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Spring Fever: Why April Has Been So Cruel To Rangers And Why 2009 Might Buck The Recent Trend

The Rangers may not be anybody's April Fool this year.

Baseball conventional wisdom says: “You can’t win a playoff spot in April, but you can lose one.”

It applies only to 29 teams.

The adage changes for the Rangers. It goes something like this: “As goes April, so goes the season.”

At least it’s been that way since 1994 when the club moved into the summertime blast furnace known as Rangers Ballpark in Arlington. The rules all changed with the new stadium and the changing global climate (if you believe such silly folks as scientists).

Because the place is hitter friendly in the first place and because the winds tend to gather into a jet stream to right center during the summer and because the temperatures regularly rise above 90 after mid-June, getting off to a hot start in the spring and surviving through the summer is essential.

Just consider the stats. Since moving into the park, the Rangers have had five “hot” Aprils. And by “hot” we mean being more than one game over .500 at the end of the month. Three of those years (1996, 1998 and 1999) resulted in division championships. A fourth, in 2004, resulted in an 89-win season. In 1997, mid-summer catastrophic injuries to the starting rotation wrecked a season that started with a 14-10 month.

Tonight, with RHP Vicente Padilla on the mound, the Rangers have a chance to go two games over .500 in April for the first time since the final day of the month in 2004.

“I still think that over the course of the regular season, you are going to win as many as you should and lose as many as you should, regardless of how you finish any one month,” said third baseman Michael Young. “I’m not one to look at April and say it’s a huge, huge month. It’s important to get some momentum, but it’s not do or die.”

The last two years, though, that’s exactly what it has been.

The Rangers got off to a 10-15 start in Ron Washington’s first year. And a bad April led into a worse May and a terrible June before there was any kind of recovery.

Last year, the Rangers seemed to feel the pressure of trying to avoid a similar start and fell into a worse hole. They fought their way to a 5-4 record, then lost 12 of the next 14. The Rangers made 30 errors in the 28 games of the first month and allowed 22 unearned runs. It put manager Ron Washington on the brink of firing before the club started to turn things around.

“I wish I had an answer to why we didn’t play well, but we didn’t,” Washington said.

The Rangers spent the summer months clawing their way back up the standings and by the time they got to August, they were on the fringes of the wild card race. But that’s about the time of year the heat takes a toll on the pitching staff. After the mid-July All-Star break, the team compiled a 5.77 ERA. Even the best offense in the league couldn’t keep pace with that.

That’s why getting out in front in April is so important. While teams in more comfortable climates – see Oakland and Los Angeles – have the capability to track down front runners with steady pitching in the summer months, it’s necessary for the Rangers to set the tone and put pressure on those clubs.

To do it, the Rangers are trying to go back in time. On Monday, the Rangers took the first step by winning a season-opener for the first time since 2003. Tonight, they have a chance to go to 2-0 for the first time since 2000. It’s all in a goal of doing what they haven’t done since 1999: win the division.

“We understand that if we want to win the division, we’ve got to play good baseball all year and that includes April,” said 2B Ian Kinsler. “I think last year, we put a lot of pressure on ourselves in the clubhouse to not have a repeat of 2007. This year, no one mentioned it. We know what we have to do and we’ve been getting ready to do it.”

Kinsler and others all believe that familiarity will play a big part in a better start. And it may very well do that. While there are a handful of new players, most are in part-time roles. With the exception of rookie Elvis Andrus, the personnel in the starting lineup is the same as it was for much of last year. The pitching staff has added Kris Benson, but that’s the only new face on a 12-man staff.

But there are other factors, too.

•  Home time: The Rangers opened at home, play nine of their first 12 games in Arlington and are at home for 12 of 22 games during the month. It’s a direct contrast to Washington’s first two years. They didn’t open at home in either 2007 or 2008 and they played more games on the road than in Arlington in both months.

• Opponents: While team makeup obviously changes from year to year, the Rangers April opponents are coming off far worse seasons than the 2008 opponents. This year’s group, which includes only three games against a team that finished above .500 last year (Toronto), had a .473 winning percentage in 2008. Last year’s April opponents had a .514 winning percentage in 2007. It included four games at World Champion Boston and three games to open the season at Los Angeles, which won the AL West.

• AL West absence: Since 2001, the Rangers have spent most of April playing AL West opponents. That’s made rough starts doubly troublesome. The Rangers were 7.5 games out in the division race by the end of April last year. This year, they play only three games within the division this month, all against Oakland in Arlington to conclude the month.

April is crucial to the Rangers’ season and the last two years it’s been cruel. But the start and the schedule suggest that maybe, just maybe, a new spring could dawn in Arlington.