This thread ended up being kind of fun last year, so I thought I'd start it again. Although it's hard to believe that elimination can happen this early, it is indeed that time of year again. This season’s first casualty is...




Yikes. This 100 million dollar trainwreck finds itself the first team eliminated from the American league. A team who slightly overperformed last year, the Mariners came crashing back to reality this year, aided by the predictable injury to Erik Bedard and forty million dollars of dead weight in the form of Richie Sexson and Kenji Johjima.

It always seems like the Orioles play a key role in eliminating other teams by losing consistently to contending teams, and apparently this year will be no exception. Oscar Salazar's one-hopper to Pedroia sealed the O's 7-4 loss and officially ended the season for the Mariners.

It is truly amazing to think that a team could win 116 games in a season, as the M’s did in 2001, and then fail to make the postseason for the next seven years, but such is the case for the Seattle nine. The Mariners have never won a World Series.

My mom was visiting here for a Sox-Mariners series last month. During one game, she looked up at the banners the M's have, and commented, "Wow, they haven't done anything since 2001."

This is the same woman who, a year or two ago, asked me after a routine fly-out, "Why does the scoreboard only say they have three hits? They've hit the ball a lot more than that." When someone doesn't know a caught ball is not a hit, yet knows how feeble a baseball team is, it says something.

The Mariners remain one of only four franchises to never even appear in a World Series, along with the Texas Rangers, Washington Nationals, and Tampa Bay Rays. With a record of 8-17 or worse the rest of this season, they would become the first team ever to lose 100 games while spending $100 million or more on payroll.

Yeah, this should be fun. Care to speculate on which team will be next to be mathematically eliminated from contention?

Seattle played well for the last week too. They won lots of games that no one would have thought they would be able to win earlier in the season. A week ago 100 loss season would have been probable. Now, it's not very likely. But still, they're gone.

By the way, is mathematical elimination when elimination numbers drop to zero or is this a more sophisticated approach where it takes into account all possible combinations of wins and losses in remaining a games? Anyhow, it only matters for the first few teams eliminated out of each division.

Washington's gotta be next. They're out of the wild card race already, and they're one loss/Mets win from being knocked out of the division, despite winning their last seven. It's probably unlikely, but it would be something if they could pass the Braves and finish 4th - Atlanta's going to be on this list before you know it.

Amazingly, San Diego is already done in the wild card, but still has an elimination number of NINE in the putrid NL West. The Pirates have been eliminated in the NL Central, but are still technically alive for the WC, so their clock should be ticking, too.

Today's NY Daily News reported what they termed the MFY's "Tragic" numbers as 15 for the AL East an 19 for the WC.

I'm certainly not suggesting they will be the next one to go, but just thought the NYDN term was a bit more fun than "Elimination" number.

At this point, it's probably enough to just consider when all the numbers are zero. Later, when the math is a little less complicated, it would probably make more sense to figure out when they're actually eliminated.

The next contenders right now are Washington and Pittsburgh. Every other team has a "tragic number" greater than 4 (I like that term. Thanks, bellyofthebeast!).

What's amazing this year is that the "rebuilding" teams (ones who purposely go with the youngsters and trade away the aging vets) are actually outperforming many of the higher-payroll teams. I mean, generally this happens to some degree, but many of the bottom feeders this year weren't considered to be "rebuilding" at the start of the season. I'm thinking specifically of the Mariners, Padres, Astros, Tigers, Indians, and even to some extent the Rangers.

Meanwhile, some of the "rebuilders" -- Oakland, Minnesota, Tampa Bay, Florida -- have kept themselves in contention much longer than anticipated.

New city, new stadium, same crappy team. No matter what they call themselves or where they play, the Nationals can’t win. It was only a miraculous seven game win streak prevented them from being the first team eliminated this year; alas, that streak ended tonight, as old friend Wil Nieves' game-ending groundout to second cemented a 4-0 loss to the Phillies and closed the book on the 2008 Washington Nationals.


It has now been an astounding 27 seasons since Washington/Montreal/San Juan last made the playoffs, which they did in the strike-shortened 1981 season. They still await their first World Series trophy.

Funny that your opening and mine were almost identical. Apparently, great minds and/or bored internet posters think alike.


