The Rangers are coming off of a 87 win campaign in which they finished 10 games back of the Angels. This year CHONE has them winning between 85-86 wins depending on the method, the FANS have them at 84, and PECOTA has them at 83. Those win levels are good for 1st in the West, but the margin is never more than 5 games, and mostly 0-2 games.

The infield returns all four starters from 2009 and project to be above average on the whole. Michael Young, whose offense rebounded in 2009 to post his highest wOBA (0.385) and WAR (3.8) since 2005, returns to man third base. He is projected to see a decline from that level and likely post something in the high 2s or low 3s. Chris Davis brings his feeble contact rates back to play first base again, and is the one of the few position players that projects to be below average at 1.5 WAR. Ian Kinsler projects to be the star of the group at 4 WAR as he projects to combine average defense with above-average offense. The most interesting, at least personally, member of the infield is Elvis Andrus. Yesterday Dave mentioned that he was one of the largest discrepancies between FAN projections (4.1 WAR) and CHONE (1.6 WAR). I could see that window of potential performances being very realistic, which would put his mean somewhere in the upper 2s.

The outfield of Josh Hamilton in left, Julio Borbon in center and Nelson Cruz in right all project to be in the neighborhood of 3 WAR. All three project to be average to above average with the glove and similarly above average with the bat. At DH they will see if they can squeeze some more life out of Vladimir Guerrero, with David Murphy providing a decent fallback option if Vlad’s knees spontaneously combust. The catching duo of Jarrod Saltalamacchia and Taylor Teagarden don’t project to be world beaters (1.5 WAR each), but that will get you by at that position.

The starting pitching is a lot like the position players in that none of them project to be stars, but they all project to be pretty solid. The closest to a star quality projection would be Rich Harden who projects to have a FIP in the mid-to-upper 3s. The question with Harden is the same as it always is, health. The de facto “Ace” is Scott Feldman and his cutter. The projection systems weren’t overwhelmed by Feldman’s 18 wins and project him to have a FIP in the 4.50 range. Colby Lewis, back from Japan, is a hard player for the forecasters to handle given his lack of MLB experience combined with a dominant year in Japan, but a FIP in the low 4s seems pretty reasonable. The back of the rotation looks like converted reliever C.J. Wilson and Matt Harrison at least for a little while (check out Matt’s piece on C.J.). The wildcard here is Neftali Feliz who is projected to put up a FIP in the mid 3s as a starter, but may spend some time in the pen.

The bullpen looks to be a strength again with closer Frank Francisco, lefty Darren Oliver, and the aforementioned Feliz all having projected FIPs in the mid 3s.

Add all of this up and you have a very solid team with few weaknesses that appears to have solid depth, so it’s no wonder that a lot of the projection systems have them at the top of their division.

For years, the Twins were an organization that succeeded in spite of their financial resources. They turned to player development to give them a chance to compete with larger payroll teams, and got so good at it that they ended up winning the division in five of the last eight years. Even as their best players got too expensive to retain, the Twins had a strong enough pipeline of talent to keep themselves competitive.

Now, with a new stadium ready to pump money into the organization, we get to see what the Twins can do with a real payroll. They added nearly $30 million in salary for 2010, bumping their expenditures on the current team from $65 million to $95 million, and this doesn’t even include the $184 million extension that they handed to Joe Mauer. The Twins are now a player development machine with money, and that’s a scary proposition for the rest of the AL Central.

The Twins are already the class of this division, even just looking at 2010. They’ve developed enough quality to surround Mauer with homegrown talent, then made some nifty off-season pickups, bringing in Orlando Hudson, J.J. Hardy, and Jim Thome. While their rotation may lack a big name ace, it’s strong at all five spots. Joe Nathan’s injury is a blow, but relievers are one of the easiest things in baseball to find, and the Twins have some good arms in the bullpen already. In my estimation, the Twins are bigger favorites to win their division this year than any other team in baseball.

There’s no reason to expect a collapse any time soon, either. Essentially the entire core is under 30 years old, and with Mauer locked up for essentially the rest of his career, the team won’t be suffering any major talent losses going forward. They aren’t one of baseball’s farm teams anymore – the Twins can finally keep the players they want to retain, and given the strength of their player development system, they will have a significant amount of young talent to keep around.

