Official 2014 Elimination Thread

[cannonball 1729]

All right, I guess it's time to fire this up.   I'm not 100% sure I'll have time to write all of the obituaries this year, but I'll do what I can.  Last night, we had our first team whose elimination number hit zero:
 
 

 
 
It’s somehow fitting that the Rangers’ season started with the confounding Ian Kinsler trade and ended with the confounding resignation of Ron Washington.
 
The Rangers easily won the award for most puzzling move of the offseason, inexplicably taking on the declining Prince Fielder from the Tigers in exchange for their starting second baseman and a minimum of salary relief.   Many details of this trade are still a mystery, including why the Rangers made the trade, how many milliseconds it took before Tigers’ GM Dave Dombrowski agreed to the deal, or how many hours it took after the call before Dombrowski stopped laughing; what is clear, though, is that the Rangers acquired a franchise lodestone whose OBP had fallen 50 points the year before and who “played first base” only in the sense that he owned a first baseman’s glove and was capable of standing near a base for minutes at a time.  It’s understandable that the Rangers didn’t want to pay the remaining $63 million for the decline phase of Ian Kinsler - they went through a similar issue with Michael Young and didn’t want to get stuck with another expensive ex-second baseman again, especially with Jurickson Profar waiting in the wings - but the guy they traded him for will end up costing the Rangers more than twice that amount.  
 
(The punchline, of course is that Profar injured his shoulder in spring training and missed the entire season.  If only they'd had another second baseman on hand...)
 
Surprisingly, the Rangers jumped out to a 15-9 start against some of the worst teams in the league (Philly, Tampa Bay, Boston, Houston, and the Chicago Americans) before an increase in the talent of the opposition and the inevitable Prince Fielder injury pulled the Texans back to the pack.  An avalanche of injuries and ineptitude followed, and a 15-37 June and July pushed the Rangers to the bottom of the league as they fell below even the lowly Astros to claim the cellar of the AL West.  Texas has made more use of the DL than just about anyone this year; in addition to Fielder and Profar, the Rangers have lost significant time with DH Mitch Moreland, relievers Nick Martinez, Alexi Ogando, and Neftali Feliz, newly minted 140 million-dollar man Shin-Soo Choo (who was hitting .242 at the time of the injury), second baseman Donnie Murphy, third baseman Kevin Kouzmanoff, catcher Geovany Soto, and the entire anticipated Opening Day rotation (which may have included either Ogando or Martinez).  It’s not clear that the Rangers, even as originally assembled, would have been a playoff contender, but there’s no team that can lose that level of talent to the DL and still have a reasonable season.
 
With the Biblical plague of injuries that beset Texas in 2014, one would certainly expect that Rangers will be a better team next year.  However, many of the injuries aren’t exactly of the fluke variety; Pedro Figueroa underwent his second Tommy John surgery, Yu Darvish, Tanner Scheppers, and Alexi Ogando all had elbow problems, Shin Soo-Choo had nagging bone spurs, Mitch Moreland’s ankle required serious reconstructing, and Prince Fielder is fat.  While it’s not clear that all of those conditions will continue to cause problems, the players on that list comprise almost a half-billion dollars in salaries and posting fees, and it’s hard to compete when you’re paying a hefty premium to the DL every year.  Worse, the players that the Rangers are counting on to be the next generation still haven’t really arrived; the prospects who were supposed to comprise the next round of starters have all either been injured (Profar), underwhelming (Elvis Andrus and Roughned Odor), or traded for Matt Garza (Mike Olt, Justin Grimm, CJ Edwards, Neil Ramirez).  Put all of that together, add in a new manager, and you have a team that could either be great or terrible or anywhere in between next year and no one would be surprised.
 
The Rangers last made the playoffs in 2012.  They have never won the World Series. 

 

[TheYaz67]

Hooray - one of my favorite threads of the year.  Can't wait for the rest of the 2014 edition - would be more than happy to pinch hit if you are traveling or something.
 
Fairly unlikely Vegas offered preseason odds on a "Ranger are worst team in AL" prop, but here we are....

 

[HriniakPosterChild]

The Rangers last made the playoffs in 2012.  They have never won the World Series. 

 
They were one strike away once.
 
I think that's been true of only two teams.

 

[TheYaz67]

 
 
They were one strike away once.
 
I think that's been true of only two teams.
 

 
They were actually one strike away twice - in the 9th and 10th innings of Game 6 of the 2011 World Series....

 

[HriniakPosterChild]

 
They were actually one strike away twice - in the 9th and 10th innings of Game 6 of the 2011 World Series....

Schiraldi had 2 strikes on Ray Knight before Stanley came into Game 6.
 
----
Edit: 's/has/had/g'

 

[PrometheusWakefield]

So if the current score holds and Seattle beats Houston tonight both the REd Sox and Astros will be eliminated on the same day.
 
Eliminated the same day as the Astros... yikes. 

 

[cannonball 1729]

All right, let's get caught up.  On Wednesday, we had:
 

 
Last year was the ultimate perfect storm.  A team, galvanized by a tragedy and inspired by David Ortiz's FCC-approved expletive, came together and played fantastic baseball, got the kind of breaks that eluded the Sox for almost a century, grew bizarre facial hair that made the whole team look Amish, dispatched of three good playoff teams in relatively short order, and held the third Sox parade in the last ten years.   The 2013 season was a storybook season with a tragic beginning and fairy tale ending.
 
Apart from that bright spot, though, the Red Sox recent history can’t really be described as anything other than an unmitigated disaster.  In the last five seasons, despite basically spending to the salary cap every year, the Sox have made the playoffs exactly once; of the 14 other teams in the AL, only the Blue Jays, Indians, White Sox, Royals, Mariners, and Astros have fewer playoff appearances in that span, and at least one of the teams on that list (the Royals and perhaps Mariners or Blue Jays) is likely to tie the Sox this year.  Ben Cherington has shown himself to be one of the best sellers in baseball, but it’s a little disconcerting that he’s been in “sell” mode by August for two of his three years in Boston.  
 
The Sox pushed themselves out of contention early this season, as a ten-game losing streak, followed by a seven-game winning streak, followed in turn by a five-game losing streak portended a season where the Sox were clearly capable of winning and also where they wouldn’t be doing much of it.  The Sox pitching has certainly been average-ish and occasionally good enough to carry the team to a stretch of victories, but the Sox offense has been abysmal; they’re last in the AL in both runs scored and slugging, and they’ve hit .198 with RISP and two outs and .229/.308/.312 in close and late situations.   
 
The culprits for this season’s trainwreck were numerous.  Many of the stars of last year and expected starters for this year got injured (Victorino, Pedroia, Buchholz, Middlebrooks), the offense (as mentioned above) took a six-month siesta, the rookies never arrived (note to prospect-enamored fans: youth movements are fun and all, but they’re pretty high risk and often don’t pan out), Stephen Drew held out to avoid the qualifying offer and then hit badly enough to make any qualifying offer talk unnecessary, and AJ Pierzynski’s play turned out to be as bad as his personality.  As the season wore on, Koji even began to look human, as he picked up four losses and two vultured wins from July on and his splitter became straighter and straighter; while this was all understandable for a guy who’s been worked as hard as Uehara, it’s a little disconcerting for a closer who is quickly approaching 40.  As the deadline arrived, the Sox management decided that they, too, were sick of watching the current team, and they sent off most of the rotation and several position players to greener pastures for the stars of tomorrow.  The good news is that the Sox now have a stocked farm system; the bad news is that no one judges a franchise by minor league titles, and at some point, some of those prospects are going to have to make an impact in the majors.
 
And then, of course, there’s the manager.  Farrell appears to be beloved in the clubhouse, and he’s certainly a great leader of men, but even last year, fans wondered whether he was actually good at in-game managing or blessed with a team for which good in-game managing was unnecessary, and many of those same fans scratched their collective heads when he outsmarted himself in several instances in the postseason (like the time he gave Brandon Workman the first at-bat of his professional career in the ninth inning of World Series Game 3, or the time he brought Franklin Morales in to give up the lead in the sixth inning of ALCS Game 6).   Usually, a team that records 11 walk-off wins and is blessed (for most of the season) with one of the best closers in history vastly outperforms its Pythagorean expectation; the ’13 Red Sox missed their Pythagorean by three games.  This year, stuck with a team that couldn’t bail him out with regularity, Farrell’s decisions have been a bit more under the microscope, and that hasn’t been a particularly good look for him.  All told, the jury is still probably out on whether John Farrell is a good manager; Farrell’s performance last year likely bought him another year, but his complete lack of success this year and his ignominious departure from Toronto certainly give reason to temper optimism on his behalf.
 
It’s not entirely clear what the Sox do from here.  They seem to have the makings of a decent (if crowded) outfield, but they’ve been given reason to worry at every position around the diamond except first, and their pitching rotation is Clay Buchholz and some kids.  The Red Sox seem to be in some sort of rebuild mode, which is sounds reasonable on its face but is ridiculous when you consider that the Sox can spend to the cap every year, had enough talent to win the title last year, and are now suffering through a worse season (by winning percentage) than any from 1966-2011.  Of course, if the 2015 Sox hit the jackpot like last year, 2014 will be forgiven, but memories in Boston are short, and another embarrassing campaign like this one may be the end of the line for the current front office.
 
 

 
 
While a number of experts this season have posed reasons why offense across baseball is at its lowest levels in decades, they’ve all found themselves in agreement on one thing: whatever the reason is, it’s clearly not the Rockies’ fault.  Indeed, the Rox spent the season playing a style of baseball that hearkened back to the slightly olden days when sluggers would hit 70 home runs and pitchers were happy to keep their ERA under 5.  So far, the Rox have scored 665 runs and allowed 742 (leading the NL in both categories), and while a team whose run differential is -77 is a team that is destined for an October full of golfing, the Rockies were at least kind enough to make their myriad losses exciting for their fans.
 
