2016 MLB Preview

Even though I vanished from this space over the last six months, there's still no way I'm letting baseball start without getting this up here. I've been paying attention all winter, as always, even if I haven't been writing. Let's go!

AL East

1. Toronto Blue Jays. Still love the offense, and I think they did just enough on the pitching side to remain the best team in a bad division.

2. New York Yankees. I liked the Yankees' offseason okay: Aroldis Chapman is the final piece of a Royals-style bullpen (Acquired much more cheaply than Boston's), and Aaron Hicks is an overqualified fourth outfielder on a team that's likely to need a good fourth outfielder. Starlin Castro is a maybe, but they didn't trade that much to get him and he's still young enough to turn into a special player. A return to the postseason is not out of the question.

3. Boston Red Sox. Price is great and so is the bullpen, we assume. But those contracts from last winter are still around, Hanley is still penciled in as an everyday player, Dombrowski took a huge bite out of the farm to get Kimbrel, and that rotation makes me cringe. Joe Kelly, again? Come on. This still isn't a good team.

4. Tampa Bay Rays. For 2016 to be any better than last year, it's going to take a healthy starting rotation and big years from three questionable acquisitions: shortstop Brad Miller, 1B Logan Morrison, and OF/DH Chris Dickerson. Miller and Morrison are both post-post-hype, and Dickerson is probably a Coors Field creation. This team looks like it's in the no man's land between contending and rebuilding to me.

5. Baltimore Orioles. Mark Trumbo and Pedro Alvarez open the season in the starting lineup, and Yovanni Gallardo is the new #2 starter. This run of contention was fun while it lasted, though.

AL Central

1. Kansas City Royals. Zobrist and Cueto are gone, but they kept Alex Gordon, so how do you pick against this core? I also like bringing Joakim Soria back to take over the 8th inning.

2. Minnesota Twins (Wild Card). This was a legitimately above-average team last year, and I'll guess that Byung-Ho Park and Byron Buxton help the Twins kick it up another notch in 2016.

3. Detroit Tigers (Wild Card). It's hard for me to go against an Upton-Cabrera-VMart middle of the other, because that's disgusting, but uncertainty about every starting pitcher and age concerns all over the roster mean Detroit has a lower floor than the two teams I ranked above them. This would be a lot easier if I knew what Justin Verlander's 2016 stat line is going to look like.

4. Cleveland Indians. All the pitching in the universe, and Mike Napoli and Juan Uribe are all they could manage to get for the offense. Not enough, probably not even close.

5. Chicago White Sox. I want to be more optimistic than this, because I love me some Toddfather. But the whole division is making a push, and you don't make the playoffs with Mat Latos and Jon Danks as your 4 and 5. You might not even make it out of April alive.

AL West

1. Texas Rangers. A full year of Hamels and Odor, most of a year of Darvish, and a bullpen that I believe is the deepest in baseball. Sold.

2. Houston Astros. That rotation looks good to me, and Carlos Correa could be the MVP. But I'm not sure just what the 'Stros are getting from their outfield or the rookies they're plugging in at first base and DH. The division's bad enough that they're going to be live for the Wild Card all year, but I see a little backslide coming.

3. Seattle Mariners. I think Wade Miley and Nate Karns were positive-value moves by Jerry Dipoto, but he never got around to replacing the bullpen arms he traded away and that's a pretty huge blind spot. The longest playoff drought in baseball is likely to continue.

4. Oakland Athletics. Other than Sonny Gray, Josh Reddick, and Sean Doolittle, I don't really feel good about any of the names on this roster. Reddick and Khris Davis are early deadline headline candidates.

5. The Red Team. If this was basketball, the Angels would be set: They have the best all-around player in the game, the best defensive player in the game, and a stodgy old former superstar who still has some offensive skills. You can maybe win a title with that in the NBA. It's those other 22 roster spots that sink the Angels.

AL MVP: Lorenzo Cain

AL Cy Young: Sonny Gray

AL Manager of the Year: Paul Molitor

Playoffs: Tigers over Twins, Blue Jays over Tigers, Rangers over Royals, Rangers over Blue Jays.

NL East

1. Washington Nationals. It's not fair that the Nats can lose Jordan Zimmermann and still run out that starting rotation. It's also not fair that the Padres and Rays conspired to give Washington Trea Turner and Joe Ross a year ago, but it happened. So they can Harper and Strasburg it up for the first six weeks, then Turner comes up and things get out of hand. I mean, this team has to put up an insane win total one of these years, don't they?

2. New York Mets (Wild Card). Like Houston, there's every reason to expect a backslide from this team. There's no way their pitchers hold up that well two years in a row, even with Zach Wheeler coming back. Also, Yoenis Cespedes isn't the world breaker they had last year. He's a good player, but he won't carry the offense the way he did in the second half of 2015. But they get to play the Braves and Phillies a lot, so...

3. Miami Marlins. If they'd gone out and added two relievers, a couple usable starting pitchers, and a good fourth outfielder this winter, I would have tried to talk myself into fanboying again. Instead, all we get is Wei-Yin Chen and another year of Stanton and Fernandez's contracts down the tubes. Thanks, Loria!

4. Atlanta Braves. I think they're closer than people realize. The Shelby Miller trade was a one-shot franchise rejuvenation, and they might manage to assemble a lineup by the time the Mets-esque wave of starting pitchers arrives. Not this year, but soon.

5. Philadelphia Phillies. We need a word that is the opposite of "stacked", so we can appropriately describe the Phillies' roster. It looks like Ulamog got to it.

NL Central

1. Chicago Cubs. It's hard to see this going wrong until October. They probably have the best team in baseball as we open the season, and I don't think any single injury could derail things too severely. The bullpen might be the weakest spot, but the lineup stacks up with anyone and they do have an ace atop the rotation.

2. St. Louis Cardinals (Wild Card). Losing J-Hey hurts, but they're not without talented young outfielders to take his place. At this point I would need a really compelling reason to not pick the Cardinals to make the postseason, and I don't think "The Pirates and Dodgers exist" is quite enough.

3. Pittsburgh Pirates. We've been hearing about Tyler Glasnow and Jameson Taillon for a while now, but I want to point out that Gerrit Cole, a former first overall draft pick, is the only  major league starting pitcher drafted and signed by the Pirates that they can claim at the moment. It's fun to have a good team in Pittsburgh, especially after they were so bad for so long, but if Glasnow and some other arms don't make an impact this year, the window might be closing.

4. Milwaukee Brewers. It'll be a long rebuilding year, but there's things to be excited about. Jonathan LuCroy and Ryan Braun could both fetch strong returns on the trade market if they're healthy and hitting, and there's more interesting talent in the Brewers' farm system than there has been in a while. Plus, Brewers fans will get to experience the joys of a lineup featuring Chris Carter, Aaron Hill, and Kirk Nieuwenhuis. So there's that.

5. Cincinnati Reds. Wave of pitching injuries aside, the Reds are an interesting case study in rebuilding. It looks like the idea is to trade for and develop a complete starting rotation before the core of Votto, Bruce, Mesoraco, and maybe Phillips are gone or washed up. I'm not saying that's impossible, or even that it's wrong, but it looks like a tall order to me. Other than Mesoraco and the obligatory prospects, there's not a lot left with any trade value. Plus, the team still has a middle-of-the-road payroll thanks to the aforementioned core, which probably rules out the possibility of signing a big free agent starting pitcher in the coming years. The circumstances of having a hypercompetitive owner and having been a good team pretty recently makes the Reds job one of the most challenging and complicated GM jobs in the game.

NL West

1. San Francisco Giants. Hey Denard, Johnny, and Jeff. Meet your new best friends, Hunter and Even Year Magic. I think you will get along just fine.

2. Los Angeles Dodgers. There's too many pitching questions to really feel good about the Dodgers' chances this year. Andre Ethier breaking his leg just as he'd reestablished some trade value was seriously unlucky as well. I can't pick a team to make the playoffs when they basically passed on the offseason, then suffered a series of spring training injuries to important players.

3. Arizona Diamondbacks. I was jacked to pick the D-Backs for the playoffs this year, but I didn't get around to writing this post until after A.J. Pollock broke his elbow and now I can't realistically do that. We all love to joke about Dave Stewart, but regardless of the long-term cost to the organization, he did put together an exciting team for 2016. It's cruel that they lost their best player before their all-in season even started.

4. San Diego Padres. With Jabari Blash, Yangervis Solarte, Cory Spangenberg, and Kevin Quackenbush on board, this might be the best-named team of all time. It's too bad Boof Bonser retired this winter, but Francisley Bueno is still on the market! As for actually playing the game of baseball, well, not so much. But A.J. Preller did manage to walk back some of last year's all-in approach with the Kimbrel trade, so things are better than they were at this time last year.

5. Colorado Rockies. Let the CarGo derby begin!

NL MVP: Bryce Harper

NL Cy Young: Clayton Kershaw

NL Manager of the Year: Bruce Bochy

Playoffs: Cardinals over Mets, Cubs over Cardinals, Giants over Nationals, Giants over Cubs.

World Series: In a rematch of the 2010 series, the Rangers get their revenge and beat the Giants in 6.

Winning the Winter 2015-16: Part 2

Before we get on with the recent past, it's time to show you my Hall of Fame ballot for 2016. We finally have good news to report, for the first time since I stated my position two years ago. Many of those voters who acted as moral arbiters without bothering to cover the sport in any capacity have at long last been relieved of the voting privilege. The Hall has always taken this process quite seriously, but until now, you couldn't say the same about all voters. No more blank ballots- or at least, fewer blank ballots. No more sanctimonious articles about how Bonds and Clemens broke America's dog and ran over its heart, or something like that. And in an unforeseen but most welcome development,  some writers have even come around to the idea that a Hall of Fame with the best players of the 90's and 00's is better than one without them. It is in that spirit that I once again submit my Baseball Hall of Fame ballot. I won't waste more words, as I've made my feelings clear in this space before.

