Locked on Rangers Podcast Wins Projection Fan Expectations
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00:00 Vanguard has released their projected standings this week and boy howdy do they not think
00:04 the Rangers are any good at all.
00:06 On today's show I'm breaking down why that's hilarious, terribly misinformed, and actually
00:11 could be a good thing for your Texas Rangers.
00:13 Talk about all that and more on this episode of Locked on Rangers.
00:15 Let's get into it.
00:19 You are locked on Rangers.
00:21 Your daily Texas Rangers podcast.
00:25 Part of the Locked on Podcast Network.
00:27 Your team, every day.
00:41 You are locked on to the World Series champion Texas Rangers.
00:43 I'm Bryce Paddock, a cripplingly addicted Texas Rangers fan, covering this team for
00:46 ten seasons including all five as the founder and host of this podcast.
00:49 Thank you all so much for making Locked on Rangers your first listen every single day.
00:53 If you're not already you can follow me on Twitter @BrycePaddock.
00:56 You can follow the show @LockedOnRangers.
00:58 Hit subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform and on YouTube where the best way
01:01 you can help grow the show is to comment nearly any single thing below.
01:04 Now before we get into the laughable, hilariously bad fan graphs projections for this season's
01:10 standings, this episode is brought to you by Game Time.
01:13 Download the Game Time app, create an account, and use code LOCKEDON for $20 off your first
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01:19 Now on Wednesday of this week, fan graphs certainly made a decision to release some
01:24 content that I would have just kept to myself if these were the projections that my website
01:31 was releasing.
01:32 Because the way they see the AOS stacking up and the way they think the Rangers are
01:38 going to finish this season is honestly laughably bad.
01:45 It is hilarious.
01:46 I'm not even mad.
01:47 I'm just laughing.
01:48 But I actually am just laughing because this is honestly insanely low win projection for
01:54 a team that literally just won the World Series exactly 100 days ago today as this episode
02:01 is being released.
02:02 Now let's take a look at what fan graphs had to say about your Texas Rangers.
02:06 Projected win total for the Rangers in 2024, 81.4 wins.
02:15 I'm sorry.
02:16 81 wins?
02:18 Barely above 500.
02:20 Actually 81 would be 500.
02:22 So not even, you can't even round up to a above 500 winning record for a team that just
02:29 won the World Series and has barely lost any talent going into 2024.
02:37 The line of turnover is extremely minimal.
02:41 It's just Mitch Garver that's gone.
02:43 That's it.
02:44 And he's a fine, good player.
02:47 But it's not like he's a nine win difference.
02:49 Jordan Montgomery might be gone, but the Rangers only had him from August on.
02:57 That's not a nine win difference even combined.
03:00 Now they did lose a few relievers in Will Smith and the half season of Chris Stratton
03:05 and the half season of Eraldis Chapman.
03:10 And they also lost MartÃn Perez.
03:13 But all of that combined is not a loss of nine wins from last year.
03:21 I don't understand where this is coming from, where this loss projection is coming from.
03:25 I mean, do they really think the Mariners are going to be that much better?
03:30 Because they traded for a second baseman who was out of room on a twins team and also reacquired
03:37 Mitch Hanegar, who was, you know, mediocre at best or because they added Luke Raley.
03:47 I just don't understand where these wins are coming from.
03:50 And their World Series odds are honestly, objectively stupid.
03:55 They're just stupid.
03:56 The Rangers have 1.3% chance to make the world to win the World Series.
04:01 1.3?
04:02 What?
04:03 They have less than a third as good a chance as the Mariners, who have never even been
04:10 to the World Series in their franchise's history.
04:14 Not even once.
04:15 They have barely, they have not been the ALCS since what, 2001?
04:22 The Rangers last year alone won as many playoff series as the Seattle Mariners have in their
04:29 franchise's history.
04:32 Which goes back to the 1970s.
04:36 They did it in one year when they won the World Series, something the Mariners have
04:41 never done.
04:42 Now the Astros are being projected for 90.7 wins.
04:46 That's fine.
04:47 But they have the Rangers four wins ahead of the Angels.