 
The Rockies actually surprised everyone to start the season when they posted a strong April and actually pulled into a tie in early May with a 22-14 record.  Then, reality set in, the Rockies realized that they weren’t any good, the annual Carlos Gonzalez and Troy Tulowitzki injuries happened (as well as injuries to Jhoulys Chacin and newly acquired Brett Anderson), and the Rockies went through a 37-72 stretch that encapsulated the vast majority of the season and put them out of the minds of all but the most diehard of Colorado fans.  Colorado has actually had a winning record at home, but they’ve been an unbelievably bad 20-51 on the road (a .282 win percentage), largely because they've supplemented their traditionally awful pitching with a .228/.278/.359 team batting line away from Coors (as opposed to .318/.369/.521 at home).  For a team that's always lived and died by its hitting, that's the recipe for many a terrible road trip.
 
The problem, as it always is for the Rockies, is pitching.  The Rockies typically have a bit of allowance for high ERA’s because they play in such a weird park, but Colorado currently leads the NL in runs allowed by almost 100, and there’s no park in the world that can be that forgiving to a pitching staff.  Obviously, a team in the altitude is going to have a problem with home runs, but what’s disconcerting about the Rockies is that for the first time in ten years, they also led all NL pitching staffs in walks, which aren’t quite as park-dependent (breaking balls may not break quite as much, but the strike zone is still the same size).  Of course, the Rockies had some decent pitchers who just didn’t stay on the field (I think it’s safe to assume that they didn’t actually plan on having Franklin Morales be their #2 starter), but the staff that actually took the field in Denver for most of the year was absolutely horrible.
 
The Rockies may still be a couple of years away from contention, but they seem to vaguely have some idea of what they're doing as a franchise.  They have a top-ten farm system, their whole lineup (except Justin Morneau) is under 30, and they sold high on Ubaldo Jimenez to help restock the farm system.  The only problem for the future is that their two franchise cornerstones can't stay on the field for a whole year, which is a pretty major issue for a team that committed about $100 million to each of those two players.  The hope for Colorado, then, is that they can eventually get enough of a good season out of either Tulo or CarGo that they can dump that player for value and salary freedom and start over.  In the meantime, though....at least there's some offense to watch.
 
The Rockies last made the playoffs in 2009.  They have never won a World Series.

 

[cannonball 1729]

Yesterday added:
 

 
It’s too bad that tough guy points don’t count in the standings, because if they did, the D-backs would be one of the marquee franchises in baseball.
 
A couple of years ago, the D-backs and GM Kevin Towers instituted a policy of Hard Work and Effort, getting rid of slackers like erstwhile All-Star Stephen Drew and MVP Candidate Justin Upton and assembling a collection of players who play the game The Right Way(TM).  Having finally established a team of grinders who had spent their time learning to be gritty instead of learning to hit, pitch, or field, the Diamondbacks took things to another level this year when they instituted an “eye-for-an-eye” policy of responding to every HBP with a beanball, thereby making opposing pitchers afraid to come inside on the D-backs horrible hitters.    It’s not clear that these policies worked in the sense of making the Diamondbacks play better, but the policies have worked in the sense that everyone in the league now hates the Diamondbacks, especially the Pirates (who lost Andrew McCutchen for no particular reason) and the Rockies (who watched as Tulo was beaned in a spring training game).   In many cases, the antics actually backfired – for instance, this June, after Evan Marshall intentionally hit Brewer Ryan Braun for reasons unknown, the next batter up hit a grand slam - but management's blind commitment to truculence has been both unwavering and inexplicable.  
 
In some sense, it might be a good thing that the D-backs were so hated because otherwise they would have been completely unwatchable.  As it was, the Diamondbacks season played out like a giant morality play, as the Diamondbacks were happy to play the haughty yet hapless heel, and they ensured that opposing fans would go home feeling happy and vindicated.  It certainly didn’t help the D-backs fortunes that they lost star hitter Paul Goldschmidt to injury (and karma), suffered through another year of waiting for AJ Pollack to stay on the field, looked on in disbelief as Bronson Arroyo went on the DL for the first time in his life, and watched as most of their prospects took a step sideways.  All told, it was an ugly year at Chase Field, and it ended, sensibly, with Kevin Towers’ ouster in September.
 
The Diamonbacks have spent the last couple of seasons operating seemingly without a plan.  The D-backs lauded prospect Trevor Bauer for his potential, then dumped him as soon as he turned into the player they claimed they wanted; they gave Kirk Gibson the keys and then took his coaching staff out from under him; they hired a manager who likes to be aggressive on the bases and then surrounded him with players who can’t steal (this year’s team is 13th in the NL in SB% - last year, they were 15th); they’ve sold low on several players (Upton, Brandon McCarthy,Bauer, Ian Kennedy, Chris Young, Adam Eaton), paid too much for others (like picking up Heath Bell’s contract for no reason last year), and drastically changed opinions on players at whiplash-inducing speeds.  Towers has always been a bit of a mixed bag as a GM (he made his name last decade by winning a historically awful NL West), so it's not a shock that his tenure has been, well, a mixed bag, but it'll be interesting to see what the next management team can do with the oft-injured major league talent, middling farm system, and weird machismo culture that has taken up occupancy at the Snake Pit. 
 
The D-backs last made the playoffs in 2011.  Their only title came off of Mariano Rivera in 2001.  
 

 
As year three of the post-Bill Smith era concludes, the Twins continue to acquire young talent that continues (mostly) to not yet be a factor at the upper levels of the organization.  The Twins’ teams in A and below appear to be loaded, as the Twins’ affiliates won their division in both Rookie ball and high A and finished second in low A and the Dominican Summer League.  They have the consensus number one prospect in baseball (Byron Buxton), another in the top ten (Miguel Sano), and, depending on who’s doing the listing, as many as six additional prospects in the top 100 (Alex Meyer, Kohl Stewart, Josmil Pinto, Eddie Rosario, and Lewis Thorpe). 
 
Unfortunately, the actual major league Twins that play in Minnesota simply aren't good.  They don't do anything particularly well: they're slightly below average (99 OPS+) offensively and downright terrible (86 ERA+) on the mound.   [SIZE=13.63636302948px]They had one month above .500 (April), and they've won more games than they've lost against just four other teams.  It's nice that the minors are doing well, but minor league performance isn't going to bring fans to Target Field.[/SIZE]
 
Now, this is not to say that it was all bad news for the Twins (that would be the description for the Rangers), but it wasn’t far off.  Phil Hughes, once the hobbyhorse of highly delusional Yankee fans, seems to have entered the Hughes 2.0 portion of his career as he escaped the pressure of the Bronx and finally posted the sort of season that roughly matched expectations.  Local boy Glen Perkins refashioned himself from marginal starter to highly effective closer. GM Terry Ryan managed to find good deals on Kurt Suzuki and Josh Willingham, and he eventually flipped the latter to the Royals for prospect Jason Adam.  Several of the young prospects and players (like Danny Santana, Oswaldo Arcia, Kennys Vargas, and Kyle Gibson) began to assimilate themselves into the bigs with decent enough results, which is certainly the first step for the Twins if they want to become competitive.  It’s probably pretty emblematic of the season, though, that the most memorable moments at Target Field this year came during Jeterfest 2014 (or, as some people called it, the All-Star Game), as there was very little of note that the 2014 Twins accomplished on their own.
 
The Twins are still trying to put their house in order after ex-GM Bill Smith effectively burned it to the ground.   Smith, for those who have forgotten, managed to turn the Twins from an efficient machine to an expensive mess in just four short years, a process that was “highlighted” by his trade of the erstwhile Cy Young award-winner for some backup outfielders and fifth starters.  While Terry Ryan has already done a much better job than his predecessor at finding freely available talent (like Josh Willingham and Sam Deduno), drafting (see above), and avoiding signing Carl Pavano to yet another contract, the rebuilding process is still in the early stages, and it’ll likely be a few more years before the Twins can start printing playoff tickets again.
 
The Twins last made the playoffs in 2010.   Their last World Series was in 1991.

 

[montoursvillefan]

Wow cannon, quite the stories, thanks for the updates. Like Y5YAZ said a good thread. Sox 2015 or beyond maybe? We'll see. Edit the yaz67.

 

[TheYaz67]

 
The D-backs last made the playoffs in 2011.  Their only title came off of Mariano Rivera in 2001.

 
LOL - thanks for including the last part.  I just want to add that not only did the Diamondbacks sell low on McCarthy, but by all accounts their pitching coaches royally screwed him up/got him to change his repertoire and dump pitches that worked (his cutter) - when he came over to the Yankees they let him go back to doing his thing and viola - a much better pitcher again.  So have to wonder if Mike Harkey and his assistants know what the hell they are doing also (in addition to the fact the staff has given up the second most runs in the NL)....

 

[Comeback Kid]

IIRC as an organization the Diamondbacks have forbid any of their pitchers from throwing a cutter. They might want to reconsider that policy after this season.

 

[cannonball 1729]

Playing catchup again....here's Saturday's entrant:
 

 
While the A’s have made quite a bit of noise this year, it has been the Astros who have most resembled the caricature of a Moneyball team: great at statistics and player-selection decisions and absolutely horrible at dealing with humans.
 
After Jim Crane took over as owner of the club in November of 2011, he quickly remade the analytical portion of the club in Baseball Prospectus’ image; he and new GM Jeff Luhnow brought on BP alumni Kevin Goldstein, Colin Wyers, and Mike Fast and stole Sig Mejdal from the Cardinals.  On the field, the ‘Stros had a managerial opening after Brad Mills was inexplicably scapegoated for a talentless team that lost 111 games, so the front office filled it with analytical favorite Bo Porter.  This was a marked change from the days when the Astros would ignore pesky things like Pythagorean win expectancy when making decisions (hence the awful decision to go for it in 2009), but Crane and Luhnow felt like a new era in Astros history needed a new way of thinking, and the two men clearly saw a market that undervalued tenure with Baseball Prospectus.
 