Yeah, I think the big story is the former. I feel like there are always surprise teams, but the number of absolute collapses this year is astounding, particularly in the AL Central.

I don't think Tampa Bay is rebuilding. They were rebuilding but if you look in the off-season last year, they were amassing veteran pieces to complement their young talent. They were going to be successful this year. But I think it's just the fact that so many high priced veteran free agents just tanked this year. So all those teams that relied on their old guys ended up sucking it up big time.

Don't know about Cleveland though. That was a real surprise. Everyone though coming into this season that they were loaded with young talent. I guess everyone just regressed or got injured. Can't ever discount the injury bug. Oakland is also a surprise. And I don't know how the Twins are doing it. It's amazing.

this spot reserved

You're early. The Pirates still have an elimination number of two in the wildcard, and the Reds have four, so they're not really eliminated.

Edit: Perhaps they are actually eliminated, but, at this point, their elimination number is non-zero, and I'm not willing to actually do anything mathematically more complicated than that.

crap...you're right...fixed, etc

All right, now it's time for an update:



There's really not much left to say about Pittsburgh. They're one loss away from tying the record for most consecutive seasons under .500. They've traded away a number of their most recognizable players. They remain the only team ever to have passed on an Upton in the draft, and the player they chose over B.J. Upton (Bryan Bullington) was released this July.

Now, their 2008 season is officially over. Pittsburgh, nursing a 4-1 lead, imploded in the 7th inning, with Denny Bautista and Kevin Grabow combining to give up five runs (improbably, Craig Hansen was not involved). The fatal blow came when career minor-leaguer Scott McClain hit his second major-league home run, leading the Giants to a 7-6 victory. Old friend Brandon Moss officially ended the Pirates' season, grounding out to second with the tying run on first.

It has now been 16 years since the Pirates appeared in the playoffs (or finished above .500). They have not won the World Series since 1979.

I remain convinced that the Expos would have beaten the Royals in the 1994 World Series. No argument will ever persuade me otherwise.

Agreed. Couldn't Selig simply award the Expos the 1994 National League pennant, and the MFYs (ugh) the 1994 AL pennant, the teams with the best record in each league? It will do exactly 0 harm, and gives the Expos the credit they deserve for their performance that season, and be an opportunity to highlight the Nationals trying to become a competitor in the NL east. I mean they award the Cy Young, MVP, and ROY (Bob Hamelin!) that year. MLB could make a big deal about it next year, on the 15th anniversary of the strike.

Thank you, man. That was the hardest I've laughed in a long long time.



On the off chance you are serious, let me remind you that MLB has spent the last decade trying to get everyone to forget about the strike, and they've pretty much done it. They are NOT going to bring it up now.

Stop me if this sounds familiar. The Orioles start the season well (or at least not terribly), convince everyone that they've improved by sometime in July, then collapse down the stretch. If it doesn't sound familiar, here are some numbers for you:

2007: 10-19
2006: 10-19
2005: 12-18
2003: 10-16
2002: 4-24 (!)
2001: 8-19

Those would be the Orioles' September records by year. Only in 2004 did they avoid collapsing down the stretch, as they had already staged a collapse in June that year. This year, the O's were 39-34 on June 20; since that time, they've gone 25-44, including winning just three of their last 18 games.

Tonight, despite a rare O's victory, the O's season officially ended with Jonathan Papelbon's strikeout of Gabe Gross. The O's tend to be a team that mathematically eliminates other teams by losing to division and wildcard leaders, so for them to be knocked out despite winning tonight is rather surprising.

The Orioles have not made the playoffs since their wire-to-wire division title in 1997, and they have not won a World Series since 1983.





Apparently, this was the obligatory rebuilding season that has to happen if your strategy is to constantly trade vets for prospects. The A's spent the season trading everyone except Jack Cust, and they played about as well as can be expected given the circumstances. One wonders how the A's might do if they actually get some revenue in their new home in Fremont, but for now we'll have to watch them tear down and rebuild every couple years.

A Boston victory, combined with an A's slug-fest loss to Detroit, officially extinguished the Oakland season. Daric Barton, one of the major bright spots for the A's this year, ended the A's pennant chase with a groundout to catcher.

For a team as prospect-laden as the A's, it is surprising that their playoff drought is just two years. Their last World Series victory was in 1989.

