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| A coveted San Francisco address |
Baseball is the losingest of all games, of course, which is why it’s a favourite subject matter here at IN PLAY LOSE. Even élite teams lose two months’ worth of games over the course of a summer. And the game has something of a clockwork element about it even though the game doesn’t have a clock. Your team sucks today? Try again tomorrow! If you enjoy the pace and the rhythm of the game, you can find something to like about it on a daily basis, even if your team sucks. And trust me when I say that. I grew up watching the Seattle Mariners in the 1980s. If that team didn’t kill your love for the game, nothing will.
With the start of the season comes prediction time, of course – but since this is IN PLAY LOSE, we have to do things a little bit differently. Today we present our 1-sentence preview in which I explain why it is that, come Dec. 31, I might actually be writing about your favourite team in the context of winning The Lose of the Year award. This is not a prediction of who will be the best team, although I will probably mention that. This is also not necessarily a prediction of who will be the worst team. Certainly, bad teams are more likely to be blogged about than good ones, but failure encompasses more than just day-to-day failure. The epic chokes, the woeful underachieving, the poorly constructed roster – all of that is great stuff. Predicting the epic choke is impossible, of course, but we can look at some clubs and get the sense that, if/when the moment comes where they could rise above it all, they still would be more likely to fall on their faces than not. As such, a team is just as likely to be LOSE fodder if they are good as they are if they are bad.
And since I have a short attention span, I’m going to keep this quick. One sentence and one sentence only. Here is your IN PLAY LOSE baseball preview, ranked in order from least likely to most likely to be fodder for the blog. Do these things, and some hack in San Francisco will make fun of you:
30. Baltimore Orioles: because I’m generally high on the O’s, probably more than I should be but it’s served me well the past few years, yet also realistic about their chances and, thus, not really surprised by anything they do, good or bad.
29. New York Mets: because the Mets aren’t going anywhere, are likely to be improved, but whatever inevitable Big Apple-centric drama unfolds around them isn’t going to do anything to make them particularly relevant.
28. Houston Astros: because they’ve graduated from being historically awful to just being bad – improving, but still bad – and just being a run-of-the-mill bad team isn’t going to get you much press.
27. Milwaukee Brewers: because, well, there isn’t really that much of note about this team, according to IN PLAY LOSE official Wisconsin correspondent, Steve ‘Team Cheese’ Drumwright: “the good thing is that they didn’t really lose anyone in the off-season, but the bad thing is that they didn’t really lose anyone in the off-season.”
26. Arizona Diamondbacks: because hating on the Snakes was so much easier when GM Kevin Towers was making dumb trades and mouthing off about his players in the press and Kirk Gibson was inciting beanball wars, but now that Tony Larussa has come in and ‘analyzed’ every aspect of the organization – and promptly fired everybody – the Snakes will still likely be really, really bad this year but maybe one of the most inexcusably poorly managed franchises in sports finally has some hope.
25. Kansas City Royals: because getting red hot and playing really well for a couple of weeks in the playoffs, while commendable, doesn’t change the fact that this was a pretty average team who lived on a very thin margin last year, and the law of averages would suggest your bullpen isn’t going to be perfect and having no power in the lineup will come back to get you, meaning some regression from the World Series appearance is likely in order.
24. St. Louis Cardinals: because while I wonder if this team’s reputation preceeds it, as I’m not particularly crazy about their offense, the Cardinals do have a seemingly endless supply of good young arms and a culture of winning and they will probably find their way into the playoffs like they do every year, but not be particularly flashy and/or noteworthy about it.
23. Texas Rangers: because while they deserve a mulligan for last year’s injury-ridden disaster of a season in which Dr. James Andrews should’ve been put on the payroll, all of the injuries masked the fact that the Rangers were due for a serious slide to begin with, and Yu Darvish’s injury this spring might mask that fact a bit more, but I do think that lack of talent is going to be more of a problem than lack of healthy bodies this year in Arlington.
22. San Francisco Giants: because odd year bullshit.
21. Cleveland Indians: because I don’t think I’m going to need to say much about this team, which is going to be really good.
20. Cincinnati Reds: because how can you explain the fact that, over the course of three years, this team has gone from being so good to not very good at all, other than to think that Buster Posey killed the franchise’s collective will to live back in 2012, from which they have not ever really recovered:
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| Greatest gif in baseball history |
18. Toronto Blue Jays: because they are entering the 18th year of the 5-year rebuilding plan in Toronto, during which the good ideas haven’t worked, and the bad ideas haven’t worked, and this year’s plan involved improving the pitching staff by trading for more hitters, which means nothing the Blue Jays do when they inevitably underachieve will be a surprise, but it will likely be somewhat entertaining nonetheless.