04:52 The Angels, who just lost Shohei Otani, who have a hobbled Mike Trout, who did bring on
05:01 Ron Washington, but this is still an incredibly young, inexperienced, not great core.
05:09 The Rangers 1.3% chance to win the World Series is just barely ahead of the Guardians, who
05:15 have absolutely no offense to speak of.
05:18 A bullpen that definitely had some questions, and a starting rotation that is pretty good.
05:23 But there's no offense there.
05:25 Are you kidding me?
05:27 Are you absolutely kidding me?
05:28 They have the Blue Jays as more than two times better chance to win the World Series than
05:33 the Rangers.
05:34 And they're in an absolute bloodbath of division with five teams that are all going to be trying
05:38 to make the playoffs and win and have scrappy, good teams in the AL East.
05:45 But no, the Rangers have half as good a chance to make the World Series as the Blue Jays,
05:50 who've been the definition of mid for decades.
05:56 When was the last time they even made the ALCS?
05:58 I honestly cannot remember the last time that the Blue Jays made the ALCS.
06:05 It'd be one thing if there was a lot of turnover from year to year, but this is basically the
06:09 exact same team running it back that won it all a hundred days ago.
06:17 It's the best offense in the American League.
06:20 It's the deepest offense in the American League.
06:22 They're getting an entire season of Evan Carter.
06:25 They're getting maybe an entire season of Wyatt Langford, or maybe it's 75% of a season.
06:31 Maybe it's 60%.
06:33 But even if it's 60%, that probably means they're signing a DH and that guy's going
06:37 to be probably pretty good and help improve the signup.
06:41 But is every offensive player just going to fall off a cliff?
06:45 Was every part of the Rangers winning ways last year just completely unsustainable?
06:51 This is basically the same team for the first half of this year that had such what felt
06:56 like an insurmountable lead at times in the AL West that was running away with things
07:02 at the midpoint of August when it felt like this thing was pretty much wrapped up before
07:08 that awful skid in the back half of August.
07:11 But the Rangers are going to be adding Max Scherzer in June.
07:15 Sometime in July, probably, they'll get Tyler Mallee back.
07:19 But August feels like at the latest.
07:22 And then, oh yeah, at some point in August, they're going to get Jacob deGrom back, probably.
07:26 Or maybe it'll be September.
07:29 Either way, if they have a fully healthy playoff rotation like they're expecting, that's the
07:35 best playoff rotation in baseball.
07:37 As Jacob deGrom is your number one, who's the best pitcher in baseball when he's on
07:40 the mound.
07:41 So if he's on the mound, he's the best pitcher in baseball and he's better than anybody else's
07:44 ace.
07:45 Plus this insane lineup.
07:47 Plus then you have Nate Evaldi, the absolute dog on the mound in game two.
07:53 And then, oh by the way, in game three, you have Max Scherzer, one of the best pitchers
07:57 of his era.
07:58 Oh, and your Game 4 starter is probably going to be Tyler Mallee.
08:03 That is an insanely good rotation.
08:05 And this bullpen disbelief.
08:07 I mean, yeah, the Rangers had a historically horrible bullpen last year.
08:12 But they upgraded it significantly.
08:16 And it should have been better than it was.
08:17 I mean, Josh Boyes' expected ERA was almost two runs better than his actual ERA.
08:23 And we also just saw him go nuclear in the postseason and be probably the best reliever
08:29 in the entire postseason.
08:31 Probably even a little better than Jose LeClerc, who was also absolutely spectacular in that
08:36 playoff run.
08:37 And yeah, they did lose a Rollins Chapman, which, you know, our heart palpitations will
08:42 thank us, hopefully with a little bit less stress from the bullpen in the late innings
08:47 this year.
08:48 Because they added Dave Robertson, who's been incredibly consistent, incredibly good for
08:52 the last several years.
08:54 He has been a steadying force and hopefully will be again for the Rangers bullpen.
08:59 They also added Kirby Yates on a buy-low deal, who is coming off a pretty solid season.
09:04 There's not going to be a whole lot of expectations on him.
09:06 And then they got plenty of other options for guys who could step up.
