseball, Diekman sits 24th in appearances and Bush is on a similar pace despite only getting called up in mid-May. Holland and Perez, twin left-handed hopes from a farm system that hasn't produced a relevant homegrown starter since CJ Wilson, have revealed themselves to be back-end arms at best and, in Holland's case, mop-up fodder at worst. Hamels' peripheral numbers are quietly teetering on the verge of collapse, with that sparkling ERA concealing a 4.78 FIP and a career-worst walk rate. And there's still no telling how much Darvish can be counted upon in the regular season, let alone for a deep playoff run.

But the Rangers can – and have – come undone before. More often than not, they've persevered, extracting every usable drop of value from every healthy body. It may be luck, or it may be a skill that no other organization has mastered quite as well,. Either way, it makes Texas uniquely dangerous. Every team cracks but no team is more shatterproof.