Every team in Major League Baseball has keys to their season.  A list of things that have to happen if they are going to finish the season holding the trophy while everyone else watches.  Some teams need a lot of things to go right, and some only need a little, but in this article we will look at the top five keys to success.  In this case we look at the Texas Rangers who are now three years removed from back-to-back World Series appearances.

5. A Healthy Bullpen

They two pitchers in the bullpen with closer experience in Neftali Feliz and Joakim Soria, but both missed most of 2013 with injuries.  It seems so far in early spring that Feliz is the frontrunner for the closer position with Soria and Tanner Scheppers which will give them one of the best back-ends of the bullpen, but if they cannot healthy they will be in some real trouble.  If two of those three go down there is not a lot of depth in the pen to fill into those roles.

4. Shin-Soo Choo Continues Doing Choo Things

The top two players in the Rangers order last season did not have the same success they had in the past, enter Choo.  Last season for the Cincinnati Reds he had an on-base percentage of .423 thanks to 112 walks and scored 107 runs because of it.  If Choo can continue doing what he did last year that will be a lot of runs out there for Prince Fielder and Adrian Beltre to knock in.

3. Fielder Returns to Milwaukee Form

In the last two seasons with the Detroit Tigers Fielder did not have to be the man because he was hitting behind two-time MVP Miguel Cabrera.  Because he was the second fiddle to Mr. Triple Crown he had a two year average of only 28 home runs, 82 runs scored and 107 runs batted in.  That is an all-star caliber season, but the Rangers need him to be an MVP caliber player.  For that to happen he’ll need to match what he did in Milwaukee where from 2007-11 he hit an average for 40 home runs, scored 97 runs and knocked in 113 runs on average.  If you pair that with the consistency of Adrian Beltre the offense could be nearly unstoppable.

2. Jurickson Profar Must Live up to the Hype

Profar has been hyped as one of the top prospects in all of baseball for the last two seasons, and after bouncing around from position to position last season and struggling in 85 games in 2013.  It is believed that the switching from position to position hampered his production, but with Ian Kinsler now gone the second base job is all his and he will not have that excuse.  The additions of Choo and Fielder give Texas quite the core to surround Elvis Andrus and Beltre but if this team is going to rise to the next level Profar is going to have to be the player that amazed in the minor leagues, and not the subpar player he has been so far in his short MLB stint.

1. Someone Other Than Yu Darvish Makes an Impact in the Rotation

A case can be made that Darvish is the best pitcher in the American League.  There will always be a case for Justin Verlander and last season Max Scherzer beat him out for the Cy Young, but his ability to strike out batters with so many different pitches is unmatched.  The problem is that the rest of the rotation is inexperienced or dealing with injury.  This will be the most important key to the Rangers season because if someone cannot step up and help Darvish out in the rotation this team will be playing from behind no matter how good the offense is.  There is a chance that Derek Holland will come back late in the season and help the rotation down the stretch but with him out and Matt Harrison struggling to get healthy it is up to some relatively unknown players to step up and hold this rotation down.