09:09 Brock Burke had an incredible 2022, fell off a cliff with the home run ball in 2023, but
09:15 still has a lot of promise there to be a very good left-handed arm in that pen.
09:20 They've also got a couple of guys that are coming up that I think could be pretty solid
09:26 in the back end of their pen and just make things a little bit better.
09:29 Hopefully a better season from Jonathan Hernandez and a few other guys that definitely have
09:33 some potential to be at least okay back end guys.
09:37 And this offense can out hit its problems.
09:40 It's the same offense that did that for three quarters of the year last year and did it
09:45 to playoff teams in the playoffs.
09:48 They annihilated good pitching staffs.
09:51 They annihilated them.
09:53 Everyone in their way.
09:54 They destroyed them.
09:56 They did not lose a single road game in the playoffs.
09:58 They only lost four games all playoffs long.
10:03 Only four games in the playoffs.
10:06 Three of them came in one series.
10:08 I don't understand where FanGraphs gets off saying that this team is nine wins worse than
10:14 last year, even before Jordan Montgomery has officially signed somewhere else.
10:19 So there's still potential for that.
10:21 Coming up, we're going to look at what they said last year, why this bodes well for the
10:24 Rangers and why it's so important to establish those expectations early.
10:30 Right after this word from our sponsors.
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12:06 Some people like to learn from their mistakes.
12:09 I myself like to learn from my mistakes.
12:13 When I mess something up, all you can do is look back at what you did and say, "Huh,
12:18 alright, I goofed that one up.
12:20 Now let's try not to make that exact same mistake again."
12:22 However, with these projections, FanGraphs looked at what they did last year and thought,
12:30 "Ah, we projected the World Series champion to win 82 games, excuse me, 81.9.
12:37 We projected him to finish fourth in the AL West.
12:41 We gave him a 2% shot to win the World Series.
12:45 Let's double down on that.
12:47 Let's do it all over again, but worse.
12:50 With more data, let us not learn from those conclusions.
12:53 Let us not, you know, alter our input, how we make these decisions, how we calculate
12:59 these things.
13:00 Let's just do the same darn thing again, but you know what, make it worse.
13:03 Let's just make them finish significantly worse, even though it's the same team, even
13:07 though we also think that Wyatt Langford is going to have like a 780 OPS in his first
13:12 year and be like a two-war player in 80 or 90 games that they're projecting him to be.
13:17 We think he's going to be great, but everything else is dog water on this team.
13:23 I just, I really just can't comprehend how this team got so much worse, but everybody
13:29 else allegedly got so much better.
13:32 I said earlier this week that I really love the Marriotters offseason and I think they
13:36 got a lot better and I do, but I don't think they surpassed the Rangers in what they're
13:41 doing and also they have been one of the luckiest teams in terms of pitcher health the last
13:48 couple of years.
13:49 They've gotten really, really lucky.
13:52 Not that I'm wishing any injuries upon anybody at all, but pitchers are fickle beasts.
13:58 Their arm and shoulder are not built, you were not built to throw a baseball 95 to 100
14:05 miles an hour, a hundred times every five days and also 30 times in your bullpen session
14:10 in between those five days.
14:13 That is not a natural arm motion, which is why so many pitchers get hurt and have Tommy
14:19 Johns or have elbow soreness or have what have you to have them miss a lot of time.
14:25 And thankfully for the Mariners, they have not had a lot of that.
14:29 They have an incredibly deep rotation, but the only couple of arm injuries they had have
14:33 been to guys who were not necessarily expected to factor very highly into their rotation
14:40 outside of Robbie Ray, who initially when they signed him, they thought he was going
14:44 to be amazing.
14:45 But basically from the time they signed him, he was dealing with injuries and also ineffectiveness
14:50 coming off of that A.L.
14:51 Cy Young season.
14:53 He just was not able to sustain that form.
14:56 Luckily for them, they had plenty of other pitchers that were young and controllable
15:00 and cheap and healthy and pretty darn good that have made up for that.
15:06 But their starting lineup, I don't know if they're going to get, I hope that all of their
15:09 players are healthy.
15:10 I really do.