1. Barry Bonds
2. Roger Clemens
3. Ken Griffey, Jr.
4. Mike Piazza
5. Jeff Bagwell
6. Tim Raines
7. Alan Trammell
8. Curt Schilling
9. Mark McGwire
10. Mike Mussina

Alright. Let's win some winter.

11/20/15: Blue Jays trade RHP Liam Hendriks to Oakland A's for RHP Jesse Chavez. After years of bouncing around as a quad-A starter, Hendriks found a home and thrived in Toronto's bullpen last year. He comes with four years of team control. Chavez will give the Jays another depth option for their starting rotation, but only for 2016. Toronto does need to build rotation depth, and it's not like they traded Osuna or Sanchez here, but I still think Oakland wins by getting a useful, controllable player.

Atlanta Braves trade CF Cameron Maybin to Detroit Tigers for LHP Ian Krol and LHP Gabe Speier. Speier has more than zero potential as a future big league reliever, and Maybin hasn't been a good player since 2012. The Braves took on Maybin last spring as a salary equalizer in the Kimbrel/Upton, Jr. trade, so getting rid of his 2016 contract is a win by itself. Good to see Atlanta's front office mixing it up and acquiring a couple relievers instead of more starting pitchers.You can field a team of 25 pitchers, right?

Oakland A's sign LHP Rich Hill, 1 year, $6M. Hill's story was one of the most fun in baseball this past September. Sometimes the guys who wash out from injuries and inconsistency don't stop pitching, but they usually don't make it back to the show and shut down the American League for a month at age 35. Oakland is hoping Hill will pitch well enough to bring back a prospect in July, and for the price, why not give it a shot? Win to Hill for making it back at all, and then another win for scoring a substantial guarantee in free agency.

11/23/15: Seattle Mariners sign C Chris Ianetta, 1 year, $4.25M with a team option. The Mariners' new front office doesn't take kindly to Mike Zunino and his sub-replacement-level offense, so to put pressure on him, they signed a guy whose bat was solidly replacement level in 2015. Wait, what? Okay, that's not completely fair. Ianetta's BABiP was miserable last year, and he was a pretty good hitting catcher in the previous two seasons. So this might be fine. But if you're going to move on from Zunino, I would have gone with a guy with a higher floor than "Zunino with a few dingers". I don't think there's a winner here.

11/25/15: Chicago White Sox sign C Alex Avila, 1 year, $2.5M. I mean, Avila can take a walk every now and then, at least. But this is probably another team trading out the old bad catchers for new bad ones. This might not matter much anyway, because Dioner Navarro is probably going to get the bulk of starts for the Sox. An aside: what in blazes happened in 2011 for Alex Avila? He put up an .895 OPS and got freaking MVP votes! He's still only 28, so maybe there's some magic left. At least there's more upside there than with Tyler Flowers. Sox get a lukewarm win.

Houston Astros trade 3B Jed Lowrie to Oakland Athletics for RHP Brendan McCurry. And so continues the strange saga of Jed Lowrie and these two teams. The Astros first traded him to the A's before the 2013 season in a larger deal for Chris Carter and two others. After two solid years in Oakland, Houston signed him as a free agent last winter. Now Oakland gets him back in exchange for relief prospect McCurry. Sometimes I think baseball GMs just like messing with us, like when San Diego and Detroit had a timeshare on Brad Ausmus that spanned the better part of a decade. Oakland used Lowrie at shortstop last time they had him, so maybe this is the end of the Marcus Semien era. If so, sure, win to the A's. Not that Lowrie would be good there, but he couldn't be much worse than Semien. If those two are going to be the keystone combo, though... Wow. That could be really bad.

11/27/15: Blue Jays sign LHP J.A. Happ, 3 years, $36M. The same J.A. Happ who was mediocre in Toronto for two and a half years, before they traded him to Seattle and he was mediocre some more, before he went to Pittsburgh and Ray Searage fixed him for two months. The Pirates' resurgence is still recent enough that we don't have a ton of data on how their reclamation projects do elsewhere. Edinson Volquez is probably the best comp we're going to get: a journeyman who landed in Pittsburgh at age 30, got right, and went to Kansas City where he was good again... so far. I wouldn't bet on Happ pitching well for the whole 3 year term. Maybe he gives them one decent year, maybe not even that. I give Happ the win, and I'm calling him a stealth Dollar Sign Bag award contender. $36 million isn't a lot in baseball, but it is a lot to put on the line for a player with his track record.

11/30/15: Detroit Tigers sign RHP Jordan Zimmermann, 5 years, $110M. With the Tigers' once-intimidating depth dwindling, a major signing was pretty predictable, and I think they picked the right guy. Price and Greinke are better than Jordan Zimmermann, but that's more than reflected in the cost to sign them. Maybe Cueto is better too, but after his brief stint with the Royals, you can't blame an AL GM for being skittish. Regardless of what other options Al Avila considered, he wound up putting up $22M a year for the early 30's of a consistent, healthy 3-5 win pitcher. That seems fine to me. If Verlander is really back, suddenly the Tigers have a scary top of the rotation again, plus now they have the pitching prospects they brought in when they punted 2015- Norris, Fulmer, etc. They're still a breakout or two away from having depth, but this team is trying to get good again in a hurry and moves like this one won't hurt.

12/01/15: Minnesota Twins sign Korean 1B Byung Ho Park, 4 years, $12M (Plus $12.85M posting fee). There's a nasty trap that hobby bloggers, and even professional baseball writers, fall into now and then. Every time a black, left handed starting pitcher is looking like a high draft pick, David Price is the name that comes up. Cubs shortstop Addison Russell is compared to Barry Larkin much more than he is compared to, say, Cal Ripken or Manny Machado. I really wish there was a way to write about this signing that didn't require me to fall into this trap. I know Park and Jung-Ho Kang are different people with different skill sets, and we don't yet know if Park's powerful swing will translate well to MLB. But after the Pirates scored one of last winter's best bargains when they signed Kang out of Korea, I can't help but be surprised to see this year's import land an almost-identical contract, and not significantly more. I'll just say what I said a year ago, when we all had no idea how any position player from Korea would fare in MLB: If this guy is half the player he was in his home country, the Twins just scored a massive bargain. If he's anything less, then the financial loss is acceptable. As a White Sox fan, I'm terrified of a Park/Sano middle of the lineup giving Sox pitchers whiplash for the next four seasons.

12/02/15: San Diego Padres trade LHP Marc Rzepczynski and 1B Yonder Alonso to Oakland Athletics for LHP Drew Pomeranz, LHP Jose Torres and OF Jabari Blash. "Scrabble" Rzepczynski is a fungible, but decent, reliever. Yonder Alonso is what would have been referred to as an "A's player" two decades ago, in that he's high-OBP, inexpensive, and possesses a skill set that doesn't fit his position (Most first basemen have cleared the 10-homer mark at least once). Of course, now that every team values OBP, the A's had to give up something to get these guys. Blash was one of the higher-rated players in this year's Rule 5 Draft, so he stands a good chance of sticking with the Padres and maybe even getting some playing time in their sketchy outfield. Pomeranz is on the long list of top pitching prospects who got destroyed by Coors Field, but in his two years in Oakland he reestablished himself as a quality swingman at worst. Torres is a relief prospect. This move does a lot for the Padres: It frees up first base for Wil Myers. It gives them a pitcher in Pomeranz who should do fine in Petco. And in Blash, they get a guy who can actually play right field and maybe hit a little while mitigating the loss of name-awesomeness incurred by trading Yonder and Scrabble. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I think Preller wins this one in a walk. That's three players with value for almost nothing. Now, about that infield, A.J....

Winning the Winter 2015-16: Part 1

I've got a week left to tweak my 2015 year in music posts: just like last year, one for the best albums, another for the best songs. Instead of writing nothing for the next week, I'm going to try to make a dent in this incredible Hot Stove season. Last year, we had Giancarlo Stanton, Jon Lester, Alex Anthopoulos, and Ben Cherington as the fuel for the fire. We probably won't see a $300M contract signed this winter, but we definitely have GMs ruining teams, star players traded for surprising returns, and aces taking the cash over the mystery box. Previous rules still apply: Every transaction has a winner, because otherwise, why bother. My sources of information are MLB.com, MLBTraderumors.com, and Baseball-Reference.com. My source of opinions is spending half my life as a baseball nerd. And a new rule I'm throwing in to entertain myself: I've come to believe that when everybody agrees on something, everybody is wrong. So every time the conventional wisdom is a little too unanimous, I'm gonna make like Homer:

 

Ready? Let's go. Welcome to Winning the Winter.

11/05/15: Seattle Mariners trade SS Brad Miller, 1B Logan Morrison and RHP Danny Farquhar to Tampa Bay Rays for RHP Nathan Karns, LHP C.J. Riefenhauser and CF Boog Powell. Because I guess Nick Franklin wasn't enough, the Rays had to go and get Seattle's other semi-useful young middle infielder? I think it's weird that a team that values and understands defense would get Miller and, at least for the moment, plan to use him as the starting shortstop. I guess Morrison is relevant too, in that he's likely to soak up a lot of at-bats as the big half of a mediocre DH platoon for the Rays. As far as I can tell, unless Miller has some power potential he hasn't told anyone about, this adds close to nothing to the Rays. In return, the Mariners got Karns, a pre-arb mid-to-back-end starting pitcher, as well as a solid prospect in Powell. Jerry Dipoto struck early, and got a modest but clear win to start his Seattle career.

