Baseball 2011: Abandon All Hope
So once again, I am a smidge late with my baseball preview. However, last year I didn't get my baseball "preview" out until mid-May, and I was still wrong about a lot of things, so all things considered, this isn't such a bad thing.
I was driving around today and listening to WFAN as I did so. Why, I'm not sure... apparently, Joe from Long Island is having a meltdown over the Mets losing their opener last night to Florida. The host didn't know what to make of this; after all, it was just one game, with 161 more to go. Well, the reason isn't that we lost, but how we lost. This game looked like so many games from last season. Mike Pelfrey pitched all right, but he made one big mistake that was hit for a grand slam by new Marlins catcher John Buck, and Josh Johnson was Josh Johnson. We were lucky we didn't get no-hit. David Wright struck out a bunch of times. In other words, we Mets fans have seen this movie before, and despite the new front office, new manager, and a handful of new players, it ended the same way.
Welcome to being a Mets fan in 2011. After watching a team that had the makings of a dominant force in the NL East slowly implode on itself over the last 4 years, we now are left to deal with the wreckage and try to put something back together. New GM Sandy Alderson and top lieutenant J.P. Ricciardi tossed some of the dead weight overboard (Luis Castillo and Oliver Perez), so there is a shot at addition by subtraction, and they certainly won't repeat Omar Minaya's routine of picking up and hanging onto players who kill your clubhouse while jettisoning "glue guys" like Alex Cora and Jeff Francoeur. These are the guys who laid the foundation for what came to be called "Moneyball" in Oakland, so they will be much better evaluators of not only talent but mental makeup.
Unfortunately, they've already proven they don't know how to hire a manager. Rather than bringing in a fire-'em-up, organization type like Wally Backman, they brought in two-time loser Terry Collins. Well, that's a little harsh, he finished in second place five straight years while managing the Astros and Angels... which means he's good for getting you 83-84 wins a season. That's nice. Getting that this year would be terrific, all things considered, but we should acknowledge right now that this would be his ceiling. He may be good as a caretaker for the franchise these next couple years, but then we'll have to make another managerial change when it shows that he is not the guy who will get us back to postseason baseball... and it will.
But that's a long time from now. Right now, we have to deal with the fact that we have a $132 million payroll, and a lot of that money is either being paid to guys who are gone (like Castillo and Perez) or guys who are injured (like Johan Santana and, for now, Jason Bay). As such, we have a Rule 5 draft pick playing second base in Brad Emaus, who shows promise with the glove but should be regarded as an experiment until he proves he belongs with his bat. We have lots of new faces in the bullpen, which we desperately needed, but no recognizable faces. And we have Carlos Beltran, Jose Reyes, and Francisco Rodriguez, all in the last year of contracts, and all with baggage. Beltran was as much a cancer in the clubhouse as anyone last year; his mere return to the team from the DL in July was the turning point of the Mets' season. He voluntarily moved to right field because he knows he doesn't have it in center anymore, so that's a step in the right direction, but he's a definite question mark. Joe from Long Island has wanted Reyes gone since he was a notable part of the first September collapse in 2007. K-Rod's 2010 ended when he injured his thumb punching his girlfriend's dad.
Add to all this misery the Bernie Madoff mess. As owner Fred Wilpon was buddies with Madoff, the mere guilt-by-association has led to the people who were bilked by Madoff suing Wilpon (and, by extension, the Mets) for a ridiculous sum of money. In order to pay legal bills and a possible settlement, Wilpon has put a portion of the team up for sale, but some think it could be the whole team. This entire franchise is in such chaos right now, so plagued by failure, ineptitude, and misery, that they may as well just hang a sign on the entrance to Citi Field, reading: "Abandon All Hope, All Ye Who Enter Here."
Now THAT is why we Mets fans are so unhappy today over our 0-1 record. In the end, my expectations are the same this year as they were last year: Just finish above .500. However, last year (and the last 4 years for that matter) the Mets failed to meet my expectations, so take it for what it is. As my lamenting over my chosen favorite team doesn't leave me much room for predicting the rest of Major League Baseball, I'll be brief on that portion.