The Twins already proved that they can win on a shoestring budget. Based on early returns, they’re not going to frivolously throw away the new found access to cash, and so now Minnesota is a real force to be reckoned with. The rest of the AL Central is playing catch-up, and the Twins have a significant head start.

The presumption is going to be that I put the Mariners at #6 because I’m a biased homer – I am well aware of that. I could spend a few paragraphs explaining how I didn’t compile this by myself and generally attempt to defend myself against the claims of bias, but I’d rather just put those words to use explaining the logic behind the ranking, and then you can think what you will.

Each organization is being graded on different aspects that affect how well the team will play going forward. Since this will undoubtedly be the most controversial ranking of the series, I’ll break down each segment.

Present Talent

The 2010 Mariners are not a great team. It’s pretty easy to look at the roster and find problems – they lack offense, the back end of the rotation is a question mark, the closer has had one good major league season, etc… The upgrades on the roster pushed them into 83-85 win territory in terms of true talent level. Put them in the American League East, and they’d likely be fighting the Orioles for fourth place. In the AL West, however, there are no Yankees or Red Sox, as all four teams are pretty evenly matched. So, while the team is flawed, they also have a pretty decent chance of making the playoffs. There simply aren’t that many teams in baseball that are going into the 2010 season with a roughly one in four chance of playing in October.

This team isn’t just designed to steal a division title and get waxed in the ALDS, either. The team is banking on several high variance players, and they won’t succeed without good years from the likes of Milton Bradley and Erik Bedard. That is certainly a risky proposition, but there’s no denying the upside that comes in a scenario where both stay healthy and perform near their talent levels. Their mean projections are dragged heavily down by the risk (as they should be), but the distribution of expected outcomes is not clumped around the middle – they will likely either boom or bust, and take the team with them whichever way they go. This team is not very likely to win 83 to 85 games. Instead, they’ll probably win 75 or 90. If it doesn’t work, they’ll be sellers at the deadline and go young in the second half. If it does work, though, the other three AL playoff clubs would be staring at having to defeat a team that throws Felix Hernandez, Cliff Lee, and Bedard in a playoff series. No one is going to sign up for that assignment.

The combination of a winnable division and a high variance roster gives the Mariners a legitimate chance at winning the World Series this year, even with a roster that has plenty of warts. They’re not the favorites, certainly, but if you ran the 2010 season 1,000 times, the Mariners would end up champions in a non-trivial amount of them. They’d also finish last a bunch of times, which is part of the risk they’ve had to accept. But we cannot ignore the fact that among the 30 MLB clubs, Seattle is more likely to win the title in 2010 than most of their competitors.

Future Talent

The Mariners farm system isn’t among baseball’s best. They have a couple of premium prospects in Dustin Ackley and Michael Saunders, but they don’t match up with the systems that boast a lot of high ceiling guys. However, there is a reason this section is entitled young talent and not farm system.

Felix is 23. Franklin Gutierrez is 27. Jose Lopez is 26. Adam Moore is 25. Ryan Rowland-Smith is 27. Every single member of the bullpen is under 30. Simply looking at a ranking of their prospects misses the youth already on the team. They’re not overflowing with young talent like Texas or Tampa Bay, but there’s a young core to build around in place, and the guys on the farm who are legitimate prospects are generally close to the majors.

This isn’t a team that has a short window to contend. They’re likely to be even better in 2011 and beyond than they will be in 2010 – the problem for them is that is true of most of the rest of the division as well.

Management

This is where I expect the disagreement lies, as I don’t think anything written above veers much from the common perception about the team. In terms of front office capability, financial commitment from ownership, revenues from the ballpark, and the other minor components of this section, the Mariners graded out very highly. Not just with me, but among everyone I talked to, including the other authors here on the site.

I understand that there’s a large contingency of people who believe that we should not presume intelligence until success has been displayed on the field, and that we should infer that an organization is well run once the fruits of their labor of have been reaped, and those are the people who are going to hate this ranking. I simply have a philosophical disagreement with you on how we should evaluate our expectations for the future. Just as we can separate Jason Heyward from a normal outfield prospect despite the fact that he has accomplished nothing at the big league level, I believe we can also evaluate an organization’s ability to put a winning team on the field before they do so.

The term “process” has become a cliche in referring to front offices, but quite simply, there are few better examples of an organization that is blending traditional scouting with new ways of thinking than the Mariners. The GM is one of the most respected scouts in the game, and his right hand man is an accountant who went out and hired Tom Tango as one of his first orders of business. Teams that have blended both ways of thinking into their decision-making process have been tremendously successful, and this is the path the Mariners have set themselves upon.