11/11/15: Minnesota Twins trade OF Aaron Hicks to New York Yankees for C John Ryan Murphy. Kudos to the Twins for moving on from Kurt Suzuki behind the plate- Murphy is young and talented enough that it's not hard to envision him giving Minnesota some years as a quality starting catcher. Hicks was a highly regarded prospect himself who showed some improvement in 2015, but he has yet to break out and Byron Buxton is coming. A year ago, the Yankees traded a valid starting catcher for a middle reliever. This year, they got a fourth outfielder/Carlos Beltran injury insurance. Better, but still not great. I like this for the Twins.

11/12/15: San Diego Padres trade RHP Joaquin Benoit to Seattle Mariners for RHP Enyel De Los Santos and SS Nelson Ward. As we'll see later, every contending team is on the Royals-style bullpen bandwagon, and therefore, dominant relievers have seen their trade value get out of hand. This was the first shot fired in the Great Reliever War of late 2015: A live-armed teenager and a fringe infield prospect for one year of a 38-year-old fireballer. This probably doesn't matter beyond 2016. Pitchers like De Los Santos are lottery tickets, and Ward is whatever. But if the plan is for Benoit to be part of the Mariners' version of Herrera-Davis-Holland in the coming year, I'm skeptical. Preller gets the win here.

Atlanta Braves trade SS Andrelton Simmons and C Jose Briceno to Los Angeles Angels for SS Erick Aybar, LHP Sean Newcomb, RHP Christopher Ellis and cash. Okay, Hart and Coppolella. We get it- nobody gets to have pitchers except the Braves. And if we reduce everything down to WAR, then yeah, a combined twelve years of Newcomb and Ellis (plus a year of Aybar, which does have value) might be a fair return for five years of the modern day Ozzie Smith. If we use WAR per dollar, then you can even argue that the Braves won this trade. That's not the argument I'm going to make, though, because it's not one anyone outside of the Braves' front office believes. The Angels lack a true ace- which Newcomb might one day become- but Jerry Dipoto left them with enough pitching depth to withstand a trade like this. And when the return is a player with a truly unique skill set like Simmons, it's amazing that this was all it took. One of the winter's biggest wins thus far goes to The Red Team.

Atlanta Braves sign C A.J. Pierzynski, 1 year, $3M. 2015 was A.J.'s best year since his Palehose days, and turned it into another year in the bigs. Good for him! Maybe Tyler Flowers will be able to learn from him in a way that Christian Bethancourt could not. Or maybe A.J. finally gets severely beaten by an opposing player and his career ends. Either way, when A.J. is in the show, we're all winners.

11/13/15: San Diego Padres trade RHP Craig Kimbrel to Boston Red Sox for 3B Carlos Asuaje, SS Javier Guerra, LHP Logan Allen and CF Manuel Margot. Here's the biggest strike thus far in the Great Reliever War. The Red Sox surrendered a jaw-dropping package of prospects: two high-end up-the-middle guys, an 18 year old lefty with good control, and a future utility guy. In 2015, what does that get you? 3 years of an elite closer, that's what. The value question isn't even close. If either Guerra or Margot gets halfway to his ceiling, the Padres win in a walk. In the context of the current Red Sox, it makes a little sense. Ben Cherington hoarded prospects, spent big in Latin America, and left Boston with a major league team and farm system loaded with talent. What they didn't have was a bullpen. Dave Dombrowski simply paid the (insane) market price to add the most valuable reliever in baseball (Aroldis Chapman is a slightly better pitcher than Kimbrel, but he comes with less team control and potentially serious off-the-field issues.) When you can get your man, retain the up-and-coming major league core of Swihart, Bogaerts, Bradley, and Betts, and keep Yoan Moncada, Rafael Devers, Andrew Benintendi, and a passel of quality arms in the minors, you can't really call this a loss. Okay, Red Sox, I talked myself out of mocking this, but I have to give Preller the win here anyway. No closer is worth this, and putting this alongside his acquisition of Kimbrel from a year ago, it amounts to a purchase of prospects. That's exactly what he should be doing.

Blue Jays sign RHP Marco Estrada, 2 years, $26M. The Jays chose to put their money into rotation depth and bank on a strong comeback from Marcus Stroman, rather than retain the now-impossibly-rich David Price. It's not an inspiring strategy, but it's practical, and it's less likely to blow up in the team's face than overextending on one player. Welcome to the Mark Shapiro era, Toronto. You probably won't remember it once it's over. Out of context, I think this is just about right. Estrada is coming off a fine platform year, but he's 32, 2015 was his first full year in a major league rotation, and his peripherals aren't nearly as sexy as his 3.13 ERA or tenth-place Cy Young finish. Another odd piece of fallout from the Great Reliever War: The Jays appear committed to using their best non-Stroman young pitchers as their late-inning combo while stocking up on mid-rotation starters. They could have gone for the upside of Sanchez and/or Osuna in the rotation and spent the Estrada money on the back end of the bullpen. It says something about scarcity and supply and demand that a team is willing to put a high-ceiling prospect into the 8th inning, rather than give him every chance to turn into an ace.

11/14/15: Arizona Diamondbacks trade RHP Jeremy Hellickson to Philadelphia Phillies for RHP Sam McWilliams. A straight salary dump for Arizona, and a flyer on a guy who could be a July trade candidate if everything goes perfectly for Philadelphia. Hellickson set a career high in K/BB ratio in 2015, but he's still more expensive and not better than a random triple-A starter. Win to the D-Backs for not starting 2016 with this guy in the rotation.

11/16/15: Texas Rangers trade CF Leonys Martin and RHP Anthony Bass to Seattle Mariners for RHP Tom Wilhelmsen, CF James Jones and IF/OF Patrick Kivlehan. The overhaul of the Mariners continues here, and this is a good one. Martin is coming off a bad offensive season, but he's one of the best defensive center fielders in the game, he's controllable for three more years, and in the two seasons before 2015 his bat was good enough, combined with the glovework, to make him quite valuable. The Rangers chose Delino DeShields, Jr. over him, though, so the Mariners could reap the rewards. Wilhelmsen, the primary piece heading to Arlington, is now the fourth or fifth best reliever in a deep Texas bullpen. Either Texas is building up assets for a major trade, or they plan to win the Great Reliever War by having the biggest army. Either one would be interesting. I think it's pretty clear I'm scoring this as another Dipoto win, with the caveat that his own bullpen is a mess at this time.

11/18/15: Milwaukee Brewers trade RHP Francisco Rodriguez to Detroit Tigers for IF Javier Betancourt and C Manny Pina. Better late than never, the Tigers are taking their shot at building a bullpen. K-Rod, as he always does, struck out a lot of guys in 2015. He's under contract for two more years, and will pitch next season at 34. Betancourt, a 20-year-old second baseman, is a C prospect. Pina is a fringe catcher, included as a hedge against further concussion symptoms from Jonathan Lucroy. Add it up, and the Tigers managed to drastically underpay for a dependable late-inning reliever in the winter of 2015-16. Someone needs to throw Al Avila a parade immediately.

MLB 2015 Wrapup Part I

It's that special time of year, when the World Series is over but Winning the Winter is still a month away from its debut. I thought I would take a quick look at all 30 teams, tell you how wrong I was about them in March for my own amusement, and give a rough overview of what they can do to win the winter and, potentially, the 2016 season. I'll break it up into three posts, starting today with the playoff teams. In descending order of 2015 awesomeness, here's the last word on the season.

1. Kansas City Royals. I gave the 2014 AL Champs a D for their offseason work, although I did suspect Kendrys Morales was a good signing and the defense-and-bullpen team construction was still solid. I overrated two of their AL Central competitors, true, but I also underrated this team as badly as anyone. I assume I'll do it again five months from now, once the free agents have left and their places are filled by Dayton Moore acquisitions that don't make sense to those of us who aren't team building savants. Those holes- second base, left field, and number one starting pitcher- will be the focus, and unless Alex Gordon stays, they'll be taking downgrades across the board. Even so, Royals magic is real, their hitting philosophy still gives them strategic superiority, and it's going to take more than a mediocre White Sox team having an aggressive offseason to knock KC off the list of favorites this winter.

2. New York Mets. Let's take a moment to acknowledge how much weirdness went into the Mets' season. The most talented team in their division lost their season to injuries and Matt Williams buffoonery. The rest of the division was so bad it took a mere 90 wins to guarantee a Division Series appearance, while it took 97 to make the Wild Card game. A blockbuster deadline deal fell through, allowing Sandy Alderson to add his backup plan- the Cuban Babe Ruth- to the lineup for the stretch run and turning Wilmer Flores into a folk hero for one of the coolest reasons anyone has ever become a folk hero. Daniel Murphy single-handedly destroyed every Cy Young contender in a two-week stretch in October, and now a bad defensive second baseman with middling power might be looking at a qualifying offer. All this is to say I was a little wrong about the Mets, but if I wasn't so very wrong about the Nationals, it wouldn't have made a difference. The World Series exposed a need for better relief pitching, but playing against KC would do that to any team. Apart from that, I don't think anyone would blame Sandy Alderson if he sat on his hands this winter. The pieces are there to do this every year for the next five years, with or without Murphy and Cespedes. The pitching is just that good.

