2013 Major League Baseball Mega-Preview: the National League

The National League enters 2013 competition with the consensus best team in baseball, the Washington Nationals.  This is relevant on a number of levels.  Three years ago, the Nats had the first overall pick and took Bryce Harper.  That means that in 2009, they were the very worst team in baseball.  Last year, they were the very best, at least in the regular season.  This year’s team looks even more scary.

But perhaps more to the point, the MLB is heavily trending the way of the NBA and NFL in that the model to build the consensus best franchise isn’t to throw money around at established vets like the Yankees (successfully) and Cubs (unsuccessfully) have done over the years, but to throw lots of money at amateur talent like the Rays did with David Price and Tim Beckham and now the Nationals have done with Stephen Strasburg and Bryce Harper; all first overall draft selections.  There aren’t a lot of sure things in a given MLB draft, but the top overall picks have a strong track record, recently at least.

Maybe what the Nationals taught us on their way to the top was that to be really, really good, you must first be really, really bad.  Just keep doing your thing, Yankees.

The National League East

Perhaps the most impressive thing about the Washington Nationals (2012: 731 runs scored, 594 runs allowed) is not the kind of talent they were able to amass through the draft,  but how few weaknesses they have.  At this point, the biggest threat to a Nats dynasty may not be hitting or pitching or defense, but the RF Jason Werth contract, which has five years left on it and more than $100 million remaining because it was heavily backloaded.  Werth and 1B Adam LaRoche are at ages where power hitters typically start to develop major holes in their swing, and though LaRoche still represents a buy-low candidate on a one year deal, Werth’s deal was signed back when the Nats were going to have to throw crazy money around to attract free agents.

The key of course is that Washington knew there would be dead money on the back end of the deal when they signed it.  What I don’t think they were prepared for is that with five years remaining on the deal, I’d be writing about how their highest paid player coming off an excellent year is the team’s biggest problem.  Hey, it’s a good problem to have, I suppose.  Large contracts to outfielders typically don’t sour as quickly as money given to pitchers or infielders or catchers.  I mean, everyone in the world knew the Alfonso Soriano contract was a disaster when it was signed, but in his first six of the eight years, Soriano has produced at an all-star level in four of those seasons.

What the Nats may lose in terms of their outfield production in regression from Werth and trading away Michael Morse, they gain back in acquiring Kurt Suzuki and Denard Span from American League teams.  And the pitching rotation’s weakest link may be Dan Haren, who was considered an Ace way back when the Nationals were horrible (in 2009).  But what’s really impressive is just the level of depth the Nationals have.  There’s no player they could lose, not even Harper, that would put the team in an offensive situation that would be measurably worse than any other team in the National League.

Except one.  The Atlanta Braves (2012: 700 runs scored, 600 runs allowed) completed a five year rebuilding project and horrific collapse at the end of the 2011 season to make the playoffs in 2012.  Did you miss them?  The reason you don’t remember this is because they lost the play-in game to the Cardinals and just like that, the Braves and Rangers missed the divisional series.  In case you’re wondering how we got the Giants and Tigers in the World Series last year, remember that the Angels, Braves, and Rangers were all the top team in baseball at different points last season.  None of them were among the 8 teams allowed into the divisional round.  This year, the Braves will run out the most interesting outfield combination in modern baseball: LF Justin Upton, CF B.J. Upton, and RF Jason Heyward.  The potential is limitless for that trio, but there is significant bust potential, and the Braves now have a whole bunch of money tied up in that group.  It also places the pressure squarely on Heyward because if the Braves need to break that group up at some point in the next three years, Heyward is the most trade-able asset in it.

The Braves have made plenty of questionable personnel moves under GM Frank Wren, but they did perhaps the smartest thing in response to the Philadelphia Phillies (2012: 684 runs scored, 680 runs allowed) quest to acquire every pitcher in the American League: they got the hell out of the way.  Now the Phillies are left with an aging, expensive roster that they are trying to plug leaky holes with: trying to be the Yankees without having the resources of the Yankees.  The Braves are off doing more exciting things.  The Phillies begin this season healthy, which is more than they can say about last year.  Ultimately though, 162 games is a freakin’ long season for the depth-less Phillies to expect all to go right.  It’s already going wrong with RHP Roy Halladay, who has lost fastball velocity and may be fighting injuries.  Cliff Lee and Cole Hamels would be a good one-two punch on any baseball team, but on the Phillies, they are the remnants of an idea that was supposed to amount to so much more.  That also describes Giancarlo Stanton’s Miami Marlins (2012: 609 runs scored, 724 runs allowed) pretty well.  The main differences being that the Marlins weren’t a very good baseball team last year.  They’ll be worse this season.  It probably says something about the New York Mets (2012: 650 rusn scored, 709 runs allowed)  that they don’t get mentioned until now, in a division that includes the Marlins.  Also, I wish I could credit this to the proper source, but I read recently that the top two highest paid outfielders on the Mets this year will be the departed Jason Bay (buyout)…and Bobby Bonilla.  And 3B David Wright might go on the DL.  Also: Johan Santana will make $25 million this year.  And the Wilpon brothers (according to reports) are basically broke.  On the positive side: 23 year old SS Ruben Tejada should be fun to watch.  So there’s that.

The National League Central

Within the next two to three years, the Los Angeles Angels of California and currently of Anaheim are going to deal with significant derision for the contracts they gave to Albert Pujols and Josh Hamilton.  I already discussed the Rangers’ side of this, but I don’t think the teams that let those superstars walk will get enough credit.  And for the St. Louis Cardinals (2012: 765 runs scored, 648 runs allowed), we’re talking about a town where Albert Pujols was the main attraction.  For the city.  Not just the team.  It would have been easily justifiable for the Cards to make a deal with Pujols under the same pretense that the Twins did with Joe Mauer and just accept the downside that comes with having a declining superstar on your team.  But the Cards let Pujols sign elsewhere after WINNING THE WORLD SERIES.  And as critical as I can be of the Cardinals and the perception of their fans, this team came within a game of returning to the World Series without Pujols.

The Cardinals built the best lineup in the AL Central after losing Pujols.  Their main acquisition was Carlos Beltran, who still projects to be an excellent player this year, even at age 36.  In 2012, Beltran had an on base percentage of .346.  Pujols? .343 for the Angels.  They’ll have some dead contract money with Rafael Furcal out for the year needing Tommy John surgery.  Furcal wasn’t that great of a signing last year though, having OPS’ed a fraction under .700.  Pete Kozma will take over at short.  The Cardinals are the favorites to win the division because they have 4 guys in the lineup who on-based better than .370 last year, in an era where that’s impossible to sustain.  Those four guys: LF Matt Holliday, CF John Jay, C Yadier Molina, and 3B David Freese, all return to the lineup this year.