The Seattle front office knows how to evaluate talent, and they know how to value talent. Organizations that do both things well, and are given a payroll of $100 million to boot, win a lot of baseball games.

I knew putting the Mariners at #6 would generate a significant amount of backlash and claims of bias. But, in my estimation, when you actually look at their chances of winning in 2010, the group of young talent they can build around going forward, the quality of the decision making in the front office, and their financial resources, this is where they belong. After years of being a joke, the Mariners have made one of the most impressive turnarounds in recent history.

The Mariners spent an all time high on player payroll in 2008 and spent it so atrociously that they won only 61 games with it and got a brand new front office. As it turns out, it was probably worth it as they now employ one of the better-run offices in baseball and are heading back into contention far faster than anyone possibly could have imagined. Still, the new regime has to bear some crosses from the past one in terms of reduced financial flexibility. After that peak in 2008, the 2009 Mariners dropped about $20 million in payroll and this year’s team is down a little over another $10 million.

The Mariners went from 61 wins to 85 last year. Will the loss of an additional payroll project to hurt the Mariners this season? According to our notable projection systems, it looks like it will have some impact though perhaps not a great one. FanGraphs readers and CAIRO both have the Mariners at 83 wins for 2010 while CHONE is more pessimistic at just 78 wins.

Run prevention is going to be the name of the game for Seattle this season. Fronted in the rotation by Felix Hernandez and Cliff Lee and possibly joined later on by Erik Bedard, the Mariners can boast some seriously good arms. The bullpen is no slouch either with power arms galore and breakout candidate Brandon League, discussed previously on FanGraphs with regards to his added splitter.

Kenji Johjima departs from the catching platoon, replaced by Adam Moore, which should make pretty much no difference. Casey Kotchman at first base will get a chance to get his career back on track and at the least will provide more solid defending than the Mariners have seen there in a long time.

Newly signed Chone Figgins is making the switch back to second base where he’ll be an asset and Jack Wilson mans shortstop from now until he–no, wait, he just got hurt again. Jose Lopez moves from second to third where the Mariners say that his body type plays better but more likely meant his trade value as they await Dustin Ackley.

Franklin Gutierrez and Ichiro Suzuki need no more fanfare, except they do, but I will not take time here to add on. Left field is a sticky situation, along with DH, with several mediocre candidates vying for time in between Milton Bradley suspensions.

The Mariners, as built on paper, are going to contend in what looks to be a slightly watered down AL West division. Given the savvy front office and talent in house, do not be surprised if the Mariners hang around contention for the foreseeable future.

When we talk about player development machines, the Braves and Twins are usually the first two organizations everyone mentions. However, the Rockies have one of the most home grown teams in recent history, and their core of players developed from within look to be ready to put their stamp on the National League.

On days when Seth Smith starts over Carlos Gonzalez, every single position player on the team will be playing for the only organization they’ve ever known. And of course, Gonzalez was acquired for Matt Holliday, who the Rockies developed internally. Dan O’Dowd and his staff should be incredibly proud of the work they’ve done in building this team from the ground up.

Of course, you don’t win a title for having the most players come up through your farm system, but the Rockies are certainly contenders for the big trophy handed out in November. They are a well balanced club that is capable of winning in a lot of ways. They have good hitters, good fielders, and a really good starting rotation. The bullpen is a question, but it’s also the easiest thing to fix. On paper, the Rockies are right there with the Dodgers as co-favorites for the NL West title, and they could make all kinds of noise in October if they earn a playoff berth.

However, for all the things the Rockies have done well, I still question whether they’ll make the right moves to capitalize on their window. Their management does far more good than bad, but some of the bad things are just head scratching. Why is Brad Hawpe still on this team? Why won’t they let Chris Iannetta play more often? Why does Huston Street, frequent visitor of the disabled list, get a three year deal? Why spend $3 million on Jason Giambi and Melvin Mora, but ignore opportunities to bolster the bullpen in a market where relief pitching was cheap?

The Rockies have a real opportunity to throw a parade with the core they have in place. To cash in and win it all, however, they’ll need to maximize their return on investment, and that hasn’t been a strength of the front office. With a few minor tweaks, this could be the best team in the NL – I’m just not sure why those tweaks weren’t made this winter.

