After having typically appeared in the hallowed pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have now been released at FanGraphs for more than half a decade. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Boston Red Sox.

Batters

Obviously, the top of the offense is extremely strong, with reigning MVP Mookie Betts and one of the most dangerous hitters today, J.D. Martinez, who can be forgiven for being relatively one-dimensional when that one dimension involves a 170 wRC+ and an OPS over 1.000. But there were some cracks in the back-end in 2018, with Eduardo Núñez a stretch as a full-time second baseman and Mitch Moreland inevitably cooling off after a hot start to finish with the Usual Mitch Moreland Stats. The team brought in Steve Pearce and Ian Kinsler to dampen these issues. Pearce’s tenure was much more successful, but he also remains a role player heading into his late-30s, albeit a very good one. I remain hopeful about Rafael Devers‘ future given that most players his age are still in the minors, but you can’t just wave away the fact that he regressed significantly both at the plate and in the field in 2018. Boston’s three-headed catcher-beast contributed defensively, and did a better job framing than dirty cops in a Brian De Palma movie, but you’d still like their bats to improve to a more normal version of terrible than we saw last season.

The good news is that when your highs are high and your lows are low, it’s easier to make a significant addition than it is if you have a team that’s fairly average from top to bottom. J.T. Realmuto would be just about the perfect fit for the team if the Marlins were motivated to make a reasonable trade. I suspect the Red Sox will be content with Moreland and Pearce at first as they more pressing needs on the roster. And Pearce probably was the best first baseman available in free agency, unless you’ve received some weird news from the future about how 2019 was the The Summer of Duda.

Pitchers

There’s not a lot to complain about in the rotation, so long as everyone is healthy. All five starters are projected to have ERAs better than league-average, and ZiPS, like Steamer, is cautiously optimistic about Nathan Eovaldi’s future, even though 200 innings shouldn’t be the default expectation for a pitcher with his injury history. Some depth would be nice, but Steven Wright is likely a perfectly capable emergency option and the bullpen, as constituted, is probably a below-average group. Even a diminished Craig Kimbrel is a tough reliever to lose. ZiPS thinks a lot of the no-name relievers can be adequate, especially Colten Brewer, a hard cutter/curve hurler picked up from the Padres a few weeks ago.

Bench and Prospects

The problem with the Red Sox farm system is that while it’s far from empty, trades and successful graduations have depleted the upper minors considerably, to the point that if the team is looking for a mid-season reinforcement, they’re more likely to call up a prospect rather than trade them for a more veteran solution. Sam Travis now has a .713 OPS in nearly a thousand Triple-A plate appearances; ZiPS has almost written him completely off as a prospect at this point. And there are no starting pitching prospects that are all that interesting for 2019. That Rusney Castillo has one of the best projections of the players currently at Triple A at .269/.304/.370 is a pretty good example of just how thin the high minors currently are. The big exception here is Michael Chavis, who ZiPS sees developing into an average third baseman with power upside, though not intriguing enough to be a better option than Devers in 2019, or a good enough hitter in the short-term to make Moreland and Pearce uncomfortable.

One pedantic note for 2019: for the WAR graphic, I’m using FanGraphs’ depth chart playing time, not the playing time ZiPS spits out, so there will be occasional differences in WAR totals.

Ballpark graphic courtesy Eephus League. Depth charts constructed by way of those listed here at site.

Disclaimer: ZiPS projections are computer-based projections of performance. Performances have not been allocated to predicted playing time in the majors — many of the players listed above are unlikely to play in the majors at all in 2019. ZiPS is projecting equivalent production — a .240 ZiPS projection may end up being .280 in AAA or .300 in AA, for example. Whether or not a player will play is one of many non-statistical factors one has to take into account when predicting the future.

Players are listed with their most recent teams, unless I have made a mistake. This is very possible, as a lot of minor-league signings go generally unreported in the offseason.

ZiPS’ projections are based on the American League having a 4.29 ERA and the National League having a 4.15 ERA.

Players who are expected to be out due to injury are still projected. More information is always better than less information, and a computer isn’t the tool that should project the injury status of, for example, a pitcher who has had Tommy John surgery.

Both hitters and pitchers are ranked by projected zWAR — which is to say, WAR values as calculated by me, Dan Szymborski, whose surname is spelled with a z. WAR values might differ slightly from those which appear in full release of ZiPS. Finally, I will advise anyone against — and might karate chop anyone guilty of — merely adding up WAR totals on a depth chart to produce projected team WAR.