After the Nationals, the Cincinnati Reds (2012: 669 runs scored, 588 runs allowed) won more games than any other baseball team last year.  What sticks out immediately looking at the Reds is the 588 runs allowed figure.  They play half their games at the launching pad that is the Great American Ballpark.  Their rotation was excellent last season.  And sensationally healthy: Johnny Cueto, Mat Latos, Homer Bailey, Bronson Arroyo, and Mike Leake all made 30 starts last year.  Dusty Baker is turning over a new leaf.

The Reds have $50 million in total contract value tied up in closers Jonathan Broxton and Aroldis Chapman, and that doesn’t even count what they spent on Ryan Madson last year to fix the position.  Chapman is excellent and Broxton isn’t bad, but the effects of such a payroll structure will be seen down the road.  For 2013, the Reds hope that switching out Drew Stubbs for Shin Soo-Choo in Center Field will fix the team’s offensive woes.  The Reds were excellent last year when 1B Joey Votto (.474 on base) was out, but that was due almost exclusively to pitching.

This should be the year that the Pittsburgh Pirates (2012: 651 runs scored, 674 runs allowed) finally make it back to third place, because a team with the National League’s best player should not finish below third place.  Andrew McCutchen (.400 on base) is every bit as good as Matt Kemp or Ryan Braun.  The strength of the Pirates is a very strong rotation, one that replaces their two weaknesses Kevin Correia and Erik Bedard with Wandy Rodriguez and Jeff Locke, a left handed prospect.  The lineup is still very much a mess, but the Pirates have about two years to get it together before McCutchen’s contract and future become problems.  The Milwaukee Brewers (2012: 776 runs scored, 733 runs allowed) are what happens to a stars and scrubs team two years removed from their peak.  Homegrown stars Ryan Braun and Yovani Gallardo still represent frontline talent, but Braun is more synonymous for his link to PEDs than to MVPs these days, and Gallardo is quickly rampaging towards free agency in 2016.  Braun is likely to still be under contract when the world ends.  The Brewers have a skill for collecting spare parts, which made all the difference when they had Zack Greinke, Shaun Marcum, and Prince Fielder.  When your third best player is Aramis Ramirez, the relative value of Alex Gonzalez vs. Jean Segura at shortstop is frivolous.  The only difference between the Brewers and the Chicago Cubs (2012: 613 runs scored, 759 runs allowed) at this point is that Alfonso Soriano, Starlin Castro, and Jeff Samardzija aren’t quite Ryan Braun, Gonzalez, and Gallardo.  The Cubs are still working hard to build around that core they have established, although players such as David DeJesus, Darwin Barney, Nate Schierholtz, Ian Stewart, and Matt Garza will all look better in other uniforms at the deadline than they will in Cubbie Blue.

The National League West

Anything goes in the West this year.  Well anything except the Colorado Rockies (2012: 758 runs scored, 890 runs allowed).  The Rockies sit casually knowing that rebuilding is imminent, however, they just haven’t had time to begin the process.  Bummer.  A healthy Troy Tulowitzki probably adds a couple of wins to the total for the Rocks, but for a franchise that has never had great pitching — its been a while since the rotation was this weak.  Every other team in the division is in play for the title this year, but it makes sense to start with the Los Angeles Dodgers (2012: 637 runs scored, 597 runs allowed), who will have the highest payroll in baseball history this season, and a surprisingly mediocre roster given that distinction.

It doesn’t take a genius to find the strength of the Dodgers: you just have to follow the money trail.  The starting rotation is baseball’s most expensive joint, and perhaps the best this side of Washington.  However, with RHP Zack Greinke fighting elbow inflammation, Chad Billingsley coming back off an elbow issue from last year, and just having no idea what to expect from Josh Beckett, the sheer number of name guys in the Dodgers rotation may be more impressive than the results.  The Dodgers are eight deep with starting pitching talent.  Offensively, SS Hanley Ramirez will miss the early portion of the season, and may move back to third base later on.  The hallmark of the 2013 Dodgers may be that they gave up on the development of all their young talent last year, creating a stars and scrubs roster.  Given more time, players like SS Dee Gordon, OF Alex Castellanos, OF Tony Gwynn Jr., IF Elian Herrera, SS Justin Sellers, and OF Scott Van Slyke could have been a deep, young lineup for the Dodgers (or at least parts), but the Dodgers lacked the patience to develop that core.

The Dodgers’ money explosion may prove problematic for their fans, but it’s definitely a problem for the San Francisco Giants (2012: 718 runs scored, 649 runs allowed), who simply have a lot more to compete with now.  The Giants have a strong one-two pitching combination with Matt Cain and Madison Bumgarner atop their rotation, but a big issue with the Giants that dates back to last season will be whether or not RHP Tim Lincecum can get hitters out.  Lincecum still has the stuff of a no. 3 pitcher in a big league rotation, but hasn’t enjoyed the results of one for a couple of years.  The lineup still very much resembles what we’ve come to think of a Giants lineup, but it’s worth pointing out that 718 runs scored last year — while probably not drumming up visions of a world series champion — is considerably better than an average NL West team would do playing in AT&T Park.  Of course, the single biggest contributor was OF Melky Cabrera, who got suspended for the final 45 games of the season and is currently a Toronto Blue Jay.

The more interesting teams in the NL West are the Arizona Diamondbacks (2012: 734 runs scored, 688 runs allowed) and San Diego Padres (2012: 651 runs scored, 710 runs allowed), either of which can take this division.  Third baseman Martin Prado was always a role player on the Atlanta Braves, but he’s very much the main guy now on the D-Backs.  And very quietly, LF Carlos Quentin had a great yer for the Padres in 2012.  If there’s just two things you can count on in this division, I don’t think it’s the pitching of the Giants and Dodgers, I think it’s that the Diamondbacks are going to score a ton of runs, and that the Padres are going to play great defense.  For all the impressive budgeting and payroll in the NL West’s larger markets, the best baseball could very well be played in its smaller ones.

2013 NL Predictions

East Champ: Washington Nationals (103-59)
Central Champ: St. Louis Cardinals (96-66)
West Champ: Arizona Diamondbacks (92-70)
Wild Card #1: Atlanta Braves (100-62)
Wild Card #2: Los Angeles Dodgers (90-72)

Marlins sign SS Jose Reyes, or when $106 Million becomes irrelevant

If I’m a Florida Miami Marlins fan, I’m pretty excited this morning: my team just made it’s biggest free agent signing in at least a decade, plucking SS Jose Reyes from the division rival New York Mets.  It remains the front runner to sign Chicago White Sox LHP Mark Buehrle.  The Marlins are still apparently in on the biggest fish in the pond, Cardinals 1st baseman Albert Pujols.  All of a sudden, wait…wha?  The Marlins are throwing their weight around.