The Colorado Rockies club is one of the most self-sufficient organizations in baseball. With the exception of Carlos Gonzalez in left field, the club projects to feature a starting lineup of players that were all originally signed by the organization. There is also a lot of young talent to be found, including Troy Tulowitzki (25) at shortstop, Ian Stewart (24) at third, Chris Iannetta (26) behind the dish, Dexter Fowler in center field (24) and the aforementioned Gonzalez (24). On the pitching staff, the club boasts the likes of Ubaldo Jimenez (26), Franklin Morales (24), and Manny Corpas (27). All three pitchers are members of the Rockies’ international scouting efforts.

That is an impressive collection of talent… but wait – there’s more to come. Pitchers Christian Friedrich, Jhoulys Chacin, Esmil Rogers, Casey Weathers, and Sam Deduno are not far away from helping the big league club. If you like offense, Eric Young Jr., Hector Gomez, and Mike McKenry could all be in the Majors within the next year or two.

The club also had an outstanding ’09 amateur draft, which netted No. 1 pick Tyler Matzek (arguably the best prep arm), college pitcher Rex Brothers, outfielder Tim Wheeler, and third baseman Nolan Arenado. The only negative to the organization’s collection of talent is that it lacks a true can’t-miss, impact bat. The club’s drafting efforts have improved with each of the past three drafts. As mentioned, the club has also had a lot of success with mining the international market despite not shelling out for the perceived top talent.

The organization obviously believes in stability amongst it’s front office. General manager Dan O’Dowd has held his position since late 1999 and the club’s scouting efforts have been overseen by Bill Schmidt since 2000. Marc Gustafson continues to direct the club’s minor league system as senior director of player development. He’s been overseeing the Rockies’ prospects since 2001.

After almost a decade, the organization is still having a lot of success with developing its own talent and there is no reason to expect anything to change in the near future.

Any team making its home at Coors Field is going to look superficially like it is all hitting and no pitching. Once the run environment is taken into account, a more nuanced picture of the Colorado Rockies becomes available. It would be a bit of a stretch to say that the Rockies project as a defense-and-pitching team. More accurately, this is a balanced team with two under-appreciated stars, some young players with upside, a number of above-average performers, and useful role players. Taken as a group, the Rockies are one of the most talented teams in the National League.

The Rockies don’t have any one player that projects as an offensive monster once Coors is taken into account. What they do have is a number of players who are good at the plate and in the field. Among the position players, the undoubted star is 25-year-old shortstop Troy Tulowitzki. 2008 can’t be ignored, but Tulowitzki still projects as very good hitter, and while his defensive ratings have been up and down, he’s average at worst. Todd Helton is still a useful piece who hits well and is good defensively at first base. Third baseman Ian Stewart is enigmatic, but projects as at least average and is only 25. Clint Barmes is truly awful offensively, but he’s also outstanding enough defensively to be a stopgap second baseman. Chris Iannetta is a good, offensively oriented catcher.

The Rockies also have some talent in the outfield, although it remains to be seen if they’ll be deployed optimally. The best combination of three is probably Carlos Gonzalez in center, with Seth Smith and Ryan Spilborghs on the corners. While Gonzalez (just 24) hasn’t had a huge impact yet, he profiles as a very good outfield defender with a developing bat who is at least above average now and potential to be much more. The underutilized Smith is a good hitter who is at least average in the field. Spilborghs is older and inferior to Smith, but he’s got enough of a bat and glove to be about average over a full season. Sadly, the Rockies may still go with Gonzalez in left; Dexter Fowler, a fast guy who is a poor hitter and hasn’t impressed in the field, either, in center; and… wait for it… the legendary Brad Hawpe in right. Much virtual ink has been spilled over Hawpe’s dreadful fielding. Suffice it to say that while Hawpe has a good bat, if Adam Dunn (a superior hitter) can’t come close to being a league average player while putting up -30 seasons in the field, Hawpe can’t either. Some sort of arrangement putting Gonzalez in center, Smith in left, and platooning Hawpe and Spilborghs (with judicious use of Fowler) would likely give the Rockies at least one more win in a tight divisional race. Surely it has crossed someone’s mind.

