The Phillies weren’t the only playoff contender to drop off the face of the earth in September. The land of the chimichanga fared no better in late-season play than the cheesesteak republic, leaving a foul aftertaste to what had been a solid season.

The Setup

Arizona went a new direction after 2016, replacing the general-managerial meanderings of Dave Stewart with the more modern approach of Mike Hazen, formerly under Dave Dombrowski and Ben Cherington with the Red Sox.

Hazen worked quickly, acquiring Ketel Marte and Taijuan Walker from the Seattle Mariners for Mitch Haniger, Jean Segura, and prospect Zac Curtis. But the 2017 season was largely based around the previous core, with Arizona signing several role players — but no big difference-makers — in free agency.

The inherited rotation combined for a 3.61 ERA and 18.8 WAR, that total ranking second in baseball behind only the Indians. Hazen did make one gigantic contribution in the form of J.D. Martinez, acquired from the Tigers in July.

As in-season trades go, the Martinez swap went just about as well as anyone could have expected. The primary starter in left field, Yasmany Tomas, had gone on the disabled list in June with a groin injurym and in truth, the team was already on the verge of giving up on him as a starter. The team’s lack of outfield depth was already glaring, with A.J. Pollock out and Arizona resorting to a Gregor Blanco/Rey Fuentes timeshare in center.

So correctly identifying the team’s biggest problem, Hazen closed a deal on the solution and Martinez paid off, hitting .302/.366/.741 for the team, with a ludicrous 29 home runs in 232 at-bats. The fact that the team’s OPS only improved by seven points in the second half of the season even with Martinez should be a fairly good indication as to the straits in which the offense would have found itself without the pickup. That Hazen managed to bring in Martinez without eviscerating the already suffering farm system was a coup.

The winter of 2017-18 presented the team with a significant problem in the form of contracts. With 16 players in their salary-arbitration years and five in arbitration for the first time, the roster was set to become more expensive without actually improving all that much.

In the end, the 2018 team would cost $40 million more than the 2017 version, and that’s with under $20 million of total spending in free agency, primarily in the form of Alex Avila and Jarrod Dyson.

Going into 2018, the primary questions about the team were whether the offense could survive J.D. Martinez’s departure with only Steven Souza added to the roster and how much 2017’s rotation would regress the following season.

The Projection

ZiPS didn’t see Arizona matching their 93 wins from 2017 but still saw them as the biggest threat to the Dodgers, with a projected 86-76 record and 13% chance of winning the division. The projections were generally optimistic about the rotation staying one of the top groups in baseball, but was much less sanguine about the offense, seeing it as a below-average unit despite Paul Goldschmidt’s best efforts.

The Results

In an abstract sense, Arizona had four seasons in 2018 rather than one, each with a different character and a grossly different set of results.

The Sprint (24-11)
The team started out absolutely blazing, not losing consecutive games until the back end of a four-game split with the Dodgers in May. The pitching went 20-8 with a 2.96 ERA and 280 strikeouts in 255.1 innings, almost looking like a Randy Johnson Cy Young campaign (though, technically, with fewer strikeouts).

There was one giant hiccup, though, in that the pitching was basically propping up the offense. The team won 24 of 35 because of that staff, but were hitting only .228/.311/.407 for the season, ranking 19th in OPS and 17th in runs scored. Those rankings were despite Goldschmidt’s .900 OPS and A.J. Pollock’s 1.021 OPS through the end of April.

What would happen to the offense without Goldschmidt and Pollock, even if they could maintain Cy Young-level pitching for an entire year? As you no doubt realize, I’m asking this question for a very specific reason.

The Wile E. Coyote (2-15)
One of the frequent gags in Wile E. Coyote cartoons features that same coyote — having just endured some mishap with an Acme-brand product — walking off a cliff into thin air and remaining aloft momentarily before realizing his predicament and plummeting to earth.

Pollock broke his thumb on the 15th, leaving the Diamondbacks again to scramble for a center-field replacement in-season. Fortunately, unlike past Diamondbacks teams, this one had prepared for such an event with the signing of Dyson the previous offseason.

It didn’t do the team any good in the end. Dyson didn’t hit at all, leaving a problem in center that wasn’t really resolved until Pollock’s return. But the larger problem was that nobody else hit, either. During these 17 games, the team slashed .182/.248/.291, and even Goldschmidt wasn’t much help.

Normally, there needs to be a lot of suck to go around when losing 15 of 17, but the pitching was absolutely fine. Not at April levels, but pretty good. The 2-15 record and 3.87 ERA they produced has a similar look to Jacob deGrom’s full-season line.

