Please note, this posting contains four positions.

Position: Senior Baseball Analyst

Department: Baseball Operations
Reports To: Senior Director, Analytics
Status: Exempt

Primary Objective: Responsible for supporting the Baseball Operations department through baseball related data science, including statistical modeling, research, visualizations and other assigned projects. Read the rest of this entry »

Kendall Graveman surprised me with something he said during the ALCS. Talking with the 30-year-old, then-Houston Astros reliever, I learned that it was only recently that he truly learned a breaking ball. As the now-free agent put it, “I didn’t throw one forever, really. I didn’t know how to spin it.”

He spun a lot of good ones during the 2021 season. Throwing more breakers than at any point in his career, Graveman had 61 strikeouts and allowed just 35 hits in 53 relief appearances comprising 56 innings. Toeing the rubber for both the Seattle Mariners and the Astros — he switched teams shortly before the July trade deadline — he logged a 1.77 ERA and a 3.19 FIP. Opponents slashed just .130/.193/.196 against the right-hander’s slider.

Graveman signed a free agent deal with the Mariners in November 2019, six-plus after entering pro ball as Toronto’s eighth-round pick out of Mississippi State University. Why did it take him so long to master the intricacies of such an important facet of his craft?

“Some pitching coaches have a very good understanding of how to teach something, and I ran into some people over in Seattle who taught me how to throw a breaking ball,” said Graveman. “Since when I was young, I would cup out of the hand and that would get me on the outside and not creating good spin. That’s as opposed to throwing it like a fastball. We started taking it out like a fastball and letting the wrist be loose, and started seeing positive signs with the spin.”

I asked the Alexander City, Alabama native if he could elaborate on the adjustment. Read the rest of this entry »

After a one-year hiatus due to the oddity and non-celebratory feeling of a season truncated by a raging pandemic, we’re bringing back the Elegy series in a streamlined format for a 2021 wrap-up. Think of this as a quick winter preview for each team, discussing the questions that faced each team ahead of the year, how they were answered, and what’s next. Do you like or hate the new format? Let me know in the comments below. We’ve already tackled the AL and NL Central, as well as the AL East and the NL West. Today, we’re looking at the AL West.

Houston Astros (95–67)

The Big Question
Could the Astros bounce back from a surprisingly disappointing season and do so while almost playing the heel as fans returned to the park? Despite being awash in offensive talent, this was easier said than done due to the possible lack of pitching depth; any team would have had a difficult time replacing the starters that have left since the team’s 2015 breakout. Even ignoring the smaller losses like Dallas Keuchel or Brad Peacock, making good on the departures of Gerrit Cole and Charlie Morton, as well as the de facto one by Justin Verlander, was an extremely tall order. Further complicating efforts was that Forrest Whitley, Houston’s top pitching prospect, required Tommy John surgery in March.

How It Went
As with the Nationals, Dusty Baker continued to be the perfect manager at the right time for the Astros. Sometimes you want a Michelangelo to paint the Sistine Chapel, but sometimes it’s 10 degrees outside and you have a burst pipe in your house, and you need a highly-skilled craftsman rather than a transcendent artist. And honestly, Dusty showed a bit of the Florentine in 2021, managing a young pitching rotation of raw talent quite well and adjusting when Lance McCullers Jr. was injured in the playoffs. Coupled with Zack Greinke showing signs of decline and suffering a late-season neck injury, it was a technical challenge for him to balance the roster, and he did pretty well. He didn’t earn his first managerial World Series ring (he has one as a player with the 1982 Dodgers), but I think you can make a case that this season was his finest hour.

The sign-stealing controversy, meanwhile, didn’t magically go away, but it didn’t seem to faze the Astros at all. They played just fine on the road in the regular season and playoffs, showing little sign that the derision of the crowds had any effect. On the contrary, the offense roared back to pre-2020 levels, Jose Altuve demonstrated he was far from done, and Carlos Correa had his healthiest season in a long time. With the lineup rocking the house, the pitching staff just had to avoid being terrible to make the Astros one of the AL West favorites. They did far better than that. One raw arm, Framber Valdez, officially shed the “raw” descriptor by building on 2020’s improvements. Another, Luis Garcia, is one of the favorites to win the AL Rookie of the Year award (he would have been mine). Cristian Javier isn’t polished yet, but he performed well in various roles, and when he could locate his slider, it was scary.

What’s Next?
There’s still a lot of work to do. Correa is much harder to replace in-house than George Springer was. Greinke may be in his decline phase, but he also gave the Astros 171 good innings in 2021, something that is hard to replace. That’s doubly so if it turns out that McCullers’ injury does end up costing him time in 2022. The team does have some payroll room to work with — a little more if Aledmys Díaz or Rafael Montero are non-tendered — and the highly encouraging 2021 cameo from Jeremy Peña after returning from injury helps the shortstop situation. As solid a success as 2021 was in the pitching department, the team would be well-served to aggressively go get more this winter.

