2009 MLB season in review: Texas Rangers

Through much of the 2009 season in seemed that the Texas Rangers were going to not only make the playoffs, but make some noise in the post season there as well. They got off to a hot start, but typically wilted in the Hot Texas Sun of late summer. Much like the Detroit Tigers this is a team that played well enough to win their division, but they collapsed in the last quarter of the season. It seemed in August that this team was good enough to run down the Boston Red Sox for the American League Wild Card, but a late season loss to the Tampa Bay Rays killed the post season aspirations of this ball club.

Their final record was 87-75 and that was good enough for second in the American League West. This team got off to a very hot start and in late May had built a 5.5 game lead. In all the Rangers were in first place for 65 days but ended up finishing 10 games behind the LA Angels in their division. A key reason for that collapse is that fact that they were shut out 13 times, for a team built on offense that is far too many scoreless games.

Their offense was able to score 784 runs and as a unit they hit .260. Only Third Baseman Michael Young hit better than .300 for the year. They did hit 224 hoe runs, which was the second most in the American League but they also led their league with 1,253. In the end they were just not consistent enough at the plate to be serious contenders. On the Pitching side, they did feature Scott Feldman who won 17 games and their staff ERA was an elevated 4.38. They recorded 11 shutouts, and struck out 1,016 batter while only walking 531.

In all 2,156,016 fans traveled to the Rangers Ballpark in Arlington to see Rangers Home games. For their 78 home games they averaged 27,641 fans good enough for 17th of the 30 MLB teams. For 2009 they were able to sell 56.3% of their ticket inventory.