15:11 I hope that they are just worse than the Rangers, but the guys who they have signed to improve
15:16 their lineup have had a lot of health injury concerns in their careers, Mitch Garver included.
15:22 And I would love nothing more than for Mitch Garver to have an amazing season because he's
15:25 a World Series hero and I wish him nothing but the best, except for when he is playing
15:28 the Rangers.
15:30 But they also look at the Astros team who made two acquisitions this entire off season.
15:38 They brought in a closer and they already had a pretty good closer and a pretty good
15:43 bullpen.
15:44 They let a few relievers go and they brought in a new backup catcher and that's going to
15:50 keep them atop the division.
15:53 I just, I don't necessarily see it.
15:56 And also I think that the Orioles who just brought in Corbin Burns are going to be significantly
16:02 worse than they were this past year when they won a hundred games.
16:06 They're projecting them for 84.7 wins.
16:11 How is that team going to be 15 wins worse when they just added a top 10 pitcher in baseball
16:16 and shored up what was their biggest weakness?
16:19 And they also added Craig Kimbrell who's not his peak Craig Kimbrell self, but he's a fine
16:27 closer.
16:28 He's a fine reliever.
16:29 I think Phillies fans were a little dramatic of saying that he was absolutely horrible
16:32 and couldn't close games and couldn't trust him in any big situation.
16:35 I think that was incredibly dramatic for the numbers that he was putting up and the performances
16:40 he was putting up.
16:41 And the rest of the bullpen is pretty fine and solid.
16:43 And they're also adding a guy who's going to be probably not the rookie of the year
16:47 favorite, but definitely up there in Jackson Holiday and the pretty much consensus top
16:51 prospect in all baseball.
16:53 And all of their young hitters are probably going to get significantly better.
16:57 I don't understand how that team is 15 wins worse and the Yankees who added one Soto and
17:02 a starting pitcher who has been very inconsistent in Marcus Stroman and his average about 130
17:11 innings the last couple of years.
17:13 I'm sorry that vaults them up to the top of the AL East.
17:17 I just don't understand it.
17:19 I really don't understand these projections of thinking all these teams who have just
17:24 shown that they're exceptional, all of them are going to fall off and all of them are
17:29 going to be significantly worse than last year.
17:31 I mean, what is the point of these projection systems if they're going to be so incredibly
17:36 wrong and not learn from their mistakes of last year?
17:41 I mean, I just still can't wrap my head around this team last year being projected to finish
17:46 worse than the angels and barely above 500 and they ended up winning the world series.
17:53 Now I'm not saying that world series was predictable.
17:55 And if you said the Rangers were winning the world series from opening day, you're probably
18:00 pretty delusional and I envy your optimism.
18:04 But even in my most optimistic mind, I thought maybe the ceiling of this team was 95 wins.
18:09 Their Pythagorean record showed they were about 95, 96 win team and they were, and they
18:14 did have the talent.
18:15 And they also made those two big acquisitions at the trade deadline that I didn't see at
18:18 the beginning of the year.
18:20 If you had told me at the beginning of the year that they would have been trading for
18:22 Max Scherzer and Jordan Montgomery at the deadline, I would have thought, oh wow, something
18:27 has gone horribly wrong for the Mets and horribly right for the Rangers.
18:29 And that was the case.
18:31 And that was very nice.
18:32 And this team did win a world series.
18:34 And even at the beginning of October, even though I was saying the Rangers could win
18:38 the world series at the beginning of the playoffs, that was mostly fed by delusion because the
18:43 playoffs are kind of random.
18:45 But once you've seen a team that can do it and will be coming off the confidence of winning
18:50 a world series, it's not just the confidence of having a world series win right under your
18:55 belt that literally just happened.
18:57 It's usually the respect from teams around the league that kind of fuels everyone wants
19:02 a chance at the champ.
19:04 Usually in college football, when you've got that number one ranking next to you, every
19:08 team is going to give you your best shot.
19:09 Or if you're a blue blood or dynasty like in Ohio State or Alabama or Georgia or Michigan,
19:16 what have you, every team is going to give you their best shot.
