A continuation of the series of retrospectives looking back at the regular season and how teams fared. They will be presented, from first to last, in order of their run differential as given by the BaseRuns formula and adjusted for strength of schedule, which I feel is the best measurement of a team’s actual talent level.

Number Seven: Milwaukee Brewers

Finally returning to the National League, we coincidentally stumble upon the second National League team that was eliminated from the playoffs. The Brewers were the inverse of the White Sox in terms of BaseRuns rankings, coming in 13th with runs scored and 8th in runs allowed.

The underrated quality for the Brewers were their defense, with the second best defensive efficiency ratio among National League teams. Paired with a front heavy rotation, the Brewers seemed like they had a good postseason recipe, but alas it was not to be. In the rotation, obviously the big horses of CC Sabathia and Ben Sheets were helpful but were almost erased by the horribleness of Jeff Suppan.

As much as the defense and front of the rotation helped was as bad as the bullpen was. Eric Gagne, David Riske and even Derrick Turnbow over his ridiculously small sample were so terrible as to scuttle the entire unit. There were a handful of average performances like Carlos Villaneuva, Brian Shouse and Seth McClung, but average isn’t enough to overcome the 80 innings of complete suck from Gagne and Riske.

On the hitting side, the Brewers find some good news, starting with a recovering sophomore season from Ryan Braun. An underrated move (again, defense) was the Mike Cameron acquisition who combined his superb defense with an offensive game that was finally allowed to shine through after a decade played in tough hitter’s parks.

For the past three years or so, analysts have been pointing out that Milwaukee’s door was opening, and while in 2008 the Brewers finally walked through, has their door slammed shut in a snap? Sabathia and Sheets could be gone leaving the Brewers’ rotation as a giant question mark. Matt LaPorta is gone to Cleveland for Sabathia and if 2009 is shaping up as a re-building year, are we looking at Prince Fielder being dangled on the trading block? We could always use more talent changing teams this news worthy winter.

A continuation of the series of retrospectives looking back at the regular season and how teams fared. They will be presented, from first to last, in order of their run differential as given by the BaseRuns formula and adjusted for strength of schedule, which I feel is the best measurement of a team’s actual talent level.

Number Six: Chicago White Sox

Number six is our fifth American League team and the third of the four playoff teams from that league. The inclusion of the strength of schedule factor makes the biggest impact here as the White Sox, by virtue of having the sixth most difficult schedule in baseball during 2008 vault four spots up the list after adjusting for it.

When evaluating the White Sox relative strengths and weaknesses it is important to remember that their home park is a veritable launching pad and thus while BaseRuns might make you think the White Sox’s offense (8th ranked) was more key to their success than their defense (13th), but those are not park adjusted numbers. Once you factor in the park, it becomes clear just how important the White Sox pitching was this season while the offense was rather pedestrian.

The White Sox offense was driven by Carlos Quentin with solid assistance from Jermaine Dye, Jim Thome and a surprising Alexei Ramirez. Aside from those three however there wasn’t much to write home about. Notably there were huge issues with getting runners on base and, perhaps atypical to Ozzie Guillen’s reputation built on the White Sox World Series run from a few years ago, the White Sox this season were very much a station to station team ranking last in the league in triples and second to last in stolen bases, but leading in home runs.

The star of this team was the rotation which boasted almost universally above average performances and fronted by Javier Vazquez, John Danks and Mark Buehrle. Gavin Floyd provided a solid innings-eater performance in addition. On the relief side there were numerous more good pitchers. Bobby Jenks and the saves obvious get the lion’s share of attention, but Matt Thornton’s blossoming into a useful left-handed reliever was just as, if not more, important. Scott Linebrink even rediscovered his good San Diego-era performance level. All in all, just a fantastic all around pitching staff.

The good news for Chicago is that their pitching staff shouldn’t see too much turnover into 2009, though one would be wise to remain cautious on the bullpen performance as those are always tough to count on. The offense needs help though. They should get some in Nick Swisher regressing from his poor luck (20.9% line drive rate, .251 BABIP), but they’ll need more than that.

A continuation of the series of retrospectives looking back at the regular season and how teams fared. They will be presented, from first to last, in order of their run differential as given by the BaseRuns formula and adjusted for strength of schedule, which I feel is the best measurement of a team’s actual talent level.

Number Five New York Yankees

If you’ve been paying attention this week, you will have hopefully picked up that incredibly this is the fourth team from the AL East already listed within the top five teams. The Yanks check in with 91.1 projected wins by BaseRuns thanks to a much more balanced team than Toronto above them and more akin to the first three teams we saw. The Yankees posted the 7th best offense and 11th best defense in the league.