The Colorado Rockies beat the Chicago Cubs in the Wild Card game and almost toppled the reigning NL champion Dodgers in the West, but fell to the awesome power of Wade Miley and Jhoulys Chacin. Colorado was a solid team in 2018, but remained a bundle of confusing inconsistencies. Unlike many good Rockies teams, they figured out how to field a rotation that was little fazed by Planet Coors, only to have a shallow, unsteady offense prove to be their downfall.

The Setup

Coming off an 87-75 season, the team’s first winning season in seven years and first playoff appearance in eight, and with a few glaring holes, the opportunity existed for the Rockies to make an aggressive push to challenge the NL elites over the 2017-2018 offseason.

Instead, the team spent $106 million on three free agent relievers – Wade Davis, Bryan Shaw, and the returning Jake McGee. The bullpen was actually a strength for the team in 2017, finishing sixth in the majors in WAR among relievers; their 3.94 FIP was quite impressive for a team that played half their games at Coors Field. If you don’t buy into WAR for relievers, that 3.94 FIP was good enough for the team to rank sixth in the majors in FIP- and seventh in ERA-.

Now, it was reasonable to make bullpen additions, especially after 2017 All-Star Greg Holland, who ended up doing a poor job evaluating the market for his services, departed in free agency. It may have been necessary to make an addition even if they had kept Holland, of course, given his 6.38 second-half ERA (I wouldn’t fault the Rockies for Holland’s 2018 in this scenario, Jeff Bridich not being a Time Lord as far as I know).

What was unreasonable was what the Rockies did about the significant holes they had outside of the bullpen.

Namely? Next-to-nothing.

The team’s 90 OPS+ in 2017 was the 10th-worst in modern baseball history among teams that made the playoffs, though it has since been knocked down to 11th by the 2018 Rockies. Their 87-75 record, while a positive given the team’s recent history, felt a bit disappointing considering it took six above-average starters (German Marquel, Kyle Freeland, Tyler Chatwood, Antonio Senzatela, Jon Gray, and Tyler Anderson), a top-tier bullpen, and two legitimate MVP candidates on the offense just to get that point.

There’s a fair argument to be made that OPS+ and similar measures can underrate the Rockies. One longstanding explanation has been the Coors Field hangover theory, which has been demonstrated with mixed results over the last decade, and generally holds that Rockies hitters are hurt somewhat by the difference between Coors Field and the parks closer to sea level. The problem for the Rockies’ offense is that this effect has a limit; there isn’t enough wiggle room to make them anywhere near a 105 OPS+ team or something.

And furthermore, if Rockies hitters face a special disadvantage from playing at Coors that simply makes hitters worse overall in terms of their value, it doesn’t excuse the front office’s role in that underperformance; it means that they have to overengineer things when putting together an offense. It’s an aggravating factor for a crime of apathy, not a mitigating one.

The front office made exactly one move to improve the offense, bringing in Chris Iannetta, who hit .254/.354/.511 for the Diamondbacks in 2017; he’d turn 35 near the start of the 2018 season. And that was it.

Whether due to ignorance or incompetence, the front office ignored the fact that their 1B/LF/RF offensive triad were all at the bottom of the league in 2017. Despite the noise about giving Ryan McMahon and David Dahl real shots in spring training, Ian Desmond and the injured Gerardo Parra were given their jobs back on a silver platter, along with Carlos Gonzalez, who re-signed with the team in the middle of spring training.

The Projection

The ZiPS projections had the Rockies at 82-80 coming into the season, facing significant trouble behind the Dodgers from the Diamondbacks (a good call for 5/6th of the season) and the Giants (oops). ZiPS was very optimistic about the pitching staff, with Jon Gray, German Marquez, Kyle Freeland, Antonio Senzatela, Tyler Anderson, a returning Chad Bettis, and even Jeff Hoffman all projected for an ERA+ of at least 96 for the season. But ZiPS only saw 1.0 combined WAR from the Trio of Sadness at 1B/LF/RF, and another blazing hot 0.7 WAR from Iannetta.

The Results

For a nine-win miss, ZiPS didn’t do too badly with the Rockies, getting the team’s essential contours right but missing on the magnitude of just how good the starting pitchers were. From a projected solid-and-deep mix of no. 2 and 3 starters came two stars in German Marquez and Kyle Freeland, the latter of whom was a legitimate Cy Young ballot contender (depending on your philosophy on FIP vs. ERA and related adjusted measures when it comes to evaluating past contributions).