19:20 And usually when you're the reigning champs, you know, in Major League Baseball, teams
19:25 will give you your best shot and teams will think projections, media, everyone will think,
19:31 okay, this team is legit.
19:32 They literally just won it all.
19:34 So I'm going to need to see them be bad before I, you know, project them to be bad.
19:40 But that has not been the case for the Rangers this off season.
19:42 It has been a case of, oh, well, even though, even though Atlanta just, uh, just won one
19:50 game in the playoffs after having an amazing regular season, we're just saying that was
19:55 fluky.
19:56 That's, that's never going to happen again.
19:57 Obviously the Braves, the best team in baseball or, oh no, the Dodgers who have won.
20:02 One world series, the same amount as the Rangers, same amount as the Braves as well in the last,
20:08 I don't know, 20 years.
20:10 Oh, that team is actually by far the best in baseball.
20:13 And I think that's definitely due with the insane amount of acquisitions that the Dodgers
20:17 made this off season.
20:20 But also you can hold that in one hand and say the Rangers are champs.
20:24 They literally just knocked off the, their biggest bugaboo to get to the world series
20:30 and then won the first ever title in their franchise's history.
20:33 So obviously they'll be feeling pretty good about themselves.
20:35 They're returning most of the same team.
20:37 Maybe they bring back Jordan Montgomery, maybe they don't, but they're still going to have
20:40 three pretty darn good additions into their starting rotation at mid season.
20:44 And I just don't understand why teams aren't viewing the Rangers as the world champs, as
20:50 the best team in the baseball, as the team that everyone's going to be giving their best
20:53 shot.
20:54 I don't think that's the case.
20:55 And just a second, I'm gonna tell you why.
20:56 That's an incredibly good thing for the Rangers chances to repeat as champs.
21:00 So let's go ahead and try for this for from our sponsors.
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21:19 talking about how the Rangers are being disrespected most everywhere in their projections.
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21:26 to repeat as champs.
21:27 Right now, FanDuel has the 2024 World Series odds for the Rangers repeating as champs as
21:32 plus 1200, the fourth, excuse me, fifth best odds behind the Dodgers, Braves, Astros and
21:39 Yankees.
21:40 They also have the Rangers as over under win total at 89 and a half wins, which I think
21:45 is a fantastic place to set that over under win total because I'm not sure if they're
21:50 going to go over or under.
21:51 But I think 89 and a half, it's perfect.
21:53 I think they go over just slightly.
21:55 But anyway, you can check out all the kinds of different bets you can make at FanDuel.
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22:01 If your first bet of $5 or more wins, just visit FanDuel.com/LockedOn to sign up.
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22:13 Shout out to the everydayers making Locked On Rangers your first listen every single
22:19 day.
22:20 On tomorrow's show, I'll be back talking about five players I think will improve significantly
22:24 in the 2024 season from what they did last year.
22:27 Rangers players to be specific.
22:29 Now the Rangers are being clearly disrespected a lot by these fan crash projections, but
22:34 I wanted to give them a little bit of a benefit of the doubt and read some of the reasoning
22:37 as to why the Rangers will be so, so, so, so, so much worse in 24 when they are the
22:45 reigning world champs.
22:46 This is a quote from their article talking about the reasoning for the Rangers being
22:50 so low.
22:51 It said, quote, as for the Rangers, their challenge will be getting to the playoffs.
22:54 Three of their top four pitchers will miss the first half of the year, which is impacting
22:58 their full season run prevention projection.
23:00 Their bullpen remains sketchy at best, but if they're still in the thick of things
23:05 when Jacob deGrom, Max Scherzer, and Tyler Mallee return, watch out.
23:09 Our depth charts give that trio 70% of their 17% of their starter innings, but that number
23:14 might be above 50% by September.
23:17 Our full year forecast simply can't account for that late season change.
23:22 Well, yeah, thanks for first stating pretty much the obvious of, of, Oh no, we, we think
23:28 this team is going to look a lot different in the second half than the first half.
23:32 Everybody knows that, but you can't project what this team will look like when they're
23:36 healthy.
23:37 I get that predicting what pitchers are going to look back, look like when they come back
23:41 from injuries is difficult, but you know, you have the kind of general timelines.