3. Toronto Blue Jays. Finally, we get to a team I got right. The lineup was every bit as good as I expected, and Alex Anthopoulos showed in July that his penchant for audacious trades wasn't confined to the winter. I'm fascinated by everything about Anthopoulos: His youth, his compulsion to trade for players no other team would consider available, the fact that he traded most of his best prospects for star players in late 2012 only to rebuild the farm system and deplete it again for more, better stars in 2014-15, and finally his diva turn, leaving when new team president Mark Shapiro became the primary decision maker. Every day when I hit MLBTraderumors, the headline I'm looking for is "White Sox/Marlins fire Rick Hahn/Michael Hill, hire Anthopoulos". But enough about my baseball man crushes. The Blue Jays had a magical season, but the cost was high. 60% of the starting rotation are free agents and the prospect cupboard is once again nearly bare. The future hinges on whether Shapiro wants to take a step back to start a bottom-up build, or if he and ownership recognize the rare opportunity 2015 gave them and assume their rightful place as Yankees North. That would entail some aggressive free agent spending on starting pitching, with the best possible outcome being David Price and a successful run at a mid-rotation starter, possibly keeping Marco Estrada. If that gets done without compromising the face-melting lineup, this team doesn't have to be a one-year wonder.

4. Chicago Cubs. Three teams made the leap in 2015 and I missed them all, but since I'm not a scout I don't really blame myself for not seeing Kyle Schwarber coming. Jake Arrieta and Kris Bryant, on the other hand... Maybe I should have called that. Still, 97 wins is an absurd total, one that wasn't predicted by anyone but the biggest North Side homers. Like the Mets, the Cubs don't have to do a whole lot to enter 2016 with great expectations. Unlike the Mets, the Cubs aren't afraid to throw lots of money at the best available player who fills a need- in this case, Price, Cueto, or Zimmermann. They also need a placeholder center fielder until Albert Almora is ready, and like most teams, some more bullpen depth wouldn't hurt. If they can fix Jon Lester's pickoff issues, that would also be a thing worth doing. The winter jockeying between three great teams and excellent front offices in St. Louis, Chicago, and Pittsburgh should be enough to keep the stove hot all winter. The 2016 NL Central race will be a good one, and it starts today.

5. Houston Astros. And here's the third leap-making team I missed on. Carlos Correa is real, y'all. But this wasn't just the K-happy team I thought they were in March. Led by Dallas Keuchel, they led the AL in ERA while finishing among the best teams in most relevant offensive stats. Oh yeah, and Carlos Gomez is their center fielder now. The Astros are pretty much the anti-Royals, based on the longball and strong starting pitching, but their success in 2015 shows that any strategy is a good one as long as the team sticks to it. To that end, I look for Houston to make a single big splash this winter, maybe signing Crush Davis to solve their first base controversy (If you have two first basemen, you don't have one) or adding another good starting pitcher. Whether or not they go big this winter, we should probably expect the Astros to be playoff regulars for the foreseeable future.

6. Los Angeles Dodgers. The Dodgers played to everyone's expectations in the regular season, with Kershaw and Greinke dominating the Cy Young discussion until Jake Arrieta came along and broke baseball in August and September. Andrew Friedman's winter trades with the Padres and the Marlins made him look even smarter than he already was. Another complex trade in July was supposed to bring in pitching reinforcements, but Mat Latos didn't stick and Alex Wood underwhelmed. In the end, the Dodgers' World Series hopes were dashed not by a lack of rotation depth but by the video game version of Daniel Murphy and the rise of the Mets' starting pitchers. Nothing can stop the randomness of short series baseball, but it's a foregone conclusion that ownership will fork over whatever it takes to restock the rotation and try it again next year under a new manager.

7. Texas Rangers. Of all the teams I got wrong in March, I'm most surprised and embarrassed by this one. I thought their best case scenario was selling at the trade deadline, and instead they rode some deadline pitching upgrades and a lineup full of comeback heroes to a close-fought division title. Among the many things I missed: Shin-Soo Choo and Prince Fielder are still quality bats, Yovanni Gallardo's stuff actually translated to the AL, and Arte Moreno's desperation to rid himself of Josh Hamilton was greater than any of us imagined. The sum of all this is the Rangers entering the winter in pretty good shape. Behind the veteran core of Beltre, Choo, Fielder, and Andrus, the team has a group of young, high-ceiling position players that could either be trade bait or replacements for whoever ages fastest. Rougned Odor and Delino Deshields, Jr. were the first two to crack the lineup, but Joey Gallo and the oft-injured Jurickson Profar aren't far behind. The bullpen was nails down the stretch under rookie manager Jeff Bannister, and the key guys are all returning. Adding a starting pitcher to replace the free agent Gallardo might be on the team's to-do list, but with ace Yu Darvish expected to return from Tommy John surgery, even that doesn't qualify as essential. This means Jon Daniels can play opportunist this winter, knowing he doesn't have to fill needs but is free to search for upgrades.

8. St. Louis Cardinals. While I did pick the Cardinals to win the NL Central this year, I only give myself partial credit because the division's three best teams each finished with 10-15 more wins than I expected. While the Cubs are the best story and the Pirates pace the league in wins-per-dollar-spent, I keep coming back to this fact with the Cardinals: Adam Wainwright missed the entire season and St. Louis still led MLB in ERA and wins while playing in the hardest division in baseball. I root against the Cardinals because they're always good and they're never interesting, but I have to say that's incredible. Meanwhile, the emergence of Stephen Piscotty and Randal Grichuk means they can let Jason Heyward leave for a draft pick- and live with the declining Yadier Molina and Matt Holliday for another year- without cratering the offense. They could go after a big bat in right field or first base if such a player becomes available, but I don't think they have to. I think this is another winter where the Cardinals stay quiet until the right great player becomes available for the right price, then they pounce and put another juggernaut on the field in 2016.

9. New York Yankees. This is another playoff team I had pegged for fifth place, but in my season preview I at least acknowledged the possibility that they could have a good year. In fact, the way they did it- big years from A-Rod and Mark Teixeira- was exactly the scenario I allowed for, give or take a Sabathia. The deep, dominant bullpen bailed out the rotation more often than not in 2015, so we have to assume the Yanks will make a play for at least one good starting pitcher to join Tanaka and Severino. But given that they're still paying a lot of players more than they're worth thanks to overly long free agent deals, I'm going to guess that the Yankees' plan to win the winter consists of adding a mid-tier starting pitcher or two, continuing to hoard prospects, and looking to take advantage of a weak AL East next year without sacrificing the future. If Toronto can't assemble a pitching staff, that might be just crazy enough to work.

10. Pittsburgh Pirates. In retrospect, leaving the Pirates off of my playoff predictions in March was too cute by half, and I knew it before April was over. This team keeps dumpster-diving and coming up with starting pitching gold, as they did midseason with J.A. Happ. If Cole/Arrieta goes the other way in the Wild Card game, we could easily be talking about the Pirates as World Series champions right now. Instead, it's an early exit, to an inferior team with a red-hot starting pitcher, for the second year in a row*. So what does Pittsburgh do this winter to get over the hump? Nothing. They won 98 games in 2015. The hump has been gotten over, and one-game-playoff results don't reflect anything fixable. They'll return the same roster, plus a couple terrible pitchers who miraculously become mid-rotation anchors or late-game shutdown artists, and they'll hope the Cards and Cubs stumble just a little so they can use both Cole and Liriano next October.

*:Personally, I have no problem with the current playoff setup because I think there should be a significant advantage granted to teams that win their division. But with the best three teams in baseball sharing the NL Central, teams like my preseason Wild Card picks- the Padres and Marlins- have some real thinking to do this winter. If they can't realistically catch the Dodgers/Mets/Nats, they might be left with nothing to play for, and then, what's the real difference between an 85 win Padres team and a 60 win Brewers team? A couple years' head start on rebuilding, that's what.

Last-Minute Baseball Playoff Picks

Ever since MLB added the second wild card, picking playoff winners at the end of the regular season makes no sense. How many people had the Pirates winning it all, only to be wrong 48 hours later? Total waste of time. So now that we're done with the coin flips and Jays/Rangers is mere minutes from getting underway, here's my playoff picks for 2015. No explanation, because there's no time. Just picks, and a special thank you to the AL for being a nonsensical crapshoot all year.

AL: Blue Jays over Rangers, Astros over Royals, Blue Jays over Astros
NL: Dodgers over Mets, Cubs over Cardinals, Cubs over Dodgers
World Series: Blue Jays over Cubs.

State of the Franchises: AL East

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.

State of the Franchises: AL Central

Chicago White Sox: Well, at least they didn't give players away like the Marlins. The whole AL Wild Card race is a morass of flawed teams, and it intrigues me that the Sox are part of it. Not a big part, though, because the offense is nonexistent. One could hope for Jose Abreu to catch fire for two months, and for guys like Alexei and Melky to get some positive regression. One could hope for their front four starters to lock in like the 2005 group. But with all the teams they'd have to pass to make it into the one-game series, as bad as those teams are, two of them are bound to have hot streaks that give them some separation. I think the Sox already had their streak, and they peaked at .500. So I'm disappointed, because I thought this was a good team in March, but I didn't want or expect a major selloff at the deadline. I'm sure Shark could have gotten more than a draft pick's worth of talent in a trade, but then we wouldn't have this ridiculous, laughable, but not completely stupid hope that he could start a playoff game. I still trust Rick Hahn to make good decisions, and when we end this season with somewhere between 77-81 wins, he'll get to work and I'll still care. But this whole season has been a big ball of meh.