The Rockies should get a ton of credit for their rotation, piecing together a group that received relatively little trouble from pitching half of their games in Coors Field, a feat that has frequently eluded the team over their existence. They’ve built good bullpens before — the mid 90s Rockies had a terrific group — but starting pitching was always a particular bedevilment.

Surprisingly, the bullpen turned out to be a bit of a disaster over the first half of the season. Davis wasn’t horrific, just mediocre, but Shaw and McGee were nearly unmitigated disasters; the three signed relievers combining to make $31 million in return for 171.1 innings of 5.41 ERA ball, which is…not…good. The second half of the season turned out to be sunnier and the addition of Seung-hwan Oh was one of the better trade pickups in baseball.

The offense was a rerun of the 2017 season. Once again, the team had two MVP candidates (with Charlie Blackmon swapped out for Trevor Story) and little production from the key offensive positions. The aforementioned Trio of Sadness, projected at 1.0 WAR, combined for 1.0 WAR, though with the odd wrinkly that they only got that high because of Carlos Gonzalez’s positive defense by UZR. David Dahl grudgingly got playing time at points when healthy, and Ryan McMahon was mostly relegated to the bench. Raimel Tapia appeared in 25 games but only started two of them, generally being used only as a pinch-hitter or pinch-runner.

Given a chance at a mulligan to address the offensive at the trade deadline, the Rockies made the big addition of…Matt Holliday, who received little interest in the offseason and spent his age-38 season out of professional baseball. Holliday did hit, but gave back almost as much value in defense, finishing at 0.1 WAR in his brief return. It’s notable how easily Holliday was handed playing time compared to the team’s young players, getting 65 plate appearances in his five weeks with little of the resistance McMahon or Tapia faced.

Despite the front office hinderance, the Rockies’ rotation and stars got them to 90 wins, a game shy of toppling the Dodgers in the division, and the playoffs, before an embarrassing NLDS sweep by the Brewers, only scoring two runs in three games.

What Comes Next

What’s frustrating about the Rockies is just how many of the tools they have for a great team, rather than a merely good one that wins 85-90 games for a few years. The player development part of the front office has done a terrific job, with almost the entire rotation coming from within; the lone exception is German Marquez, who was obtained from the Rays in the Corey Dickerson trade. The team’s three MVP-candidate position players the last two years (Blackmon, Arenado, and Story) are also farm system products. In the pen, Scott Oberg was homegrown and while Adam Ottavino wasn’t a Colorado product, the Rockies were the team that turned him into a top reliever after being a mediocre starting pitcher prospect claimed off waivers.

And the team has more talent coming. Brendan Rodgers should seize a job in the infield fairly quickly, and Tapia and McMahon, while not technically qualifying as prospects, really should be given their limited opportunities to shine thus far.

It’s at the major league level, however, the team is just not currently run all that well. But there’s still time; despite the problems, they did make the playoffs in consecutive seasons, and the team still has opportunities to add real difference-makers in offense. Why shouldn’t the Rockies be a player for Bryce Harper? I’d argue there’s no team in baseball that needs him more.

And changing how the team is run wouldn’t require a giant teardown and rebuild. It just requires properly evaluating the team’s offensive weaknesses, realizing that Ian Desmond is a sunk cost who should either be a role player or making the league minimum with another team after his release, and treating the team’s offensive prospects as potential contributors who can add value rather that as inconveniences for mediocre veterans. Keep the team, nix the front office.

ZiPS Projection – Nolan Arenado

One problem on the horizon for Colorado is the impending free agency of Nolan Arenado, the prize of their high-performing prospect pipeline. He’s Troy Tulowitzki without the injuries, a player still on the sunny side of 30 who could very possibly have Hall of Fame career, especially if the BBWAA becomes better at evaluating mid-spectrum players.

ZiPS suggests a five-year, $143 million extension for Arenado if signed today. While he’s likely not the type of player who should be signed to an eight-to-ten-year extension, as he’s not hitting the free agent market at as young an age as Manny Machado or Bryce Harper are, he’s a player the Rockies can’t easily replace, and has deserved his MVP consideration the last two seasons.

After having typically appeared in the hallowed pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have now been released at FanGraphs for more than half a decade. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Atlanta Braves.