The NL East belongs to the Phillies. For people to say otherwise (and believe me, people have, most notably those Braves-obsessed analysts at ESPN) is foolish... or is that "phoolish"? Anyway, they've got the best top 4 starting pitchers ever put together in Hamels, Halladay, Oswalt, and Lee, and although they didn't score much last year and are missing Chase Utley for a while, they are the champs until they are beaten. And they won't be this year. Second place this year belongs to the Marlins. They have a great up-and-coming team with lots of young hitting talent, and they are putting all the pieces in place to become serious contenders when they move into their new stadium next year. The Braves will finish third. Yes, they have Jason Heyward, Dan Uggla, Tim Hudson, and a few other solid players... but they also have many question marks, and they no longer have Bobby Cox in that dugout. That matters, despite what ESPN tells you. The Mets will finish 4th, and the Nats... are the Nats.
Speaking of good young rosters, the Cincinnati Reds put themselves in position to contend for a few years with the team they've put together. Their good young pitchers will only get better, Joey Votto, Brandon Phillips, and Jay Bruce are first-rate hitters, and they'll get a chance to improve their postseason pedigree after getting flushed out of the wild-card round last year, getting no-hit by Halladay in the process. St. Louis has the usual amount of talent and Tony LaRussa's veteran presence in the dugout, but the specter of Albert Pujols' expiring contract looms large and could become a distraction. They'll contend for a wild-card, but the Reds will win the NL Central. Chicago should have a nice bounce-back year and will be in it for the wild-card as well. Milwaukee brought in Zack Greinke to help their rotation, but they're still too thin to seriously contend. Houston showed yesterday that they have no closer, and the pitching problems that have held them back in recent years will continue to do so. Pittsburgh... won their opener yesterday. Likely the high water mark of their season.
Next, we go to the NL West, where we find the defending World Champions... wait, is that right? The Giants won it all last year? I swear I keep forgetting that. One thing is for sure, they won't sneak up on anyone this year, not with that rotation of Lincecum, Cain, Sanchez, and Bumgarner (and maybe Zito), and a full year of Buster Posey to go with another young slugger in Brandon Belt. With the defection of Adrian Gonzalez, it's hard to believe the Padres will be able to keep up with the pack in the NL West this year, but nobody expected them to be there last year, so you can't really count them out. So pencil them in as wild-card contenders, along with the Rockies, who have their key parts returning from last year. The Dodgers have the same problem as the Braves, including the first-year manager replacing a retiring legend. LA fans will have to give Don Mattingly a year to settle in. Arizona is in rebuilding mode.
The AL East should go to the Red Sox this year, unless the injuries that have plagued them in recent years pop up again. The Yankees will contend for the wild-card, and will go as far as their questionable rotation after CC will take them. The problem with the AL East is that with Baltimore's new manager, Buck Showalter, giving them a hint of legitimacy, you potentially have five teams beating the stuffing out of each other all year, and it's tough to shake them all out. But here's how I see it ending: Boston 1st, Yankees 2nd, Toronto 3rd, Baltimore 4th, and the Rays return to the cellar. The "glory days" of 2008-10 are over.
Minnesota won the AL Central last year, and they return a healthy Justin Morneau, but don't think they'll cruise to the division title this year. The White Sox are always lurking so long as Ozzie Guillen is their manager, and Detroit has a nice, young, improving core of hitters. Expect both to give the Twins fits and the Yankees a run for the wild-card. Not much has gone right in Cleveland the last couple years, but at least they're not the Royals, so much like the Mets, they know they won't be worse than 4th.
Finally, the AL West is home of the defending AL champs, the Texas Rangers. They too will surprise no one this time around, but they are clearly the best team in that division, so they should repeat as division champs. The Angels still have some holes to patch in their lineup, but if they do, they might have a shot at a wild-card. Seattle and Oakland have much work to do, which kinda shows you the downside of "Moneyball": once everyone else figured out the importance of OPS, the A's became just another small-market team.