To this point, the results have been exactly what one would expect from a front office with a plethora of analysts and nobody capable of actually managing people.  The talent has definitely started to come along, as Jose Altuve is challenging Dustin Pedroia as best tiny player in the game, Chris Carter discovered a home run stroke and hit 36 home runs, George Springer made a strong first impression as the rookie with the 124 OPS+, and Dallas Keuchel and Collin McHugh put up legitimate frontline starter-type seasons.  The improvement actually showed up in the standings, as Houston mounted an almost-mediocre season that will see them finish with something other than the worst record in baseball for the first time since 2010.  This year, they even had a winning record in both May and July; that may not sound impressive because it isn’t, but it’s the first time the Astros have had a winning record in *any* month since September of 2010.
 
Unfortunately, the Astros feel-okay season was marred by a series of bungled transactions, self-inflicted wounds borne of equal parts malice and incompetence.  In spring training, the Astros tried to play hardball with prospect George Springer, using the threat of demotion to try to strong-arm Springer into a team-friendly contract extension that guaranteed all of $7.6 million to the young slugger; the gambit failed, as Springer called their bluff and they called him up anyway.  A couple months later, Houston would try to play hardball again with draft pick Brady Aiken, using his less-than-stellar physical as an excuse to cut 3 million off of their offer to him; after this gambit, too, backfired, the Astros found themselves not only without a first pick but also having to renege on an offer to their fifth-round pick.  (The latter may yet cause a problem; the CBA frowns on rescinding offers.)   The personnel problems came to a head on September 1, when manager Bo Porter was fired after frequent altercations with Jeff Luhnow; in the aftermath, it became clear that the divide between the front office and the on-field staff was large and irreparable.
 
The problem for the Astros is that they’re not going to find too many managers who are more analytic-friendly than Porter, and if they can’t even get along with him, it’s hard to imagine who they can bring in to make things work.  Houston will likely continue to accrue talent (although if the Astros keep playing hardball, they may not be able to keep it), but without an actual baseball manager to lead the team, it’s not clear how they can make the step from “interesting” to “good.”  As much as we deride the Joe Morgans of the world their complete misunderstandings of what Moneyball is about, they do have one thing right: MLB rosters aren't fantasy league teams, and players still need to be managed like human beings.
 
The Astros last made the playoffs in 2005.  They have never won a World Series.

 

[cannonball 1729]

And Sunday:
 

 
For the first time in a while, the future looks a lot brighter than the past. 
 
The team that Theo inherited in 2011 had a bleaker outlook than almost any other team in baseball.  The Cubs had whiffed on every draft for about a decade (badly – since 2002, their best draft pick was probably either Sean Marshall or Randy Wells), and they had mortgaged what little farm they had had left on an “all-in” move for the 2008 season.  The top prospect upon Theo’s arrival was either the immortal Brett Jackson or the equally immortal Trey McNutt, and most of the frontline talent was either injured (Alfonso Soriano), aging (Aramis Ramirez, Ryan Dempster), maddeningly inconsistent (Carlos Marmol), or a pain in the rear (Carlos Zambrano).  So bereft of talent were the Cubs that when they took Theo Epstein from the Sox, they basically had to give the Sox an IOU in lieu of compensation; the Cubs eventually sent someone named Chris Carpenter, apparently hoping that the Sox would mistake him for the other Chris Carpenter and call the trade even.
 
The good news for Theo, if you can call it that, was that nobody was going to object to a complete tear-down of the franchise, and that’s exactly what Mr. Epstein did.  Over the last three years, Theo has traded away nearly every player for whom value could be extracted;  this year, he appears to have finished the selloff by sending Jeff Samardzija and Jason Hammel to the A’s for still more young players.  What’s left now is a team where everyone is young (the Cubs have the youngest average age of any team in the bigs), prospects abound, and no one can yet hit, pitch, or field (11th in the NL in both OPS+ and ERA+).  There are what appear to be pieces of a credible MLB team, including an all-star first baseman, a strong left side of the infield, and a legitimate ace and closer, but there are still an awful lot of holes for the new kids to come up and fill.  At some point, the Cubs will probably have to start spending money to fill some of those holes - although their initial attempt at doing so was disastrous (Edwin Jackson: $46 million, 5.47 ERA) - but for the time being, they’re content to watch highly-touted kids like Javier Baez, Jorge Soler, and Matt Szczur assimilate into a major league lineup while the Cubs lose 90+ games a year.  
 
What’s been interesting about the Cubs rebuilding process has been that Theo Epstein has governed with a consistent but unusual organizational philosophy: stock up on bats and figure everything else out later.  This is a pretty marked change from how teams have done things in the recent past - for example, the newly rebuilt Orioles’ franchise was governed by Andy McPhail’s stated principle of “grow the arms, buy the bats,” and the Royals are the pitching-and-defense-est team in the bigs -  but the power shortage in MLB appears to have turned the exercise of team building on its head.  The next couple of years will show us if this was the right move; if it works, the Cubs could be a contender for several years with Anthony Rizzo and Kris Bryant in the middle of the order, but if it fails, the Cubs could end up looking an awful lot like this year's Rockies.
 
106 years and counting....

 

[Al Zarilla]

Cannonball, re "Apart from that bright spot, though, the Red Sox recent history can’t really be described as anything other than an unmitigated disaster.  In the last five seasons, despite basically spending to the salary cap every year, the Sox have made the playoffs exactly once;"
 
I guess you're right but, to me, one world series win trumps those lousy seasons. Easily. It's like a great player, like Williams, Bonds or Marino never being on a title team vs. great players that were on just one. The one, even if it was one in a 20 year career, makes it all so much better. 

 

[Laser Show]

Cannonball, re "Apart from that bright spot, though, the Red Sox recent history can’t really be described as anything other than an unmitigated disaster.  In the last five seasons, despite basically spending to the salary cap every year, the Sox have made the playoffs exactly once;"
 
I guess you're right but, to me, one world series win trumps those lousy seasons. Easily. It's like a great player, like Williams, Bonds or Marino never being on a title team vs. great players that were on just one. The one, even if it was one in a 20 year career, makes it all so much better. 

From a fan's perspective I certainly agree, but if you're objectively evaluating the franchise I would also say it's been a disaster. IMO, and I know many share this thought process, the postseason is a crapshoot. So, the best way to ensure championships and long term success is making the playoffs as often as possible. And the Red Sox, despite their resources, have seen October just once since 2009.

I really do think that if they miss the playoffs next year they need to start reevaluating some things.

 

[cannonball 1729]

Catching up for Monday night:
 

 
Like their compatriots across the city, the White Sox are a young team that is still rebuilding after the front office forgot to make a backup plan for when incumbent core grew old.  
 
For the second half of the last decade, the White Sox were content to run a team on the field whose offense consisted of Dunn, Konerko, Pierzynski, and whoever else happened to be around the clubhouse at the time.  Of course, such a team is unlikely to break 90 wins in a season; however, the late 2000’s AL Central was terrible, so the White Sox were able to parlay their three-man offense into a division title in 2008 and a one-game playoff loss in 2009.  Unfortunately, such a team “building” strategy is only sustainable for a limited time, and after Pierzynski left town and Dunn and Konerko started posting Mendozan batting averages, the White Sox realized that they forgot to formulate a plan B.  Last year’s team was the inevitable result of that oversight, as the Sox fielded a 99-loss team whose hitters collectively couldn’t have hit water if they fell out of a boat.
 
This year, expectations on Chicago’s South Side were low, and the White Sox certainly delivered.  In the offseason, the Sox had traded closer Addison Reed for a prospect and starter Hector Santiago for Adam Eaton (an actual hitter!  Not named Dunn, Konerko, or AJ!), and they still hadn’t filled Jake Peavy’s hole in the rotation, so the pitching generally stunk.  On the plus side, the hitting got better, partially because it couldn’t get worse, but mostly because Eaton, Connor Gillaspe, and (especially) Jose Abreu had breakthrough seasons; the former two were prospects who finally had the productive seasons that everyone expected (albeit not with the team that drafted them), and the latter was a brilliant $68 million gamble by GM Rick Hahn.  Sadly for the South Siders, the improved hitting couldn't make up for the pitching staff's propesity for throwing the ball all over the place (1st in the AL in both walks and HBP), and while the current Sox team is on pace for an 11-game improvement over last year, the improvement seems mostly to be the result of Pythagrean underperformance last year and overperformance this year.
 
As the Gillaspe and Eaton acquisitions demonstrated (and the Gavin Floyd and Carlos Quentin acquisitions before them), the White Sox have always had a knack for finding talent in other teams’ trashcans, and they’ve redoubled their efforts at finding talent abroad as well (with amazing preliminary results).  The problem is that they’ve not drafted particularly well; while Chris Sale worked out splendidly and Addison Reed brought back value, the White Sox haven’t a position player come through the draft and post a 3-win season in eight years.   In the era of more teams having money and fewer free agents hitting the market, it’s tough to win consistently when your farm system keeps pumping out question marks.  Now, It’s entirely possible that the White Sox can find success through these alternative alleys of dumpster diving, winning trades, and shopping abroad, but to do so would be remarkable, and if they can’t, well, this decade’s AL Central is a lot better than last….
 
The White Sox last won a World Series in 2005.

 

[Flunky]

Cannonball, re "Apart from that bright spot, though, the Red Sox recent history can’t really be described as anything other than an unmitigated disaster.  In the last five seasons, despite basically spending to the salary cap every year, the Sox have made the playoffs exactly once;"
 
I guess you're right but, to me, one world series win trumps those lousy seasons. Easily. It's like a great player, like Williams, Bonds or Marino never being on a title team vs. great players that were on just one. The one, even if it was one in a 20 year career, makes it all so much better. 

 
not just this, look at the 90+ win seasons since 2001:
 
2013
2011
2009
2008
2007
2005
2004
2003
2002
 
65% of their seasons have been competitive. It's a lot more than a lot of teams. Winning the World Series sure is one of those glass half full/half empty deals for fans.