23:47 Tommy John surgery is not as much of a mystery as it was in years past.
23:51 It happens literally all the time.
23:53 Almost every starting pitcher goes through it and it's pretty predictable what they're
23:57 going to do when they get back.
23:59 Jacob deGrom is expected to get back in August.
24:03 It's not like there's been no information, no updates on, on his health and his return.
24:07 There's hasn't been a whole lot on Tyler Mallee's, but there's already been a lot of updates
24:11 on Max Scherzer return.
24:12 Looks like he's going to be back the soonest of everybody.
24:16 And he's not coming back from Tommy John surgery.
24:18 He's coming back from surgery on a herniated disc and he's probably gonna be ready before
24:22 anybody else.
24:23 But say this bullpen is, is shaky at best.
24:26 Um, excuse me.
24:28 Uh, yeah.
24:29 Sketchy at best.
24:30 I'm going to use the exact words there.
24:33 It's like they didn't see what happened the entire postseason.
24:36 It's like they haven't looked at the advanced numbers behind what Josh Sports is and why
24:41 the Raiders have stuck with him for so long, despite him having an ERA of around five.
24:45 It's like they didn't see what David Robinson just did.
24:48 I mean, they're projecting basically every picture that the Rangers have that pitches
24:52 more than 60 innings outside of, I think Max Scherzer and, um, Josh Sports, who they project
24:58 around like a three eight or a three 90, right?
25:00 I think everybody who's going to pitch for the Rangers are gonna have an ERA above four,
25:04 including Nathan Evaldi, who they predicted is going to have 170 innings, which also feels
25:10 kind of insane predicting that.
25:12 But it's not like these predictions are the be all end all or the ultimate truth on how
25:18 good a team is going to do.
25:20 Obviously we saw last year that is very much not the case.
25:23 They had both teams that were in the world series projected to finish fourth in their
25:27 own division.
25:28 And uh, well, spoiler alert, that didn't happen.
25:32 Those teams finished higher than fourth in their division.
25:35 They rejected the Dimebacks for 78.4 wins last year, and they made it all the way to
25:39 the world series and gave the Rangers a pretty, pretty decent shot.
25:44 Not decent enough.
25:45 Um, maybe too decent for, for my taste, a sweep would have been even nicer, but Hey,
25:50 I'll take a world series however I can get it.
25:53 But there is some good news about bad projections about lower expectations.
26:01 This team is coming off a world series, but I think projections like this and other ones
26:06 that are expecting the Rangers to either, you know, barely scrape into the playoffs,
26:10 if not miss the playoffs altogether is that it gives you the greatest gift of being a
26:16 fan.
26:18 In my opinion, the most fun time to be a fan of a team is when they are on the rise, when
26:25 they're on the come up, when you get to legitimately say, Hey, nobody believes in my team, but
26:30 they're really darn good.
26:32 And I want everybody to know that they're really darn good.
26:36 The second best time to be a fan, I guess probably actually the best time is, is probably
26:40 after winning your first championship in franchise history.
26:42 So scratch that.
26:43 Yeah, no, the best time is definitely soaking in the post champagne bliss of the last hundred
26:49 days of being reigning world series champs and being like, wow, all you haters are mad.
26:54 All you haters are dumb.
26:56 Nobody understands that my team just kicked everybody's butts.
26:59 Nobody thought it would happen and it freaking did.
27:01 And y'all can just suck it.
27:04 And that's where Rangers fans are right now.
27:06 They are in the combination of those two places.
27:09 You get to sit there and say, wow, look at my team.
27:14 They just did it.
27:15 They just won it all.
27:17 They beat the baddies and the Astros.
27:19 They beat the snot out of the Orioles.
27:21 They beat the snot out of the Rays.
27:22 They beat the Diamondbacks.
27:24 They won a ring.
27:25 They did the dang thing that nobody thought would happen.
27:29 Look at us.
27:30 We're the best.
27:32 And they also get to look around and say, hey, nobody believes in my team.
27:37 My team is better than you think it is.
27:39 And we're going to freaking show you.
27:42 And that is an incredibly unique position to be in.
27:46 It is absolutely delightful.