Somewhat off topic, but it's beginning to look pretty clear to me that an analogy for the A's the last few years is to build the Bay Bridge halfway between SF and Oakland and then tear it down and start over, and over and over. Their attendance is poor for the two reasons of a bad ballpark and putting a team in front of people with no star quality/bad team. They have a lot of ticket promos and relatively low ticket prices to boot that just doesn't bring in the revenue to pay name players. Vicious circle. The new stadium in Fremont is 2011 at the earliest, as the city of Fremont is still sitting on approval for it. ~32,000 is the proposed seating capacity. Found an update, A's owner still believes the ballpark will be built in Fremont, or does he?

http://cbs5.com/sports/fremont.athletics.s...m.2.785821.html

.220/.314/.343 from a 1B is a "bright spot"? Barton has been a bit of a disappointment since 2005.

I'd say the bright spots for Oakland were Devine and Ziegler. It's not looking up for the organization when the two bright spots are in the bullpen.

They've whiffed badly in the draft a good portion of the past 7 years, and those that have panned out have already (for the most part) been traded to other teams. Out of their BA top 10, the only position player that had a really promising season was RF Aaron Cunningham. It's going to get worse before it gets better.

You're just not savvy enough to recognize Billy Beane's master plan. Unfortunately, I'm not either, but I'm sure it's there somewhere.

To be fair, they also had a phenomenal year (first half, anyway) from Justin Duchscherer (10-8, 2.54 ERA, 1.00 WHIP), and a solid season from 25-year old Kurt Suzuki (.289/.356/.384), considering the state of catching in MLB right now.

Three years ago, Leo Mazzone left the Braves to join his buddy Sam Perlozzo up in Baltimore. Before he left, the Braves had won 14 consecutive division titles; since then, they haven't won anything. At least this year, they have the injury excuse, though whether that's bad luck or an illustration of the folly of depending on the likes of Tim Hudson, Mike Hampton, Tom Glavine, and an aging Chipper Jones to stay healthy is an open question.

Regardless, their season is now over, as a comeback win for the Mets officially eliminates the Braves from playoff contention despite a dramatic, extra-inning Atlanta victory against the Rockies. The Nationals, having already eliminated themselves, are now taking out other teams as well, as Kory Castro's groundout to first clinched the impossibility of Braves' title hopes.

Atlanta last won the World Series in 1995.




If your team can't hit and can't pitch, the odds are that your team isn't very good. Just one inning away from the playoffs last year, the Padres spent most of this year chasing the worst record instead of the playoffs. San Diego never had strong hitting teams (thanks to Petco), but the loss of Chris Young, the aging of Trevor Hoffman, and the regression of much of the bullpen meant that the Padres weren't a terribly strong pitching team either.

Tonight, despite being staked to an early lead, the Padres lost the lead on a Manny home run and fell behind on a Manny sac fly. Kevin Kouzmanoff (or "Kouz", as he's known) grounded to short to end a surprisingly futile playoff bid.

Though the Padres have been to the playoffs five times, most recently in 2006, they have never won a title.

Am I the only one who had the A's winning the west after they looked remarkably competent against the Red Sox in the first series of the year? Yes, I'm the only one? Damn. They are horrible, and I am a horrible judge of talent. Carry on.

It's folly, and I'd add John Smoltz to that list - he's been healthy in the past, but he's not young. Let the record show that half of ESPN picked this team to win the World Series. Seemed stupid then, and now it's been proven so.

They're getting there. The Reds have two stud young arms in Edison Volquez and Johnny Cueto. They've got guys like Joey Votto, Jay Bruce, and Edwin Encarnacion who could be very good very soon. They've even got a surprisingly good bullpen, anchored by Coco Cordero.

It's just....they're not quite ready now. With the exception of Volquez, most of the young guys are only at the "ready to play in the bigs" level, rather than the "star" level. Worse, some of the veteran placeholders have been awful; Corey Patterson hits like he has a plane to catch, Paul Bako may have actually died three years ago, and the back half of the rotation (Harang, Fogg, and the underachieving Homer Bailey) is a disaster. The good news is that they'll probably be a better team soon...unless Dusty Baker gets in the way.

