ESPN Predicts Rangers as Baseball's Best Over Next Five Years

Jim Bowden, Keith Law and Buster Olney have been jointly running a feature attempting to measure the potential for each team in baseball over the next half decade. Using a formula for ranking each team in five different categories (Major league roster quality, minor league system quality, finances, management and mobility [the age and cost of players on roster]) the troika of writers have determined that the Rangers are "baseball's model franchise these days."

The article is behind the ESPN Insider wall, but I'll give you a little taste. Bowden's "Next Step" for the Rangers begins with:

Perhaps the biggest issue facing the Rangers will be to figure out on which fingers their World Series rings will go.

The top five teams listed are Texas, New York Yankees, Tampa Bay, St. Louis, and Boston. As for the rest of the AL West, the Angels are ranked 7th, the Mariners are ranked 18th, the A's are ranked 23rd, and the future AL West Astros are ranked 29th.

Richard Durrett has a pretty lengthy piece on how the Rangers were able to transition from small market disaster to, as Olney writes, "a superpower."

It's a pretty good time to like Texas Rangers baseball.

At noon Law will be answering questions at ESPN here. You can go ask him questions about how awesome the Rangers are or about Leonys Martin's hit tool if you like.