We'll wrap up this series with my take on the outlook for the five AL East teams. Coming soon, another messed-up movies post and maybe something completely different.
Baltimore Orioles: The O's are one of the many average teams in the Wild Card scrum. Dan Duquette insisted they would buy at the deadline, and they did, but I don't think they did it right. Thanks in part to the continued injury problems of their best minor league arms, it seemed obvious to me that they needed a pitching upgrade. Instead they sent Zach Davies, a real pitching prospect, to Milwaukee in exchange for Gerardo Parra. Parra is essentially a fourth outfielder in the midst of a career year that makes him look like a viable starter. Now look, the O's' non-Adam Jones outfielders have been terrible this year, so if they wanted to give up Davies in a deal for Justin Upton or Carlos Gonzalez, I would have supported that. If they'd instead jumped into the seller's market of rental bats with pending free agents Matt Weiters and Chris Davis, that would have been entertaining and probably really opportunistic. Instead, the core of recent Baltimore playoff teams is about to have its last gasp. While any of these .500-ish teams could make the Wild Card game and it wouldn't shock me, I'm not optimistic about the short or long term future of this team. We're three months from it being Manny Machado and a bunch of whatever.
Boston Red Sox: Who would have thought that a season build around mediocre starting pitchers and aging sluggers forced to play out of position could have gone so badly? All that money saved in the Gonzalez-Crawford-Beckett trade, all the possibilities it opened up for the Red Sox, have come to this: $22.5M to Rick Porcello for four more years. $22M to Hanley Ramirez for three more years. $19M to Pablo Sandoval for four more years. Those contracts, all less than a year old, all of them apparent busts, define the state of the Red Sox franchise at this moment. Not even Wade Miley's smile can save them now. The stealth rebuild is on, and Bogaerts, Betts, the catching tandem, and the pitching prospects are nice pieces to have. There was simply no selling to be done at the deadline, since the value of their veterans to other teams has cratered in 2015. They'll have to clean up the mess while working around these sunk costs, and it's going to be awkward and difficult. Since Red Sox fans have become justifiably entitled- tied for the most World Series rings this century- it's a matter of knowledge, rather than belief, that these problems will be fixed. And they will be. But there's a real chance that Ben Cherington won't be the one to make the fixes.
New York Yankees: Going into the 2015 season, I couldn't find any compelling reasons to pick one team over another in the AL East. I ended up picking the Yankees to finish last because of their age and likely health issues. So of course, Mark Teixeira and Alex Rodriguez have combined for roughly 6 WAR so far- aka their entire division lead. A lot has gone right, but the Yankees aren't chasing the best record in the AL strictly due to luck. The bullpen has been Royals-esque, and the lineup that looked so suspect heading into the season is second in baseball in runs scored. Even though I still don't believe this is real (in the "not a fluke" sense, not the "actually happened" sense) I have to accept that over 100 games are in the books and the record is what it is. The odds of all these resurgent players missing significant time with injuries is now pretty low, and that's what I thought would sink this team. I thought an addition to the rotation or a usable outfielder would be a smart hedge, but instead they brought in Dustin Ackley. If I were a Yankees fan, I wouldn't be able to get over that rotation, especially with Michael Pineda out with a forearm strain, which usually means elbow problems. A shutdown bullpen doesn't mean as much when your starter can't hold a lead through five innings, and the Yankees aren't so dominant offensively that they're immune to good playoff pitching. I would hope like hell that they hold off the Blue Jays, celebrate one of the team's least likely AL East titles in my lifetime if it happens, and then take the playoffs as a bonus. It's simply amazing that this "best team money could buy five years ago" thing hasn't already crashed and burned. They've still got another year before the biggest contracts come off the books, and I would spend that year learning all I could about Aaron Judge, Greg Bird, Jorge Mateo, and Luis Severino. They're just about as likely to be relevant to the next Yankees World Series as anyone on the current roster.
Tampa Bay Rays: If I were a Rays fan, I would be lonely and sad there aren't more of me. I also don't quite understand trading away a quality late-inning reliever when you're still in the Wild Card race. But hey, there's still a pretty good collection of pitchers both in Tampa and throughout the organization, as they've clawed their way back to an average farm system after years of picking late in the first round. All that said, I'd still have my doubts that this front office, minus Andrew Friedman, can keep the run of contention going. We're eight months removed from the first major deal of the Matt Silverman era: the Wil Myers trade. At this point their big get, Steven Souza Jr., is on the DL with an OPS around .700. Meanwhile, the players they passed on to Washington- Trea Turner and Joe Ross- are absolutely crushing it at their respective levels. What made Friedman special in Tampa was his ability to walk the razor's edge, giving up players at the peak of their value in order to add high-end, almost major-league-ready talent. It's just one trade, I know, but that looks like a huge missed opportunity and a very un-Friedman set of decisions. All they had to do was make it a two-team trade, take San Diego's guys, and they'd be looking really good. Instead, Washington got more elite talent. As I expressed in my season preview posts, I would be worried as a Rays fan that I've already seen my last playoff game in Tampa.
Toronto Blue Jays: That lineup is so shiny and pretty, I just want to stare at it until my eyes water. All these average teams in the AL Wild Card picture, and only one of them has the ability to score six billion runs per game. What does Alex Anthopolous care about Jeff Hoffman, Daniel Norris, and the rest when he knows he just gave his city the best team in the Wild Card race? And it's not like this is a one-year thing, either. This lineup still has prime years left, and some of them will be under contract in Toronto. This is like someone recreating the 1999 Indians with nothing but the brass ones necessary to trade for Josh Donaldson and Troy Tulowitzki. And the presence of David Price, the final head-exploder in this trilogy of mad genius, just means the one-game playoff is something the Jays are actually looking forward to- assuming they don't just blow past the Yankees, that is. There's risk and downside, as always, but remember, everyone said Anthopolous strip mined his farm system when he acquired Jose Reyes, Mark Buerhle, Josh Johnson, and R.A. Dickey after the 2012 season. And he did- Henderson Alvarez, Travis D'Arnaud, and Noah Syndergaard all look pretty good today, and that isn't half of what he gave up. But the point is, in less than three years' time, he managed to regenerate enough prospect depth to acquire the greatest left side of the infield in recent memory without ever trading from the major league roster. If this falls short, there's no reason to think he can't do it again. Right now, I'm more jealous of Blue Jays fans than I am of any other fanbase. The presence of Toronto in the playoffs opens up the possibility of some of the most insane, unlikely, unprecedented playoff games ever. As soon as my Sox fall out of this ugly race, I will be rooting every day for a Jays-Royals ALCS. The baseball world needs this kind of chaos.
That's my state of MLB, early August, 2015. We'll check back in in two months to make playoff predictions, then I'll be sure to make fun of myself for all the wrong things I've said this year once it's all over.
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