In which I look back at my pre-season predictions with wonder and/or shame:
My NL East predictions:
Philadelphia Phillies (95-67)
Atlanta Braves* (89-73)
Florida Marlins (84-78)
New York Mets (79-83)
Washington Nationals (75-87)
The real 2011 NL East:
I have finally found the crown jewel of my DVD collection:
The films of Laurel & Hardy have been tragically absent from DVD, with the notable exception of this collection from Turner Classic Movies. The complete films of Laurel & Hardy number 106, although three of those films are considered lost. I own every commercially available Laurel & Hardy film on VHS (including a few tapes bought in England that I had to pay to convert to Region 1). But getting them all together – the best available transfers along with newly-discovered and never-released footage and films – has been a dream I thought may never come to pass.
An idea occurred to me out of nowhere – as they so often do – that most of the great teams that people write about are the dynasties. So I thought, “What about the non-dynasties?” That is, what about the teams that were really good for one year, and then receded into the fog of history? It seemed like these teams – out-of-nowhere success stories – would be just as interesting to write about, if not more so.
So I compiled my list of teams with a few caveats. One is that I generally wanted teams that made the postseason. That may seem unfair at first, but then who would read a series of essays about “Worst-to-Third” teams? Secondly, I wanted teams that were not very good before and after their season of success, since this would make their one good season an interesting oasis of winning. And thirdly, I’ll admit that I was biased toward teams that were a good story and potentially fun to write about. Hopefully then, they will also be fun to read about.
The series will run in chronological order. This sets up a potential anticlimax, since the first team in the series just might be the biggest miracle story in baseball history: the 1914 Miracle Braves.
The problem with taking a one-month break in between installments of a series containing analysis is that your clever pre-season work can be made to look silly in a month. No, the Indians aren’t nearly this good, but I also may have spoken too soon when I dropped the “pathetic” tag on the franchise.
Still, continuing where I left off, at #20 in my organizational rankings:
Ranked 17th by Fangraphs
Financial Resources: C
Present Talent: D
Baseball Operations: C
Future Talent: C
You may have recently come across this at fangraphs.com. Basically, the Fangraphs writers were asked to rank each major league organization according to four factors. The resulting organizational rankings are being posted at Fangraphs (they’re halfway through as I write this.
I saw this as an opportunity to rank the organizations myself and then see how my rankings compared to those of the Fangraphs team of experts.
The four factors used to determine the rankings are (with their weighted value in parentheses):
I’ve spent a lot of time preparing my article on the best baseball players of the 2000’s (2000-2009). I’ve put a lot of time and thought into it, so it’s taken me longer than I expected. Then I got the idea to list the best films of the 2000’s. It didn’t take nearly as long as I expected and was fun to put together.
I’ll start by naming my favorites by genre, and then I’ll finish with the best acting performances of the decade. The following is based solely on my opinion, of course. Keep in mind that I haven’t seen everything, even including some really notable films that everyone ELSE has seen, but I haven’t gotten around to yet. Feel free to leave a comment if you wish to dispute my rankings.
#5: The Dark Knight
This was as nasty and brutish as anything Thomas Hobbes could have envisioned. It was also pretty brilliant. I only had a few problems with it, notably the fact that it was crammed with a little too much plot. But Heath Ledger was an inspiration. I doubt he would have won the Oscar had he survived, but in any case I think he deserved it.
#4: Iron Man
I really don’t know what to say about Iron Man that hasn’t been said. Every bit of it was just a good movie, superhero or not. You can’t say that about many “franchise” movies.
#3: Kill Bill Vol. 1AL EAST
Boston Red Sox (96-66)
New York Yankees* (91-71)
Tampa Bay Rays (87-75)
Toronto Blue Jays (78-84)
Baltimore Orioles (78-84)
AL CENTRAL
I started with a simple question: What team has had the best right fielders (or catchers, or shortstops) in its history? The following is my best answer to the question. See the first post in the series for a full explanation.
The best right fielders by team:
Al Cowens, Jay Buhner, Ichiro Suzuki
W-L: 75-87 (5th place in NL Central)
Pythagorean W-L (pW-pL): 73-89
Payroll: $124.9 million (2nd in NL)
R/G: 4.23 (10th in NL)
ERA: 4.24 (13th in NL)
Defense Efficiency Ratio (DER): .679 (12th in NL)
Team MVPs: Geovany Soto, Carlos Marmol, Ryan Dempster
Team LVPs: Derrek Lee, Aramis Ramirez
Defensive Stars: Marlon Byrd, Alfonso Soriano, Derrek Lee
I started with a simple question: What team has had the best center fielders (or catchers, or shortstops) in its history? The following is my best answer to the question. See the first post in the series for a full explanation.
The best center fielders by team:
Lloyd Moseby, Devon White, Jose Cruz, Jr., Vernon Wells
Nothing spectacular here, but a lot of consistently good work.
I started with a simple question: What team has had the best left fielders (or catchers, or shortstops) in its history? The following is my best answer to the question. See the first post in the series for a full explanation.
Carl Crawford
I started with a simple question: What team has had the best third basemen (or catchers, or shortstops) in its history? The following is my best answer to the question. See the first post in the series for a full explanation.
Jimmy Austin, Harlond Clift, George Kell, Brooks Robinson, Doug DeCinces, Cal Ripken, Melvin Mora
I started with a simple question: What team has had the best first basemen (or catchers, or shortstops) in its history? The following is my best answer to the question. See first post for full explanation.
George McBride, Roger Peckinpaugh, Joe Cronin, Cecil Travis, Pete Runnels, Zoilo Versalles, Leo Cardenas, Roy Smalley, Greg Gagne, Cristian Guzman
I started with a simple question: What team has had the best first basemen (or catchers, or shortstops) in its history? The following is my best answer to the question. See Previous Post for full explanation.
Bobby Knoop, Sandy Alomar, Jerry Remy, Bobby Grich, Gary DiSarcina, Adam Kennedy, Howie Kendrick
The question I started with here was: Which team has had the best first basemen over its history? So, with the help of Baseball-Reference.com, I decided to try to answer that question.
First of all, two caveats in this “study.” One is that I wasn’t interested so much in a collection of names as a collective contribution. In other words, I’m not going to highly rank a team like the Mets that has had a lot of Hall-of-Famers – when they were past their prime. I’m more interested in production than name recognition.
Secondly, I decided to weigh my rankings to give some credit to expansion franchises. The Giants and Cardinals have a lot of great players in their histories, but that’s partly because they’ve been around for 100-plus seasons. So a franchise’s age is taken into account when looking at a list of players.
So who had the best first basemen of all time? Here’s my own personal Top 10, in reverse order. Note that the players listed under each team are just some of the highlights in team history.