You may notice that even though I typically use this blog as a medium for analyzing pro sports transactions, I try not to keep a running ledger of every move made by a baseball team.  But for the Marlins, this is a significant shift away from rhetoric about spending more to develop a ball club and a fanbase, and towards the actual action of building a larger market club.  When a team like the Yankees is involved in a three way trade, sure, that’s worth discussing.  When they sign Bartolo Colon or Freddy Garcia, or the Red Sox sign Marco Scutaro, it doesn’t and shouldn’t register on the public consciousness.  Despite my best efforts, LiveBall Sports has never been a baseball heavy blog.

Reyes to the Marlins is different.  We’re talking about a team that doesn’t draw well moving out on a financial limb with no guarantee of return on investment.  In fact, I will argue that this move will not generate even $50 million in additional ticket and jersey revenue for the Marlins, though I think they will not feel the financial impact of the trade right away.  The more interesting angle, to me, has to do with the Marlins and winning.  Manager Ozzie Guillen was the first big fish to fall.  Now: Reyes, and probably Buerhle could be additions to the club.  Hanley Ramirez is still a Marlin.  This move happens to solve the most gaping hole on the baseball diamond for the last two years: third base.

Or does is?  Well, yes it does, because the remarkably healthy and consistent Hanley Ramirez will slide over that way.  Sure, his long term contract with the Marlins doesn’t look like quite as much of a bargain at the hot corner, but there are maybe two third baseman in the National League who offer more value with the bat than Ramirez: Washington’s Ryan Zimmerman, and New York’s David Wright.  Pablo Sandoval is still very young, and Placido Polanco is still very productive, but neither is (or ever was) Hanley Ramirez.

But the bigger issue here is Reyes, who wasn’t healthy at all in 2009 or 2010.  He was then sensational in 2011, but to me, I’m just not sure how much more Reyes has to offer.  I am guilty of thinking Reyes may have been done as an everyday player prior to last season.  While that was proven obviously incorrect, $106 million is a lot to give to a guy who likely could never justify that.  It’s even more to give when you consider: these are the Marlins.

While there is clearly something brewing in Miami with Reyes joining Ramirez, Mike Stanton, and Gaby Sanchez in the same lineup, and it is easy to see how a team like the Marlins (or Braves, or Nationals) might start looking at the rusting on the armor of the Philadelphia Phillies and think that now is the time to build a perennial contender, I am highly skeptical that Reyes does anything to make the Marlins a contender of the highest order.  I think it just makes them a spender of the highest order.  Reyes heads into 2012 as the premier shortstop in the National League, but I don’t see too many ways he emerges as such in October.

I just don’t see any reason to believe the Marlins are going to allocate enough cash efficiently enough to overtake the Phillies this year, and you may have realized that the Braves have totally rebuilt their farm system and that the Nationals are also flexing their financial muscle, except with a team that now includes a healthy Steven Strasburg and Bryce Harper now in the high minors.  Reyes is a much better bang for buck signing than Jayson Werth was, but that’s not the real competition now for a Marlins team that has struggled to draw even better than three other MLB teams over the last four years.

The Marlins are pretty much just competing against themselves here, because moves like this are unsustainable on their current budget.  And sure, they were just pocketing a pretty hefty revenue sharing check instead of spending it on winning, and yes, I think Ozzie Guillen might have won tougher divisions with less talent than he is going to have in Miami this year.  But while year one jersey sales should support this deal, you know that it is also coming in tandem with other big free agent contracts.  And yet we have every reason to be skeptical that a winning Marlins team will follow.

Guillen is among the best at his job, as is Reyes and as is Pujols and Buerhle.  You can see clearly what the Marlins are trying to accomplish here.  But I can also say that I don’t think it will succeed, because like so many teams before them, the Marlins are trying to leap a lofty development curve by throwing cash around.  And since the MLB free agent market is typically a costly version of players in their prime vs. former superstars: take your pick, the effort to target select talents is admirable.  It may work out on the financial side after all.  I can offer a cost-benefit analysis, but I don’t have all the relevant information.

In terms of winning baseball games: Reyes is a costly investment, and I don’t know how confident I’d be that the wins the Marlins are chasing are going to come soon, if ever.

LBS 2011 MLB Preview: NL East

The NL East is the most improved division in baseball from last year.  The Phillies have risen from the level of top level NL team to one of baseball’s super powers.  The Braves are better.  The Marlins are better.  The Mets probably aren’t better, but they have better team leadership.  And the Nationals- well, did you see how far Bryce Harper just hit that pitch?

1) Philadelphia Phillies (projected finish: 98-64)

The Phillies can only be so much better than they were last year.  After all, they had the NL’s best record.  And while this year’s version of the fightin’ Phils is not quite as good as the Red Sox, they certainly have the inside track as baseball’s second best team, at least in March.

We’ll start with the criminally underrated second baseman Chase Utley, who has a case of patellar tendonitis that has the team worried about possible DL time.  It’s a big deal, as the quickest way to de-rail the Phillies could be through injury.  Also, Utley is such a good player that he deserves mention at the top of an article about the Phillies.

With that out of the way, it’s time to compare the Phillies rotation to all the all-time bests.  There is no rotation in history that has four aces in it.  Before we accuse the Phils of treading in uncharted waters, they really only have a pair of aces in Roy Halladay and Cliff Lee.  That’s still really good.  It’s also not like we’ve never seen two of the best pitchers in baseball on the same roster before.  Curt Schilling and Randy Johnson won a world series with the Diamondbacks.  Cliff Lee and Felix Hernandez managed to pitch on a losing Mariners team last year.  Heck, the Brewers have a pair of aces THIS year in Zack Greinke and Yovani Gallardo.

What makes the Phillies special is the perception that Roy Oswalt and Cole Hamels would be at the top of other rotations elsewhere.  And that’s where I think observers are grading the Phillies too high on the Heat Index.  Having two number twos to go with your dueling aces seems nice, but while theres a long history of teams with two aces going deep into the playoffs, typically rotations like the Phillies end up underachieving expectations.  The worst case scenario for the Phillies is that Cliff Lee goes from two years as perhaps the most dominant pitcher in baseball to an erratic, inconsistent pitcher heading into his mid-thirties.  If that were to occur, Roy Halladay would not, by himself, be able to lead an aging lineup deep into the playoffs.

Still, this is a low risk team, at least in 2011 (perhaps not beyond).  The Phillies will be back in the playoffs this year, then we’ll see.

2) Atlanta Braves (projected finish: 88-74)

The Braves will look to replicate the success they started last year, but its key to remember that the was no team comparable to the Phillies of the present back when the Braves were winning 15 consecutive division titles in the 90’s and 2000’s.