Cleveland Indians: They decided against making the big move, trading away someone like the slumping Carlos Santana or the amazing Carlos Carrasco, and parted with a couple other minor pieces for minor returns. Rob Kaminsky, acquired from the Cardinals for Brandon Moss, looks like the big prize. It's worth noting, however, that a number of the Indians' best players were acquired as minor returns in minor trades. Finding the Yan Gomeses and Corey Klubers of the world is this front office's best skill. This year has sucked out loud for Cleveland, but for all we know Eric Stamets, the double-A shortstop the Angels gave up for David Murphy, is going to become a star. And with controllable, quality pitching depth, bona fide guys like Jason Kipnis and Michael Brantley in the lineup, and the arrival of top prospect Francisco Lindor, it never feels like this team is more than a mid-level upgrade away from contending. Once the Bourn and Swisher contracts stop smothering this small-market franchise after the 2016 season, they might even be able to make that upgrade.

Detroit Tigers: Remember what I said about the morass of flawed teams going for the Wild Card? The Tigers were probably the best of those teams even if they did absolutely nothing, and they decided to White Flag it instead, cashing in David Price, Joakim Soria, and Yoenis Cespedes for prospects. To be fair, every one of those deals returned more prospect value than should have been expected, and few teams needed a farm system rejuvenation as much as the Tigers. On a personal level, I'm delighted, because it means I got one team out of five right in my AL Central predictions and I always like to see titans fall. And standing pat or trading for more help could definitely have been a waste, as the upside was making it to a one-game playoff. So yes, there's a strong argument to be made that this was the right call. It's just not an argument I would give half a crap about if I were a Tigers fan. The one-game playoff would be against an inferior team. And more importantly, the Tigers had already pushed almost all their chips into the pot. They'd bet, raised, and called until there was a huge pile of money in the middle, then they folded instead of putting their last five bucks in. If the rest of the team could manage to stay afloat while Miguel Cabrera healed up, they'd be looking at a stretch run with an ace, a solid closer, a still-fearsome middle of the lineup, and they'd be chasing some just-barely-better-than-average teams in Baltimore, Toronto, Anaheim, and Minnesota. The Detroit Tigers, four-time defending champions of the AL Central, property of Mike "Win me a World Series before I die" Ilitch, looked up at the Twins and the Angels and decided to pack it in. If I were a Tigers fan, I don't think I'd be able to talk about this, much less write about it.

Kansas City Royals: With the Royals, we might be facing the most important three months of baseball for any team in my lifetime. Think I'm exaggerating? I'm not. By trading for Cueto and Zobrist- both costly additions, but also perfect fits for the team- this is the real definition of all-in. They were going to win the division anyway, but now, rings are the thing. Maybe a return to the World Series will be enough. If they succeed, maybe the fans will come back en masse, maybe the Glass family will spend some pittance of their enormous wealth to keep the team's payroll and roster respectable, and maybe Dayton Moore will preside over the most complete and lasting franchise turnaround since Andrew Friedman fixed the Rays. IF they succeed. If they fail, there are no maybes, there are just truths. The Glass family will enact some version of the Jeffrey Loria doctrine: "We spent $100M and didn't win, so we might as well spend $40M and not win." Moore will spin this as "We were overextended with our payroll and we needed to get it back in line with our market size." The Process, as it used to be derisively referred to and is now respected as a real thing, will have to start all over again. The Royals will lose free agent Alex Gordon along with Zobrist and Cueto. Their aging roster and depleted farm system will require a trade of one or more of their core position players to make payroll and undo some of the damage the system sustained this July. In short, Kansas City's renaissance as a baseball town could last a mere 15 months. No pressure, Johnny. And remember, kids, it doesn't matter if the billionaire behind Wal-Mart owns your team. It doesn't matter that revenue sharing and bloated TV deals mean that every owner is making money. The amount of money spent on your team is all about how many people live in your town. For Royals fans, I offer the same advice I give myself every day I wake up cancer-free and moderately sane: Enjoy it while it lasts.

Minnesota Twins: They traded a couple young pitching prospects for Kevin Jepsen, a quality setup man and potential insurance against a Glen Perkins injury. OK, fine. Terry Ryan addressed one of the Twins' weaknesses without committing to the team's tenuous hold on a Wild Card spot. Obviously any fanbase would get fired up over an unexpected playoff berth, but I think Twins fans know that next year isn't here. Staying in the Wild Card race and getting above .500 in 2015 is enough to build some positive momentum for 2016, which should be the first full seasons for superstars-in-waiting Byron Buxton and Miguel Sano. The organization still lacks high-ceiling arms, and settling for cheaper, non-strikeout-oriented pitchers is a bad habit that will only make it harder for this team to ascend. If they do find a way to pick up an ace this winter, they could definitely contend again, but next time it won't be a mirage. The only way I would have bought into the 2015 Twins is if they'd jumped the gun a little and brought in someone from the Price/Hamels/Cueto class, but those blockbuster buys have never been the Twins' DNA. It's for the best, anyway. The less emphasis you put on this year's stretch run, the happier you'll be as a Twins fan.

State of the Franchises: AL West

Houston Astros: The most important thing I can note about the Astros is that it's 2015 and they have the second-best record in the American League. They're well ahead of schedule on the rebuild in both lineup depth and pitching adequacy, so they're basically a World Series contender right now. That's going to be enough for a lot of Astros fans. If we're looking for downsides, here's one: Was Jeff Luhnow too aggressive at the deadline? Brett Phillips, Jacob Nottingham, and Domingo Santana were some of the highlights of their deep reserves of minor league talent, and now they're gone. As always with prospects, we won't know for years, but the team's top-heavy and talent-heavy 2015 draft might have replenished the system before it was even depleted. Back to the present, Scott Kazmir and Carlos Gomez make the Astros one of the short-term winners of the deadline, and nobody should be surprised if they run away and hide in the West. Even if they lose these trades with years of hindsight, they look pretty tough right now and there's still a lot of talent in the minors. I'd take that deal.

Los Angeles Angels of The Red Team: Bill Stoneman picked up three spare-part outfielders to replace the ones who helped drag the Angels toward the bottom of the AL in offense, despite the presence of Mike Trout and a surprisingly dangerous Albert Pujols. Mike Scioscia has more options now than he did a couple weeks ago. It's just far from a sure thing that David Murphy, David DeJesus, and Shane Victorino are actually upgrades on the Matt Joyce/C.J. Cron Krappenfest Angels fans have been treated to for 100 games. They're just the outfielders who were available to bargain shoppers. Also, it's not Stoneman's fault that C.J. Wilson might miss the rest of the season, but since he didn't add any pitching it's now essential that Hector Santiago continues his stellar breakout year and Jered Weaver contributes. There are plenty of teams in the Wild Card race, and the Angels (and Twins, but we'll get to that) have to look vulnerable to any of the six teams clustered around .500. However, they still have Mike Trout and a pretty nice collection of young arms, so this isn't really a do-or-die year for them.

Oakland Athletics: They didn't look good going into 2015, they met only the lowest expectations, and now Billy Beane is talking about going the way of the Astros and Cubs. That's a pretty big bummer. I guess their deadline haul, scoring the aforementioned Nottingham along with Sean Manaea and Casey Meisner, is a silver lining. But if Beane is willing to take a step back, we need to do the same. The highwire act of simultaneously contending and rebuilding ended the moment Josh Donaldson was traded. Maybe even before that- was it the Samardzija trade that broke the cycle? No matter. Now they're just another low-payroll team with other teams gearing up for the Sonny Gray sweepstakes to begin. Sorry about that, A's fans. But you know what, you've had it pretty good for a while now. So I'm not that sorry.

Seattle Mariners: The M's are going nowhere fast, and didn't trade anybody good enough to bring back a notable return. Is this the new most boring team in baseball? With Felix, Cano, Kyle Seager and Nelson Cruz all locked up for at least another few years, the M's have been sending signals of contention for a while, but the rest of the major league roster begs to differ. At least being bad means they've had high draft picks and a deep minor league system, right? Um, nope, not so much. Last year's apparently legit run at the postseason masked all kinds of flaws and made people much smarter than me buy in, but a year later, those predictions look incredibly off base. I even said in my season preview I wasn't crazy about Seattle and there were infinite ways it could all go wrong, and I STILL picked them for a Wild Card. Now I don't remember what any of us were thinking. It's not my call, nor should it be, but GMs have been fired for less than what Jack Zduriencik's perpetrated here. The coming years aren't likely to be a whole lot better than this one.

Texas Rangers: Can a team trade away three high-end prospects in July, miss the playoffs, and still have the season be a success? That's what we're looking at with the Rangers. The Cole Hamels acquisition could help them sneak into a Wild Card game this year but the trade was really about 2016 and beyond, when the Rangers hope Yu Darvish will be back atop the rotation and Jurickson Profar will resume his long-delayed ascent to stardom. It's a fascinating trade for that reason alone: we can't even begin to evaluate it until Hamels's contract is up in three or four years. I have my doubts about the value he brings to this team. Even with Philadelphia paying down Hamels' salary, we have to wonder how much money will be available to augment a core of position players that is more salary and reputation than production these days. If you believe in the Rangers, it means you believe in guys like Josh Hamilton, Shin-Soo Choo, and Prince Fielder. It means you believe giving Darvish a 1-A in Hamels was the missing piece of the puzzle. I'm always happy to be surprised, but I don't believe in any of that. Even though the Hamels trade was great value in a vacuum, it might not end up as more than a waste of minor league talent.

State of the Franchises: NL East

Atlanta Braves: Trading useful short-term assets Juan Uribe and Kelly Johnson for two interesting arms is in keeping with the John Hart plan of making sure nobody but the Braves has any pitching in five years. That's fine. But their role in the Dodgers/Marlins megatrade makes even less sense today than it did yesterday, as it's been reported that Atlanta is still paying the nearly $10M owed to Bronson Arroyo. So Hart must really, really like Hector Olivera, because he essentially gave up Alex Wood, Jose Peraza, and Jim Johnson for Olivera, prospect Zach Bird, and a draft pick from Miami. I've sung Hart's praises in this space before, but I don't get this one at all on a short or long term level. If I rooted for the Braves this would confuse and disappoint me, but Hart would have the benefit of my doubt. He's made so many great moves, maybe this one turns out fine. No idea how, but there's always a chance.

