So...I seem to have fallen a bit behind on the thread (one of my bands has been working to get a CD out this month, so I've been spending 10 hours a week in the recording studio mixing things), so instead of putting all of the eliminations at once, I'll slowly extricate myself from the hole with a couple teams at a time. Let's start with the two teams that were eliminated at the beginning of last week and the one that was eliminated on Saturday:
It looks like the Giants’ even-year thing is finally over. Although they still haven’t made the playoffs in an odd-numbered year since 2003, the Giants have always managed to find success and a whole lot of luck anytime the year was divisible by two, through a combination of low-scoring baseball (or “torture,” as Bruce Bochy used to call it), standout performances by a couple key contributors every year (Lincecum and Posey in 2010, then Cain and Posey in 2012, and finally Bumgarner and Posey after that), and some good old-fashioned luck (like a massive Padres collapse in 2010).
This year, however, the luck part seems to have deserted them. Giants fans this year weren’t even afforded the luxury of Opening Day optimism; a week before the opener, Madison Bumgarner exited his last spring training start with a broken hand after an unfortunate encounter between his pitching hand and a Whit Merrifield line drive. That same week, Jeff Samardzija strained a pectoral muscle, meaning that the Giants would enter the season with their ace and #3 starter already on the shelf. The pitching staff’s fortunes, then, would depend upon #2 starter Johnny Cueto, and Cueto proved himself up to the task as he went out and dominated opposing hitters…..for about a month, before he was sidelined with an “elbow sprain” that would later (after a brief and ineffective comeback in July) be upgraded to “blown UCL.” In July, major offseason acquisition Evan Longoria would lose a month of the season after a HBP against (who else?) the Marlins, although given the way he’s played so far this year, that may not have been the worst thing for the Giants. Perhaps most damaging, however, has been the balky hips of Buster Posey; he’d been battling the problem for much of the season (even going so far as to skip the All-Star game) before finally undergoing surgery in August.
If luck is the residue of design, though, the Giants bad luck can be said to be the residue of their unusual team design. The Giants have seemingly always had an unbalanced roster construction, as if one of the facets of their game was always compensating for another one; in 2014, for instance, they had a consistent lineup and an inconsistent rotation, while in 2012 and 2016 they had an inconsistent lineup and a top-heavy rotation. They’ve never been a deep team, and they’ve never been a dominating one, having bested 90 wins in just half of their playoff appearances (and never besting 94), and while that’s a fine strategy when the players are playing as expected, it’s always left them a bit exposed in that one or two key injuries can sink the team. This year, they ended up with far more than “one or two” injuries, and the team’s fortunes have suffered as a result.
Despite all of their injury issues, the Giants stuck around the playoff hunt for quite a while, trailing the division leaders by just three games in early July and just five in early August. San Francisco, then, was done in not by the bad luck of injuries but instead by the bad luck of unfortunate timing. The Giants, struggling to stay afloat in the playoff race, unfortunately suffered through a 1-6 stretch (mostly against the Mets and Reds) from August 15 to 22….at exactly the same time the D-backs, Rockies, and Cardinals went 5-1, 5-2, and 6-2, respectively. By the end of the disastrous streak, the Giants were 9.5 games out of the division lead and 8.5 games out of the coinflip game, and even though the Giants rallied for a four-game win streak shortly thereafter, the season was already effectively over by that point. Three days after the end of the mini-collapse, Buster Posey elected to get surgery to fix his hips, thereby slamming the door on the 2018 season for good.
The Giants aren’t in a particularly good place right now. The Giants still owe a whole bunch of money to a pitcher who can’t stay healthy (Samardzija, $40 Million), a pitcher undergoing Tommy John surgery (Cueto, $65 million), and a third baseman who hasn’t been a league-average hitter in two years (Longoria, $60 million). Also, they’re stuck in a division with three ascendant teams, their farm system is terrible, and Bruce Bochy’s four-leaf clover farm has apparently run dry. It’s been a long time since the Giants went through an honest-to-goodness rebuild, and with Bumgarner and Posey still on the team, they may still be able to spend their way out of their predicament. However, given the contracts that they already have on the books and the potential for injuries to reoccur, the Giants’ path to success is narrow one, and San Francisco could just as easily see themselves stuck in this same spot for the next couple of years.