For the Braves, the key is having lineup production consistent to last year to give plenty of run support to their young, developing pitching staff.  Last year, the Braves produced the runs, but what they did not do was play defense.  Had the Padres edged out the Braves for the NL wild card, the top four teams in defensive efficiency would have represented the NL in the playoffs.  In reality, the Padres shouldn’t have been competitive with the Braves for nearly ass long as they were.  Atlanta finished a league average .687 in defensive efficiency (percentage of balls in play that become outs).  They’ll look to improve that figure in 2011.  Unfortunately, they’ll try to do so with a 40 year old Chipper Jones, Martin Prado in left field, and Dan Uggla playing second base.  It’s not going to be easy, mind you.

In a bunch of ways, this will be a transitional year for the Braves, hence a couple of wins off the overall record from last year.  But the overall direction of the franchise is pointing upward, and most of the team’s contributors are rather young, and the farm system, per usual, is quite strong.  The Braves are transitioning for a day where the Phillies are old and can be had.  And right now, either they or the Cardinals or Reds look like the best bet for the NL Wild Card again, which is a good place to be in a transitional year.

3) Florida Marlins (projected finish: 85-77)

The Marlins are likely to come up just short of the playoffs, and perhaps holding onto Dan Uggla for another year might have been the difference.  But I’ve recently bought into the idea that this team is quite good, led by Mike Stanton in the outfield, John Buck at catcher, Gaby Sanchez at first base, and Hanley Ramirez at shortstop

The pitching staff is young as well, and perhaps just not as far along as the Braves, but this team is going to be able to score runs with the best teams in the NL.  I like the Marlins lineup more than, for example, the Brewers lineup, and the Brewers find their way to the top of the AL in run scoring each season.

What’s hurting the Marlins at this point is that the Miguel Cabrera trade with the Tigers simply hasn’t yielded very much in return, while Cabrera looks like the most dangerous hitter in the AL.  Andrew Miller looks like a washout.  Cameron Maybin is yet to hit at a major league level.  Burke Badenhop is a non-descript middle reliever with 53 appearances in 2010 (good by the standards of this trade).  That’s everything that’s still with the Marlins organization.  The trade looked even at the time, so we shouldn’t crush the Marlins for it, but that’s a weak outcome to the trade of a star player.

If the pitching takes great strides the Marlins can possibly jump the Braves into second place this year.  But likely, they’ll finish in a close third, and come up short of the playoffs.

4) New York Mets (projected finish: 80-82)

While the Mets still offer plenty of star potential for the 2011 season, I don’t really believe in their stars anymore.  David Wright is better than you think he is, which is to say, you should look at his numbers.  He’s the best player on this Mets team.  Carlos Beltran will probably never play a full season again, and I don’t see him enjoying a Jim Edmonds-type end of career.  Jose Reyes is done, in my estimation as an elite player, but he can last as an all-star level player because he plays shortstop.  He’s a .700-.750 OPS guy from here on out.  Jason Bay is going to end up being a dreadful signing because the home ballpark (Citi Field) is going to keep him in the yard often.

But Angel Pagan was a shrewed pickup by former GM Omar Minaya, and while Ike Davis may be due for a regression, he repesents the hope of the future for Mets fans.

The Mets have a pretty good rotation led, still, by Johan Santana and featuring knuckleballer R.A. Dickey, but the home ballpark makes Dickey and fellow starter Mike Pelfrey look better than they are.  The Mets are still a year away, but they can look to build around this pitching/fielding strength, and have already made the right decision to switch Carlos Beltran to RF and put Pagan in CF.  Though I question how exactly playing RF is going to “protect” Beltran’s knees, its still a wise move.  We’ll see if the Mets can get back into contention in the next couple of seasons.

5) Washington Nationals (projected finish: 72-90)

The Nats picked a really good time to be dreadful, we’ll put it that way, and I’ll also say they are my early pick to surprise next season (2012).  Stephen Strasburg looks like the best pitcher in baseball, when healthy.  He will stay sidelined thanks to Tommy John surgery for at least the first four months of the season, and should be all over the headlines next year, when Washington matters.  And if OF Bryce Harper really is the chosen one, he might end up breaking camp with the Nationals at the age of 20.

The Nationals have both of those guys because they were horrible in 2008 and 2009.  They were much better last year, only a little because of Strasburg.  Those two lead a farm system that’s getting stronger by the month.

The Nationals also are closer to a .500 team at the ML level than to a disaster.  They are the worst team in the NL East, for sure, but they would be competitive in the other two NL divisions.  Without Strasburg at the front of their rotation, pitching is a concern.  So is the lineup, which lost it’s second and third best hitters; Adam Dunn to free agency (ChiSox), and Josh Willingham to a trade (A’s).  The Willingham trade bolsters the front of the bullpen with the addition of Henry Rodriguez.  The Nats are, however, strong up the middle and have excellent depth at catcher.  They’ll need more power out of the corner outfield spots and first base before they can compete, but that’s Harper’s role and as long as they can acquire that power to coincide with Strasburg’s return, the Nats could get pretty good at the end of this season.  Once they are already out of it.

Giants-Braves Game 2, Or Why Playoff Baseball isn’t Like Other Baseball

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The MLB playoff system fascinates me.  Especially the divisional round.

So, you probably realize that the MLB regular season is unreasonably long.  It stretches for six straight months, with each team playing at least six times every week.  Every game matters in the sense that you just don’t know how it’s going to break at the end, whether or not a margin of victory is just a game, or is going to be 14 games.  Clearly though, no one is confusing the need to win every game you play as they would with a football season.  It’s more like a basketball season: if you have a bad day, whatever.  If you have a bad week: you may not be the team you thought you were.

Anyway, we do that for six months.  They play the all-star game “for keeps” even though the NL was unsuccessful in ever making up the gap until this year’s late comeback.  By the end, the vast majority of playoff teams are leveraging their leads in the division and legal 40-man enhanced rosters into a line-up made up of primarily backups.

Then, as you would imagine to be the case, we have eight of the best teams square off in short five-game series to determine who goes on to the ALCS, probably eliminating a couple of the best-teams-in-baseball in the process.

Obviously, this makes very little sense given the season-long ideals of baseball where the pressure isn’t supposed to be on every team every night to win, but rather, to be the best team in the division over the long haul.  For the Tampa Bay Rays, you have to prove over six months that you are more deserving of the top seed in the AL playoffs (and homefield advantage) than the two largest market franchises in all of baseball, Boston and New York.  As the seeding would have it, Texas needs just three wins in a preposter0usly-short five game series to make 162 games of Rays accomplishments completely irrelevant.

Generally speaking, the playoff system just doesn’t make a lot of sense in baseball.  If you have a playoff system, you already are accepting the trade off between having the best teams play in the World Series every year against the more-preferable revenue stream generated by more playoff baseball games.  There’s no reason to rehash the playoff debate.  They used to not have playoffs prior to the World Series, then they added them not because they didn’t think there was enough baseball games in a season already to determine who was the best, but because they could have a money-generating showcase between the best teams in the league.