The offense rested on Alex Rodriguez and a surprising rejuvenation from Johnny Damon. Rodriguez gets too little credit for being probably the best overall hitter in the American League this season and as always when you have a team full of stars, the supporting cast was solid as well. Possibly free agents Bobby Abreu and Jason Giambi both contributed excellent offensive seasons as well.

What did New York in on offense though was their players up the middle. Jorge Posas was hurt early on and Jose Molina was a poor substitute. Robinson Cano had a horrid April which was bad enough to drag his whole season line down the tubes. Derek Jeter had a big off year, recovering some in September after their playoff hopes were already dashed (though you won’t be hearing any words about Jeter only getting hits in meaningless situations) and center field was a nightmare as well.

On the pitching side, the rotation was a mess of injuries and ineffectiveness. On the plus side was the surprising Mike Mussina who succeeded despite a microscopic swinging strike rate, but he might retire. Joining him was Joba Chamberlain, but there are concerns about whether he will be able to stick in the rotation health-wise. Andy Pettitte was also solid enough as well.

On the negative side were injuries to Chien-Ming Wang and Phil Hughes and dismal performances from Sidney Ponson (why?) and Carl Pavano. In the bullpen, amazingly this was one of Mariano Rivera’s best seasons to date and further shows that nobody has any idea when he’s going to show signs of age or when or even if, batters will ever figure out his cutter.

How do the Yanks look for 2009? Well, they should be busy during the winter as usual and that takes a lot of the edge off but right now they have serious question marks up and down their rotation and a rapidly aging offensive core.

A continuation of the series of retrospectives looking back at the regular season and how teams fared. They will be presented, from first to last, in order of their run differential as given by the BaseRuns formula and adjusted for strength of schedule, which I feel is the best measurement of a team’s actual talent level.

Number Four: Toronto Blue Jays

This is probably a surprising result to many considering the Blue Jays finished fourth in their own division, much less in all of baseball, but anyone paying attention to adjusted standings throughout the season will have seen this coming as the Blue Jays posted a 93-69 pythag record. Their BaseRuns record wasn’t quite that impressive, docking them an additional 30 runs allowed, but still good enough to qualify them above 26 other teams.

It is here that I have to take a moment to bring up a modification to the rankings. I mentioned in the Rays review that the Rays’ strength of schedule (SoS) was the toughest in the league. Well it occurred to me that if I was using BaseRuns to try and correct for luck on the field, I might as well use SoS to try and correct for luck in scheduling as well. To that extent, I modified each team’s BaseRuns winning percentage by adding their SoS to their BaseRuns pythag and then subtracting 0.5. The rest of the rankings will proceed using this methodology and there’s already one change. Because of Tampa’s toughest schedule and the Cubs relatively mild one, the Rays overcome the Cubs for second in the league. So for those keeping score at home, here’s the adjusted win totals of the first four teams:

1. Boston 101.5
2. Tampa 96.1
3. Chicago (N) 95.8
4. Toronto 91.8

Now then, we can get on with the focus on the Blue Jays. The staple so far had been balanced teams, but the Blue Jays break that mold by having probably the most dominant run prevention corps in the league. They rank 2nd overall, but by just eight runs allowed to a National League team.

A.J. Burnett and Roy Halladay (who probably deserves the AL Cy Young over Cliff Lee) anchored the staff but the avoidance of any black holes in the rotation helped equally in creating such a strong staff. Unfortunately, much of that is up in the air for 2009 with Burnett having an option to leave, and Dustin McGowan and Shaun Marcum suffering through arm surgery. On the relief side, a big kudos goes to Scott Downs and his crazy groundball rates that helped limit home runs and his solid enough strikeout and walk rates making him one of the better relievers in the league this season.

Offensively, there wasn’t much to celebrate. Vernon Wells was one of the few bright spots, recovering from his disastrous 2007 year to post a very solid season much more in line with his previous efforts. The Blue Jays dumped Frank Thomas, who went on to be good in Oakland (before getting hurt), for Matt Stairs, who went on to be mediocre and then was traded to Philadelphia. Alexis Rios cemented himself as a capable hitter with his third consecutive productive year. Travis Snider had a good first 80 plate appearances, hopefully providing Toronto with some hope for a future that looks tough behind Boston, New York and Tampa.

A continuation of the series of retrospectives looking back at the regular season and how teams fared. They will be presented, from first to last, in order of their run differential as given by the BaseRuns formula, which I feel is the best measurement of a team’s actual talent level.