The Surprisingly Normal Period (48-35)
After a carnival-ride first two months came a decidedly normal stretch of the season. The rotation ranked 10th in ERA during this period, a little below where ZiPS pegged them, but amply compensated by the 3.44 ERA from the bullpen.

Even the offense showed a pulse. While Pollock struggled after his return from his thumb injury, hitting .234/.276/.318 through the end of August, the team had six players with at least 100 plate appearances and an .800 OPS in this mini-season: Goldschmidt (1.087), David Peralta (.978), Ketel Marte (.858), Steven Souza (.819), Daniel Descalso (.818), and Eduardo Escobar (.813). This was enough to rank Arizona eighth in runs scored, behind only the Dodgers, the Coors-inflated Rockies, and the Cardinals among NL teams.

The September Collapse (8-19)
On the morning of September 1st, Arizona was still leading the NL West by a single game. This was their last lead of the season, however — and, by the time they went to bed on the 2nd, they were in third place. On only one occasion did Arizona win consecutive games in September, helping the Rockies catch up to the Dodgers in the last week, but long past the point at which they could help themselves in any meaningful way.

Arizona hit .214/.287/.374 in September, Ketel Marte representing the team’s only bright spot at .301/.373/.562. The bullpen collapsed, allowing a .795 OPS en route to a 5.52 September ERA. As before, the starting rotation largely held up its end of the bargain — with the exception, at least, of Zack Godley, admittedly the rotation’s weak point most of the season.

What Comes Next?

The biggest problem the team faces is that the fundamental problems still remain. They still need to improve the offense while navigating significant payroll constraints. The farm system will take years to repair, so they can’t look for many quick fixes from that source.

Arizona already starts with a roster that’s somewhere around $140 million after the re-signing of Eduardo Escobar. This will come down somewhat with Shelby Miller almost certain to be non-tendered and Brad Boxberger a probability to follow Miller to free agency.

Even if we call it a $120 million payroll for the same team as last year but without Patrick Corbin and A.J. Pollock, that’s a dreadful place to begin an offseason.

The general feeling around baseball, one Arizona has done little to rebut, is that the team is headed for a rebuild. Goldschmidt is unsigned past 2019, and aging first basemen have a tendency to result in terrible contracts for the signing teams. Greinke’s survived the loss of velocity on his fastball, but he’s also a very expensive 35-year-old on a team without much payroll flexibility.

A lot of people are unhappy about the prospect of Arizona and Seattle entering rebuilding phases right now after their competitive 2018 campaigns, but they both share a similar set of problems: payrolls near their maximum willingness to spend combined with minor-league systems that can’t bridge the short-term gaps. Arizona can’t afford even to re-assemble the exact 2018 roster that finished barely above .500.

I don’t expect a full rebuild for the team to be as painful as these sometimes go. The club does have players that can be part of the future around which they build, including Marte, Walker, Robbie Ray, etc. Rebuilds like Houston’s are especially difficult because they weren’t started until after everything of value was gone.

Whether Arizona chooses to go the “let’s call a contractor” or the “cool, check out this WWI-era flamethrower we found!” path, the team is likely to finish 2019 with fewer wins than 2018.

Way-Too-Early Projection – Paul Goldschmidt

It’s not 2019 that’s possibly scary for Arizona and Goldschmidt; the short-term is not the question. What is scary, if Arizona did extend Goldy rather than trade him, is what his decline phase looks like. Age hasn’t been brutal to Joey Votto, but it’s taken a lot of star first basemen very quickly — and not just average guys, but legitimate mega-stars like Albert Pujols and Miguel Cabrera.

The projection highlights the quandary Arizona’s in. Goldschmidt has been — with the exception of a brief appearance from J.D. Martinez — the centerpiece of the D-backs offense. Losing him would be really tough. On the other hand, if Arizona’s internal projections are anything like ZiPS, they probably can’t sign him either — unless he’ll agree to a Carlos Santana-type deal rather than an Eric Hosmer one. So the idea of Goldschmidt starting 2019 wearing new threads is not far-fetched.

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One would think that setting a 15-year record for wins would feel more satisfying than it ultimately did for the 2018 edition of the Mariners. Alas, the world is as cruel as the Wheel of Fortune suggests: consonants are free but you have to pay for vowels. The A’s finished ahead of the M’s, giving the former club a place in the Wild Card Game.

The Setup

One of the defining features of the Seattle Mariners during the Jerry Dipoto regime is that the payroll has increased — from among the bottom 10 in 2012-13 to the back of the top 10 in 2018 — even though the club hasn’t been particularly active in free agency or signing young talent to long-term extensions.