The downside of that: the AL East race which could have been awesome was essentially meaningless.  The Rays won the division because they won more games than the Yankees.  It sure looks like the Yankees are going to be in the ALCS, while the Rays are going to end their season early than expected.  This is because…the Rangers have proven to be a much better team than the Twins through a week in October.  Cheer for our wonderful system!  I, for one, am glad we got that AL East race settled the proper way.

All of this brings me to the one series that doesn’t appear to be decided yet: the series between the injury-riddled Braves and the scoring-challenged Giants.  Playoff baseball has proven, to me at least, to be a different brand of baseball.  Intensity levels are higher in the playoffs, and it does seem to change the performance levels of many players.  That’s a fairly standard observation — and I wish not to pass judgment on the clutch-ness of any player versus another — but the Braves and Giants played a very epic playoff game yesterday that was a joy to watch.  It was a titanic 11-inning battle where every pitch mattered, even if play-by-play commentator Dick Stockton called the 11th inning same as he did the 2nd.

It was must-see TV.  And yet, I think in many ways, it showed why baseball just isn’t a “playoff-sport”.  In the game, Braves CF Rick Ankiel hit a towering game winning homer off of Giants reliever Ramon Ramirez, making Braves reliever Kyle Farnsworth the winning pitcher.  That’s an excellent reason of why these games aren’t any more valuable or harder to win than regular season games.  Those three players have just two things in common: they all played for the Dayton Moore/Trey Hillman Kansas City Royals, and they are no better than league average at their positions, and probably are worse.  I watched an entertaining game where both teams approached each play with increased intensity — but the quality of the game in extra innings was hardly up to par with baseball prior to the all-star break.  None of those players started this season with those teams, but they are the reason the series is 1-1 going back to Atlanta, instead of 2-0 with the Braves on the brink of elimination.  The Giants GW RBI in the first game was driven in by OF Cody Ross, a Marlin until the Giants through in a claim to block him from becoming a Padre (allegedly), and the Marlins jumped at the opportunity to dump salary.  These are the things playoff heroes are made of!

I guess my point is that there’s no reason we couldn’t have had naturally increased intensity back in September, re: division races.  It’s six months and 162 games.  Then playoffs, because we essentially waste the final month and a half from a marketing perspective.  Then the Rays get eliminated, and we lose that selling point.  Instead, MLB playoff marketers must convince Cowboy fans now that the Rangers are the hot ticket in town.  Good luck with that.

We all know the result of close playoff baseball games matters in a way that close regular season games do not, because a teams ability to win 11 out of 18 times against a playoff opponent is irrelevant if that opponent can win 4 of the first 5.  I can just safely point out that even with that necessary evil, having a five game series decide ANYTHING is ridiculous.  If seven-game series are used to determine champions, it makes absolutely no sense to play five game opening rounds.  I’m just surprised that the need for instant replay in playoff baseball has all of the relevant headlines when the system allows elimination in just three losses by teams who have 65-70 of those equivalent losses on the season.

Where is the dissatisfaction with such an insane playoff system, and why can’t I find any links?

MLB Playoff Field Has All the Best Teams; Best Storylines Bound to Be Left Out

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The competitive structure of Major League Baseball has a lot of things going for it right now.  And with 6 of the 8 playoff spots claimed, we can now say that one of the major things that this playoff field has is quality teams at the peak of their popularity.  The Yankees, Twins, and Phillies are joined in the playoffs by upstarts such as the Rangers, Reds, and Rays.

Ultimately, I think this is a good development for baseball.  This is a sport that loves it’s tradition, however, it’s hard for me to see how teams like the Cubs, Red Sox, Angels, and Cardinals would actually make this October more captivating.  Those haven’t been the best teams this season, and them limping into the playoffs would not make the field more impressive.

Problem is, the teams that are playing the best baseball right now are not the teams that would impress most observers the deeper they went into the playoffs.  This is not to intentionally overvalue a few games at the end of the month of September, but almost all the playoff teams are playing incredibly undistinguished baseball.  The Phillies have been the strongest team this month, but they’ve represented the NL in the World Series two straight years.  I think the worst fear of a lot of casual fans is that the Phillies make it back to the World Series in a year where the NL field includes at least three other teams that haven’t been in the postseason since 2005.  They are certainly good enough to do it.

On the AL side, the Yankees are the one team that all of baseball will benefit from going as far as they can.  The AL East might be the lone example of the playoff system benefiting from the rule that prevents LDS match-ups between a wild card team and the division leader in it’s division.  This is not the year that you would want to match the Rays and the Yankees in the first round — those are your two biggest divisional round draws in the American League.  The Rangers are a nice story reaching the top of the AL West in a down year, but they haven’t benefitted much at least in the regular season from acquiring Cliff Lee from the Mariners in July.  I can’t fathom the Rangers taking down either the Rays or the Yankees in a five game series.  The Twins are a much more formidable opponent, and I happen to think that Rays vs. Twins would be one heck of a series to follow.  However, if the Rays sweep the Kansas City Royals to win the division, we know that they will draw the Rangers in the first round.

The NL pool is a lot more interesting, in the opinion of this blog, if both the Atlanta Braves and San Diego Padres find their way into the playoffs.  At this point, that’s probably a long-shot ideal.  The position of the San Francisco Giants in the standings right now allows them to go .500 the rest of the year and limp in unless the Braves and Padres combine to go 7-2 or something in their remaining games.  It would really be some feat if the Giants were beat three or more times the rest of the year, given that they can throw their two aces, Lincecum and Cain in more than half of their remaining schedule, if necessary.  The Braves would qualify as “injury-riddled” at this point, with no Martin Prado or Chipper Jones for the playoffs, who were their 1 and 3 hitters for most of the year.  The Padres would be talent deficient.

The Reds have a horrendous record against playoff quality teams this year, and given that the profile of all teams you’d meet in the playoffs qualify under the class of teams the Reds struggle with.  The most likely match-up for the Reds right now is the Phillies — and though that match-up is far from a certainty — that’s a series that could be short lived.  If the Giants were to get knocked out early by the wild card winner (this isn’t to make a prediction), you’d have a weaker team playing the Phillies in the NLCS to prevent them from a third straight World Series berth.  As such, you can see why the Phillies are such a heavy favorite right now.  It’s just not obvious who can beat them.

Personally, I’d love to see the Braves buck their historical trends and go to the world series as a team who struggled for a long time after the break.  That would be the best storyline of the remaining possibilities, and the Braves have the inside track for the wild card as we speak.  While a repeat of a Phillies-Yankees World Series looms large over the playoff field, the early clinches of the Reds and Rangers as well as some of the stronger upstarts in the field suggest that 2010 has the ability to produce new October outcomes for baseball’s playoff season.