 

[cannonball 1729]

Last night gave us two more:
 
 

 
This season for the Reds was the proverbial tale of two halves.  For the first half of the season, the Reds were a force to be reckoned with, a team whose middling offense was offset by one of the best pitching staffs in the league.  At the close of business on the day of the All-Star Game, the Reds were just two games away from having the best record in the National League, and their torrid June had convinced many a fan and prognosticator that Cincinnati would be a major player in the upcoming pennant races.
 
It would be an understatement to say that the second half hasn’t been nearly as kind to Cincinnati as the first.  Since the All-Star break ended, the Reds have been the worst team in baseball, as a seven game losing streak coming out of the break set the tone for their awful 20-38 performance through the dog days of summer. Their hitting went from middling to anemic, as Reds’ hitters have collectively hit .221 and scored fewer runs than anyone else in the bigs in the second half (despite playing in an absolute bandbox of a home park).  The pitching, meanwhile, has been a half-run worse than the first half, which isn’t terrible but hasn’t been nearly good enough to carry the slumbering offense. 
 
The culprits for the second-half swoon are many.  Joey Votto still hasn’t played an inning since July 5 (and appeared to be injured long before that) which is a huge loss considering that Votto was four-time defending OBP champion coming into the year.  Staff ace Homer Bailey hasn’t pitched in a month, and last year’s rookie sensation Tony Cingrani hasn’t fired a pitch in anger since June.   Jay Bruce’s knee injury-plagued season has gone from disappointing before the break (.229/.310/.409) to abysmal after it (.189/.237/.297 after); similar second-half declines happened with Billy Hamilton (.285/.319/.423 vs. .211/.265/.272), Todd Frazier (.290/.353/.500 vs. .255/.308/.375), and Zack Cozart (.233/.284/305 vs. .200/.243/.281).  Even Dat Dude Brandon Phillips, long a favorite of fans and media, has found himself confronting the ire of both groups as a nagging thumb injury has made him unable to play to his usual standards in the second half (.217/.287/.272, as opposed to a .272/.308/.392 1st half).
 
When the bottom completely fell out, though, was in August when the bullpen turned into the arson squad.  The starters have managed to hold themselves together all season, but the relievers posted 5.08 and 5.40 ERAs in August and September, respectively, and have lost 13 games since August 1.  Special mention here has to go to J.J. Hoover, the reliever has who somehow managed to pick up 10 losses out of the bullpen, a feat made all the more impressive by the fact that he’s only entered 20 games where the Reds were either tied or had the lead (and six of those appearances were leads of five runs or more). 
 
The Reds are one of those teams like the 2012 Red Sox that seem to have a lot of the pieces (they were in the playoffs the last two years in a row, although last year’s appearance was as the losing wildcard team), but some combination of injuries, underperformance, and who-knows-what-else made them into a terrible team for the year.  Obviously, the pitching will be better if Bailey and Cingrani come back, the team OBP will look better if Votto can get on base at his usual clip, and the defense will look much better with a repaired Phillips and a healed Bruce.  The major question for the offseason, then, is whether those players can return to the levels that they were over the last two years; if they can, it’s likely that 2014 will be little more than a blip on the radar for a generally successful franchise run.
 
The Reds last won the World Series in 1990.
 
 

 
 
I think it’s safe to conclude that Ruben Amaro doesn’t really understand what this whole “general manager” thing is all about.
 
In 2008, when the Phillies had a strong young core and newly minted championship rings, the front office began to face the type of decision that can make or break a franchise: which of your team’s stars do you extend, and which do you let walk to free agency?  It’s a tough decision, and many a franchise has been torpedoed by a poor choice (Pittsburgh choosing Andy Van Slyke over Barry Bonds comes to mind), but few franchises’ decisions have been as dumb as Amaro’s “go ahead and re-sign everyone and figure out the payroll problems later” mantra.  By 2011, the Phillies’ payroll had broken $160 million (it had been $89 million just four years prior), and by 2012, the Phillies had officially entered Payroll Hell, putting up $172 million (mostly in unmovable, long term contracts) for a team that won 81 games .   After a cursory attempt at shedding payroll toward the end of the 2012 season, the Phillies gave up on frugality and started spending money again, signing Cole Hamels to a massive extension and giving deals north of $8 million per year to Carlos Ruiz, Marlon Byrd, and AJ Burnett.  Unfortunately, it turns out that trying to spend your way out of a payroll crunch is a bad idea, and the 2014 Phillies are now a team with the worst of all worlds; lots of payroll ($177 million, third in the MLB), no flexibility (they already have $112 million in salary commitments and achievable vesting options allocated to 2016, and 2014 isn’t even over yet), and very little on-field success (69-82, last in the NL East).
 
On the field, the 2014 Phillies were one of those teams that never really had a chance.   The pitching scuffled in April (4.31 ERA) and the offense went to sleep from May through July (.230/.311 BA/OBP in May, .240/.291 in June, .248/.302 in July), and by the trade deadline, the Phillies were the third-worst team in the NL.  A brief stint of .500-ness took hold of the team in August, but the September Phillies are hitting .206, and it’s tough to beat anyone when your whole offense could be replaced by nine Mario Mendozas without anyone noticing.
 
What truly pushed the season from pathetic to absurd was the bizarre saga of the trade deadline.  Faced with a payroll that desperately needed paring and a couple of clearly movable pieces (Jonathan Papelbon, Marlon Byrd, Cole Hamels, and AJ Burnett among them), the Phillies decided that their best option was to….do nothing.  Moreover, Amaro then took to the airways to complain that other GM’s weren’t serious about his players and that he had “a lot of talent” on the team.  It came out shortly thereafter that other GM’s had indeed tried to deal with Amaro but found that he would only make ridiculous offers (like Marlon Byrd for Yankees’ top prospect Aaron Judge) that didn’t even deserve a counter-offer (according to Jayson Stark, one rival executive described Amaro’s offer as “Could you please drive your AA team to Reading and drop them all off?”), and that Amaro was trying to rebuild the Phillies by making "winning" trades as opposed to, say, "mutually beneficial" ones (not surprisingly, other GM's don't want to be on the "losing" side of a trade).  Whatever the reason for the inactivity, this Phillies team looks basically the same now as it did when everyone wrote them off in March (except perhaps for Papelbon, who’s in the midst of a seven-game suspension for making a lewd gesture to the fans), which is absolutely inconceivable for a team as bad and vet-loaded as the Phils.
 
All told, the Phillies are basically stuck for the time being; they’re not good, and they owe a lot of money to a lot of people.  The only question, then, is who will be at the helm; if it’s still Amaro, the ownership can look forward to an awful lot of losses and an awful lot of empty seats in 2015.
 
The Phillies last made the playoffs in 2011.  Their only two World Series trophies came in 1980 and 2008.

 

[SLC Sox]

I love the Elimination Thread!  In years when the Red Sox are down I embarrassingly pay less attention to the league throughout the summer and this has been a great way to get a high-level overview of what I've missed.  Thanks cannonball, keep up the good work.

 

[AlNipper49]

My favorite thread of the year

 

[cannonball 1729]

I probably won't get to today's eliminations until tomorrow, but let's get caught up from the rest of the weekend.  On Friday, we had a couple:
 

 
Just as Rockies’ pitching is rarely as bad as the raw statistics imply, the Padres’ hitting is rarely as inept as one would figure from raw statistics.  PETCO Park is a cavernous place to play ball (trying to hit a ball out of Petco is a bit like trying to hit a ball out of Yellowstone), so we always have a tendency to underestimate just how good the Padres’ offense is.
 
Unfortunately, this year’s Padres’ offense was every bit as bad as their statistics would lead you to believe.  Their 84 OPS+ is the worst in the NL, and the lineup consisted of Seth Smith and a bunch of guys who had absolutely no idea how to get on base.  Certainly, losing C/1B/DH Yasmani Grandal to two hamstring injuries and a knee injury didn’t help, but key cogs like Jedd Gyorko, Will Venable, Everth Cabrera (pre-injury), and Chase Headley (pre-trade to the Yankees) took huge steps back, and Cameron Maybin simply hasn’t developed at all since arriving in San Diego three years ago.  Their hitting has been slightly better since the All-Star break, but that’s largely because there’s only one direction you can go when your entire team hits .171 in June.  
 
What’s unfortunate about the current situation is that this looked to be the year that the Padres made the jump to a .500 team.  The pitching staff looked to have finally filled its holes (which it did - Padres pitchers were as good as anyone in the NL besides the Nationals), and several hitters had breakthrough years in 2013, portending a year where the two might come together to some good.  Unfortunately, this year’s Friars' team seems largely to have been torpedoed by the fact that they had to play against the Dodgers and the Diamondbacks, against whom they went a combined 14-24.  With even a decent showing against those teams (especially the D-backs, who are terrible), the Padres would have had that first .500 season since the 2010 collapse; as it was, ownership felt compelled to fire GM Josh Byrnes in June during just his third season at the helm.
 
The big issue for the Padres is that they’re on their fourth GM in five years, and it’s hard to keep a plan in place if you keep switching out the guy in charge of executing it.  The Pads have shown signs of being decent over the last several years, but they seem to lose or fire their general manager at the first sign that something is going wrong, and while it’s understandable that you fire a GM when your team is having a horrible month, it goes without saying that “understandable” isn’t the same thing as “good.”  The new guy is a bit of an unconventional choice, which is usually the direction that teams go when their last two guys were conventional choices, so there may be a bit of a learning curve; hopefully, the Padres realize this and are willing to give him more than two years before showing him the door as well.
 
The Padres last made the playoffs in 2006, though they did lose a one-game playoff in 2007.  They have never won a World Series.
 

 
Tampa Bay has always worked with a slim margin for error.  The Rays are one of the perennial lowest-of-the-low-budget teams, cursed as they are with a mausoleum of a stadium that’s located in an area where no one lives (and a lease that doesn’t run out until 2027).  Expensive free agents are obviously off the table for the Rays, but so too are many of the less expensive ones, which means that the Rays have to live off of the fruits of their farm, aided only scrap heap discoveries (like Carlos Pena) or the occasional mid-level free agent splurge (like Grant Balfour this year).
 