So, because you need definite answers from me, here's my in-stone, guaranteed-to-be-half-wrong picks:
NL: East - Phillies, Central - Reds, West - Giants, Wild-Card - Cardinals
AL: East - Red Sox, Central - Twins, West - Rangers, Wild-Card - White Sox
I was driving around today and listening to WFAN as I did so. Why, I'm not sure... apparently, Joe from Long Island is having a meltdown over the Mets losing their opener last night to Florida. The host didn't know what to make of this; after all, it was just one game, with 161 more to go. Well, the reason isn't that we lost, but how we lost. This game looked like so many games from last season. Mike Pelfrey pitched all right, but he made one big mistake that was hit for a grand slam by new Marlins catcher John Buck, and Josh Johnson was Josh Johnson. We were lucky we didn't get no-hit. David Wright struck out a bunch of times. In other words, we Mets fans have seen this movie before, and despite the new front office, new manager, and a handful of new players, it ended the same way.
Welcome to being a Mets fan in 2011. After watching a team that had the makings of a dominant force in the NL East slowly implode on itself over the last 4 years, we now are left to deal with the wreckage and try to put something back together. New GM Sandy Alderson and top lieutenant J.P. Ricciardi tossed some of the dead weight overboard (Luis Castillo and Oliver Perez), so there is a shot at addition by subtraction, and they certainly won't repeat Omar Minaya's routine of picking up and hanging onto players who kill your clubhouse while jettisoning "glue guys" like Alex Cora and Jeff Francoeur. These are the guys who laid the foundation for what came to be called "Moneyball" in Oakland, so they will be much better evaluators of not only talent but mental makeup.
Unfortunately, they've already proven they don't know how to hire a manager. Rather than bringing in a fire-'em-up, organization type like Wally Backman, they brought in two-time loser Terry Collins. Well, that's a little harsh, he finished in second place five straight years while managing the Astros and Angels... which means he's good for getting you 83-84 wins a season. That's nice. Getting that this year would be terrific, all things considered, but we should acknowledge right now that this would be his ceiling. He may be good as a caretaker for the franchise these next couple years, but then we'll have to make another managerial change when it shows that he is not the guy who will get us back to postseason baseball... and it will.
But that's a long time from now. Right now, we have to deal with the fact that we have a $132 million payroll, and a lot of that money is either being paid to guys who are gone (like Castillo and Perez) or guys who are injured (like Johan Santana and, for now, Jason Bay). As such, we have a Rule 5 draft pick playing second base in Brad Emaus, who shows promise with the glove but should be regarded as an experiment until he proves he belongs with his bat. We have lots of new faces in the bullpen, which we desperately needed, but no recognizable faces. And we have Carlos Beltran, Jose Reyes, and Francisco Rodriguez, all in the last year of contracts, and all with baggage. Beltran was as much a cancer in the clubhouse as anyone last year; his mere return to the team from the DL in July was the turning point of the Mets' season. He voluntarily moved to right field because he knows he doesn't have it in center anymore, so that's a step in the right direction, but he's a definite question mark. Joe from Long Island has wanted Reyes gone since he was a notable part of the first September collapse in 2007. K-Rod's 2010 ended when he injured his thumb punching his girlfriend's dad.
Add to all this misery the Bernie Madoff mess. As owner Fred Wilpon was buddies with Madoff, the mere guilt-by-association has led to the people who were bilked by Madoff suing Wilpon (and, by extension, the Mets) for a ridiculous sum of money. In order to pay legal bills and a possible settlement, Wilpon has put a portion of the team up for sale, but some think it could be the whole team. This entire franchise is in such chaos right now, so plagued by failure, ineptitude, and misery, that they may as well just hang a sign on the entrance to Citi Field, reading: "Abandon All Hope, All Ye Who Enter Here."
Now THAT is why we Mets fans are so unhappy today over our 0-1 record. In the end, my expectations are the same this year as they were last year: Just finish above .500. However, last year (and the last 4 years for that matter) the Mets failed to meet my expectations, so take it for what it is. As my lamenting over my chosen favorite team doesn't leave me much room for predicting the rest of Major League Baseball, I'll be brief on that portion.