Strasburg an All-Star? Not a Very Funny Joke

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With the permission of just one man, Phillies manager (and NL skipper) Charlie Manuel, Stephen Strasburg will be headed to Anaheim to pitch in the 2010 MLB All-Star game, just seven starts into his big league career.  Strasburg’s pitching “stuff” is legendary: you just wonder how a guy like that ever made it 1) out of the grasp of MLB teams out of high school in the first place, and 2) to San Diego State University to play for Aztec head baseball coach, Tony Gwynn.

Strasburg threw for SDSU for three years, gaining national notoriety in the second, and then improving to pitch himself into a household name as a college junior.  Strasburg entered the major league baseball rule IV amateur draft a polished, potentially finished product.  A year’s time passed between Strasburg’s drafting and his major league debut, but what he accomplished in the minor leagues for about 11 starts at AA and later AAA was pretty legendary: former major league baseball players went down against Strasburg in just three pitches.  To make solid enough contact to hit a foul ball back to the screen, these accomplished hitters needed to outguess Strasburg.

His remarkable strikeout rate has held up strong at the major league level, but outside of his uncanny control, Strasburg has hit his fair share of struggles in the majors.  While it says something about the kid that he’s yet to run into a lineup that has stymied him to the point where he couldn’t find a way to record outs and progress the game, Strasburg has also faced the following lineups in the majors:

• Pittsburgh Pirates
• Cleveland Indians
• Chicago White Sox
• Kansas City Royals
• Atlanta Braves

Strasburg hasn’t won since the Indians game because he hasn’t gotten a single run of support since that day, but you’d also be hard pressed to find a major league pitcher that wouldn’t be able to do exactly what Strasburg has against those teams, minus the obscene strikeout rate and tough luck.  The Atlanta Braves sport the one above average major league lineup from that bunch, and when they faced Strasburgh, they figured him out the third time through the lineup, made the adjustments, and blew his quality start — chasing him from the game in the 7th — and handed him his second loss.  Strasburg is neither the first nor the last pitcher to hold the Royals to a single run in six innings.  He will not be the last pitcher to strike out a bunch of Pirates, or beat the Indians in fairly unimpressive fashion.

He’s a remarkable story and a very bright hope for a Nationals team that needs him, but — perhaps due to luck — Strasburg hasn’t quite accomplished anything since he stormed onto the scene with 14 Ks against the Pirates in his debut.  Hey, for a 21 year old rookie, we probably shouldn’t expect the world from him right away.  His stuff is electric, and he can clearly command it at the major league level.  He’s going to learn how to pitch, because he was ahead of the curve in college, and already knows how to pitch a minor league baseball game.

Should he pitch the major league All-star game?  Of course not.  The game is for remarkable major league pitchers, not remarkable stories.  In the current offensive baseball environment, teams like the first three that Strasburg faced prior to his first lost…those teams aren’t scoring runs against any pitcher.

Without a doubt, this subject of this article will be good enough to consistently turn all-star hitters into outs, probably as soon as next season.  He figures to pitch in ten+ all-star games, and if Charlie Manuel really feels that he’s not leaving anyone off the NL roster to put Strasburg on, I don’t have a huge problem with that.  That would almost have to be a faulty conclusion, however.  The National League has the best pitching of the two leagues this year, had the best pitching prior to Strasburg, and probably can’t justify him on the roster on merit.

A year from now, when Strasburg shuts down some of the better offenses in the NL, he’s going to earn his spot on the all-star team.  This is a matter of time.  At this time, let’s go with the 13 or so all-star pitchers who better deserve it, and not cost a National like Josh Willingham or Ryan Zimmerman a spot in the all-star game because we’re not actually paying attention to what’s going on in Washington four days a week.

The Braves are the National League’s Best Team

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Two teams in baseball have sported a longer losing streak than the eight games the Houston Astros dropped to start the season.  Neither are the Kansas City Royals, who topped out this year at seven consecutive losses.

The Milwaukee Brewers struggled in the middle of May, and were swept out of three straight series against the Braves, Phillies, and Reds to polish off a nine game losing streak that is tied for the longest streak in baseball.  The Brewers have had their struggles this year — the pitching has been horrendous — but they aren’t a notably bad team.  Their nine game losing streak is notable, because the only other team in baseball to lose that many games in a row is, in my mind, the favorite to take the NL pennant this year: the dangerous Atlanta Braves.

The Braves offense struggled mightily between April 21st and April 29th, and not to excuse a week long sub par offensive performance, but if you’re trying to determine whether the April nine game losing streak was a fluke, or the May winning streaks of 4, 5, and now 7 are fluky, the pitcher matchups faced by the Braves do paint a clear pattern.  They faced Roy Halladay on April 21st, and lost 2-0.  They faced Mike Pelfrey on April 25th, and lost 1-0.  They faced Chris Carpenter on April 27th, losing 5-4. The next day, Jaime Garcia beat them 6-0, and the day after that, former Atlanta farmhand Adam Wainwright won a 10-4 decision to extend the Braves’ losing streak to 9.  They clearly struggled after the Pelfrey-Hanson duel, but that would have normally been a four game losing streak, which happens to every team every year.  It’s the shutouts that had Braves fans and league observers worried.

That’s it for “the Bad” for this team, because the offense is no longer of concern.  There are non-contributors who might need to be upgraded before the trade deadline if things turn around, but all the “problems” are coming from established professionals who have worked through slumps before, among them: SS Yunel Escobar, OF Melky Cabrera, and OF Nate McClouth, none of whom is younger than 25 or older than 28.  When your biggest offensive issue is that established players in their prime are performing below expectation/replacement level, waiting them out is always a reasonable solution.  But the Braves also have the option to increase the playing time of someone like Eric Hinske, or trade for one of many available outfielders, including Royals OF David DeJesus, or White Sox OF Andruw Jones…who I hear was a pretty good OF for the Braves back in the day.

The Braves always pitch well, and this year, they are accounting for a struggling back-end of the rotation with a fantastic bullpen, led by two guys in right-hander Takashi Saito and left-hander Billy Wagner who are nearly 80 years old combined, and who more than a handful of teams gave up on before the Braves had an opportunity to sign either.  Neither Saito nor Wagner is showing a meaningful drop in velocity, and the Braves certainly aren’t stressing finesse; both pitchers are throwing a higher percentage of fastballs than at any point in the last five years.  Also featuring great bullpen depth from the left side (the rotation is five right handers), the Braves are going to hold a very high percentage of late inning leads.