During the 2008-2013 Rays’ run of success, the Tampa Bay front office made a number of smart moves, but the ballast of the team basically came from the fact that they drafted at the top of the draft for many years prior; David Price and Evan Longoria (picked 1st and 3rd in their respective drafts) were cornerstones of the franchise, and BJ Upton (drafted 2nd) was flipped for Matt Garza.  It’s certainly no indictment of the Rays front office to say that they used their early draft picks well; picking talent at any point of the draft isn't easy, as even tops of drafts are loaded with minefields like Bryan Bullington (the guy picked before Upton) and Greg Reynolds (the guy before Longoria), so they certainly did a good job of grabbing the talent while they had the chance.
 
The difficulty with depending entirely upon the draft for a team-building strategy is that an improving team is likely eventually to encounter a bit of a prospect gap; players picked at the top of the draft are often ready to contribute to the team immediately, where as those toward the bottom of the round tend to be longer term projects.  The Rays are currently going through a bit of that lull right now, as the last round of prospects have all graduated to the bigs while the next are still a couple of years off; they’re still waiting on their first draftee to make his MLB debut from the 2011-2014 classes, and the only player the Rays have drafted since 2008 who’s yet become a starter in the bigs has been Kevin Kiermaier.   The Rays tried to counterbalance this problem by being more aggressive in the foreign markets, but they only had limited success (basically, they got prospect Hak Ju Lee and a bunch of lottery tickets) before the new CBA shut down that path as well.  The Matt Garza and David Price trades restocked the farm a little bit, but we’re still probably waiting a year or two before we know if the Rays are as good at picking on the bottom of the draft as they were at picking at the top.
 
Even despite the obvious difficulties of team construction, the Rays managed to put together a sometimes decent, largely inconsistent team this year.  Much like last year, the Rays had a torrid July (17-6) and a pedestrian rest of the year; the problem was that the pedestrian part was much more pedestrian this year than last (58-74 in non-July this year vs. 71-66 last), and it’s tough to make up such a massive amount of pedestrianness in a single calendar month.  Unfortunately for Rays fan(s), the Rays decided to cluster many of their losses at the beginning of the season, which meant that they were never close to contention; they haven’t been within six games of the division lead since May, and even in the midst of their streak, they never really got close.
 
With the talent that now calls the Trop home, the Rays should generally be in contention over the next couple of years (developmental missteps by Wil Myers and Jake Odorizzi aside); in fact, most of the difference between this year’s disappointment and last’s year’s playoff appearance came from a four-game overperformance of Pythagorean last year and a four-game underperformance this year (the actual difference between Pythagoreans was only about three games).  The problem for the franchise is that the next round of stars has to replace guys like David Price and Ben Zobrist, and until those players materialize, the Rays may have a harder and harder time getting through the regular season an increasingly crowded AL East.
 
The Rays have never won the World Series.
 
 

 
I suppose that this is what progress looks like.  For the first time since 2008, the Mets are on pace to finish the season with a Pythagorean win expectancy above .500, and for only the second time since 2008, they’re on pace to finish fewer than 20 games out of first.  Of course, no one awards trophies for third-place finishes or win expectancies (and their actual record is three games worse than it should be), but for a team trying to rebuild both its on-field product and its finances at the same time, the Mets will take whatever victories they can get.
 
This year, the hitting looked decent for the first time in ages; unlike last year’s lineup, which was basically David Wright, this year’s lineup actually packed some punch.   Although Wright actually got a bit worse, Lucas Duda stopped being a platoon hitter and started being an actual hitter,  Travis d’Arnaud finally found his big-league stroke, and Curtis Granderson brought his old-player skills to the other side of the city (.223 BA, tons of walks, 20 homers).  Of course, one of the issues for the Mets this year was that the hitting generally got worse as the game got late (for a team that hit about .245 for the first six innings, the Mets hit .230 from the seventh on, and they hit about .220 when things were late and close), but that’s more likely to be a fluke than a fatal team-building flaw. 
 
The biggest thing holding the Mets back right now is that their rotation is basically an ace and four #4 starters; Jacob deGrom turned out to be as good as projected, and Jon Niese and Zack Wheeler are decent enough back-of-the rotation guys (so far – Wheeler may yet improve), but they’re missing that second above-average starter that would make the rotation formidable.  The Mets actually committed $20 million to Bartolo Colon in hopes that he would be that second starter, but they soon learned that committing a bunch of money to a 41 year-old coming off of a career year and a year removed from a steroid suspension may not necessarily be a good idea.  (See?  Learning valuable lessons counts as progress, too.) The rotation should receive a huge shot in the arm next year when Matt Harvey comes back from Tommy John, and barring any more weird financial issues or other assorted Metsian things, the Mets now actually have enough talent that they could conceivably put together a real winning season next year for the first time since the Bush presidency.
 
The Mets haven't made the playoffs since 2006.  They last won a title in 1986.

 

[cannonball 1729]

And Saturday; thanks to a scheduling and mathematical quirk, the 3rd-place team in the NL East was eliminated before the 4th-place team:
 

 
 
The only thing worse than having your star player suffer a season-ending injury is having your two star players suffer season-ending injuries.  
 
Coming into the 2014 season, the Marlins’ roster basically consisted of Jose Fernandez, Giancarlo Stanton, and some other guys, and the season highlights were expected involve Jose Fernandez improving on his ROY season or Stanton hitting a ball so hard that it disintegrated like in The Natural.  Those expectations changed rather quickly when Fernandez lost velocity in early May with what was first termed an upset stomach, then a right elbow sprain, and finally a damaged UCL, and a visit to the Kerlan-Jobe clinic ended his season shortly after it began.  That would remain the most horrific injury of the Marlins’ season until September, when Giancarlo Stanton took a baseball to the face, ending his season as well.  The good news is that both are slated for recovery long before next year’s spring training and Stanton’s injury is unlikely to cause lingering problems; the bad news is that UCL injuries can recur, so it’s entirely possible that the Kerlan-Jobe center may see Mr. Fernandez again before too long.
 
Even though the Marlins haven't been in contention since May, there were still some bright spots for the few Miami fans who actually made it to the park this year.  Henderson Alvarez turned into the ace that Jose Fernandez was supposed to be, Marcel Ozuna and Christian Yellich turned in good major league seasons (a very positive sign for two players who are still under 24), and Tom Koehler came out of nowhere to make the jump from “nondescript” to “#2/3 starter.”  Most importantly, Giancarlo Stanton put on an absolute clinic, hitting some of the longest home runs in baseball (he had three of the eight longest homers in the majors this year) and leading the NL in home runs, OPS, total bases, and walks (intentional and total).  All told, the Marlins are definitely a much better team this year than they were last year or the year before, which means that their decision to unload all of their contracts in the 2012-13 offseason may have been the correct one (baseball-wise, not PR-wise) after all.
 
 
The problem that the Marlins have going forward isn’t just that the fate of their team rests on a young kid coming back from Tommy John surgery, or that they’re back down to last in the NL in attendance, or even that they’ve openly feuded with their fans from time to time (like last year, when they moved the signs on the baselines up several inches, blocking the view of the first row of fans.  Or like the time they convinced Miami to give them $500 million for a new stadium and then sold off all of their players).  No, the biggest problem that the Marlins have is that ownership has a less-than-stellar reputation around the league, which may yet cause problem with trying to sign mid- and high-end free agents (or extending the players they have).   Of course, money talks, and if they throw an enough money at a free agent, they may manage to land someone; however, Miami’s franchise is one where the fans don’t show up, the front office acts retributively in cases of management abuse (like the Chris Valaika saga last year – Valaika was demoted last year for being one of the players that hitting coach Tino Martinez verbally assaulted), and new long-term signees are often traded within the year (often to places they wouldn’t have chosen themselves).  It’s an ugly situation down there in Miami, but ownership has no one to blame but themselves, and until something changes, the Marlins are going to have to put together a contender while functioning as the baseball equivalent of Siberia.
 
The Marlins haven’t made the playoffs since Josh Beckett tagged out Jorge Posada to end the 2003 World Series.

 

[Harry Hooper]

Great stuff here, thanks for providing it!
 
Loved this line in the Sox summary:
 

The Sox pushed themselves out of contention early this season, as a ten-game losing streak, followed by a seven-game winning streak, followed in turn by a five-game losing streak portended a season where the Sox were clearly capable of winning and also where they wouldn’t be doing much of it. 
 

 

[pk1627]

Great writing!
 
I love that the Sox have turned their franchise around to the point that their past 5 years is deemed an unmitigated disaster.

 

[HriniakPosterChild]

Great writing!
 
I love that the Sox have turned their franchise around to the point that their past 5 years is deemed an unmitigated disaster.

Remember the days of, "Just once on my lifetime!"

 

[cannonball 1729]

Playing catchup again - here's Sunday's loser:
 

 
No one does September/October disappointment quite like the Braves.   Since Frank Wren took over in Atlanta at the end of the 2007 season, the Braves have managed to put a playoff contender on the field nearly every year; their only losing season under Wren’s watch was his first one in 2008, and they’ve been within a half-game of leading the division or wildcard standings at some point in late August in each of the last five years.  Unfortunately, the Braves generally forget how to play baseball at some point in September or October, as despite the clear talent around the team, Atlanta won exactly two playoff games in the Wren era.  The Braves have generally made the playoffs on guts, guile, and depth, but they seem to lack the middle-of-the-order hitters and frontline starters to make a dent in October; for instance, in last year’s playoff series, the Braves started Kris Medlen, Mike Minor, a 23-year old Julio Teheran, and a 36 year-old Freddy Garcia, which isn’t a recipe for postseason success (especially when your opponents have Kershaw, Greinke, Hyun Jin Ryu, and Kershaw again).
 