Batters
Sure, you can buy an All-Star, but making one of your own is so much more satisfying. After years of rebuilding, in which Freddie Freeman stood mostly alone in the offense, the Braves added Ozzie Albies and Ronald Acuña, both legitimate stars who will be with the Braves well into the 2020s. Josh Donaldson was just about the perfect addition to the team — after all, you can pay almost anything for a one-year contract without singeing your fingers too badly. Sure, there’s risk with the former AL MVP given his age and recent injury history, but he won’t block Austin Riley and the Braves have the perfect Plan B in Johan Camargo, who may very well be a super-sub type for the team in 2019. Absent Atlanta giving a whole lot of money to Bryce Harper to possibly become the NL favorite, I’d personally prefer they just plunk Camargo out in left and not worry about Adam Duvall, whose limited window as a legitimate starter has likely closed. No doubt some will bemoan the loss of Nick Markakis, but the team was right to ride his first half heroics and move on after his .701 OPS second-half.

Pitchers
Let’s get the very minor bad news out of the way: ZiPS doesn’t see any of the Braves’ starting pitchers as likely to match up against a deGrom or a Kershaw or a Scherzer, not even Foltynewicz. But that’s very minor bad news, because even if no individual pitcher has better than a coin flip’s chance of being a star in 2019, the Braves’ enviable young depth can help them compensate for their lack of a true staff ace. The Braves are playing Plinko on The Price is Right, only Drew Carey gave them a hundred of those little disks. ZiPS actually projects the 11th-to-15th best starting pitchers in the organization (Max Fried, Joey Wentz, Wes Parsons, Ian Anderson, and Kyle Muller) to not be that far from league average, which is a filthy, disgusting horde of pitching to have if the projections prove true. In fact, The Braves may find themselves in the odd position of having too much pitching to sort through in Triple-A. A few will end up in the bullpen, of course, but Atlanta can go into the next few trade deadlines and offseasons with enough interesting pieces to make a competitive offer for any player another team is willing to trade.

Bench and Prospects
The offensive prospects aren’t quite as strong, but Riley looks like he’ll be a legit major leaguer in the not-too-distant future and Christian Pache has tremendous upside; the Braves would surely be happy if he matched the on-field contributions of his number one comp. The only real concern I have here is with the dearth of the kind of position player reinforcements that most teams try to stock at Triple-A, but there’s still plenty of time for Atlanta to get those minor-league signings in. Veterans like Lane Adams, Preston Tucker, or Xavier Avery, while unlikely to move the needle too far, are still handy to have around in a “break-glass-in-case-of-emergency” situation. I’d also like to see another arm or two in the bullpen; players like Sam Freeman are hardly bad pitchers, but the Braves are a legitimate contender, and I think they’re only a couple of lucky breaks with the pitching staff away from being in the conversation for the best team in the National League.

One pedantic note for 2019: for the WAR graphic, I’m using FanGraphs’ depth chart playing time, not the playing time ZiPS spits out, so there will be occasional differences in WAR totals.

Ballpark graphic courtesy Eephus League. Depth charts constructed by way of those listed here at site.

Disclaimer: ZiPS projections are computer-based projections of performance. Performances have not been allocated to predicted playing time in the majors — many of the players listed above are unlikely to play in the majors at all in 2019. ZiPS is projecting equivalent production — a .240 ZiPS projection may end up being .280 in AAA or .300 in AA, for example. Whether or not a player will play is one of many non-statistical factors one has to take into account when predicting the future.

Players are listed with their most recent teams, unless I have made a mistake. This is very possible, as a lot of minor-league signings go generally unreported in the offseason.

ZiPS’ projections are based on the American League having a 4.29 ERA and the National League having a 4.15 ERA.

Players who are expected to be out due to injury are still projected. More information is always better than less information, and a computer isn’t the tool that should project the injury status of, for example, a pitcher who has had Tommy John surgery.

Both hitters and pitchers are ranked by projected zWAR — which is to say, WAR values as calculated by me, Dan Szymborski, whose surname is spelled with a z. WAR values might differ slightly from those which appear in full release of ZiPS. Finally, I will advise anyone against — and might karate chop anyone guilty of — merely adding up WAR totals on a depth chart to produce projected team WAR.

After having typically appeared in the hallowed pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have now been released at FanGraphs for more than half a decade. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Cleveland Indians.

