The perception of the Rangers gets screwed up by the hitter friendly ways of the the Ballpark. Its been suggested in other posts here that this team is good on offense, but lacking on the mound. It isn't so. Here are the rankings in AL OPS+ and ERA+ from Baseball Reference. Both stats are adjusted for home ballpark effects and normalized to 100.

AL OPS+

BOS 120
DET 110
NYY 109
TEX 107
TBR 103
TOR 103

It should be noted that the three teams ahead of Texas in this measure are the three most likely other playoff teams.

ERA+

NYY 119
OAK 117
TEX 113
LAA 112
CHW 110

Better than you thought it would be?

Texas is an all around sound team who can compete with anybody. On the other hand, it doesn't have any world beater strengths. It do what it do.

On the other hand

Rangers Home sOPS+ 132
Rangers Away sOPS+ 102

Which suggests one of a few things.

1) The Ballpark adjustment isn't particularly accurate
2) The Rangers are going apeshit on road trips or something and leaving their bats at home.

Personally, I think what it comes down to is the ballpark adjustment is not sophisticated enough to model ballpark effects, and this really is an averageish offense in a bandbox.

Either way when we match up with another team when/if we get to playoffs I'll take this offense against the others in the AL. Including NY and BOS. We have to play the games head to head in the same stadium under the same conditions. Thats all that really matters.

firstly, the offense's biggest issue is the lack of walks. that obviously affects the team's ops. secondly, rangers ballpark isn't a "bandbox" as it sits somewhere in the middle in terms of size. the high temperatures increase the ball's flight by a couple of feet, but you'd have to conduct extensive research to determine whether or not temperature has a significant impact on home runs.

i highly doubt the ballparks have anything to do with their away ops.

@wingsofjoy,

I am pretty sure that extensive research has in fact been done, and it has been proven that the Rangers ballpark year in and year out yields strongly above average home run numbers. You can't pin that all on the Rangers being a historically weak pitching club, as there have been some years (like this year and last and the late 90's) where we have had solid pitching and still seen abnormal home run rates in our ballpark. im just saying.

if you're referring to home run park factors, you should know that the ballpark was 18th in 2001, 12th in 2006, and 17th in 2007. like i said, you'd have to research home run distances and environmental effects to really determine the impact the home park has on their hitting. they're not hitting as well in away games, but you can't just attribute that to the park.

So, you saw that the fact that have hit 82 out of their 123 HRs at home, and their slugging percentage is 120 or so points better at home than on the road, and you don't think they play in a bandbox. Gotcha.

if rangers ballpark is a bandbox, then so are most major league ballparks. mark texeira hit a 320-foot grand slam at yankee stadium the other day. you're taking these numbers at face value without considering factors like pitching.

they hit quite a few home runs at safeco, angel stadium, and tropicana. they didn't hit any at u.s. cellular field and only one at yankee stadium.

There is a significant amount of drop off just by being the road team. The Rangers may just have more mojo and confidence at home, they certainly produce more wins at home so it would feed the confidence factor. Its not all or even mostly the ballpark effect, its the placedo of being in front of home fans where you dominate opposition for going on 3 years now.

I've been looking over runs scored splits for the last several years and its pretty consistent that some where between half and three quarters of the league scores more runs at home than they do on the road. The only teams that consistently score fewer runs at home year in and year out are San Diego, Los Angelos and Seattle. Every other team is consistently even or better at home so it's not like the Rangers are the only team that plays better at home than on the road.

So, scoring ~2 Runs per game or about 50% more at home than on the road is just normal. Gotcha. It has nothing to do with an unusually hot, dry summer at RBiA.

Seems to me its unusually hot and dry everywhere this summer.

Besides I don't think anyone is suggesting that weather and park don't play some role in how a team performs offensively. As for me I tend to believe that most teams hit better at home than on the road due to a number of factors that relate to where they live. There are a few exceptions to this in which the park plays a significant role in deminishing/improving offensive performance such as San Diego or Colorado. Both those teams end up at the very top and very bottom of scoring differential every year.

From year to year the Rangers do score more at home but it's never at a 2 to 1 rate. For the three years prior to 2011 the Rangers average about 0.68 runs per game more at home than on the road or around 70 runs. The league average over those three years was just under 20 more runs at home than on the road. So yes RBiA does help the Rangers offense more than the average team but not drastically so on a year by year basis and often no more than Fenway helps the Red Sox, Yankee Stadium helps the yankees or Coors Field helps the Rockies.

This year they are scoring roughly 6 at home and roughly 4 on the road.

What do we think of this offense after 27 hits! Would you trade this lineup for any other in the majors. Not me!

Boy howdy! When Kinsler and Josh are hot, we are almost impossible to beat! I certainly appreciate and enjoy watching the strong pitching that we are seeing this year, from our starting staff. However watching these guys smash 27 hits vs. the Twins was freak’in hilarious.

The statistics you cite don't control for variables like pitching quality and whether the road park is a pitchers' park. The Rangers have played 20 of their road games against Sea., LAA, Oak, Phil., and Atl.--all teams with great pitching staffs. Also, Sea. and LAA have scored many more runs on the road than at home, suggesting that their parks are pitcher friendly. Oak. has a pitcher-friendly park.

I'm not saying that your theory is definitely wrong, just that simple home-away stats don't prove that it's correct. (The Red Sox also have a substantially higher home OPS than road OPS. Their offense is hardly mediocre.)

And let's not forget that the Rangers are second in the majors in runs despite having been without Hamilton and Cruz for a substantial part of the year. You might argue that their offense is not as good as Boston's or NY's, but it's tough to argue that they are average.