ARLINGTON - Everybody is looking for the next big competitive advantage in baseball. The big data and analytics fans rush to find the next great metric. The scouting and development devotees are determined they are going to uncover the next great player in the next small town to which they send an evaluator.

What if there was a third school of thought?

What if it took components of both stats and scouting, but also incorporated a revolutionary concept? We’ll call the concept: “People.”

You can’t grade people on a 20-80 scale and you can’t distill them down to just a spin rate or an exit velocity. There is no metric. It’s the sixth tool, impossible to quantify, but idiotic to ignore. If the Rangers have an identity, this is it. They pride themselves on investing in people. And their second consecutive AL West title sparkles with those investments.

“We had a standard that we were going to hold ourselves to,” Rangers general manager Jon Daniels said Monday as he tried to put the regular season into context before plunging into Division Series preparation. “It all sounds great. It’s all good business school speak, but I feel like we really put that into play this season. I think we’ve put people first and we are going to keep doing that.”

His point: Any investment in people is not an investment in stats only. The Rangers have identified a type of player they want. Think Ian Desmond. Think Jonathan Lucroy. Think Carlos Beltran. And that’s to name just three of the 10 or 11 guys who did not appear in 2015 who will be on the 2016 playoff roster.

There are others and they aren’t just players. Matt Bush has been a gift to the bullpen, but behind him there is staff assistant Roy Silver. Silver advocated for Bush after Bush was released from prison last fall. He now serves as his accountability partner.

Manager Jeff Banister, as serious a student of psychology as a Ph.D. candidate, and hitting coaches Anthony Iapoce and Justin Mashore unlocked the enigma that was Carlos Gomez after he was cast away by Houston. Banister encouraged Gomez to be himself in the clubhouse, the veterans underscored that and the hitting coaches went about reconstructing his confidence and his swing.

Third-base coach Tony Beasley battled debilitating cancer all year but stayed positive in the clubhouse, stayed on Elvis Andrus and Rougned Odor and provided an inspiration for the club. Ownership made it possible for him to shuttle between cancer treatments and the team.

“The mentality starts with ownership,” Daniels said. “Time and again, they treat our people like family, not employees. They’ve set the standard that we are going to take care of each other first and worry about the rest later. It’s an organizational culture.”

It’s evolved.

Daniels always could cite the “business school speak,” but in his first few years on the job, he occasionally struggled with the execution part. It’s understandable. When you become a GM at 28, the players are still often just sets of numbers and commodities. It takes time to learn people. In his 11th season and with the closest, most all-inclusive front office staff he’s had, he understands better.

And he’s been willing to admit shortcomings. Among them: It’s almost impossible for somebody who is not a world-class athlete to understand the mind of a world-class athlete. So he went out and hired world-class athletes in Michael Young and Darren Oliver as special assistants. They’ve brought a better understanding of how words and actions at the executive level will be interpreted at the clubhouse level.

It was Young who advocated the outside-the-box thinking that led to Desmond signing as a free agent in February, agreeing to move to center field and rescuing the Rangers when Josh Hamilton’s knee crapped out.

“What we didn’t have at the department head level was anybody with big league playing experience,” Daniels said. “To have that now gives us a much more well-rounded decision-making process. We can check off more boxes. It’s been a definite help.”

Young and Oliver helped give real definition to makeup. It’s not necessarily just a nice guy. Nor is it somebody who works tirelessly but aimlessly. There is a profile. It may be a little more ideological than physical, but the Rangers seem to grasp it.

“We have targeted guys that fit a certain mold, a mold I think has become identifiable with this organization,” Young said. “We’ve identified guys who are extremely accountable and competitive. We’ve identified guys who embrace the struggle and grind of the full season. And I think we are going to keep identifying them.”

Call it the Rangers’ proprietary competitive advantage.

And whatever it is, it’s working.

Twitter: @Evan_P_Grant