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12:00

Dan Szymborski:

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Yogi Berra once said “if you see a fork in the road, take it.” While that may be typically less-than-helpful, the Nationals find themselves at a crossroads, with one of those big, franchise-altering decisions regarding their still-young star slugger, Bryce Harper, before them. 2018 may have muddied more than clarified the situation.

The Setup

To a large degree, the Nationals have had it easier in the regular season than any contender in baseball, with the possible exception of the Cleveland Indians. With the Atlanta Braves and Philadelphia Phillies rebuilding, the Miami Marlins doing their usual cry-pauper schtick, and the New York Mets being the Mets and Metsing up a few seasons, Washington entered every season since 2012 as the divisional favorite.

The 2017-2018 offseason was relatively quiet for Washington, with no follow-up trade like the one that brought Adam Eaton to the team. Nor was there a major free agent signing, though this was largely due to the fact that there were few significant free agents available last offseason and even fewer that fit the team’s needs. (Catcher was a position in obvious need of an upgrade, but there was nary a great free agent catcher to be found, and a trade for JT Realmuto failed to materialize.)

Sure, I liked Lorenzo Cain, but considering the team’s minor league talent, would that have been the most efficient signing? The Nationals did at least dip their toes into the Yu Darvish and Jake Arrieta markets, but given the disaster of a year Darvish had and with Arrieta being merely solid, it’s hard to say there was much in the way of regret there.

For a team that didn’t expect to have to worry about the Braves and Phillies — yet — and faced a luxury tax threshold beckoning and an uncertain future after the short-term, there’s a very good argument that this was the right way to play the offseason. If the team had dough they were absolutely dying to spend, putting it towards a future Harper contract, if the team went that way, made more sense.

While Washington has had above-average payrolls, it’s not a team that historically has dipped that deeply into the free agent market. They spent aggressively to bring in Max Scherzer (as they should have) but otherwise haven’t spent $50 million on a single free agent player since Jayson Werth.

The team was active, but low-key, picking up a number of role players like Matt Adams, Jeremy Hellickson, and Howie Kendrick. These constituted depth pieces for a contender rather than foundational talent.

Much was made about the team moving on from Dusty Baker, but similarly, I felt it was the right move at the time. Dusty’s challenge in 2016 and 2017 was to take a veteran team, keep them from murdering each other, and guide them along on cruise control. That’s Baker’s specialty. But a the team that had reached the possible end of the Bryce Harper era and now faced the challenges of transitioning to a new core, whether by retool or rebuild? That’s not something I was as keen on having Baker handle.

The Projection

ZiPS still saw the Nationals as the class of the NL East, but with an 89-73 record, they were the only projected division winner with a median win guess under 90 wins. The projections didn’t see this as the year that it was more likely than that the Braves or Phillies took a step forward, but it was still a 1-in-3 chance (32.4%) that a non-Marlin team toppled the team.

The Results

While the season started off strong with a sweep of the Cincinnati Reds, an 11-16 April left the Nationals spending a good chunk of the early part of the season in fourth place, behind the Phillies, Braves, and the surging Mets.

Things seemed to have righted themselves in that lusty month of May, but while Washington ending May in first place, with a 33-23 record, it had become clear that the Braves and Phillies had shown real improvement, not simply an early-year mirage.

The team was in first place and largely hadn’t even yet seen the full benefits of phenom Juan Soto in the lineup (43 PA through the end of May). The only player who wasn’t really hitting at that point was Michael A. Taylor, who was already on borrowed time with Adam Eaton’s return expected.

Then the team’s pitching largely collapsed. At the end of May, Washington’s 3.45 FIP was the second-best in baseball, behind only the Houston Astros. Over the rest of the season, it was 4.52, 24th in the majors. While Scherzer was more or less his usual self, the rest of the rotation combined for a 5.35 ERA.

By the time the trade deadline rolled around, there were a lot more arguments for the Nationals being sellers than buyers. While the team was theoretically still on the outskirts of both the Wild Card and NL East races, they were only hovering around .500.

The team wasn’t major seller until after the post-waiver deadline, only then moving players like Daniel Murphy and Gio Gonzalez who were unsigned past the end of the season.

The Dodgers claimed Bryce Harper on revocable waivers, but the Nationals never seriously discussed trade terms with Los Angeles. It was one of those instances in which you heard a lot of behind-the-scenes rumors. I wonder if we’ll ever get a full, true story about what happened. Did the Dodgers not make a serious offer, taking advantage of their disappointing win total at the time, hoping to keep Harper from a rival? After all, it wasn’t a Randy Myers situation where Washington would just say “fine, he’s yours” so there was little risk in a block.