The Giants last won a title in 2014. They last made the playoffs in 2016.
Kurt Vonnegut always used to say that there’s only one place worse than hell…..which is purgatory. While it’s tough to verify Vonnegut’s assertion while we’re here on Earth, the Mets fans who have inhabited baseball purgatory for the last three years might be inclined to nod their heads in rueful agreement. The Mets have been stuck in a holding pattern as a result of their illusory starting rotation featuring Syndergaard, Matz, and de Grom, as well as their equally illusory lineup anchored by Yoenis Cespides. How does a front office throw in the towel with such a talented, if injured, roster? How does one sell off those players when doing so would clearly constitute selling low? Much like the early-in-the-2010’s Rockies with Tulo and CarGo, the stars of the Mets seem to vacillate between leading the team and holding it hostage.
This year was just like every other year, wherein the Mets were faced with the choice of either starting a rebuild with very few tradeable assets (the Mets’ farm is almost completely barren) or rolling the dice with stars who are unlikely to last an entire season. Sensibly, the Mets decided to pick option B, hoping that this would be the year where their stars stayed on the field for at least most of the season. Unfortunately, the Mets lack any assets that would entice teams to give up talent, so they were forced to fill the holes on their roster with the only asset they had: a gigantic pile of U.S. dollars. Despite a free agent marked that inspired no team to spend money, the Mets took $89 million from their coffers and offered it to six free agents: Jason Vargas, Jay Bruce, Todd Frazier, Adrian Gonzalez, Jose Reyes, and Anthony Swarzak. The Mets would also add a new manager, which is another thing that teams do when they can’t figure out how else to improve their team. Mostly, though, the 2018 offseason was spent hoping that the team could find a way to stay healthy, which, if you’ve followed the Mets at all, is a pretty bad bet.
Unsurprisingly, then, 2018 was yet another year of disabled-list purgatory for the Mets. Mets players were felled with everything from back injuries (Cespides) to calcified heels (also Cespides), to hamstring injuries (several players) to hand, foot, and mouth disease (Syndergaard). All told, the Mets have donated roughly 67 million to the disabled list, which is more than the entire Opening Day payroll of the Oakland A’s.
If there was a surprise, then, it’s that the Mets started out hot. Through the first 12 games, the Mets were an astonishing 11-1, which is another thing that sometimes happens with new managers. Unfortunately, the Mets quickly ran into an opponent known as “reality,” and once the annual injuries arrived, the team was down to Jacob deGrom, who may end up being the rare Cy Young-winning starter not to finish with a winning record. There was a mini-surprise in the middle of the season when Jose Bautista turned out to be slightly less dead than advertised, and there was a surprise when Matt Harvey regained his pitching form (although Mets fans might have appreciated it more had the rejuvenation not occurred in Cincinnati). For the most part, however, the Mets had another Mets year, where the acquisitions didn’t work (Gonzalez was released, Reyes is Reyes, Bruce was injured, Jason Vargas’ ERA jumped two runs, Swarzak collapsed), the stars couldn’t stay healthy, and the team embarked on their usual June swoon (5-21) that put them definitively out of the playoffs for yet another year.
Now is not a happy time to be a Mets fan. The stars can’t stay healthy, there’s little help on the horizon, and the organizational structure is a mess. The GM had to step away from the team for cancer treatments, a horrifying experience for anyone. The Mets seem to have no acumen for how to spend money; their free agent spending is a disaster, and their financiers are best known as the group who were swindled by Bernie Madoff and who continue to send money to Bobby Bonilla every year. Of course, an organizational hole in major league baseball is never quite as deep as it seems, and the Mets have enough money to paper over a whole lot of ills, but if the Mets want to have any hope in the future, they need to figure out how to stop donating so much money to the DL first.
The Mets last made the playoffs in 2015. Their last World Series was in 1986.
The Nationals were an exciting team in 2016-2017. In the regular season, they were an absolute powerhouse, winning 95 and 97 games. In the postseason, they seemed wholly out of luck, the loser of some of the crazier postseason games in the last couple of years. Of course, baseball is a playoffs-oriented business, and even a manager who averages 96 wins a year can’t keep his job if his teams keep face-planting in the postseason; naturally, then, skipper Dusty Baker was shown the door in the offseason, marking the third time in Baker’s career that he was fired immediately after a postseason appearance.