While other Braves’ teams have done the autumn collapse, this year’s Brave team out-Braved themselves with an even more dramatic collapse than usual.  At the end of August, the Braves were just 1.5 games out of the wildcard and were primed for an easy stretch of games, as the only winning teams they would play in September would be the Nationals and the Pirates.  Inexplicably, though, the Braves stopped winning; they dropped two out of three to the Phillies, two out of three to the Marlins, another two out of three to the Nationals, and then all three of their contests against the Rangers (!) to effectively put them out of contention.  A sweep by the Mets last week effectively sealed the deal, as a team that can’t beat the Rangers or the Mets really shouldn’t be playing baseball, anyway.  All told, the Braves have gone 4-14 in September, an absolutely stunning turnaround for a team that was 72-65 coming into the month.
 
Naturally, any ownership that suffers through that sort of collapse for the second time in four years is going to be angry, and the Braves were no exception; they fired Wren the day after their mathematical elimination.
 
The Braves under Frank Wren were an extremely mixed bag.  On the one hand, Wren’s teams drafted and developed extremely well; they now have a number of talented young players like Jason Heywood, Andrelton Simmons, Craig Kimbrell, Freddie Freeman, and Julio Teheran, most of whom have been signed to extensions to buy out free agent years.   On the other hand, Wren should probably have left the checkbook at home when high-profile free agents were involved.  The three biggest free-agent contracts of the Wren era were Derek Lowe ($60 million), BJ Upton ($72.5 million), and Dan Uggla ($62 million); those of you scoring at home can read those as “an inconsistent pitcher coming from one of the biggest pitchers’ parks in baseball,” “a lead-gloved second baseman who was already showing old-player skills at the time of the contract,” and “a talented headcase.”   Not surprisingly, those contracts worked out horrendously; so far, the three players have combined for 1.8 wins above replacement (a number which will probably continue to go down, since BJ has posted negative value every year), and the Braves eventually ended up paying Lowe $10 million to pitch for the Indians and Uggla almost $30 million to play for the Giants.  The Braves aren’t a small budget franchise by any means, but they’re not the Yankees or Dodgers, either, and they simply don’t have the resources to cover such terrible investments.  Mr. Wren did a lot of great things for the Braves, but those three players likely comprise the Mount Rushmore of Why Frank Wren is Unemployed, and if you want to know why the Braves couldn't make noise in the playoffs, it’s probably because they were counting on guys like Derek Lowe to lead the charge.
 
The Braves last won the title in 1995.

 

[YTF]

Thanks for this thread cannonball. Really well done and I like the inclusion of some of the old school logos. Just as a side note, who would have thought at the All Star break that the Reds and Phillies would be eliminated on the same day?

 

[cannonball 1729]

Continuing with the collapse portion of the thread, last night gave us:
 

 
 
 
This Blue Jays team is tough to figure.  Last year, the Blue Jays were hailed as the winners of the offseason, acting as the willing recipients for a 69-win Marlins team looking to unload whatever big contracts they had.  Now, it’s a mystery why taking on the core of a horrible team is considered to be a good idea, but last year’s prognosticators were in no mood for logic.  Whatever the predictions were, the Blue Jays certainly did not meet them, as pretty much everyone they acquired or had on the team regressed or got injured and the Blue Jays stumbled to a terrible 74-88 finish.
                                                
This year, Toronto didn’t really make any major moves other than signing Melky Cabrera (who’s injured), mostly because they didn’t have any more salary space after last year’s acquisition spree.  Instead, their goal was to see if they could get the pieces they acquired last year to be closer to what they had been before moving north.  Some of it actually worked; RA Dickey regained velocity on his knuckleball (which sounds weird, but increased knuckleball velocity means increased control), Jose Reyes actually stayed healthy for a season, Joey Bats came back to health, and Mark Buehrle went back to being a speedy workhorse (he’s the fastest worker in baseball).  For the first half of the season, the Blue Jays actually made noises as though they were going to be contenders, finishing July with a 2.5 game lead in the wildcard standings and pulling within a game and a half of Baltimore for the division lead.  Then, August happened, the Blue Jays posted their worst month by batting average (.239), starter ERA (4.84), and team record (9-17), and just like that, the season was over.  The Jays been kept alive throughout September by the fact that most of the wildcard teams that they’re chasing can’t win either, but Toronto hasn’t done a reasonable impression of a playoff team since somewhere around the All-Star break.
 
The Blue Jays should be better than this.  They have two credible front-of-the-rotation starters (Mark Buehrle and RA Dickey), a top-three offense featuring the most fearsome 3-4 combo in the league (Edwin Encarnacion and Jose Bautista), a reasonably good bill of health, an average-ish defense, and one of the best personalities in the game (Munenori Kawasaki).   It’s just….everything is a little worse than it should be; the frontline starters are a little worse than they were when they came to the Jays, the back of the rotation is a little worse than their FIP tells us they should be, the closer and setup guy are a little worse than the rest of the bullpen (Casey Janssen actually has the third-worst save percentage of anyone with 20 saves), the offense hits a few points worse with runners on base, and the catchers can’t catch anyone stealing.  It’s often said that doing the little things doesn’t matter if you can’t do the big things, but for a team on the borderline, trying to do the little things certainly doesn’t hurt.
 
Honestly, it’s a mystery why manager John Gibbons still has a job, or, for that matter, why he ever got the job in the first place.  Gibbons already had one stint with the Blue Jays; it ended when he challenged Shea Hillenbrand to a fistfight and got into actual fisticuffs with Ted Lilly.  Worse, as soon as Gibbons left the Jays in 2008, Cito Gaston took Gibbons' middling team and led them to a 51-37 record.  Obviously, since no one knows why Gibbons was hired in the first place, no one’s quite sure what he has to do to get fired; GM Alex Anthropolous has said that Gibbons will be back in 2015, so one might guess that Gibbons will last until he starts getting into fights with his players again.  Blue Jays' fans can only hope that this happens soon….
 
The Blue Jays haven’t made the playoffs since their back-to-back titles in 1992-93.

 

[cannonball 1729]

Thanks for this thread cannonball. Really well done and I like the inclusion of some of the old school logos. Just as a side note, who would have thought at the All Star break that the Reds and Phillies would be eliminated on the same day?

 
There have been some pretty prodigious collapses this year, haven't there?  Reds, Brewers, Blue Jays, Braves, A's....  
 
And Googling around the internet to find the old school logos is definitely my favorite part.  There's something that feels historic to me about a team's season officially ending, so I like to use the historical logos to reflect that.

 

[dynomite]

There have been some pretty prodigious collapses this year, haven't there?  Reds, Brewers, Blue Jays, Braves, A's....  
 
And Googling around the internet to find the old school logos is definitely my favorite part.  There's something that feels historic to me about a team's season officially ending, so I like to use the historical logos to reflect that.

Everyone has already said it, and I say it every year, but this is my favorite thread of the year.

Anyway, speaking of collapses, how often do BOTH the AL (A's) and NL (Brewers) teams with the best record at the All-Star Break end up missing the playoffs?

It's moot at this point because the Mariners' collapse in Toronto has basically saved the A's from themselve and because the Brewers were a half game behind the Dodgers for best record in the NL at the break, but still. All through May and June the A's and Brewers were the talk of baseball. And for the Brewers to miss entirely while the A's stumble backward into a one-game playoff likely in Kansas City? Weird.

 

[Al Zarilla]

Looking forward to the best one of all.   

 

[cannonball 1729]

If I don't post this now, it probably won't happen until tomorrow, so here it is:
 

 
For several years, the Yankees have made an explicit goal of trying to get under the $189 salary cap in 2014.  It wasn’t going to be easy, but the Yankees were willing to make sacrifices, and the payoff was going to be significant; the Yankees would reset the tax rate from 50% to 17%, and they would save many millions in luxury tax rebates every year (although how many millions is uncertain, given the vastly differing estimates).  The Yankees were handed a golden opportunity this year when, in addition to the $140 million coming off the books, A-Rod went down for the season with a broken drug ring, and the Yankees got ready to pounce; they declined to pursue Robbie Cano to his near-$300 million deal, choosing instead to sign Jacoby Ellsbury, Brian McCann, and Carlos Beltran and pushing themselves right up to, but not over, the magical $189 million line.
 
Then Masahiro Tanaka became a free agent, and the Yankees cast all of their budgetary work to the wind and threw $155 million at Mr. Tanaka.
 
Yankee fans are now left to wonder what changed.  While austerity is certainly a valiant goal for a franchise, it’s not something to be entered into with frivolity, as it has tangible costs that a franchise has to be willing to bear.  Thanks to the penny-pinching of the last couple years, the Yankees hadn’t made a major free agent acquisition since 2011; they were forced to let Russell Martin walk last year, replacing him with something called a “Chris Stewart,” which is apparently a knockoff brand of catcher that hits .211 with no walks or power; they left a festering hole at second base this year (and at shortstop last year), manned only by the corpses of Brian Roberts and (eventually) Stephen Drew; and they decided that instead of finding a long-term solution for short/third, they’d go cheap with Yangervis Solarte and hope that no one would notice.  It’s hard to fathom that the Yankees (the Yankees, of all teams) weakened their 2012-2014 teams for a financial goal of frugality that wasn’t even achieved, but that’s the reality of where the Yankees are today.  
 
As a result of the result of the sudden spending spree after years of penury, the Yankees rolled out a team that looked a bit like an old car with a new paint job.  Last year’s team had most of its key players over 35; this year had most of its key players over 35 plus Tanaka, Ellsbury, and McCann (and minus Robbie Cano).  New York’s fortunes would still depend on the oft-injured likes of CC Sabathia and Mark Teixeira and the just-plain-old players like Ichiro Suzuki, Alfonso Soriano, and Hiroki Kuroda (plus newly acquired Carlos Beltran). Not surprisingly, the Yankees have battled injuries all season; at various points in the season, they lost Ellsbury, Beltran, Teixeira, Sabathia, Tanaka (whoops!), Brett Gardner, Ivan Nova, and deadline acquisition Martin Prado for pretty significant amounts of time.  Brian Cashman, as he always seems to do, pulled some rabbits out of hats when he picked up Brandon McCarthy (7-5, 2.89 ERA) and the aforementioned Solarte (104 OPS+, eventually flipped for Chase Headley), but there’s only so much when you can do when the core of your team is older than Methuselah and can’t stay on the field.  While the Yankees have been a decent enough team, they haven’t ever reached the point of been good; New York's best month of baseball was played at a .577 clip, and they’ve been a game under .500 since the All-Star Game.
 