24-year old RHP Jair Jurrjens hasn’t pitched great — and is stranding an obscenely low 50% of baserunners (in part due to the league slugging .440 against him) — but he’s generally keeping guys off the bases (at least in part due to an unsustainable .260 BABIP).  Jurrjens is a power-arm who has kept the ball in the park rather well over his career, and when his strikeout rate rises, he’ll do a lot better.  The weakness in the Braves’ rotation is Kenshin Kawakami.  They, like everyone else, got caught up in the late aughts Japanese pitcher craze, and on the whole, pitching imports from Japan have turned out to be pretty overpaid (Saito may be one of a few exceptions to this rule).  The Braves still owe Kawakami more than 10 million through 2011, according to Cot’s.  Kawakami’s line is right in line with both his FIP and his xFIP, and at this point, we can conclude that he’s somewhere between a replacement level pitcher and a league average pitcher.  Still, it’s possible that a year from now, his contract will look better on the Braves’ books than rotation-mate Derek Lowe.

Still, beyond the troublesome half of the rotation, the Braves are in first due to two players who are costing the team not quite $1 million this year, combined.  RHP Tommy Hanson is one of the games best young starters and features three devastating pitches: fastball, slider, curveball.  You don’t hear much about Hanson, who figures to make his first of many all-star teams this year, because RF Jason Heyward is threatening to make baseball fans forget that Chipper Jones ever existed.  Heyward, who will play in the same division as Nats phenom Steven Strasburg by weeks end, will probably not fail to make an all-star team in this decade.  And then he’ll be 29, and in the prime of his career at the end of it.  The 20-year old is walking in 15% of all plate appearances, and homers once every 20.  If his K rate ever progresses towards what he established in the minor leagues (one season), he could destroy ALL of baseball records, and do it in an era that is beginning to lean towards pitching.

For all of the above reasons, I’m looking at the Braves as a candidate to destroy the National League this year.  The Phillies, yes, figure to be there at the end and in the playoffs, and the Rockies are a well rounded team that could cause the Braves trouble in the post season if they can figure out a way out of the NL West, but the most complete team is once again, in Atlanta.  Furthermore, they are young, supremely talented baseball players, and ten years from now, this period of second, third, and fourth place finishes for the Braves from 2006-2009 will probably just look fluky.  Major League Baseball seems more…correct when the Braves are looking down on the rest of the division, and with this latest hot streak, the Braves have established a lead in the NL East that I don’t expect them to give up at any point the rest of the way.

Hall of Fame Over/Under: The 90’s Braves

flickr.com/Steve Paluch

In this periodic series, I’ll take a look at one dominant team at a time, and we’ll set an over/under baseline on the amount of hall of famers that team will have from the era.

Today’s team is the 90’s era Braves, they of 15 consecutive division championship fame.  The over/under: 4 1/2 hall of famers.

We’ll start with the locks from this era.  Greg Maddux: lock.  Tom Glavine: lock.  Chipper Jones: lock.  That’s three hall of famers from the 15 year era.  Then there’s John Smoltz, who might not be a first ballot guy, but despite the recent hit his reputation has taken for poor performance, his body of work is almost certain to make him the fourth Brave into the hall from this era.

So if you’ll give me Smoltz, this question boils down to all the remaining players who helped the Braves to 15 consecutive division titles: is there another hall of famer anywhere?  Or were the Braves simply a revolving door of good and great players matched up with three hall bound pitchers and one of the greatest hitters of the generation?

Well, let’s just say that I’m not putting my money 0n Vinny Castilla.  Let’s go back to the pre-strike days, and throw out some names who just might one day go into Cooperstown with the rest of the great Braves of this dominant era.

*Jermaine Dye and Kenny Lofton are not under consideration because they only had one year each with the Braves, nor are Gary Sheffield or Andres Galarraga who both had two years with the Braves, but at the end of their respective careers.  It is not otherwise a requirement that a player had his best years with the Braves.

Terry Pendleton

Won the MVP in 1991, which has gotten his name thrown around in HOF discussions.  Accrued 303 total bases in consecutive seasons.  He’s assisted by the fact that his best years came from just before the strike and hall of fame era, but he’s not going to get any serious Hall pull.  His career was remarkably mediocre.  He was a solid defensive player who was above average every season range factor, and he won three gold gloves, but he was a 91 OPS+ guy, and that pretty much means he’s not going in under any circumstances.

David Justice

Justice was a legitimately great hitter, posting a career 129 OPS+, but as a corner outfielder, he was somewhat undistinguished.  Jim Rice posted a career 128 OPS+, and he only went in on his last year of eligibility with the sportswriters.  He might have had a shot, but then he was linked to PED’s, and that takes a borderline hall of famer and makes him a very, very easy exclusion.  Not to mention that Justice’s best year was his first year with Cleveland after he left Atlanta, and that was in the height of the steroid era.

Mark Wohlers

Even in his peak, he was a tier below Eckersley in terms of reliever quality, but Mark Wohlers was very, very good for a very long time.  Where he gets hurt is that he didn’t become the Braves closer until the 1995 world series year (he was already the team’s ace reliever since 1992), and only got one all star appearance when he started to accrue saves.  Then, he imploded so spectacularly in 1998 that it really hurt his reputation.  He returned in 2000 and offered two more years as a strong relief pitcher for the Reds and Yankees.  He was out of the game by age 33.  His hall candidacy is about what Eric Gagne’s would be if Gagne wasn’t a known PED user: visible, but not all that strong.

Charlie Leibrandt

Charlie Leibrandt is a hall of famer in no ones mind, but you know, he’s better than some pitchers who are hall of famers in some minds.  He was a very valuable player for a long time, first with Kansas City and then he threw together three front of rotation seasons with the Braves in their upstart years, and got replaced by Greg Maddux in 1993.  He provided about as much total value to the Braves as Steve Avery did, but Avery did it at the beginning of his career, which puts him above Leibrandt in the minds of the masses.  It was a better career than most realize, but not hall worthy.

Javy Lopez

Up until this point, we’ve looked at a bunch of Braves who won’t make the hall of fame, for various reasons.  Lopez is the first guy on this list that I think might be able to get in.  The guy was a truly excellent hitter for a catcher, and perhaps one of the best breaking ball hitters in the history of the game.  His 112 OPS+ compares favorably to Ivan Rodriguez (108), and though he was never regarded as a great defensive player like Pudge was, he was a much better one than Mike Piazza.  To this date, Lopez has not been linked to PEDs, though it’s pretty clear that his other two contemporaries used.  I think, that although he’s going to have to wait, if Lopez’ name is never linked to performance enhancers, he will eventually get the call to Cooperstown.

Ron Gant

He was an annual MVP candidate with the Braves, but never put together a single dominant season, and overall, his career numbers were hurt after he left Atlanta.  His 112 OPS+ is significantly less than his outfield-mate Justice, and Ron Gant is not really a hall of fame candidate, although it certainly at one point during his career looked like the sky was the limit.