Batters
Mind the gap! One wouldn’t think of the Colorado Rockies and Cleveland Indians as having similar front offices or philosophies, but they ended up in a similar place when it came to their offenses, with each boasting a of couple MVP-types who carried a disproportionately large portion of the load. Now, the Indians don’t have a replacement level Ian Desmond in the lineup, and the lesser lights don’t cost quite as much, but it still leaves Cleveland with a fairly unbalanced offense. The outfield is the biggest problem, with Michael Brantley, who did not receive a qualifying offer, still possessing the third-best batter projection on the team. While Cleveland’s still good enough otherwise that they can win the Central without much of a struggle — even if they trade a starting pitcher and go into the season with their existing outfield — it’s not ideal.

Pitchers
ZiPS really, really likes Shane Bieber. It likes him to such a degree that when I saw the nearly four-WAR projection, I fired up his profile page and checked the Steamer projection to make sure I hadn’t accidentally broken something. Like the time I initially projected Jose Molina to have a 1.200 batting average. I talked more about this in Cleveland’s Elegy for ’18 just a few days ago, but it’s understandable why the Indians are willing to talk pitcher trades. The team is still hopeful about Danny Salazar and while I can’t get in their brains, I suspect they feel the difference between Danny Salazar (or the other fallback options) and Corey Kluber or Trevor Bauer is smaller than the difference between nothing and the prospects they could get in return. While I would’ve preferred the team to at least give Brantley a qualifying offer and pinch pennies a few years down the road, one can at least understand their thinking.
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Coming off three consecutive division wins and a World Series appearance that fell short of the championship by a single run, this offseason has started differently, with the Indians talking about trading a piece or two from their core. In a weak division with two teams rebuilding, a third team with some big holes left to fill, and a fourth trying to rebuild without rebuilding, can the Indians still maintain their hold on the AL Central for the time being?

The Setup

In the last quarter-century, the Cleveland Indians have gone through a significant generational change: the franchise is no longer defined by ineptitude. As losers go, it was the Cubs that got the “lovable” label; Cleveland’s forays into last place felt more sad than anything else. The John Hart era changed all this and after more than 40 years without a playoff spot — indeed, without even a finish above fourth place during the divisional era — Cleveland won the Central in six of seven years, starting in 1995. Cleveland has had two other periods of success since, each with different player cores, and the latest one finds the team at the forefront of sabermetric thought.

The end of Cleveland’s 2017 season was a frustrating one. The Indians won 102 games, the most in the American League and behind only the Los Angeles Dodgers overall. It was a team that was built for playoff success, with dangerous arms at the top of the rotation and bullpen. After the aforementioned World Series appearance the previous season, it was a bit humiliating to exit October in a backdoor sweep, losing a 2-0 series lead over the Yankees on seven unearned runs in the final two games and a team offense that only hit .171/.263/.287.

Baseball losses don’t necessarily teach you a lesson — even the 2018 Orioles dealt better teams 47 losses this season past season — and it was a good thing the organization didn’t panic and decide they lost the ALDS to the Yankees due to some fatal construction flaw.

But maintaining a core can be expensive. Cleveland lost seven players in free agency after the 2017 season (Carlos Santana, Bryan Shaw, Jay Bruce, Austin Jackson, Joe Smith, Boone Logan, Craig Breslow) to contracts totaling $150 million, and while only Santana and perhaps Shaw had been key long-term pieces for the team, the departures constituted some real value lost.

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While waiting for the main course of a possible Robinson Canó trade, Mariners GM Jerry Dipoto temporarily sated his trade-based appetites by sending relief pitcher Alex Colomé to the White Sox for catcher Omar Narváez.

For the White Sox, this trade, coupled with the rumors of the team’s real interest in some of this year’s top free agents, may imply something about when they see their competitive window opening.

Narváez was essentially the default option for the White Sox after the suprise 80-game suspension of Welington Castillo, stemming from his positive test for high levels of erythropoietin. A former Rule 5 pick from the Tampa Bay Rays, Narváez had been generally considered a defense-first catcher, well off the top prospect lists. But he could get on-base a bit, sort of like another former White Sox prospect, Mark Johnson, enough to make him mildly interesting and he was promoted quickly given that the catchers of interest in the organization were generally behind him chronologically. Narváez proved better than expected, and hit .275/.366/.429 for the White Sox, good for 2.1 WAR in just 322 plate appearances, which created an interesting dilemma for the team.

