Should the Rangers buy, sell, or stay at the MLB trade deadline?

If the Rangers wanted to blow it up, they could blow it up spectacularly. Yu Darvish to the Dodgers for all of the prospects. Cole Hamels and money to the Brewers for most of the prospects. Adrian Beltre to the Red Sox for a plurality of the prospects. They could sail into August with a fortified farm system, and all they would have to give up are their hopes and dreams.

However, this brings us to the Greater Theory of Rebuilding and a comic-sans chart that I made a couple years ago for the White Sox.

The White Sox ended up trading their best players, and they got a prospect haul that’s the envy of baseball. The y-axis keeps bothering me, though. The White Sox had 40 percent of a stellar rotation. They had talent up and down the roster. How did they screw that up? Should they have given up so quickly?

The Rangers aren’t quite as far to the upper right as they used to be on that, so you can understand why they’re contemplating dealing Darvish, at least. This is their chance to cash in. What should they do?

The Rangers, who seem to be contending a lot more than floundering in recent seasons. They have more division titles in their last seven seasons than they had in their first 49.

48-51, as of Tuesday morning.

50-49, which suggests they’ve been a little unlucky. Remember that last year, the Rangers finished a whopping 13 games over their Pythagorean record, mostly because they were 36-11 in one-run games. As always, the argument was that this team was different.

I mean, when you have Sam Dyson closing for you, the one-run wins just happen.

This year’s team is 10-15 in one-run games, which is more than a little cruel. But the lesson is obvious: Never assume the team is different. Just take the extra wins and giggle a lot.

47-52, which means that Pythagorean record might not be the whole story. The Rangers have been pitching worse than they’ve been hitting, generally. That’s a problem.

(A definition of BaseRuns can be found here.)

They’re 18 games behind the Astros. So this will not be their fifth division title in eight years.

Just 3½, but they’re chasing five teams, including two in their own division. That’s a tall order if you assume that one or two of those teams will get hot.

Yu Darvish
Jonathan Lucroy
Carlos Gomez
Tyson Ross
Andrew Cashner
Jason Grilli

At last four of those expiring contracts are features, not bugs, and they should be able to spend some of the savings to improve the team. The big question is Darvish, of course. Without him or a free agent equivalent, the Rangers will have some serious pitching needs.

They were 22nd, which is substantially lower than the previous season. Trades for Jonathan Lucroy and Cole Hamels took a big bite out of their prospect cache, but so have promotions. There’s still youth on the roster.

Rougned Odor harnessing his tools. Joey Gallo making more contact. Cole Hamels avoiding age gremlins. Jurickson Profar returning from the abyss (he’s hitting .300 with more walks than strikeouts in Triple-A and is just 24, after all).

Yu Darvish.

But it wouldn’t be a stretch. This is a team that has reloaded with less, and they’re planning on reloading for next season, too. The idea of a rebuild seems premature.

At the same time, they could sure loot the Dodgers or Yankees, then swing back around and sign Darvish in the offseason.

Do nothing. Hold onto Darvish and the exclusive negotiating window. It’s tempting to exchange him for prospects, especially ones who might help in 2018, but for every Cliff Lee and Aroldis Chapman who is traded in the middle of the season and comes back, there are roughly 100 pitchers who drift away and never return.

The Rangers have a chance, still, and those notes under what it would take for them to contend next year? They could all happen over the next two months, as well. Really, though, Darvish is too important to their ‘18 plans to deal, and that’s what should drive them. If they make up ground in the wild card chase, that’s grand. If they don’t, they’ll send a message to Darvish that they’d rather keep him than deal with incubating new prospects. The Giants did this in 2013 with Hunter Pence, and he never made it to free agency.

That’s the plan for the Rangers. But I don’t blame them for being tempted. All they would have to give up is two months of a pitcher they can reacquire in the offseason, and they would get a huge boost to their farm. It sounds so simple, so seductive ... how could it possibly go wrong?