Miami Marlins: One of my favorite fantasies is to pretend I own the Marlins. And every time they make a signature Jeffrey Loria move- like giving away Mat Latos just to dump Michael Morse's contract- I say to myself, "OK, I'll take over the team tomorrow." The reality of the Marlins and their owner is nothing less than the opposite of my fondest dreams. Their other deadline trades weren't so bad: Ivan Pineyro, the pitching prospect acquired in exchange for Dan Haren, has some upside. Catcher Tomas Telis was a surprisingly strong return for reliever Sam Dyson. And I have no real problem with dumping Steve Cishek on the Cardinals. But the yo-yo of building and tearing down in Miami is the same embarrassment it's always been. Sell the team, Jeffrey Loria. Please. I want my team of choice- as opposed to my White Sox fandom, which is an inherited trait- to act like a real major league franchise and not a fantasy team run by a guy who sucks at fantasy. If I owned the team, I would pick a direction and stick with it instead of these half-assed attempts to contend that undo all the work of building a farm system. I would also bring back the teal and black. I would use the current uniform design, but replace the "technicolor barfbag" palette with the old colors. I might add a little gold accent in place of the silver in the following picture, but that's all. The team would win and look good doing it. I'm the Everlasting Dave, and I approve this message.

New York Mets: As I said in my trade suggestions post, one big bat wasn't going to solve the Mets' offensive woes. But two league-average players in Kelly Johnson and Juan Uribe, plus dynamic outfielder Yoenis Cespedes, fit the bill quite nicely. Hit with the year-long Jenrry Mejia suspension, they also went out and got reliever Tyler Clippard to fill the void. They gave up some prospect depth in each deal, but not from the very top of the system. Just fair prices for necessary upgrades. Am I crazy to think they're lucky the Carlos Gomez trade was scuttled? Zach Wheeler is such a big piece, and they added some lineup depth while keeping their injured, controllable number 2 starter in their back pocket for 2016. Among the three rebuilt teams who found success a year early, I think the Mets hit a sweet spot in supporting a playoff run without compromising the future. The Astros moved much more aggressively, giving up high-end guys as well as depth to push for the division title, while the Cubs did little more than sit on their hands. If I were a Mets fan, I don't think I would have wanted anything more or less than what they did this July. I also think my faith in Sandy Alderson would be at an all-time high.

Philadelphia Phillies: The Phillies finally caught up to rebuilding expectations this July. It started with clearing Jonathan Papelbon's salary while bringing back an OK prospect. Then the long-awaited Cole Hamels blockbuster finally went down, with both quantity (Six players) and quality (Three of them top 100 prospects) coming back from Texas. Finally, they snagged two relief prospects from the Jays for slap-hitting outfielder Ben Revere. With this influx of young talent joining the fruits of three consecutive good drafts, the Phillies skipped right over the "signs of life in the minors" stage of rebuilding to the "collection of promising young talent" phase, with a solid six players in MLB.com's current top 100 prospects list. The major league team will be bad for at least another couple years, but that just means more high draft picks like the ones that netted J.P. Crawford, Aaron Nola, and Cornelius Randolph and more international bonus pool money they can use to find more Maikel Francos. And once enough of them make it to the show, there's no doubt the Phillies will swing the money hammer, just as they have over the past eight years. This renewed commitment to player development is the corpse reviver every Phillies fan needs after the 2013-14 hangover. It doesn't measure up to being a great team for five years, as they so recently were, but watching the pieces fall into place is its own kind of exciting. Just as long as you trust the architects.

Washington Nationals: The Nationals have had some bad injury luck this season, but they're still leading the division and approaching full health as we head into the home stretch. Joe Ross has been outstanding as Stephen Strasburg's replacement, and Clint Robinson has racked up a .349 OBP filling in for Denard Span and Jayson Werth. Tough to complain about that. They also added Jonathan Papelbon, possibly the best reliever traded at the deadline, moving Drew Storen back to his old setup man job. Nats fans can only hope that health and luck are on their side come October, because there's not much more Mike Rizzo and the Lerner family can do. This is a win-now team that's going to have to answer some tough questions after the season, but if Bryce Harper and Max Scherzer can bring this franchise its first title in October that'll take the edge off.  High expectations come with this much talent, and Harper of all people sets a fine example for how to handle them. If I were a Nationals fan I would be supremely confident in my team's ability to hold off the Mets in the regular season, and I would just have to wait and hope they can get lucky against the Cardinals, Dodgers, or any Wild Card upstarts in the playoffs. Harper the likely MVP, Max Scherzer and an outstanding bullpen tandem are pretty good guys on whom to pin your hopes.

State of the Franchises: NL Central

Chicago Cubs: If Theo Epstein were Dayton Moore, this is the point where he should tell the fans to "trust the process" or something like that. Because twenty- and thirty-something Cubs fans like to pretend they've been around for the entire existence of the Billy Goat Curse. They see a team with a winning record and start talking about how long they've been waiting for a World Series, so it better happen RIGHT NOW. This nonsense is why I could never be a Cubs fan. The 2015 Cubs are a pretty good team, and they have a shot at catching the Giants or Pirates to make the Wild Card game. Renting David Price or taking a huge bite out of the farm system to get Cole Hamels just doesn't move the needle on that possibility enough. If they were neck-and-neck with the Cardinals, and adding a win here or there meant skipping the Wild Card game entirely, then sure, make a push. But as it stands, I would be a little psyched about adding Dan Haren to the back of the rotation, I would be moderately psyched that they didn't sell low on Starlin Castro, and I would still be hella psyched that the 2016 Cubs, with another big addition or two, will be ready to start breaking baseball. Of course, that's a hypothetical from the mind of this proud White Sox and Marlins fan. If I were actually a Cubs fan, I would never have bothered to learn baseball and would be cursing Theo's name for not overpaying for two months of Price.

Cincinnati Reds: Like everyone else, I had my doubts on how far the Reds would take their selloff. And given that they still have expensive and lights-out closer Aroldis Chapman on their roster, those doubts seem appropriate now. I have no qualms with the Cueto haul: Finnegan, Lamb, and another potential starting pitcher is a lot for two months of anybody. I think they did fine on Mike Leake: the Giants may have a terrible farm system, but at least they got their best guy. Were I a Reds fan, I would be moderately impressed with my team's moves right now, just as I was when they traded Alfredo Simon and Mat Latos for useful, controllable players last winter. My concern would be this: By only trading the pending free agents and nobody else, that might telegraph some really stupid intentions for the winter. There's bound to be a temptation for Castellini and Jocketty to reload instead of rebuild, to keep treating Votto, Bruce, Frazier, and Phillips as a championship-caliber core. Don't do it, dudes. Save your money and plant the seeds. Maybe they'll grow before Votto is useless.

Milwaukee Brewers: The Brewers were a lot worse in the first half than I thought they'd be, but I think they handled it just fine. Sending Aramis back to the Pirates for one last playoff run is something the baseball gods will smile upon, and getting a prospect package with a real top-tier headliner for Carlos Gomez and Mike Fiers could wind up as a classic win-win trade. Getting anything at all for Jonathan Broxton was the capper on a solid July for Doug Melvin. I don't know if I'd be that positive if I rooted for the Brewers, though. After the illusion of a .500 season in 2014, to collapse so completely that trading Gomez made sense would be a kick in the junk. So if I were a Brewers fan, I would listen to Dashboard Confessional in a dark room until November, and then see what happens after the World Series. That's probably what I'll do anyway, as my teams are just as bad.

Pittsburgh Pirates: In acquiring Tigers closer Joakim Soria at the deadline, the Buccos added an arm comparable to Jonathan Papelbon at a fraction of the financial cost. They also added a mediocre back-of-the-rotation arm in J.A. Happ to go with the ones they already had, a sort-of-usable middle relief option in Joe Blanton, and they've given a last chance to Aramis Ramirez thanks to the Josh Harrison injury. I can't complain about Soria- that was the kind of move that can loom large in the postseason by shortening the game. But all the rest were no-risk, no-reward moves, and this is a team that needed another bat and another legitimate starting pitcher if they had designs on leveling up this year. Unless the light goes on for Gregory Polanco, this could be another one-and-done October. For that matter, they've banked plenty of wins but their lead in the Wild Card isn't so big that they couldn't fall out of it entirely. I say this as someone who respects the hell out of the job Neal Huntington has done to get his team to this point, but I would be very disappointed and nervous if I were a Pirates fan. Just as a fan of baseball, I don't want the 2013 NLDS to be the furthest Andrew McCutchen goes with the Pirates. I want them to have a year, and I don't think 2015 is it.

St. Louis Cardinals: GM John Mozeliak basically shrugged his way through July- Jonathan Broxton, Steve Cishek, and Brandon Moss are the baseball version of a shrug- and why not: the Cardinals have the best record and second-best run differential in the game. Kolten Wong and Randal Grichuk are hitting, with Stephen Piscotty just called up to join them. Their front four starting pitchers have been nails, leading the best pitching staff in baseball, and that's without Adam Wainwright. All Cards fans have to worry about is Matt Holliday's health, but even if he's not good to go, the rest of the lineup's shown the ability to pick up the slack. I guess running into a buzzsaw team in the NLDS is still possible, but you can't worry about that now, and does anyone even think that's likely? I can't even imagine myself as a Cardinals fan. I'm not equipped to handle that much happiness.