Regardless, any season where a team trades a 600 home run guy and the league leader in home runs in separate trades has to be considered a strange one.

Anyway, now they're done. They actually touched up C.C. Sabathia a little today, but a late inning Brewer comeback, capped by a Mike Cameron go-ahead RBI single, put the Reds away for the year. Promising center fielder Chris Dickerson struck out to end the game.

Cincinnati has not made the playoffs since 1995, though they did lose a one-game playoff to the Mets in 1999. Their last World Series championship was a sweep of the Bash Brothers-era A's in 1990.




You'd think it would be tough to have a disappointing year if you're the Royals. They haven't finished out of last since 2003, and they haven't finished higher than third since Clinton was in his first term. The bar is pretty low. Unfortunately, Kansas City had expectations that their prospects would progress this year, and only a few of them (Mike Aviles, Zach Greinke, and Jo Soria) did so. Billy Butler took a step back. Alex Gordon, the Third Baseman of the Future, still hasn't found his power stroke in the bigs. Mark Teahan stopped hitting. Joey Gathright had four extra-base hits the entire season. Luke Hochevar still hasn't recovered from the development time lost to his Scott Boras-induced holdout.

For a team so dependent on youth (their vets are terrible), there was no way for them to overcome the non-development of such major pieces. They scuffled early, collapsed late, and did little in between. Now, they're out, as an Alex Rios strikeout against Bobby Jenks sealed a 6-5 White Sox victory and eliminated them from the division.

The Royals' last World Series was won in their last trip to the playoffs in 1985.

Hang on -- the Angels clinched the division, doesn't that mean the Rangers are out too?

EDIT: Or are they still mathematical candidates in the wild card hunt?

Yeah, stupid me.

Well, that was entertaining. The Rangers have consistently been a team with good hitting and no pitching, but they've taken it to another level this year, playing the type of rock 'em, sock 'em baseball normally associated with pre-humidor Coors field. This team leads the league in runs scored, and yet they've been outscored by their opposition by more than 60 runs. That's hard to do. I hate to be the one to bring a reality check into a feel-good story, but as fun as the Josh Hamilton experience has been for Texas this year....they might have been better off just putting Edison Volquez in the rotation.

Today, a Texas loss and a Boston win officially dropped the Rangers out of the playoff picture. Jonathan Papelbon closed out the Rangers' season by forcing Scott Rolen to ground out to short.

The Rangers have not made the playoffs since 1999. They have never won a World Series; in fact, they have only won one playoff game in their entire history.

Pretty much everything about the Tigers this year has been a disappointment. The entire pitching staff has been abysmal (Dontrelle Willis deserves special mention for posting an 8.82 ERA before being demoted and hurt). Gary Sheffield, with his nifty .222/.318/.393 line, is 39 going on 100. Edgar Renteria left his bat in Atlanta. Even Miguel Cabrera took a step back this year, which, combined with his arepa-induced move to first base, turns him from an elite player into merely a good one. There's no one quite like Jim Leyland to turn a bad team into a good one and a good team into a mediocre one.

Tonight's loss required the Rangers to come up with three runs in the bottom of the 9th, which Fernando Rodney was apparently more than happy to allow. Chris Davis' walkoff single to complete the ninth-inning collapse was a fitting end to a season which began with high hopes and ended with bitter disappointment.

The Tigers must now wait until next year to attempt to win their first World Series since 1984. They last made the playoffs in 2006.

Great thread! I really enjoyed the count-down last September.

When you think back to the expectations in March, it would have been impossible to believe that the Tigers would be officially eliminated from playoff contention before the Giants.

At least if you bought the hype... if you looked at the team and saw what I saw it was pretty clear that wqhile they could mash, this was a team that was going to be pretty weak on pitching, defensively average, and with crap for a bullpen. I was derisively calling them the "Detroit Yankees" before the season even started.

I was going to gloat about being right about the Tigers then my preseason favorites the Indians went to crap too. And I picked Seattle as a dark horse...

Regardless, no one in their right mind would have picked the Tigers to be eliminated before the Giants. And whoever claims they did is lying, no matter how overrated they thought the Tigers were.

Thankfully the Tigers and Yankees were more than happy to completely blow the 2006 Red Sox out of the water as "most expensive team to miss the playoffs".

