That might seem like an obvious question, but the reality is that the club does have an offseason checklist of things and some of them overlap. It has to start, clearly, with the offense. Rangers GM Jon Daniels was asked about that during Thursday's postseason chat with fans on ESPN Dallas. Here's what Daniels had to say when asked about expectations for 2010 and the area the team needs to improve the most:

"External expectations are clearly higher than if we'd struggled this year, but we've always felt like the '09-'11 window is one in which our plan should come together and bear fruit on the ML field. Having seen what this group is capable of, and knowing that it'll remain largely intact, we expect to win next year. We can and need to improve across the board, but if I had to pinpoint one area it would be offensive consistency. Bottom line is we didn't have enough baserunners. Some of it was due to youth, but that gets overblown - some of the most consistent hitters were 1st and 2nd year players. If we can improve our on-base ability, our situational hitting, and just generally get tougher outs, I like our chances to play winning baseball more consistently."

Hard to argue with that. The question is how to do that. Is it to hope that the players that underachieved or struggled at times this season will bounce back in 2010? Or does this team really have to go out and make trades or hit the free agent market (despite a budget that will likely be the same as 2009) to fix it?

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