And then, of course, there’s the issue of good old #2.  The grand finale tour was cute and all, and the adulation around the league was undoubtedly sincere, but……for a team trying to win actual baseball games, putting a 40 year-old shortstop hitting .256/.304/.313 with below-replacement level defense was probably a bad idea; hitting him second in the lineup was probably even worse.  The Yankees were only a couple of games out of a wildcard spot; how many more games could they have won if their number two hitter weren’t hitting .198 in high leverage situations, or .176 in close and late opportunities?  Jeter hasn’t really been the same since breaking his foot in 2012; continuing to pencil him into the lineup and pretending that he was the Derek Jeter of yesteryear may have cost the Yankees a trip to October. 
 
Next year, there are still some serious holes to fill.  The Yankees still haven’t figured out who’s going to play the middle of the diamond, they’re still trying to figure out if Brian McCann is going to work out at catcher (a great September may have saved an otherwise dismal season), they’re still beholden to CC Sabathia’s massive contract, and they probably need to find a right fielder younger than 40 or a DH who can hit over .233.  Fortunately for Yankee fans, Cashman finally seems to have been given the go-ahead to spend money again; on the other hand, three years of minimal team maintenance caused a few cracks in the foundation, and simply throwing money at a problem doesn't always make it go away.....
 
The Yankees last made the playoffs in 2012.  Their last title came in 2009.

 

[cannonball 1729]

Everyone has already said it, and I say it every year, but this is my favorite thread of the year.

Anyway, speaking of collapses, how often do BOTH the AL (A's) and NL (Brewers) teams with the best record at the All-Star Break end up missing the playoffs?

It's moot at this point because the Mariners' collapse in Toronto has basically saved the A's from themselve and because the Brewers were a half game behind the Dodgers for best record in the NL at the break, but still. All through May and June the A's and Brewers were the talk of baseball. And for the Brewers to miss entirely while the A's stumble backward into a one-game playoff likely in Kansas City? Weird.

I think the A's have been saved by the fact that the rest of the AL has been pretty bad except the Orioles and Angels.  Here are the wildcard contenders and their September records:
 
Royals: 12-10
Indians: 12-12
Mariners: 10-13
A's: 8-14
Blue Jays: 12-10
Yankees: 11-13
 
The A's have tried their best to choke their playoff position away, but no one wants to pass them.

 

[TheYaz67]

Just want to point out that the first team eliminated, Texas, thanks to a 9-1 run over their last 10 games, is now ahead in the standings of the 4th team eliminated this season, the Diamondbacks, thanks to their 2-8 record over their last 10....

 

[jon abbey]

The Yankee one is very well done, but omits maybe the most crucial bit of info going forward, which is that not only is NY already locked into $169M of salaries in 2015 (not counting arb cases), but due to their thoughtless spending spree of last offseason coupled with their previous albatross contracts, they are already locked into a Dodgers-esque $170M of salaries in 2016.
 
What this means is that any multiyear deal they give out this offseason will make them even that much less flexible next offseason. The media doesn't seem to have grasped this yet, but presumably they will sometime in October or November. 

 

[cannonball 1729]

That is certainly true.  On the other hand, I always hesitate to say that the Yankees will be hamstrung financially by anything they do.  I remember once upon a time saying that the Yankees couldn't afford to take on a $27 million dollar contract for a shortstop that they'll then have to move to third base, and we all know how that worked out.....
 
Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if the Steinbrenners gave permission for a $240 million payroll next year like the Dodgers will have - they've clearly given up on the salary cap nonsense, and the marginal value of making a playoff run is huge for the Yankees.

 

[cannonball 1729]

While we're getting ready for the festivities today, let's remember the teams that have fallen in the past couple of days.  First, Thursday gave us another entrant in the "collapse" category:
 

 
 
Of all of the collapses in 2014 (apart from the A's, whose status is still pending), Milwaukee’s may have been the most impressive.  At the end of June, Milwaukee was easily the best team in the National League; their 51 wins by June 28 were the most in baseball, and their .614 winning percentage at that point was second only to the A’s of the other league.   The playoffs were a foregone conclusion; they were 3.5 games ahead in the race for homefield throughout the NL playoffs, and the Cardinals would have had to gain 6.5 games just to tie the division.  
                                       
June 29th was the start of the Brewers’ first freefall.  From June 29 to July 12, the Brewers couldn’t do anything right; they hit .202, slugged .320, ERA’d 5.50, and went 1-11.  At the end of that stretch, the Brewers were tied with the Cardinals at the top of the NL Central, their 6.5-game division lead having vanished almost overnight.  Milwaukee spent the next month righting the ship, going 21-15 over their next 36 and eventually building up a slight lead in the division once again; by the end of August, the Brew Crew had convinced most around the league that the dizzy spell at the beginning of July was nothing more than a brief sidetrack in the Brewers’ inexorable march to the division crown.
 
Then, on August 26th, the second freefall began.  After starting the day with a 1.5 game division lead, the Brewers embarked on a stretch where they would hit .232, pitch 5.79, and lose 13 of 14.   By the time that games ended on September 9, the Brewers were 6 games out of the division lead and 1.5 games behind the second wildcard.  Another 1-5 stretch in late September buried the Brewers for good, and now they’re left to play the Cubs for a weekend series that no one will be watching.
 
As is the case in any collapse, the culprits are many, but some were more surprising than others.  No one realistically thought that the Brewers could continue to outperform their Pythagorean wins by five games, especially since an easy first-half schedule had probably given the Brewers an additional two wins on top of that.  No one really expected 24 year-old Scooter Gennett to hit .300 all season (he didn’t; he hit .259 in the second half after a .309 first half), and many thought that 36 year-old Aramis Ramirez might wear down a bit in the second half.  Some of the declines, though, were a bit more ominous; Ryan Braun’s fall to .238 hitter and Matt Garza’s second-half 4.69 ERA were probably not what the Brewers wanted to see, especially considering that 1.) Braun might be going through his first PED-less season in years, 2.) Garza had a similar ERA escalation last August (4.89 August/September), and 3.) both of those gentlemen will continue to be employed by the Brewers for several years to come. Whatever the reason for the collapse, the Brewers have been bad (.438) since the break and downright awful (.378) since the middle of August.
 
The Brewers are still trying to figure out what to do after they mortgaged the farm in attempts to make the playoffs from 2008-2011.  Of course, it should be noted that selling the farm wasn’t a bad idea at the time; at some point, you have to make a run at a title (especially for a team like the Brewers who haven’t seen a World Series game since 1982), and those Brewer teams were good enough that a deep playoff run was a real possibility.  Now, though, they have to figure out how to rebuild without rebuilding; Milwaukee obviously has some good pieces(so blowing things up would be ridiculous), but they’ll need to find those cheap complementary players that can push the Brewers back into the playoffs, and they’ll probably need to look outside of their own farm system to do it.
 
The Brewers last made the playoffs in 2011.  They have never won a World Series.

 

[cannonball 1729]

Friday, we had the opposite sort of team:
 

 
If ever you want to explain how much difference a manager can make and you’re tired of using Bobby Valentine as an example, you can always talk about Terry Francona on the Indians.
 
Last year’s playoff team in Cleveland was the playoff team that probably shouldn’t have been.   The 2013 Indians were wholly incapable of beating good teams; Cleveland’s record against teams with winning records was 36-52, a mark which was good for 11th in the AL.   So, you might ask, how did they make the playoffs?  It turns out that they went 56-18 against teams with a losing record; that was good for an astounding .757 winning percentage, about 90 points better than any other team in the major leagues.  It’s often been said about teams that the mark of a good manager is that his team beats the teams that they should beat, and few teams in baseball history have done that quite as dramatically as the 2013 Cleveland Indians. 
 
Unfortunately, while such a performance is admirable, it is also likely to be unsustainable.  Ever since the season was expanded to 162 games in 1961, no other AL team has won 90+ games and finished 16 games under .500 against winners; in fact, no other AL team has come close.  If the Indians wanted to play in the playoffs again in 2014, they were probably either going to have to learn to beat good teams or hope that lighting struck twice.  Neither one really happened; the Indians improved slightly to 35-47 against over-.500 teams (still good for 11th in the AL) but fell to merely excellent against bad teams (47-29, third in the AL).
 
Now, for a team that finished a couple games out of the second wildcard to have the third best record against sub-.500 teams still speaks to a team that’s getting everything imaginable out of their talent; the problem is just that the Indians don’t have all that much talent.  Cleveland did discover this year that they had a star pitcher in Corey Kluber, who was forced to take over the ace role when former ace Justin Masterson imploded; in a season where King Felix has had a rough September and Chris Sale has fought injuries, Kluber has improbably pushed himself into the Cy Young debate.  Moreover, Michael Brantley has singlehandedly salvaged the CC Sabathia trade for Cleveland, posting a 157 OPS+ this year and making Tribe fans forget that the actual centerpiece of that deal was supposed to be Matt LaPorta.  Unfortunately, the Indians simply lack depth; their 2-5 starters were well below average, half of their lineup couldn’t hit, and Cleveland’s middling farm system didn’t have any reinforcements to send (the farm is still coming back to life after Cleveland gave away four of its best prospects for the enigmatic Ubaldo Jimenez).  Mr. Francona did the best that he could, working in cross-positional platoons and using lefty-righty matchups to his advantage whenever possible (for the second year in a row, Cleveland batters faced same-handed pitchers fewer times than any other team in baseball), but there was only so much he could do with the talent he had.
 