States of the Franchises: NL West

You can go to any one of a dozen sites for instant analysis and projections based on baseball trades of the past month. I've read up on the prospects and the playoff odds, but I don't want to be redundant. I'm just going to do what I did over the winter: short term and long term, should you be happy to be a fan of your team? If your team participated in the trade frenzy, did that help or hurt? Six bite-sized posts over the next day or two. Here we go.

Arizona Diamondbacks: The early season deals of Mark Trumbo to Seattle for Wellington Castillo and the sale of pitching prospect Touki Toussaint to the Braves was all D-Backs fans got. They were supposedly in on some big targets like Aroldis Chapman and Cole Hamels, but came away empty handed. Despite claims of competitiveness from Dave Stewart and Tony Larussa- and, to be fair, the team's record- D-Backs fans are probably less than thrilled about 2015. But with A.J. Pollock and Paul Goldschmidt as legit stars in the lineup, and with some young pitching on the way, they're not a disaster. The team's medium and long-term future is entirely at the mercy of the aforementioned baseball bosses. I'd be hopeful for 2016 if I was a D-Backs fan, and encouraged that there was no short-term buying this month, but I'd still be very nervous about LaRussa and Stewart's talent evaluation skills.

Colorado Rockies: I asked Jeff Bridich not to make the playoffs or trade Tulo this year, because that would make them not the most boring team in baseball. Sadly, Tulo went to Toronto for Jose Reyes and a pretty good trio of pitching prospects a couple days ago. While the deal itself was interesting and decent for both sides, now we don't have the idea of the Tulo trade to speculate on anymore. Just the reality of Jose Reyes falling further from being worth his contract, and another hyped young arm in Jeff Hoffman getting introduced to the majors via Coors Field, like Butler, Matzek, and countless others before. Hmm. Maybe the Rockies are still the most boring team. I think I prefer the trade that happened to no trade at all, but I'm still wondering if Bridich has his own vision for building a winner at Coors. "Pitching prospects" looks a lot like Dan O'Dowd's vision.

Los Angeles Dodgers: While fans of instant gratification were clamoring for Andrew Friedman to acquire David Price or Cole Hamels, he decided his best prospects were too valuable to trade- so LA became a buyer in the most literal sense, adding talent at the cost of little more than money. The blockbuster 13-player deal with the Marlins and the Braves amounted to Los Angeles taking on the other teams' bad contracts while adding two solid mid-rotation starting pitchers, a late-inning reliever, and a top infield prospect. With a pair of aces now followed by a respectable supporting cast of arms, and with the team's minor league system even better than it was a week ago, there's nothing for Dodgers fans to complain about. This is what the Steinbrenner Yankees would have looked like under modern baseball rules.

San Diego Padres: With minutes to go until the deadline, Padres GM A.J. Preller made his choice. Rather than gut the major league roster he assembled so frenetically last winter, he chose to hang on to his many valuable players while adding lefty reliever Mark "Scrabble" Rzepczynski from the Indians. That Preller didn't act drastically might have been disappointing, but the blunders he made in the winter cannot be fixed by simply trading away the players he acquired. For better or worse, this mediocre team with a decent pitching staff, horrid infield, historically bad outfield defense, and a strip-mined farm system is what the Padres are going to be for now. That Preller still thinks the team has a run in them, capable of closing the 7 1/2 game deficit in the Wild Card race, is kind of ridiculous. I'm glad I'm not a Padres fan, because you never want one season's Opening Day to be the peak of your excitement for several years. But I'm hard pressed to find real reasons for optimism here.

San Francisco Giants: With a two-game lead in the Wild Card race, the Giants merely have to stay ahead of the Cubs and the Mets for two months to give themselves a shot at back-to-back World Series titles. To that end, they traded their top prospect- A-ball pitcher Keury Mella- along with another minor leaguer to the Reds for starting pitcher Mike Leake. It's a footnote to a chaotic trade season, but by some kind of wacky happenstance the teams that go far in the postseason are almost always the teams that make these useful mid-level deals in July. The Giants needed a reliable mid-to-upper rotation starter and they hit the low end of that target. Their supply of prospects appears damn near dried up, but somehow they keep finding Chris Hestons and Matt Duffys who come up and excel. I don't understand Giants Magic, I don't particularly enjoy it, but were I a Giants fan I would surely enjoy the complacency that comes from rooting for a team that wins a lot for no reason. I would be unreasonably confident for 2015, and I would have faith for the future that prospect rankings and offseason projections have nothing on Sabean/Bochy Jedi powers.

Baseball Spitballs

I've been reading, watching, and listening to every bit of trade deadline news and speculation I can find this month. It's a good time, we all want our favorite team to get the players we want at the price we want to pay. But last winter's Jeff Samardzija trade notwithstanding, that just doesn't happen much. If you want your team to get Cole Hamels, you're going to have to accept that that involves giving up that elite prospect who you consider off the table. If you want anybody of value and you're the Mets, you don't get to keep all your pitchers. So I thought I would have a little fun with it, and make some shot-in-the-dark guesses for some of the major trade targets.

-Cole Hamels (LHP, Phillies). Phillies management has been holding out for a team to offer their best minor leaguers since the winter, and it hasn't happened yet. We can rule out a couple of teams because of financial reasons (Royals, Pirates) and a few more because they've made clear they're not mortgaging their future for anyone (Red Sox, Dodgers, Cubs, Astros). I think we can make some more cuts by looking at the teams that just don't have the elite prospects to give (Angels, Giants, Cardinals, Tigers). There's only one team I see that fits all the criteria: not on Hamels's no trade list, has the money and prospects to deal, and believes it's in a contending window. That team is the Texas Rangers. Joey Gallo is their Mookie Betts/Kris Bryant and probably won't be moved, but a package of C Jorge Alfaro, OF Nomar Mazara, and a pitcher from further down the list seems like a deal that the Phillies could accept and the Rangers could withstand. It's either that or wait for Andy McPhail to put together an analytics department and head into the winter with a better idea of what the options are, and who's going to make the decisions. It wouldn't shock me if it went that way either.

-Johnny Cueto (RHP, Reds). Cueto might be the first trade domino to fall, as Walt Jocketty was pretty much just waiting for the All-Star Game to be over before he starts the retool in Cincy. He's 29, a proven ace, and owed only $5M for the remainder of 2015. That means any team with a chance to win in 2015 will be after him, and he'll probably go to whichever team offers up the best prospect. I think Toronto, Houston, Minnesota and the Dodgers are likely to get in on the bidding war, but let's remember a couple years back, when Royals GM Dayton Moore traded a package of prospects including next-big-thing Wil Myers for James Shields. The Royals are good again this year, but there's a hole at the top of the rotation that Cueto could fill nicely. Maybe Moore is crazy enough to part with OF prospect Raul Mondesi, among other lesser parts, to give his team another crack at winning it all. Concern over Cueto's health could derail all of this, which seems in keeping with the Reds' luck in recent years.

-Ben Zobrist (IF-OF, Athletics). I don't think the A's can risk keeping BenZo and making him a qualifying offer this winter, so this could be another highest-bidder rental situation. Billy Beane wouldn't go after the highly regarded kid in A-ball, though. He would want a player who could step in in Oakland by 2016, and ideally, before then. How about Gavin Cecchini of the Mets? New York's farm system is deep in shortstops, and while Cecchini doesn't have the same upside as some of the others, he's close to big league ready and at some point the Marcus Semien era has to come to an end. I think it makes sense from the Mets' perspective for multiple reasons: they can add a versatile high-OBP bat to go with the zero they already have, and it leaves the pitching depth intact to go after another hitter. We all know the Mets aren't just one guy away from being a powerhouse, but if this was the headliner among two or three trades for position players, that might be good enough.

-Jeff Samardzija (RHP, White Sox). The big winter reload hasn't gone the way the Sox (or I) thought it would. They're not a terrible team, just a handful of games under .500, but with so many teams above them it might be time to stop dreaming on 2015 and just remind ourselves that Abreu, Eaton, Sale, and Quintana will be here for a while. So who would jump on the Shark? A team without the financial or prospect wealth to chase the available aces, and ideally a team that already has an ace and could slot Samardzija in the 2 or 3 spot. I like the Pirates as a fit here. They could build a package around almost-ready-for-primetime infielder Alen Hanson and maybe another guy from their 15-20 range. Then Shark slots in behind Cole and Liriano and the Pirates are in decent shape to take a run at the Cardinals- or at the very least, survive the Wild Card game.

-Justin Upton (OF, Padres). Speaking of offseason makeovers I gave too much credit to, let's help A.J. Preller dig himself out of this mess. Upton would instantly become the best available position player, if we assume the Brewers are going to wait until the winter to execute a full tear-down. This could easily become a bidding war situation: if you wanted Cueto and wound up with Scott Kazmir you're still better, but there may not be another outfielder with Upton's offensive ability on the market until November. Despite their front-office turmoil, the Angels are in first place with an offense that's been Trout, Pujols, and seven o-fers on a daily basis. It would cost the Angels a pitcher they wouldn't want to give up- maybe Sean Newcomb, maybe Andrew Heaney- but one of the best things Jerry DiPoto did in his tenure was establish some surplus of quality young arms. Bill Stoneman shouldn't be squeamish about parting with one of them if that's what it takes to give that playoff-caliber pitching staff an offense to match.

That's it for now. If we don't get some trade activity soon, I might just have to do another one of these.

MLB 2015 Season Preview Part VII: Awards and Playoff picks

Here's the final piece of my season preview: the educated wild guesses for postseason hardware and playoff results.