27:48 To get there and be, you know, fake outraged of, oh no, how dare these people not believe
27:54 in my team?
27:55 Well, my team believes in my team and they believe in themself enough to win the dang
27:58 World Series and have highlights of it that I will be watching pretty much every day for
28:03 I think the rest of my natural born life.
28:05 And then I think probably even a few days after I die, I would like someone to project
28:09 like in my coffin that Corey Seager home run just in case there's still part of me that's
28:14 there just for posterity's sake.
28:18 I will never get tired of watching Joe Davis scream, high drive, it's tied.
28:24 I'm going to watch it about a billion times the rest of my life, maybe two billion.
28:28 I don't know.
28:30 But it is an absolutely delightful place to be as a fan to get there and get the best
28:34 of both worlds.
28:36 Just like Hannah Montana and Miley Cyrus, Rangers fans are getting the best of both
28:40 worlds.
28:41 Yet to be aggrieved at people disrespecting your team, the absolute goal of somebody to
28:48 not believe in the amazingness of my Texas Rangers, of your Texas Rangers, of our Texas
28:54 Rangers.
28:55 How dare those morons disagree?
28:58 That this team is anything but amazing.
29:01 And also get to still sit there with your crown being like, Hey, look at that ring that
29:06 literally just happened.
29:08 Want to see me do it again?
29:11 Want to see me do it again?
29:12 Want to see me do it several more times?
29:15 How much more does my team need to prove to be the greatest, to be respected?
29:24 Now I think the third best time to be a fan of a sports team is when you are the villain.
29:32 When your team is the villain.
29:35 Not for having morally objectable players on your team.
29:40 Not for just being rude and annoying and harassing other fan bases.
29:46 Not for cheating your way to a championship like some sports team might have done.
29:50 I don't know who.
29:51 I'm not naming names.
29:52 I'm not.
29:54 Um, but because your team is so good that people are sick of watching your team win,
30:03 they are tired of watching your team win.
30:06 Every time your team loses, it is a celebration by the nation.
30:11 That's the third best time to be a fan of a sports team.
30:14 And I know a little bit about that because I've been an Alabama football fan since I
30:19 was a freshman in college in 2012.
30:21 So I know a little bit of what that's like.
30:25 And if the Rangers continue on this trajectory, which I think they will, because right now
30:30 they are the rating champs, they do have an incredibly good core of hitters that are all
30:35 going to be here for another three seasons.
30:38 They're also adding one of the top prospects in all of baseball this season.
30:42 They've got a guy who, in my opinion, should have finished at least top three in rookie
30:45 of the year voting in Josh Young.
30:47 They got little Evan Carter, who's 21 years old and was the number three hitter on a World
30:52 Series team.
30:53 They got Corey Seager here for more than another half decade.
30:57 They've got several more years of Marcus Simien, I think another half decade of him as well.
31:02 They're getting back Jacob DeGrom at some point, and maybe at some point some of these
31:06 young pitchers will start being something.
31:08 But this team could be at the start of a dynasty.
31:12 It always starts with a championship kicking off a dynasty in earnest.
31:16 They got a couple more years under contract of Bruce Bochy, and then we'll see what happens
31:19 after that.
31:20 If Bruce Bochy wants to ride in the sunset after a three-peat, I think that'd be just
31:23 fine with me.
31:25 But even if he does, even if the Rangers do three-peat, even in 2027, whatever that, yeah,
31:33 2026, excuse me, that would be after a three-peat.
31:36 This team will still probably be set up to be incredibly good for the long haul.
31:41 So, as a Rangers fan, thank fangraphs for their crappy projections, thank them for disrespecting
31:48 your team, and enjoy the best time to be a fan of any kind of sports team as reigning
31:53 champs who aren't getting that respect because by gosh, this team is going to make people
31:58 respect them in 2024.
32:00 And if they don't, they still got that incredible World Series that we will treasure for the
32:05 rest of time.
32:06 That's going to do it for today's show.
32:08 Thank you all so much for listening and subscribing, and until next time, don't forget to enjoy
32:12 World Series champion Texas Rangers baseball.
32:15 [END]
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