Fred McGriff

I think so.  I know he only played a few years with the Braves, and was generally a journeyman which hurts his overall case, but McGriff was a great power hitter who slugged over .500 in nearly 9,oo0 ABs, numbers not adjusted for age decline.  He was a remarkably consistent hitter: as effective at age 38 as he was as a rookie.  Interestingly, the worst year of the relevant portion of his career came with the Braves.  I ultimately think that McGriff will be a hall of famer, and when he does, it will count towards the hall of famers who helped the 90’s Braves.

Andruw Jones

Jones is a 10 time gold glove winner and perhaps the greatest defensive outfielder in the last 25 years.  He’s still going as well, though the Rangers have moved him out of center field, he’s one of the best defensive corner outfielders in the majors this year, according to UZR.   Historically though, Jones has been viewed as a bit of an underachiever, and his best chance to make the hall of fame is to do something great with his bat in the last part of his career.  Jones is only 32.  He’s got 388 homers.  If he hits 500, he’s a sure fire hall of famer given his defensive value.  I mean, heck, shortstop may be a glorified defensive position, but Omar Vizquel is going to get some hall of fame support and he has almost no offensive value.  I think, and we’ll know a lot more at the end of next year, that Andruw Jones is a hall of famer.

Rafael Furcal

Furcal has been maybe the best NL shortstop in the league over the last five years or so, and as a Brave product who helped to extend the string of division titles past where it perhaps deserved to be based on the peak of players like Jones, Maddux, Glavine, et al.  But he’s not going into the hall.  He’s a middling hitter in a historical context, and though he has tools, he’s not as good defensively according to UZR as he sometimes gets compared to.

Brian McCann

McCann is only 25, is currently the leagues best hitting catcher, but didn’t play that much as a rookie in the 14th consecutive division championship, so putting him on this list might be out of context in the spirit of the list.  His 122 OPS+ is excellent for a young catcher, and while it way too early to make a hall of fame case, he’s on the right track.

The interesting thing is that not one of these players fits nicely into the era in question, save Andruw Jones perhaps.  But after looking at a lot of the fringe hall of famers from this era, I think I’m going to have to side with the over.  I feel like the Braves should have about 6 hall of famers from the era, so 5 seems incredibly reasonable.  I’m sold on the hall cases of Fred McGriff and Andruw Jones, and when you add them to a list that includes John Smoltz, Greg Maddux, Chipper Jones, and Tom Glavine, I’d say that this era of Braves dominance will be well represented in Cooperstown one day.

Handicappin’ the MLB Wild Card Races

Taking a one day timeout from NFL camp previews and depressing Royals posts to focus on MLB teams who are still playing for something.

The concept of the wild card seems like a silly thing in American sports.  Think about it: we have a culture where we celebrate champions and largely ignore runner-ups.  The wild card is a way for us to give runner ups a shot at being champions.  It’s a very fascinating concept.  And it’s been a decisive one as well.  Since 2000, only two world series match-ups have been between division winners.  It’s not likely that this trend will continue at the same pace it has been, but we’ve seen plenty of instances where the wild card team is favored in it’s first round match-up.

Part of the problem has to do with the antiquated rule that disallows two playoff teams from the same division to play in the first round.  You can understand why major league baseball would do this: you don’t necessarily want the Yankess and Red Sox matching up in the first round every year.  There was a time at which that was only a 5 game series.  But now that it’s seven games, is it any better that the Yankees and Red Sox play every other year?  I think if you have a situation where the wild card has the 4th best record, and plays in the division with the no. 1 seed, they should play in the first round.  Either eliminate the wild card team right away, or have them represent their division in the LCS.

flickr.com/Keith Allison

That’s tangent to the real point here: that the AL and NL effectively use the wild card differently.  In the AL, the wild card is a necessity if you are going to have three divisions and two rounds of playoffs.  Back in the East-West days, it made sense to let the big market powers in the East duke it out in the regular season.  In many ways, it was a better system then as opposed to now because the playoff system was simplified, and the ALCS was a stronger match-up on a year to year basis than it is now.  But in the era of three divisions, it’s important to make sure the two best records in the conference get in despite divisional lines.  That’s true of the NL as well, but the wildcard in the NL has little purpose outside of expanding and diluting the playoff field.  None of the division races are unfair from year to year, and you can thank the Cubs for not capitalizing on their market share for that.

This year’s example is as good as any.  The AL wild card has 3 legitimate contenders this year (4 if you count division leading Yankees and 5 if you count the division leading Angels):  it’s currently led by the Red Sox, and challenged by the Rangers and the Rays.  For another team to get into the race, all three of those teams would need to fall considerably off the pace.  The Rangers probably will do so before the end of the year, and I see their presence in this race as temporary.  I think that the Rays have a better chance of catching the Red Sox (4 GB) than, say, the Red Sox have of catching the Yankees (1.5 GB), but obviously, the status quo would be for New York to win the division and Boston to win the wild card.  But when you analyze the AL wildcard race at it’s most basic level, it’s the Red Sox/Yankees in the lead, the Rays challenging, and a whole lot of noise.

That’s not true in the NL.  Seven teams have a reasonable shot at the NL wild card.  It’s currently led by the Rockies, with the Giants a half game back, the Cardinals two games back, then the Marlins (4.0), Braves (5.5), Astros (6.5), and Brewers (6.5).  The Astros and Brewers are very much below average baseball teams incapable of keeping up the pace without improving significantly.  The Marlins on the other hand, might very well improve, but in their current form are not going to be competitive for much longer.  The Braves might be a longshot based on being more than 5 games out in August, but they also could get plenty better fast, and leap back into the race.

flickr.com/rosepetal236

It’s hard projecting a race that you can’t even identify the contenders in (Cards or Cubs?), but it’s made significantly easier by the dominance of the Dodgers and the Phillies this year.  Over the last week, St. Louis and Chicago have really made it a two team race in the NL Central, which narrows down the possibilities for playoff contention in the NL.  The West has two legitimate wild card contenders, the central has one, and the east has one or two.  The Central is wide open enough to be decided by the lesser of two poor teams, the stronger of two good teams, or by a wide margin.  If both the Cards and Cubs trend upward over the final two months, it’s likely that both will make the playoffs, since neither the Rockies nor the Giants are flawless.  But given the other two options: one or both teams falling off the pace, and this wild card race is going to break down to just two or three teams very quickly.

This race, moreso than any in past years, features the two most likely winners hoping that they don’t have to stave off both the Cardinals and the Cubs.  I’d put my money on the Rockies, who seem like they will only extend their lead throughout August, but unlike 2007, if we’re three weeks into September and the Rockies don’t have the wild card locked up, it’s a good sign that the Cardinals (or Cubs) are going to win it.

Since I wrote this much, and have basically earned the right to make a prediction, LiveBall likes the Rockies in the NL, and in a bit of an upset (but not much), the Rays over the Red Sox in the AL.