Speaking of which....

If you set your expectations low enough, pretty much anything you achieve is considered a success. Such is the case with the Giants, whose 68-84 record in the weakest division in baseball appears to be a success amongst the ineptitude that has characterized most of the recent seasons. They now at least have a young core of starting pitchers to cover for Barry Zito, though hitting is still a work in progress. The bad news is that, in most divisions, the Giants would likely be several years away from contention; the good news is that the Giants are in the NL West, where the only team above .500 required a mid-season trade for one of the most prodigious sluggers in baseball to get there.

Much to the surprise of nobody, the Giants will not make the playoffs this year. Randy Winn's groundout to the always scrappy David Eckstein sealed the deal for the Giants.

The Giants have not made the playoffs since they were eliminated in a walk-off home plate collision in 2003. The Giants currently have the third-longest World Series-less streak; their last World Series win, which occurred in 1954, predates their move to San Francisco.

With the wealth of young talent the Dodgers and Dbacks are in the process of growing I'm not so sure it'll be that easy for the Giants in a few years.

Thanks!

I feel like the Tigers are a great example of how expectations get inflated when you amass a whole bunch of big names. People were looking at the Tigers this offseason and they saw names like All-Star Gary Sheffield, Rookie of the Year Dontrelle Willis, and AL MVP Ivan Rodriguez, and they forgot that those guys are long gone and have been replaced by 39-year old Gary Sheffield, pitching-disabled Dontrelle Willis, and aging catcher Ivan Rodriguez.

That said, I don't think anyone expected Justin Verlander to have a 4.78 ERA, or Nate Robertson to have a 6.15 ERA, or Miguel Cabrera to lose 25 points of batting and 45 of on base. I don't think it would have been shocking if the Tigers had finished the season with, say, 84 wins, but a 71-80 record with 11 games left is a bit of a surprise.



I'm skeptical about the Dodgers' youth movement, not because I don't believe they have young talent, but because I'm not convinced that the GM has a clue what he's doing with that youth. It's possible that the youth will start to take over the Dodgers in the next few years, but it's equally possible that Colletti will decide to give giant contracts to the next round of Juan Pierres, Andruw Joneses, and Nomar Garciaparras, thereby continuing to block the next generation.

Baseball Prospectus had a great line about the Dodgers: "The Dodgers hold the best hand in the division. Their biggest handicap is the man playing it."

The sad part about real-life Cinderella stories is that this is how they usually end up. Some team performs way over its abilities, eventually meets an opponent where the talent gap is just too great, folds like an accordion, and spirals downward thereafter. Since the World Series sweep last year, Troy Tulowitzki got injured, Todd Helton's day of reckoning arrived, Willy Taveras went from under-appreciated speed guy to over-exposed fourth outfielder, and the back half of the rotation went back to putting up typical Coors Field numbers. You'd expect that they'll be better next year, since the only major players on the team over 30 are Helton and Brian Fuentes; of course, given the way the last two years have unfolded, predicting anything about the Rockies at this point is probably a foolish endeavor.

The Rockies have the distinction of being eliminated on an off-day, as the Pirates were charged with the task of beating the Dodgers and keeping the Rockies in the playoff hunt (generally, when your only playoff hope involves the Pirates winning, it's time to start making vacation plans). After James Loney put the Dodgers in the lead in the top of the 12th with an RBI single, Jonathan Broxton survived a tightrope act in the bottom of the inning by inducing a Jason Michaels pop-out to second with two runners in scoring position.

Colorado has still never won a World Series.

Don't ask me why this stuff gets me so geeked up. But looking at the standings, it looks like the Indians are next on the chopping block (pun intended) and not only would they have to win out, but hope that Minnesota takes 2 of 3 from CWS next week (since they cannot win the WC the division is their only mathematical hope). Any other scenario in that series would result in the Indians being eliminated even if they were to win out. However I fully expect to see the Indians logo before the weekend is over.

They already are. The Indians have 77 wins with 8 games to play. The most wins they can hope for is 85. The White Sox already have 85 wins, so they would need to lose all their remaining games to for the Indians to have a shot. But three losses by the White Sox would be to the Twins, who currently have 83 wins. In this scenario, the Twins would end up with 86 wins, and the Indians would be watching the postseason from the comforts of their homes. The Indians were eliminated when the Twins beat the Rays on Friday.