Or were the Nats owners, primarily the Lerner family, simply not interested in trading Harper when push came to shove? I think it far more likely they were a roadblock to a possible trade than team president Mike Rizzo. Remember, Harper was in a different situation than Manny Machado was, where there was actually a good chance that the owners of his current team would re-sign him in free agency.

Washington ended the season in second place in the division, but that was due more to the Phillies deciding to stop winning games ever than to any impressive late-season surge from the Nationals.

What Comes Next?

The Bryce Harper question is of course the one that will dominate this offseason. Spending $300 million (and maybe more) on a player who has just one MVP-type season in his portfolio is a major risk. But Washington may feel they need to retain him just to keep pace with the Braves and Phillies, one of which has a far better farm system and the other of which possesses a deeper bank account.

Harper’s not the only pending financial decision, either. Anthony Rendon is a free agent after 2019 and it wouldn’t take a crazy-good year from Stephen Strasburg to make him think he could beat four years and $100 million after next season or three years and $75 million after 2020.

The good news is that whichever way the team goes, they do have impressive build-around talent in Soto, Victor Robles, and Trea Turner. But given their division, Washington may be in trouble if they resort to half-measures. In fact, if they want to spend $300 million, Manny Machado is likely a better fit on the roster than Harper, with the added bonus that they can stick it to their rival up the B-W Parkway.

Way-too-Early-Projection – Victor Robles

Ha, you thought this was going to be Juan Soto, didn’t you? Just picture a whole bunch of really big numbers. There, you have the Soto projection.

In essence, a Harper-less Nationals outfield would likely be best configured with Soto, Eaton, and Victor Robles. So with Robles the least established as a major leaguer right now, we’ll go with him, certainly no chopped liver as a consensus top-ten prospect coming into 2018.

Not the flashiest projection around, but ZiPS anticipates Robles to be a contributor in the majors very quickly. If Robles is your third-best outfielder, it makes the “pay Bryce Harper $35 million a year” case harder to make for the team.

They’re contenders! Or wait, they’re not. No, they actually are! And… it’s gone. In 2018, the Pirates experienced a season of dramatic highs and lows only to end up with basically a .500 record, as if Odysseus had endured war and other dangers simply to end his journey at an Olive Garden.

The Setup

In a lot of ways, the Pirates are a bit of a cautionary tale for rebuilding teams. You can be smart, careful, forward-thinking, but if too many things go unexpectedly awry or you don’t push ahead at the right moment, your team’s peak can still be rather short-lived.

That’s not to say the Pirates are without accomplishment, having made three straight playoff appearances from 2013 to -15, the team’s first since they were giving a regular paycheck to a prime-age slugger by the name of Barry Lamar Bonds. The team of Frank Coonelly and Neal Huntington largely reversed the effects produced by 15 years of mismanagement from the Dave Littlefield and Cam Bonifay eras. Even when the team struggled in 2016-17, they never descended to the level of hapless joke, as had previously been the case.

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“I love September, especially when we’re in it.”

– Willie Stargell

“Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.”

– Albert Camus

“@*%(#*&%.”

— Phillies fans, 9/18

The Setup

What precisely makes a dynasty is a point of some contention. Many believe that, however strong a run a team produces, if that run ends in something less than multiples titles, then the result can’t possibly be considered dynastic. I’m a little more liberal with the term than most, however, and I think the late-00s and early-10s version of the Phillies can rightly be regarded as a dynasty, simply for the length of time for which they remained one of the best clubs in the league. As for championships, they claimed just the one, but it’s also a lot easier to win the World Series when only two teams qualify for the playoffs, as was the case in baseball for a long time.

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Goodnight, moon. Goodnight, even-year World Series wins. Goodnight, bowl of mush. Goodnight, even-year playoff appearances. Goodnight, Jeff Samardzija’s arm…

In 2018, the Giants beat out the Padres in the NL West. Unfortunately, they didn’t do much else.

The Setup

With three World Series championships over the decade and a fourth playoff appearance, it’s hard to have that much pity for the Giants, who have won more than their share of trophies.

Having aggressively spent after the 2015 season, signing Johnny Cueto and Samardzija in free agency just a week apart, the Giants can’t be blamed for lack of effort. The $251 million invested in the team that offseason was third in baseball. And it paid off, too, with Cueto and Samardzija combining for over 400 innings and 8.1 WAR, in addition to Madison Bumgarner, who had yet to start suffering a freak injury at the start of consecutive seasons.

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