AL Awards

Rookie of the Year: Daniel Norris

Manager of the Year: Buck Showalter

Cy Young: Felix Hernandez

MVP: Jose Abreu

AL Playoffs

Wild Card game: Mariners over Orioles

ALDS: Mariners over Angels. White Sox over Blue Jays.

ALCS: White Sox over Mariners

NL Awards

Rookie of the Year: Kris Bryant

Manager of the Year: Mike Redmond

Cy Young: Clayton Kershaw

MVP: Giancarlo Stanton

NL Playoffs

Wild Card game: Marlins over Padres

NLDS: Cardinals over Nationals. Marlins over Dodgers.

NLCS: Marlins over Cardinals

And your 2015 World Series winners: The Chicago White Sox, in 5 games. It's not the best team that wins, it's the hottest team. And I just think Chris Sale and Jose Abreu are so hot right now.

MLB 2015 Season Preview Part VI: NL West

We'll wrap up the division previews today with the NL West. Is it just me, or are all the tough calls in the American League this year? Maybe we're all wrong about everything.

1. Los Angeles Dodgers
2014 record: 94-68 (First place. Lost to St. Louis in NLDS.)
Offseason grade: B

The Andrew Friedman era in LA got off to a fast start, a flurry of trades with San Diego, Philadelphia, Miami, and the Angels drastically reshaping the roster of a 94-win team. The biggest takeaway is that they're all new and improved up the middle, with Kendrick and Rollins replacing Gordon and Ramirez for a notable defensive upgrade and not too much of a loss on offense. Yasmani Grandal replacing A.J. Ellis and Joc Pederson replacing Matt Kemp round out the changes to the lineup. They're banking on health from two pitchers who haven't shown a lot of it in Brandon McCarthy and Brett Anderson, but when you start your rotation with Kershaw and Greinke, the best 1-2 in the game, you can afford to roll some dice. With all due respect to the defending world champs and Extreme Makeover: San Diego edition, no team in the NL West is close to this good.

How it could all go right: Kershaw stops throwing the five or six pitches per game that aren't perfect, and he breaks every record. The rest of the rotation is healthy enough. Joc Pederson makes the most of his long-awaited opportunity to play center field for the Dodgers every day, and dominates the Rookie of the Year conversation. The Dodgers head into October with the best regular-season record in baseball.

How it could all go wrong: A long-term injury to either Kershaw or Greinke devastates the rotation, meaning the team has to scramble with Joe Weiland or give up one of their prize prospects in a deal for another starter. Anderson contributes nothing, and McCarthy fails to make it back-to-back healthy seasons. Decline from Adrian Gonzalez and failure to develop from Yasmani Grandal leads to a power outage. If all that and more goes wrong, I guess I could see the Dodgers winning as few as 80 games.

2. San Diego Padres
2014 record: 77-85 (Third place)
Offseason grade: A

A.J. Preller is the most exciting thing to hit San Diego since Ling Wong was pregnant. Taking over a boring, inexpensive team that hadn't done anything well in four years, Preller wheeled and dealed from his real life roster of real life baseball players like a bored, stoned 28-year-old Everlasting Dave with his Playstation and MLB11- The Show. Will it work? Were they all smart moves? That's not really the point. The point is to be interesting, and for the first time since they ditched the Tony Gwynn classic uniforms for a blue and tan fashion wasteland, the Padres are interesting. The choice for second place is between a team that just added a brand new star-studded outfield and a team that lost two of their best hitters and added nobody of significance. Yes, yes, the Giants Know How To Win, and Brian Sabean and Bruce Bochy are the baseball version of Yoda and Obi-Wan. Fine. I'm still taking new and interesting.

How it could all go right: Wil Myers, fully recovered from his 2014 wrist injuries, fakes center field defense well enough while continuing the climb that started before he was baseball's top prospect. Matt Kemp is also not finished. Tyson Ross and Andrew Cashner keep all their ligaments and tendons in place long enough to form a really strong rotation. Someone from the Middlebrooks-Gyorko-Alonso group of infield disappointments shows a sign of life. The Padres win a wild card spot, or, in the "Everyone in Dodger blue gets seriously injured" universe, the NL West title.

How it could all go wrong: James Shields' streak of healthy, innings-eating, sub-ace effectiveness comes to an end. Like the Marlins of 2013, no amount of outfield awesomeness can cancel out an infield full of pumpkins. The outfield isn't even that awesome, seeing as how it's made up of three left fielders and there's some pasture out there at Petco. Preller's job is merely half done, and the Padres don't escape from the not-terrible, not-contending rut they've been in for the better part of a decade.

3. San Francisco Giants
2014 record: 88-74 (Second place. Beat Pittsburgh in the Wild Card game, Washington in NLDS, St. Louis in NLCS, and Kansas City in the World Series.)
Offseason grade: D

This isn't just the lazy "Odd year/ even year" argument, even though that's what I used last year and it was correct. For the first time since the Giants became an every-other-October monster, they're bringing a team to Spring Training that is significantly, indisputably worse than the previous year's team. Buster Posey is on the short list of best players in baseball, and if Brandon Belt plays all year I think he'll be a good wingman. But until real-life superhero Hunter Pence returns, they're also the only guys on the roster who you really want in your lineup. Madison Bumgarner is an ace, Jake Peavy is serviceable as long as he's healthy, and backing them up are a useless Tim Lincecum, an almost-40 Tim Hudson, and a guy who's lost almost all his value in two short years in Matt Cain. This team had little margin for error in an 88-win sneak into the playoffs in 2014, and with the loss of two of their better bats, that margin all but disappeared.

How it could all go right: Angel Pagan puts a full season together. Posey and Belt have their best seasons yet. Matt Cain's elbow issues are behind him. Bochy finds a way to get some value out of Lincecum. Casey McGehee and Nori Aoki, imbued with Bochy/Sabean magic, hit well enough to justify their starting jobs. The same bullpen the team has had for five years delivers the same results it has for five years. The Giants' title defense makes it to October, where anything can happen.

How it could all go wrong: Cain and Lincecum are unusable, pushing Ryan Vogelsong and Yusmeiro Petit into the rotation while they wait for anyone in the minors to develop. That taxes the bullpen past the breaking point. The power drain brought on by losing Michael Morse and the Panda leads to one of the worst lineups in the league. The Giants sink to fourth place.

4. Colorado Rockies
2014 record: 66-96 (Fourth place)
Offseason grade: See below.

After the Winter of Preller, I decided I had to come up with a new most boring team in baseball. A team that wouldn't even force me to change my typical Padres season preview: "There's still nothing interesting to say about this team." After giving every team a few paragraphs over the past few weeks- and oh, I will have things to say about Dave Stewart's Diamondbacks as well, in the coming paragraphs and the months that follow- my finalists were Colorado, Minnesota, Philadelphia, and Milwaukee. Philadelphia was the first elimination, as they were excellent not too long ago, they possess baseball's shiniest trade chip at the moment, and they can swing the money hammer when they want to. The Twins were next out, as I said in their preview, because that would have been like calling the Nationals boring right before they called up Bryce Harper. So in the final boring-off, it came down to this: The Brewers have two legit MVP candidates, of whom great things are expected, and another guy who could find his way into the discussion with a lot of lucky breaks. The Rockies have two guys who used to be regarded that way, but they haven't been healthy in so long I don't know if other teams even want them anymore. Milwaukee's front office also has a history of making gutsy trades for elite players when the team's in the race. Jeff Bridich is new to the top job in Colorado, but he's been in their front office for a while, and his first winter at the helm fits comfortably into the team's long history of not doing much of anything. So congratulations, Colorado Rockies. Due to your forgettableness, I'm not even giving you an offseason grade or a best and worst case. You'll be better than the Diamondbacks and worse than almost every other team in the game. That'll have to be enough until I say the same thing, minus the explanation, a year from now. Don't go screwing that up by trading Tulo or making the playoffs in the meantime, k?

5. Arizona Diamondbacks

2014 record: 64-98 (Fifth place)
Offseason grade: D

I really want to snark out here, and explain that Dave Stewart has assembled a brick-red train wreck, that Tony LaRussa must be the dumbest person in the world to think that this is a good idea, that this team is the natural biological product of grittiness eating too much getoffamylawnism. But this is about baseball, not about silly quotes and philosophical differences that I suspect are overblown just so bloggers have something to blog about. And in a baseball sense, the first winter under Dave Stewart wasn't appreciably worse than the Kevin Towers years, was it? It's not like Stewart took the reins of the team, traded Braden Shipley and Aaron Blair for Willie Bloomquist, then cut Touki Toussaint because having a guy named Touki in his organization pissed him off. All he did was move some parts around, made room for Archie Bradley and Chris Owings on the major league team, decided his team doesn't need a catcher, and gave a big fat guy a lot of money to play a position he can't physically play. Not the best winter, true, but I didn't hate everything he did. Just look at the Wade Miley reports out of Spring Training and tell me the D-Backs didn't get away with robbery there. The Stewart/LaRussa collaboration still has many fine moments of blog fodder ahead of it.

How it could all go right: The organization's crown jewels, the pitching prospects, are healthy and effective. They find something productive for Yasmani Tomas to do. Mark Trumbo starts hot and the team is able to get something of value by trading him. Stewart and his scouts find the one can't-miss guy in a weak draft class, and nail the first overall pick. 2014 was their hitting bottom, and the D-Backs improve by as many as ten wins as the pieces start falling into place around Paul Goldschmidt.

How it could all go wrong: So many ways, but the most obvious are that none of the new position players are ready for the big leagues, and the pitching staff is the worst in baseball. Sadly for D-Backs fans, those are both pretty likely. There's reason to believe the good times will last once this starts to turn around, but it won't start in 2015.