Maybe there is one positive to playing a shortened season. Anything can happen.
One-hundred-sixty-two games has a way of revealing what a team really is. If they don’t have enough pitching, it catches up to them. You can hide not enough offense for a while. But not for 162.
There is a huge difference between sprinters and marathon runners. Same in a baseball season.
The Rangers have the starting pitching to win a short series. They don’t have the offense to sustain. But if they don’t need to sustain, it’s a different story.
Last year is a prime example. The Rangers were a fourth-place team. They had the roster construction to prove it. Yet, they got out of the gate fast, thanks to a very favorable schedule and a couple surprises on offense from Danny Santana and Hunter Pence. Even with that MacGyvered rotation, they were ten games over .500 after 82 games. One hundred games into the season, they were exactly at .500. Of course, when it was all said and done, they were six games under.
They weren’t marathoners. But they did well in the fifty-yard dash out of the gate.
Assuming this season is played, a team like the Rangers might benefit the most. As last year proved, even a bad team can catch lightning in a bottle in small doses.
If there is a season, it will be small doses. That’s exactly what Texas needs. Pay no attention to the lack of offense behind the curtain.