The NL East belongs to the Phillies. For people to say otherwise (and believe me, people have, most notably those Braves-obsessed analysts at ESPN) is foolish... or is that "phoolish"? Anyway, they've got the best top 4 starting pitchers ever put together in Hamels, Halladay, Oswalt, and Lee, and although they didn't score much last year and are missing Chase Utley for a while, they are the champs until they are beaten. And they won't be this year. Second place this year belongs to the Marlins. They have a great up-and-coming team with lots of young hitting talent, and they are putting all the pieces in place to become serious contenders when they move into their new stadium next year. The Braves will finish third. Yes, they have Jason Heyward, Dan Uggla, Tim Hudson, and a few other solid players... but they also have many question marks, and they no longer have Bobby Cox in that dugout. That matters, despite what ESPN tells you. The Mets will finish 4th, and the Nats... are the Nats.
Speaking of good young rosters, the Cincinnati Reds put themselves in position to contend for a few years with the team they've put together. Their good young pitchers will only get better, Joey Votto, Brandon Phillips, and Jay Bruce are first-rate hitters, and they'll get a chance to improve their postseason pedigree after getting flushed out of the wild-card round last year, getting no-hit by Halladay in the process. St. Louis has the usual amount of talent and Tony LaRussa's veteran presence in the dugout, but the specter of Albert Pujols' expiring contract looms large and could become a distraction. They'll contend for a wild-card, but the Reds will win the NL Central. Chicago should have a nice bounce-back year and will be in it for the wild-card as well. Milwaukee brought in Zack Greinke to help their rotation, but they're still too thin to seriously contend. Houston showed yesterday that they have no closer, and the pitching problems that have held them back in recent years will continue to do so. Pittsburgh... won their opener yesterday. Likely the high water mark of their season.
Next, we go to the NL West, where we find the defending World Champions... wait, is that right? The Giants won it all last year? I swear I keep forgetting that. One thing is for sure, they won't sneak up on anyone this year, not with that rotation of Lincecum, Cain, Sanchez, and Bumgarner (and maybe Zito), and a full year of Buster Posey to go with another young slugger in Brandon Belt. With the defection of Adrian Gonzalez, it's hard to believe the Padres will be able to keep up with the pack in the NL West this year, but nobody expected them to be there last year, so you can't really count them out. So pencil them in as wild-card contenders, along with the Rockies, who have their key parts returning from last year. The Dodgers have the same problem as the Braves, including the first-year manager replacing a retiring legend. LA fans will have to give Don Mattingly a year to settle in. Arizona is in rebuilding mode.
The AL East should go to the Red Sox this year, unless the injuries that have plagued them in recent years pop up again. The Yankees will contend for the wild-card, and will go as far as their questionable rotation after CC will take them. The problem with the AL East is that with Baltimore's new manager, Buck Showalter, giving them a hint of legitimacy, you potentially have five teams beating the stuffing out of each other all year, and it's tough to shake them all out. But here's how I see it ending: Boston 1st, Yankees 2nd, Toronto 3rd, Baltimore 4th, and the Rays return to the cellar. The "glory days" of 2008-10 are over.
Minnesota won the AL Central last year, and they return a healthy Justin Morneau, but don't think they'll cruise to the division title this year. The White Sox are always lurking so long as Ozzie Guillen is their manager, and Detroit has a nice, young, improving core of hitters. Expect both to give the Twins fits and the Yankees a run for the wild-card. Not much has gone right in Cleveland the last couple years, but at least they're not the Royals, so much like the Mets, they know they won't be worse than 4th.
Finally, the AL West is home of the defending AL champs, the Texas Rangers. They too will surprise no one this time around, but they are clearly the best team in that division, so they should repeat as division champs. The Angels still have some holes to patch in their lineup, but if they do, they might have a shot at a wild-card. Seattle and Oakland have much work to do, which kinda shows you the downside of "Moneyball": once everyone else figured out the importance of OPS, the A's became just another small-market team.
So, because you need definite answers from me, here's my in-stone, guaranteed-to-be-half-wrong picks:
NL: East - Phillies, Central - Reds, West - Giants, Wild-Card - Cardinals
AL: East - Red Sox, Central - Twins, West - Rangers, Wild-Card - White Sox
posted by Dave | 5:02 PM
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