17. Pittsburgh Pirates: because I wonder, if the Pirates make another quick exit from the playoffs, if amnesia starts to settle in among Bucs’ faithfuls, who will start being annoyed at their team not winning championships and forget how godfuckingterrible this team was for two decades.
15/16. Seattle Mariners/Washington Nationals: because quite honestly, I don’t expect to be writing at all about either of these teams unless it’s in the context of doing something stupid which costs them the World Series, which is where I think both of them will be at the end of the year, as the two franchises who have never been to the biggest of shows both finally get there, and do so in the same season. But I get two sentences here because this is two teams we’re talking about at once, so I will say that Nats were done in by their own sloppy play last year, along with Matt Williams having Bruce Bochy run circles around him, and I would hope they’ve learned from their mistakes while, in the case of the Mariners, well, haven’t I already written enough about the Mariners already?
14. San Diego Padres: because going on a ‘bright shiny object’ buying spree, where you grab every good-looking player available and ignore their ample downsides, rarely pays off.
13. Chicago White Sox: because see #14.
12. Miami Marlins: because the Fish rot from the head, and you should never take anything seriously that Jeffrey Loria says or does.
11. Colorado Rockies: because I really do think this is the most hopeless franchise in all of sports, and doubt they will ever be able to develop a functioning pitching staff – even if they were to bottom out with the worst record and get the top pick of the draft and draft a stud pitcher, her would be spooked to the point of being ineffective after two seasons at Coors Field – and because they look to be almost as dreadful as last year, when they played .200 ball for about three months, and because you wonder at what point Tulo and Cargo just say “trade me, damn it,” in an attempt to salvage their careers before advancing age and injuries finally do them in.
10. Tampa Bay Devil Rays: because they’re still the Devil Rays in my book, damn it, which was a cool nickname, and because I look at a team with a new front office, new manager, one good player, and no offense, and see the worst team in the majors, even worse than #9 …
9. Philadelphia Phillies: because at some point this year, The Lose should write up a piece about the long-term costs of success and whether or not they are worth it if/when you happen to win a championship, which I believe that they are, and it will almost certainly be in the context of the Phillies enduring a 100-loss season featuring a lack of talent and players from their championship heyday who are now old, slow, and injury prone and whose contracts make them immovable.
8. Detroit Tigers: because The Lose is quick to scold those who waste opportunities, and the Tigers’ formula for success – 1-dimensional power offense and great starting pitching – hasn’t been as successful as you think and just doesn’t translate in the playoffs in this bullpen-speed-defense-and-details era of modern baseball, and yet the organization refuses to address its greatest needs and, as a result, the Tigers’ collective star is starting to lose its luster.
7. Boston Red Sox: because I’m not sure what’s more comical, the idea of having Hanley Ramirez in the outfield or signing Hanley Ramirez in the first place, and because I’m not sure why Panda’s running his mouth and bad mouthing his former employer after seven years of both adoration and patience by the bay – neither of which is going to be prevalent in Boston if he doesn’t perform – and because this team, as constructed, has an air akin to a great big, bloated balloon which is due for a popping.
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5. New York Yankees: because A-Rod heading back to the Bronx promises to be as awkward as a blind date at the Jr. Prom.
4. Chicago Cubs: because it’s the Cubs, of course, and because I suspect the expectations are too great and patience and perspective in too short a supply for a promising team that needs a little time to jell.
3. Oakland A’s: because ridiculing the Moneyballers for their feel good, indie sort of failures is sort of like shooting fish in a barrel, and while there is a possibility that this latest reinvention of the A’s by Billy Beane turns out to be OK – it is the A’s, after all – this club looks to have far more downside than up.
2. Atlanta Braves: because this team hasn’t looked to be this bad since the 1980s, and while I am not an advocate of schadenfreude, if there is ever a club that deserves it, it’s this self-important franchise with its fair weather fans and obnoxious tomahawk chop.
1. Los Angeles Dodgers: because as I said on Dec. 31, 2014, if you took out Clayton Kershaw from that team last year, it really wasn’t very good, and while they made a flurry of moves in the offseason, I think that those moves are lateral in nature if not a step back and have made them slower, older, and more brittle, and given the enormous expectations that come with the enormous payroll, this cannot possibly end well and it will be wildly entertaining if and when it doesn’t.