The Rockies have made impressive strides in finding the right pitchers for their home park. Their rotation is both a skilled and deep. Ubaldo Jimenez‘s excellence should be more widely acknowledged; at the moment he’s on the same level with more celebrated pitchers like Clayton Kershaw and Chad Billingsley. Aaron Cook continues to defy the odds with few strikeouts but tons of grounders. Jorge de la Rosa, obtained after the Royals lost patience with him, has managed to get it together and become an above-average starter. Jason Hammel is also close to average, and once Jeff Francis’s return from injury is figured in, the depth of the rotation is impressive indeed. Huston Street, Rafael Betancourt, and Manny Corpas are key parts of a good bullpen.

It would be inaccurate to say that the Rockies have no stars — Tulowitzki and Jimenez certainly qualify. But the Rockies aren’t totally dependent on their production, as they have many other skilled players around the diamond and on the mound, as well as a useful bench. Colorado will probably be in a tight NL West race with the Dodgers during which pretending like Fowler and Hawpe are everyday players isn’t a great idea. Even so, the Rockies are probably the best team in the division at the moment, and Los Angeles is the only serious competitor in 2010.

Once a powerhouse in developing young talent – especially pitchers – the organization slipped a bit in the player development game in the early-to-mid-2000s. You can now argue that the organization is back on track, and focusing on quality, rather than quantity – and that it’s diversified its portfolio.

Tommy Hanson, currently in the Braves starting rotation, is just 23 and entering his sophomore season in the big leaguers. The right-hander burst onto the scene in ’09 by posting a 3.50 FIP and allowing just 105 hits in 127.2 innings of work. The club will also feature an early Rookie of the Year favorite in right-fielder Jason Heyward. The prospect put on an epic display this spring and his size, tools, and statistics suggest he could become a massive star in a hurry. I’m tempted to invoke the name of Albert Pujols… but I won’t.

The club has some other young players helping out at the MLB level, too, including second baseman Martin Prado, catcher Brian McCann, shortstop Yunel Escobar, outfielder Melky Cabrera and pitcher Jair Jurrjens. It’s a good, young core to build around. The organization’s Top 10 prospect list also includes promising names like first baseman Freddie Freeman, catcher Christian Bethancourt, and pitchers Julio Teheran, Arodys Vizcaino, and Craig Kimbrel.

The club’s mid-2000s stumble was partially due to poor drafting choices with the likes of Macay McBride, Jeff Francoeur, Luis Atilano, Eric Campbell, Joey Devine, and Cody Johnson. Top international prospects like Wilson Betemit and Andy Marte also failed to develop. Pitcher Adam Wainwright was in Cy Young consideration last year, but he did not blossom until entering the St. Louis Cardinals organization.

While employing a win-now attitude, the club has sacrificed a lot of young talent over the past few seasons, including pitcher Neftali Feliz, shortstop Elvis Andrus, as well as catchers Jarrod Saltalamacchia, and Tyler Flowers.

There was a small shift in draft philosophy in 2009 as the club took two college players with its only two selections in the first three rounds, including first rounder Mike Minor. Those were the first four-year college selections that the club had made in the first three rounds of the amateur draft in three years – unless you count reliever Joshua Fields in ’07, whom the club failed to sign.

After 10 years, scouting director Roy Clark has been replaced by Tony DeMacio. It will be interesting to see what direction the club takes with the 2010 amateur draft. The organization punted its first-round selection for veteran reliever Billy Wagner, but it has a supplemental first round pick and an extra second rounder for the loss of Mike Gonzalez. Whoever ends up getting selected will be overseen by Kurt Kemp, who enters his third season as director of player development.

It’s actually kind of scary to think about what this club would be capable of in three to five years if it had a lineup including Flowers, McCann, Freeman, Escobar, Andrus, and Heyward, as well as a staff led by Hanson and Feliz. Even without that day dreaming, the organization still has a pretty promising future, especially if it can re-focus its efforts in the amateur market.

The Atlanta Braves are back: they’re a pretty good team that has enough talent to make the playoffs, but not to go very far. They led the majors in starters’ ERA last year, they have a top-5 farm system and some of the best frontline talent in the majors. They’ve missed the playoffs for four straight years, averaging just 80 wins a season, but this could be the year they finally make it back. (CHONE and the Fangraphs Fans think the Braves will win the division in 2010.) The trouble is, they’re in the same division as the back-to-back NL champs, and they have some of the same weaknesses they’ve always had.