The Indians in 2008. The Mets and A's in 2007. The Angels in 2006. Ignoring the Diamondbacks (who may soon be a part of this list), four of the last five teams to lose the LCS did not make the playoffs the next year. Though it's often forgotten by fans in Boston, New York, or Anaheim, making the playoffs is really, really hard, and even teams go deep in the playoffs one year are no lock to make it the next. It's tempting to call the Indians' season a disappointment, but the reality is that the odds of getting great health and lucky bounces for two years in a row are pretty slim.

Although the Indians were technically eliminated Friday, the win which made it official did not come until today. John Danks shut down the hapless Royals for seven innings, and Bobby Jenks' strikeout of Alex Gordon sealed the deal.

Despite the Indians' recent playoff success, they have not won a World Series since 1948. No other AL team has gone longer without a title.








The good news is that the Jays are probably one of the seven best teams in the major leagues. The bad news is that four of those seven play in the AL East. Barring a major off-season shakeup, the current incarnation of the Jays is pretty much as good as it's going to get, and it's not good enough to make the playoffs. Every position is filled by somebody who is decent, not enough of them are filled by players who are stars, and the cost of transforming from one to the other appears higher than what Ted Rogers is willing to sink into the team.

Given the Red Sox general inability against the Jays this year, it is somewhat surprising that the Sox would be the team to eliminate the Blue Jays. Jonathan Papelbon had the honor of putting the final nail in the Jays' coffin, forcing Adam Lind to fly out to eliminate the Jays from Wild Card contention.

Toronto has not been to the playoffs or won a World Series since 1993, when they did both.

I just posted this on the main board - after dropping two to the Jays on August 16-17, the Sox rebounded to go 7-3 in the final ten games between the teams and finish the season series at 9-9. I was more than a little concerned about how the schedule had back-loaded these games in August and September, but the Red Sox took care of business when they needed to.

Before I say anything else, thanks for this thread. It's a great way to wrap up each season.

That said, in terms of the 2008 season, the Indians are only slightly behind the Tigers in terms of disappointment. This was a team that tied for the best record in baseball last year, a team that had the best 1-2 starting pitcher combo in baseball in 2007, a team with a solid lineup filled with young talent that scored over 800 runs. This was a team projected to win 90+ games easily.

The Indians don't have a starter hitting above .289. Sabathia was traded for an unproven commodity and became 1998 era Randy Johnson. Fausto Carmona's ERA rose 2 full runs. Rafael Betancourt went from being perhaps the best setup man in the league to being a younger Mike Timlin -- his ERA+ declined from 312 to 86! Travis Hafner appears to have officially lost the ability to contibute to a major league lineup, Ryan Garko and Ass-dribble Cabrera took major steps back.

The lone brights are Cliff Lee (a Brady Anderson-esque outlier of a season) and Sizemore (a true superstar). An unmitigated disaster of a season for a team that was expected to compete for the AL pennant.

I don't disagree. I was just saying that disappointment like this seems to be the rule, rather than the exception.

I am giddy thinking about the next logo you will be putting up possibly tonight, around 10:30 pm.....

If someone can post a link to last year's thread, I'd much appreciate it. Memory lane and whatnot.

http://sonsofsamhorn.net/index.php?showtopic=23044

If the Jays were in the American League Central Division, Toronto would have made the playoffs a few more times, definitely.

Go bye bye

bye yankeeeeeeeeeeeeeees!!!!!!!!

I'll spare the write-up - I'm pretty sure the Yankees' demise might be covered somewhere else on the board. The relevant info (for completeness sake): season ended on a Victor Martinez pop-up to Alex Cora, Yankees have not won a World Series since 2000 and have the 24th-longest World Series-less streak in MLB, and Suzyn Waldman is crying somewhere.

Interesting facts about the last time the Yankees missed the playoffs:

1.) There was no wildcard
2.) Toronto was the World Champion
3.) The Yankees' staff ace was Jimmy Key
4.) Jim Abbott threw a no-hitter
5.) Curt Schilling pitched in the World Series for the Phillies
6.) Kurt Cobain was still alive

Needless to say, it's been awhile.