At 87-75, the Texas Rangers finished second in the AL West, a distant 10 games behind the Los Angeles Angels. Their division is one of the stronger divisions in baseball. The Rangers’ record against teams in their own division was 30-27. They went 21-19 against the AL Central and 27-20 against the tough AL East division; the only team they had a losing record to was the New York Yankees. The Rangers also finished 9-9 in Interleague play. How does a team who does this well finish so poorly?

Texas’ main problem was their inability to pound on weaker teams with the exception of the Cleveland Indians, whom they were 8-1 against. If you take the Indians out of the mix, the Rangers were 25-26 against teams under .500 in the American League. Counter that with the Yankees, who went 40-18 against the same teams (and 5-3 against Cleveland). Ask anybody in sports and they’ll tell you that in order to be successful, at the very least you have to compete with teams better than you, and crush those who aren’t, and that’s exactly what the Rangers didn’t do in 2009.

Another of Texas’ problems was the consistency of their players. Michael Young was the only hitter to hit above .300, while nobody even reached the 90 RBI mark. On the mound, the only pitchers to reach double digits in wins were Scott Feldman (17) and Kevin Milwood (13), and aside from those two, no other pitcher threw more than 138.1 innings. If a team is going to make it to the postseason, they need to play as a team and have more than two or three guys on the roster make a regular impact.

The Rangers aren’t far away from becoming a real threat again. This season was their best record since 1999, when they won the division, and is only the second time they’ve finished above .500 in that span. They have the pieces to be a good team, but they’re lacking what is needed to be great. The Rangers should be very active in the free agent market this winter if they want to put themselves over the edge and become one of baseball’s elite franchises.