In the short-term, the White Sox had already invested in Castillo; in the longer-term, Narváez would have considerable pressure from the farm in the form of Zack Collins and Seby Zavala, neither of whom the team has thrown in the towel on as a catcher. Sure, you can keep Narváez around as a defensive caddy or a fallback if neither prospect ends up at catcher in the majors, but is that the best use of a resource? Narváez’s season makes him interesting for a rebuilding team at an earlier stage in the process, like the Mariners, who can afford to give him the at-bats needed to prove 2018’s improvement wasn’t a fluke.

Chicago’s bullpen is very thin at the moment after Nate Jones and Jace Fry, and with them having enough young talent that they could catch lightning in a bottle and compete in 2019 and 2020 (especially in the latter year), a pickup like Colomé for a catcher you might not be able to use as much as is ideal makes for an interesting swap. Colomé’s not an elite reliever, simply a solid one, and I don’t believe that there were any better prospects forthcoming given that the trade that originally brought him to the Mariners only fetched Tommy Romero and Andrew Moore. Even that trade needed Denard Span to make it happen. And if the White Sox don’t compete in either of the next two seasons, it’s an organization that has shown little reluctance to re-gift a relief pitcher.

The Mariners are clearly entering a rebuilding phase, so they have time to take a long look at Narváez. One thing I ride rebuilding teams for is when they don’t utilize roster spots to learn something useful about players, and there are things to learn when it comes to Narváez. In addition to assessing whether his 2018 122 wRC+ represents skill at the plate that’s here to stay, there are concerns about his defense; by Baseball Prospectus’ catcher defense metrics, he was worth -10.8 framing runs in 2018, after a 2017 that was almost as poor. Figuring out what Seattle has while they have time, before the wins matter as much again, is useful. David Freitas isn’t going to be the catcher when the Mariners are good again, and neither will some stopgap veteran signed to fill out the lineup for a year. If Narváez is good, the Mariners get three additional seasons of him after this one; if Jonathan Lucroy or Nick Hundley or Matt Wieters are good, they just get better paid in next year’s one-year contracts. Either way, it’s going to be a few years before finding playing time for Cal Raleigh, drafted in 2018, theoretically becomes a need.

The Red Sox may have won the World Series, but in many ways, it was the Oakland Athletics that were baseball’s hot summer jam. Winning 97 games, the most since the heady Moneyball days of yore, Oakland returned to the penthouse from the outhouse. And quite literally, given that the 2018 version featured stories of a possible privately financed new ballpark rather than tales of raw sewage befouling the clubhouse. No, their…stuff…doesn’t yet work in the playoffs, but getting there is half the battle.

The Setup

The A’s were largely a victim of their own success, with their stathead shenanigans and a movie in which their GM was played by an A-list actor helping to usher in a new era in baseball, one in which every team in baseball has embraced modernity to at least some extent.

Much of the praise Oakland received 15 years ago had to do with a front office that was largely playing in a world in which many of their opponents didn’t know all the rules. Once the people you’re playing Monopoly with realize that they too can build houses and hotels on properties, things get a lot harder.

Baseball got a lot smarter and the A’s saw their edge harder to maintain. It’s one thing to be smart while the other guy is rich, but what happens when the rich teams are also smart?

Times have been lean in Oakland since the frustrating finish to the 2014 season, when the team lost ten games to the Angels over a two-week period in late summer, falling from a first-place battle to nearly missing the playoffs entirely.

The A’s have generally been content to just survive on a yearly basis, holding their head safely above baseball’s true pits of despair, but never keeping together enough of a core to win consistently. The front office is far from incompetent and has continued to cleverly acquire under-appreciated talent like Blake Treinen and Khris Davis, even if it’s frequently more expensive to do so than it used to be.

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Some may say it was choking. Some may say it’s a new curse. Some may even say it was due to only scoring two runs in 22 innings of two must-win games against the Brewers and Rockies. However it happened, the Cubs were the first team dispatched of the ten playoff teams, baseball’s answer to the point-of-view character in the first chapter of a George RR Martin book.

The Setup

This may be a bit of obscure trivia, but the Chicago Cubs won the World Series in 2016, a matchup against the Cleveland Indians that determined which team could waste enough cheap beer to fill a very disappointing swimming pool.

Following up on a World Series championship is always a bit of a tricky problem to approach for a team. Since new seasons start every year–a very fortunate fact for those of us employed as baseball writers–there’s no final happy ending in which everyone walks off into the sunset. Even championship teams have difficult decisions to make, often centered around how much you’re willing to tinker with a winning roster while also keeping the team’s core more-or-less together.

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