Number Three: Tampa Bay Rays

The Rays continue the streak of well balanced teams, possessing the 5th best BaseRuns scored mark and the 6th best BaseRuns allowed mark. This lead to a BaseRuns differential of 121 in the positive column, which was well behind the Red Sox (186) and Cubs (151) for first and second, but was well ahead of tomorrow’s featured fourth place team.

One aspect that has been noted but somewhat overlooked as a quantity was strength of schedule, which was brutal for this year’s crop of teams in the American League East. The top five hardest schedules this season belonged to the five members of that division and that includes the Rays who topped them all.

A poor (for him) season for Scott Kazmir was made up for by a huge step forward for control artist Andy Sonnanstine and Matt Garza making good on the trade that cost the Rays Delmon Young and others. In addition to those two in the rotation, and another good year from James Shields, was Grant Balfour taking over the spotlight in the bullpen and J.P. Howell moving out of the rotation where he was so-so and becoming dynamite in some needed long relief situations.

On the hitting side, it was a big up tick in production from Dioner Navarro and the emergence of Evan Longoria, which allowed the Rays to move Upton off the infield which not only improved the offense but greatly improved the defense.

What does the future hold for the Rays? It looks nothing but bright as David Price emerges on the scene, Scott Kazmir would be likely to rebound and Evan Longoria is probably only going to get better. With both the Rays and Red Sox looking strong for the next few years, we could have a new power duo in the east.

A continuation of the series of retrospectives looking back at the regular season and how teams fared. They will be presented, from first to last, in order of their run differential as given by the BaseRuns formula, which I feel is the best measurement of a team’s actual talent level.

Number Two: Chicago Cubs

Owners of the best record in the National League and the best actual run differential in the majors, the Cubs ranked 3rd in the majors in runs scored and 5th in runs allowed by BaseRuns.

Like the Red Sox above them, the Cubs did well to balance both good offense and defense and their bullpen was rooted in the success of two main pitchers, Carlos Marmol and Kerry Wood. Beside those two, the Cubs pen was rather ordinary.

In the rotation, the Cubs lost the contribution of Rich Hill and got almost nothing out of acquisition Jon Lieber, but instead got a tremendous uplift from moving Ryan Dempster out of the closer role into the rotation. Beyond him, mid season pickup Rich Harden managed to stay healthy and helped solidify the Cubs on top of the Central.

The Cubs were heavily rumored to be involved in trading for Brian Roberts over the summer at the cost of a massive haul of prospects. It’s a good thing for them that Peter Angelos balked at the proposal since the Cubs were able to use some of those prospects to acquire Rich Harden and also because Mark DeRosa flipped out this year eclipsing 20 home runs for the first time in his career.

Continuing with the bats, the Cubs got a great performance out of Geovany Soto, fulfilling the promise he showed at the tail end of 2007 and a bargain pick up of Jim Edmonds after a disastrous first 100 plate appearances in San Diego. Edmonds came over and put up a rejuvenated .937 OPS. A nice boost from Mike Fontenot joined the usual contributions from Aramis Ramirez and Derrek Lee as well.

In the end, it was an extremely potent offense, bordering on the best in the majors when you factor in that the only two teams to produce more offensively were both AL teams benefiting from having a designated hitter.

Today will kick off a series of retrospectives now that the regular season is over and done with. These will concern themselves only with the regular season and how the teams fared. They will be presented, from first to last, in order of their run differential as given by the BaseRuns formula, which I feel is the best overall measurement of a team’s actual talent level for the season.

Number One: Boston Red Sox

The Red Sox occupied the top spot according to BaseRuns and by a fair margin to boot, 35 runs better than the second place team. The Red Sox were 2nd best on offense at a projected 884 runs scored and 7th at run prevention with 699 runs allowed.

Boston’s pitching was well balanced between the rotation and the bullpen. The rotation was anchored by Josh Beckett and Jon Lester and saw a solid, if curious and likely unsustainable, performance from Daisuke Matsuzaka as well. The bullpen was built on the backs of another outstanding season from Jonathan Papelbon and a breakout year for Manny Delcarmen.

On the hitting side there were many people to spread the credit around to. J.D. Drew rebounded from a vilified first season in Boston to post fantastic numbers both at the plate and in the field. Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz provided much less value than before but were still helpful contributors. The breakouts though came from Dustin Pedroia (a fine, but nowhere near MVP performance) and Kevin Youkilis, who busted out a never before seen slugging power.

While the catcher and center field positions did what they could to drag down the offense, the rest of the lineup made up for it and with Boston’s immense financial resources they should be in prime position to patch what few holes they have and continue being a dominant force in 2009.

Last night the Mets and Brewers both won, leaving the NL Wild Card race at a standstill. The Rays lost and Red Sox won leaving the Rays still without a clinched division title. The Twins came back from a huge deficit and completed a sweep of the White Sox, but that still left the separation in the division at one half of a game, just with a new leader now.

