Year after year the Texas Rangers feudal attempts to sign any marquis players leave them at the bottom of their respected division. They have to compete with the Los Angeles Angels, Seattle Mariners, and the Oakland Athletics all of which are pretty decent teams year in, year out. As players of great stature are plucked off the free agent market by other teams, the Rangers are left empty handed because they fail to sign anyone. Instead the Rangers rely on their farm system to bring up young talent, but once this talent reaches the major league level they trade them away for mediocre players who never reach their potential.

An example of the Rangers trading away good talent would be them trading Alex Rodriguez to the New York Yankees. The Rangers had just signed A-Rod to the largest contract in baseball, and less than two years later they traded him for an up and coming player, Alfonso Soriano. Once Alfonso Soriano reached the big league status he was then traded away for a miniscule player named Brad Wilkerson, who after two injured plagued seasons in the outfield was released, leaving the Rangers with nothing from the A-Rod trade. Another example of the Rangers stupidity was trading away Pudge Rodriguez arguably the best catcher in the game today. One more act of stupidity by the Rangers was trading away Mark Texiera, one of the best first basemen in the game today for no one except two minor league pitchers that have done nothing for us.

While other teams look at the free agent market to find young, upcoming talent the Texas Rangers can't really look that hard. The reason for this is because of the A-Rod trade, if they hadn't have signed him to such a huge contract then they would still be able to compete with other teams in Major League Baseball. In fact the Rangers are still paying A-Rod after he has been off of their roster for at least five years. However since they did make this terrible decision, the Rangers are left to suffer the consequences by having mediocre teams instead of having great teams. This affects them now because players don't want to go to a bad team, if they had a choice between the Boston Red Sox and the Texas Rangers most would pick the Red Sox because they have more talent and are known to do better than the Rangers and who wants to go to a bad, unsuccessful team.

Relying on their farm system or minor league system has worked well for the Rangers so far. The problem with the Rangers is that they have no money because they are giving it all to A-Rod, so they have to trade away this good talent for money to help pay A-Rod and to sign more players to raise in their farm system. If the Rangers would just be smart enough to raise ticket prices to earn the revenue for A-Rod, then we could keep our good players and be a pretty successful team. The benefits of this would be that more players would want to come to the Rangers and the Rangers could probably start going out and signing players like Mark Texiera or A-Rod again. Another benefit would be that the Rangers might start filling all the seats in the stadium, earning them even more money to use to get upcoming talent.

In the era of baseball decided by high-priced free agents, the Rangers don't have the cash influx to sign the players necessary to be title contenders year after year. In the Rangers 36 year history they are the only team to not have a playoff series win, this is because they don't have the money necessary to sign the players that will help turn their franchise in the right direction. If young players can continue to develop and the Rangers accumulate more money the Rangers will slowly but surely work their way to the top of their division.