Texas Rangers offseason losers, per Davidoff

The Texas Rangers are offseason losers, says Ken Davidoff of the New York Post. Davidoff runs down the teams that he sees as the winners and losers of the offseason, and has the Rangers as one of five losers.

Davidoff, not unreasonably, suggests that the addition of Andrew Cashner and Tyson Ross, and replacing Ian Desmond with Carlos Gomez, isn’t going to do much to improve last year’s pedestrian run differential. The Rangers have to hope that a deeper bullpen, and full seasons from Yu Darvish and Jonathan Lucroy, will have more of an impact than their offseason signings will.

Davidoff also mentions the possibility of bringing Mike Napoli back, which would help the lineup, but realistically, any improvement from the Rangers in terms of runs scored and runs allowed between 2016 and 2017 is going to have to come from players who were in the organization at the end of 2016. Holes can be filled come July, but at this point, JD appears comfortable with going into 2017 with much the same team he had for much of 2016.