The team has some exceptional young stars: C Brian McCann, SS Yunel Escobar, P Jair Jurrjens, and P Tommy Hanson are all under team control through at least 2013, not to mention rookie super-prospect Jason Heyward. But they’ve been surrounded by below-replacement-level talent in recent years, the sort of aging veterans that 68-year old manager Bobby Cox can’t lay off but GM Frank Wren really ought to know better, like Garret Anderson, Corky Miller, and Chris Woodward. Cox is retiring after 2010, and probably will move into the front office brain trust, as John Schuerholz did after he retired. Wren will finally get to hire his personal manager, but he won’t necessarily have a much freer hand in personnel decisions: Cox and Schuerholz will continue vetting every move.

Wren’s showed some ability to fill the team’s holes through trades, but he still often leaves dead weight on the roster. Throughout his tenure, the team has strangely been strongest up the middle and weakest at the corners, as it likely will remain in 2010, unless the team gets exceptionally lucky with injury risks Troy Glaus and Chipper Jones, and Kaline-like production out of Heyward. As a result, they’re significantly underpowered. No regular in 2009 slugged .500, and there’s a good chance no one will in 2010 either. The team’s power shortage is one of its biggest offensive weaknesses: this team has long had trouble in one-run games, hitting more poorly in later innings and stranding runners on base. The power outage meant that despite being 11th in OBP in 2009, the Braves were 17th in runs: they could get them on, but couldn’t get them in.

Beyond Heyward, OF Jordan Schafer and 1B Freddie Freeman are the only impact position prospects in the high minors; once Heyward graduates, the Braves’ farm strength will be almost entirely in pitching. And as it was at their height, the Braves will be led by a terrific young pitching staff and a more-or-less average offense. (In 2009, the Braves had the 17th-highest OPS in baseball and the lowest starters’ ERA in baseball, exactly as they had in 2000.) That’s a formula that works for them, though it’s also a formula that led to five NLDS losses in six years.

The Phillies are the team to beat, but their payroll is ballooning, and they’ll have much less money to work with if they happen to miss the playoffs. Because of their farm system and young team-controlled stars, the Braves are the team best positioned to pick up the slack. They’re one of the best teams in the National League. But these days that’s almost a backhanded compliment. There’s a reason that the first six teams on the Organizational Rankings are all in the Junior Circuit.

Let me get this out of the way and save you the troube: “You ranked the two time defending NL champions ninth, behind teams that haven’t won anything in years – you are a biased moron!”

First, thanks for reading. Second – if it’s not obvious by now, a team’s record in the past means nothing in this series. This is not a backwards-looking reward for best recent performance, in either the regular season or the playoffs. This series is not designed to identify teams who have dominated baseball over the last few years. If it were, the Phillies (and Angels) would rank significantly higher.

That the Phillies rank just ninth here is not any kind of knock on what they have accomplished the last two years. It is simply a reflection of the questions that surround their ability to play at that level going forward. And there are legitimate questions surrounding this team.

Here are the core players on this team are under 27: Cole Hamels. That’s it. Last year’s Phillies team was the second oldest in baseball, barely behind the Astros, and after a series of trades that ripped apart the farm system, they have one impact prospect left (Domonic Brown). This team is straight up old.

They’re good, certainly. They should be the favorites to win the NL East, though the Braves are catching up very quickly. But as the Yankees learned the hard way, the combination of having a lot of high salaried older players without much of a farm system to support them is not the best way to build a team. And that’s exactly the situation the Phillies face going forward.

It can work. There’s enough star power on the roster that they’re a championship team if everyone stays healthy and plays as expected. But they’ve opened themselves up to problems if injuries arise or players age earlier than they’re hoping. They’ve tied themselves to Raul Ibanez for the next two years, but may not be able to afford to keep Jayson Werth beyond 2010.

The rotation after the big three is not good, and they can’t afford to have any of Halladay, Hamels, or Blanton hit the disabled list for a long period of time. Utley and Rollins are backed up by Juan Castro. Ryan Howard’s replacement, should he get injured, is Ross Gload or Greg Dobbs.

There is a significant lack of depth here, and combined with the age of the players they’re relying on, the Phillies have taken on quite a bit of risk. Risk isn’t inherently bad, but given the amount of vulnerability here, they need to win this year to make it worthwhile, or they could end up looking more like the current Mets team than they would want.