The good news for the Indians is that unlike last year, when the Tribe had to replace 340 innings by two of their top-of-the-rotation starters (Jimenez and Scott Kazmir), most of the players that fueled this year’s fairly successful finish aren’t going anywhere; Brantley, Kluber, Carlos Santana, Yan Gomes, and closer Cody Allen are all signed through at least 2017.  Even with the holes that they have, the Indians are a formidable team; if the Cleveland front office can start to complement those players with decent (i.e. average-ish) supporting players, they'll have a good chance at making the playoffs in a pretty weak AL Central.  Who knows….. maybe they'll even start beating good teams soon.
 
The Indians last won a championship in 1948.

 

[cannonball 1729]

And finally:
 

 
The Jack Zduriencik saga continues.  Last offseason, Eric Wedge became the second manager in four years to leave the organization, noting on the way out that he “wouldn’t have stayed if they’d offered a 5-year deal.”  Now, Wedge doesn’t seem to have been a great manager; his teams underperformed in Seattle, and they dramatically underperformed in Cleveland, and he engaged in several ill-informed rants about “sabermetrics” that demonstrated a complete lack of understanding of the term.   However, Wedge is only the latest of the staff to make a stampede for the door; in addition to manager #1 under Zduriencik (Don Wakamatsu), front office staff who have left the organization include scouting director Carmen Fusco (scapegoated when Zduriencik traded for a possible rapist), Assistant GM Tony Blengino (marginalized for being too “statistical” even though his background was largely in scouting and drafting), Latin American Scouting Director Bob Engel (pushed out when Zduriencik decided to change his international approach; Engle had been the scout who signed King Felix, Shin-Soo Choo, and Michael Pineda), Patrick Guerrero (Engle’s top assistant), and a number of other unhappy scouts and executives who’ve grown weary of working for Jack.  A scathing expose published by the Seattle Times last December revealed that the reasons for the flight ranged from Zduriencik’s dislike for dissent (“Zduriencik ..berated people for no particular reason. He set out to eliminate any type of disagreement, accumulating yes-men who meekly go along with his program,”), to lack of communication (“He began operating much like the Wizard of Oz, wielding his power from behind a curtain,”) to frustration over lack of understanding of statistical tools (“Jack never has understood one iota about statistical analysis…to this day, he evaluates hitters by homers, RBI and batting average and pitchers by wins and ERA”), to bizarre directives from owners (“[owners] Lincoln and Armstrong wanted Felix Hernandez and other pitchers to throw live batting practice between starts so position players could work on bunting and situational hitting.”)   
 
Usually, a hatchet job of that magnitude might cause problems for the front office.  Fortunately for Jack and his merry band of yes-men, Seattle fans this offseason were distracted by two things: 1.) the Seattle Seahawks, and 2.) the high-profile courtship of Robbie Cano.  Thanks to a new television contract, the Mariners had the opportunity to expand their budget dramatically; they responded by signing Robinson Cano, doing the unthinkable and blowing the Yankees’ offer out of the water with a 10 year, $240 million deal.  Cano was probably the best player on the Yankees last year, so he was likely to come into Seattle and add several wins; however, he’s also 31, which means that he probably only has a couple of years before the Mariners have to move him into their logjam of 1B/DH.
 
The good news for Seattle is they seem to get a performance bump when a new manager comes in that isn’t yet sick of the Mariners’ front office, and this year was no exception.  The lineup still isn’t good, but it’s no longer historically awful; thanks to the development of Kyle Seager and Micheal Saunders into useful players, the lineup is now only “bad.”  Moreover, the defense rounded back into form; the team that originated the “pitching-and-defense” moniker decided that maybe it had been a bad idea to throw octogenarian Raul Ibanez into left field in hopes that he might not accidentally spike yet another ball directly into the ground.  The biggest reason for the improvement, though, was that King Felix finally had that season that everyone was expecting; after three years of 3 point something ERA’s,Hernandez posted the best ERA of his career this year (of course, his FIP was the same as last year, which makes one think that the real breakthrough actually was the defense).  With Hernandez and the defense in order, the pitching moved to the top of the league, and even with steps backward by Hisashi Iwakuma,a shoulder injury to Taijuan Walker, and nightly high-wire acts by new closer Fernando Rodney (he of the 1.342 WHIP), the Mariners had enough pitching to make a run into September.
 
Unfortunately, the Mariners’ September hasn’t been any good, as they’ve tried to bow out of the race several times, only to have the A’s drag them back in.  Last Saturday, through little work of their own, the Mariners found themselves a half-game out of the second wildcard – and they promptly lost the next five games; at some point in that skid, they gave the ball to Felix in hopes that he would stem the tide, only to watch the King have his worst performance of the year (4.2 IP, 8 R, 4 ER).  In most years, that losing streak would have been enough to put Seattle away, but the A’s went 2-3 over the same stretch, giving the M’s undeserved life.  The Mariners would then win the next three against a resigned Toronto team and a resting Angels team to make things close; they were finally eliminated today when the A’s managed to put together a couple of runs and actually beat the last-place Rangers for once (the A’s are now 2-5 against the Rangers in September).   In previous years, the second wildcard has given us interesting matchups and last-day excitement; during Tankathon 2014, however, it’s basically been an excuse to throw a life preserver to a couple of teams that simply couldn’t get out of their own way. 
 
2015 will be an interesting year.  If the Mariners tank again, McClendon may find himself the unfortunate victim of Zduriencik’s quick trigger finger.  The question for the ownership will be whether they will continue to be okay with the constant turnover as long as the Mariners continue to make a profit for their Nintendo overlords (which they have nearly every year of their ownership).  The owners has generally been squarely on the side of Jack Zduriencik in the ongoing “Jack vs. the rest of the Mariners” feud, and it has been speculated by many that that will continue as long as they make money, but you would think that Nintendo would like their investment to turn into a winning franchise at some point.  Of course, if the Mariners can make a leap forward into the playoffs, all will be forgiven (for a while); in the meantime, there’s no doubt that the hemorrhaging of scouting and front-office personnel is doing some long-term damage to the Mariners.
 
The M’s last made the playoffs in 2001.  They have never been to a World Series.

 

[dynomite]

Where Green Field of the Mind is the sad coda to the season, this thread is upside. Great work.

The good news for the Indians is that unlike last year, when the Tribe had to replace 340 innings by two of their top-of-the-rotation starters (Jimenez and Scott Kazmir), most of the players that fueled this years fairly successful finish arent going anywhere; Brantley, Kluber, Carlos Santana, Yan Gomes, and closer Cody Allen are all signed through at least 2017.  Even with the holes that they have, the Indians are a formidable team; if the Cleveland front office can start to complement those players with decent (i.e. average-ish) supporting players, they'll have a good chance at making the playoffs in a pretty weak AL Central.  Who knows.. maybe they'll even start beating good teams soon.

I'll be very interested to see what the Indians do this offseason. Going into 2015, I have them as a strong bet for the playoffs and a dark horse World Series contender.

Since the All-Star Break (and dumping Masterson and demoting McAllister and Salazar) the Indians allowed the 4th fewest runs in baseball and a 3.03 ERA.

That rotation is terrifying: Kluber-Carrasco-House was probably the best Top 3 in baseball in September. If they stay healthy and two of Salazar, Bauer, or McAllister put together good seasons, that's the best rotation in the AL in my opinion.

If Kipnis rebounds and they can get another bat somehow, look out.

 

[cannonball 1729]

Where Green Field of the Mind is the sad coda to the season, this thread is upside. Great work.
 
 

 
Thanks!
 
 
 

Where Green Field of the Mind is the sad coda to the season, this thread is upside. Great work.


I'll be very interested to see what the Indians do this offseason. Going into 2015, I have them as a strong bet for the playoffs and a dark horse World Series contender.

Since the All-Star Break (and dumping Masterson and demoting McAllister and Salazar) the Indians allowed the 4th fewest runs in baseball and a 3.03 ERA.

That rotation is terrifying: Kluber-Carrasco-House was probably the best Top 3 in baseball in September. If they stay healthy and two of Salazar, Bauer, or McAllister put together good seasons, that's the best rotation in the AL in my opinion.

If Kipnis rebounds and they can get another bat somehow, look out.

 
That's kind of my thought as well.  Given what Francona did with the limited talent of last year, they could definitely do some damage in 2015 if the September improvements are real.  I guess they just need to hope that the next bat they bring in isn't another Nick Swisher.
 
The really interesting question is if the Tigers are as bad this year as they played.  They're an 87-win team by third order wins, and if that's still the case next year, the AL Central is wide open.

 

[moly99]

The Mariners are a flipping infuriating team due to their front office politics. I live in Seattle and I'm so glad I'm not a fan of the M's.

• The controlling owner lives in another country (Japan) and has never seen the team play in person.
• Since ownership takes so little interest in running the team, the front office people are free to make decisions to protect their jobs at the sake of the long term success of the team.
• They are the opposite of the Twins in promoting from within. Smart people within the org are viewed as a threat by their superiors and are marginalized.

They certainly aren't the worst team in baseball. The M's almost always have at least one guy with hall of fame potential. But they are a sickening franchise behind the scenes.

 

[HriniakPosterChild]

Nitpick: Mr. Yamauchi is now watching baseball games in a luxury box beside Generalissimo Francisco Franco. Ownership of his shares was transferred before his death to Redmond's Nintendo of America. 
 
Your larger point is correct. George Steinbrenner may have been the incarnation of Satan, but he gave a damn about whether his team won or lost.

 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=butZyxI-PRs

 

[jon abbey]

Bump in the hopes that we get a 2015 thread from cannonball soon, already six NL teams eliminated,

 

[Snodgrass'Muff]

Cannonball 1729 has been gracious enough to do these through the dot com this year and he will be starting a thread for that run soon.

 

[Mike Greenwall]

:bravo:

 

[jon abbey]

Nice!