Unfortunately, while fans will remember Baker as the guy who couldn’t win a playoff series (or perhaps the manager who blew the Steve Bartman game by leaving Mark Prior in too long), it’s easy to underestimate how hard it is to win 95+ games, even with a talented team. Certainly, a new manager can push a team over the top, but for every Terry Francona or Joe Torre pushing a playoff team to the next level, there are plenty of Byran Prices who can turn a playoff disappointment into a regular season disappointment.
Anyway, this offseason, the Nationals went ahead and fired Dusty Baker, a sensible enough decision for a team looking to get over the hump. Equally sensibly, they hired Dave Martinez, a Joe Maddon sidekick and expert in the new statistical wizardry that permeates the league, as their new skipper. Both of these decisions were, on paper, reasonable, and both of them make sense for a normal team. The only problem is that the Nationals are not a normal team. Washington is currently chewing through its fifth manager since 2011, and the Nats have likely had more seasons ruined by clubhouse strife than anyone else over that time frame. In seemingly every year except for the last two, Washington sportswriters have spent their Septembers breathlessly gossiping over the broken clubhouse, over relievers getting into fights with lockers or position players, over players getting into screaming matches with one another, over players calling out other players in public press conferences. The emblem of the team is undoubtedly Bryce Harper, a player who is immensely talented but also carries an immense presence….and it’s up to the manager to make sure that that presence is a good one.
It was in this score that Martinez would eventually come up lacking. The Nationals had a decent start to the season, as a middling April gave way to a scorching May, and by the middle of June they had closed a six-game gap in the division to grab a small lead in the NL East. Sure, Bryce Harper wasn’t hitting, but he was walking and slugging, and besides – Mark Reynolds and Juan Soto were destroying the ball, and Max Scherzer is Max Scherzer, so it was easy to overlook Harper’s struggles. If anything, Harper’s struggles gave hope for improvement; if Harper could turn things around, and if Anthony Rendon could start driving the ball like he did in 2017 (which he eventually would), the Nationals would be even better in the second half.
Unfortunately, June is when personalities emerge, and as the weather gets hotter and tempers grow shorter, it’s also when personalities can begin to clash. This June, the team-wide détente that Dusty had negotiated in 2016 began to crumble, and the Nats began to collapse. Washington would encounter its first protracted streak of bad baseball in mid-June, enduring a 5-17 stretch that would drop them from a team with a division lead to one with a losing record. On July 4, Max Scherzer dressed down the team following a sweep at the hands of the Red Sox; in the following game, the team sort of responded, in that they spotted the Marlins a nine-run lead before coming back to win. The Nats would tread water for the rest of July before tensions boiled over publicly at the end of the month; on July 31, reliever Shaun Kelley, angry at having to pitch to the Mets with a 20-run lead, got into an altercation that “almost turned physical” with GM Mike Rizzo, which quickly led to Kelley’s ouster. Add in a feud between the two best starters on the team (Scherzer and Strasburg), some controversial Bryce Harper press conferences, and a litany of anonymous quotes from players openly criticizing the manager’s bullpen treatment and describing the clubhouse as a mess, and it’s not hard to understand how a team with such talent could be eliminated so quickly. Even the rare feel-good stories of the season (like the aforementioned 25-4 win over the Mets) always seemed to come with some sort of feel-bad story in the immediate aftermath.
This all puts the Nationals in a difficult spot. Sure, some of the stars like Bryce Harper are impending free agents (although Bryce Harper certainly isn’t the Bryce Harper of old), but the team is still a talented one. It’s easier to fire the manager than it is to fire a team, but it’s hard to fire a manager and change directions so quickly after firing another one the previous offseason. So what do you do? Can you bring in a players’ manager like Baker to be the new bench coach? Do you tear down? Do you bite the bullet and fire the manager? The status quo certainly isn’t working, but there’s no clear out for Mike Rizzo and the Lerner family. The next few years will be interesting ones in DC; the Nationals are probably the one team where anything from “Nats win 120 games” to “The entire Nats team gets injured in a team-wide brawl” could happen and nobody would be surprised.
The Nats have never won a World Series.