Those races are all highly publicized. One other race was pared down last night that might have gone unreported. With the Mariners losing, the Padres were officially eliminated from the race for the first overall pick in next June’s amateur draft. The tiebreaker for draft order is to award the earlier pick to the team with the worse record in the year prior and of the three teams vying for that top spot: Seattle, Washington and San Diego, the Padres had the best record in 2007, followed by Seattle.

This means that in the event that San Diego and Seattle tie in overall record come Monday, the earlier pick will be awarded to the Mariners. Since if Seattle wins out and the Padres lose out, the two teams would end up with identical records, there is now no way for the Padres to surpass the Mariners for the first pick. What that ends up meaning is still very much up in the air, but no matter who ends up emerging over the course of next Spring, draft picks get exponentially more valuable the closer they get to first overall.

The current consensus top talent, San Diego State starter Stehpen Strasburg, will be closely watched along with fellow southern California collegian Grant Green. In the event that their stock hold up into next June, that San Diego will have to hope that at least Seattle, and possibly Washington as well, pass on both can not fill them with much glee.

Never minding the ludicrous idea that the Tigers could score 1,000 runs this season, they did look to come into the year with an overpowering offense and despite a slow start to April that left most people forgetful of them, the Tigers did exactly that. Though Miguel Cabrera perhaps had a disappointing season given his hype and move over to first base defensively, the Tigers offense was not what sunk them this season.

No, it was on the run prevention side that Detroit flopped. Notably, their defense was horrible. Anyone who was paying attention in 2007 would have predicted that coming in however. What was unexpected was the utter collapse of the Tigers pitching staff. Last season the bullpen was nothing special, but neither were they especially terrible. This year? Not so much as they had Bobby Seay and that’s about it as far as relievers that actually contributed positively to the pen.

However, not even that is the most troubling aspect of 2008 for Detroit. That distinction goes to the rotation, once hyped full of young talent. In 2008, it nearly all fell apart aside from Justin Verlander. Jeremy Bonderman, Dontrelle Willis and Kenny Rogers were all colossal failures compared to preseason expectations and what’s worse is that Detroit purged its system of Andrew Miller in acquiring Willis and Cabrera from Florida.

Detroit would like hope to be on the way in the form of Rick Porcello, but the teenage stud of the 2007 draft who the Tigers nabbed after he fell due to signability reasons did not have an inaugural professional season to write home about. Walking or hitting over 8% of hitters in advanced A ball isn’t going to get you noticed unless you’re fanning over 25% of them at the same time. Porcello certainly wasn’t doing that, registering a 13.7% figure in that department.

Yes, Porcello is young. Very young in fact; just 19 in a league averaging 23 years of age, but his slow start just going to reinforce that the Tigers are going to need to look elsewhere for awhile to find help in the rotation.

Tom Gordon has had a noteworthy career, but for today, the discussion is going to focus on three players who have a connection to Tom Gordon that most do not realize. Gio Gonzalez, Ian Kennedy and Joba Chamberlain were all selected with draft picks received by their respective teams as compensation for losing Tom Gordon.

Gio Gonzalez, along with Ray Liotta, was drafted by the White Sox in the 2004 June draft after the White Sox capitalized on their one-year contact with Gordon by offering him arbitration and seeing him leave to the New York Yankees where he provided two great seasons of set up relief. Gonzalez is best known at the moment for being involved in the Nick Swisher trade, which explains why he is now with Oakland. Gonzalez has an uninspiring major league experience this season, but has fared well in Triple-A with over a strikeout an inning, though he will have to get the walks under control.

After the 2005 season, with Gordon’s contract up, instead of remaining with the Yankees as many aging but still productive veterans seem to do, Gordon instead chose to go back to closing games and signed with the Philadelphia Phillies. That signing netted the Yankees a pair of first round compensation picks, the 21st and 41st overall picks. With the 21st, the Yankees selected Ian Kennedy and grabbed Joba Chamberlain with the 41st. Both were inspired picks and have come along much faster than their relative draft position brethren.

Obviously Joba Chamberlain’s story and skills are well enough known at this point, but Ian Kennedy has seemed to lose a bit of his future luster after a seemingly poor showing this year in the bigs. However, Kennedy is still young and still has a tremendous minor league track record to his credit so patience is needed with him. We’ll see if the Yankees are willing to exercise some after missing the post season for the first time since 1993.

That all three of these hurlers came as a result of compensation for Tom Gordon (and all three also involved the Yankees) makes for a unique reason to follow their careers as the they progress from here on out.