Player Projection Spotlight: Kyle Tucker

A ZiPS favorite for a long time — it had him pegged as a league-average outfielder as early as 2018 — Tucker built on his 2020 season, hitting .294/.359/.557 and finishing with just under 5 WAR. His solid plate discipline improved in the best way, as he became even more aggressive at swinging at pitches in the strike zone without suffering contact issues or reduced power. Only two players in the top 10 for zone swing percentage were also better-than-average at avoiding swings at out-of-zone pitches: Tucker and Freddie Freeman. Derek Fisher didn’t become a thing in Houston, but Tucker and Yordan Alvarez are building blocks for this franchise.

Seattle Mariners (90–72)

The Big Question
Did the Mariners have enough pieces they could put together to challenge the top of the division? Seattle’s roster looked a bit like one of those baskets from Chopped: a lot of intrigue, but it wasn’t obvious how the whole thing would work together without ending up as a nice frosty bowl of cod liver ice cream for dessert. The right side of the infield looked particularly problematic, with Evan White and Shed Long Jr. having miserable 2020s, but these were two players who required playing time, not 33-year-old journeymen you could simply replace without risking losing future contributions.

How It Went
It went pretty well, actually. A big assist came from the run differential, but considering this looked like a team that should have been happy to finish with a .500 record, Seattle has to be pleased with the final standings. Not ecstatic, as the M’s were eliminated from the playoff picture after losing two of three to the Angels in the final weekend, but the year ought to be considered a success. But neither White nor Long answered questions about them positively, and 2020 Rookie of the Year Kyle Lewis was done after May due to a knee injury.

Luckily for them, the Mariners received enough pleasant surprises elsewhere to make up for it. Mitch Haniger hit just as well as he did before his long string of injuries, and Chris Flexen’s solid season will likely have even more teams looking to Korea for rotation help.

What’s Next?
The Mariners won 90 games rather than the 76 implied by their run differential, and while mean statheads aren’t taking those off the scoreboard, there’s literally almost no correlation in baseball history for teams outperforming run differential one season and then doing it the following year. The magic didn’t carry over in 2019 or ’10, and it’s unlikely it’ll do so in ’22.

Another troubling thing is that Seattle’s success in 2022 was derived mainly from older players. In addition to the young players mentioned above, Jarred Kelenic struggled in his debut, Taylor Trammell lost his starting job in a month, and Justus Sheffield struggled with injuries and command. Logan Gilbert was solid, but he was an exception. Paradoxically, though, that gives Seattle some additional upside here. Most of those players are young enough to turn things around, so the Mariners could easily draw their flush with some breakouts that help compensate for a more normal Pythagorean record. Helping matters is that it looks like president of baseball ops Jerry Dipoto appears to have the ability to add payroll this winter.

Player Projection Spotlight: Jarred Kelenic

I’m not going to tell you that you shouldn’t have some worries about Kelenic, but they ought to be milder than his performance in the majors suggests. Where you should really panic are those cases when a player fails to hit in the majors and then goes back and continues to struggle against minor league pitching. That wasn’t the case for him; he hit pretty well for Tacoma, and when you combine his major league line and minor league translation, ZiPS sees his 2021 as a .215/.293/.403 line. That’s not good, mind you, but it’s less of a disaster, and similar to his translation from 2019 of .226/.281/.411.

It’s troubling if Kelenic’s not better at 21 than at 19, but he’s still very young, and the loss of the 2020 season prevented him from going through trials by fire as he moved up the ladder, each rung featuring pitchers more able to adjust to hitters than the one before. I still think Seattle made a mistake not getting him playing time that year.

Oakland Athletics (86–76)

The Big Question
Could the A’s continue to find enough free or cheap talent to remain relevant given the thinning out of their farm system? After ranking in the middle of the pack prospect-wise entering the 2019 season, they steadily dropped in the rankings over the next two seasons. By 2021, they had sunk to 28th, ahead of just the Rockies and Nationals. And that wasn’t solely due to graduations to Oakland’s roster, which were basically just Jesús Luzardo and Sean Murphy. Coming off a year in which there was no minor league season, which made it trickier to string the fishing pole with waiver wire than usual, some good news on this front would be a pretty big deal.

How It Went
The results here were mixed. Luzardo, rather than developing into the ace the team hoped for, struggled with his command far more than in 2020, and by the end of the season, the Lizard King was a Marlin, traded for Starling Marte. But Sean Manaea was healthy and effective, as was James Kaprielian. The cobbling together of the roster mostly worked yet again, from Cole Irvin being picked up very cheaply and being a solid innings-eater to a lineup that hardly disappointed, except for Matt Chapman (at least offensively). Less successful was the bullpen, which combined for just 1.5 WAR, better than only a single Oakland relief corps over the last two decades. As such, the A’s were that rare team that actually saw their use of relievers drop relative to recent seasons while the four-inning and five-inning specials became more common league-wide.

What’s Next?
It’s likely that another round of cost-cutting is about to wallop Oakland. The A’s already let Bob Melvin, manager for the last 11 seasons, go to the Padres without any compensation just months after extending his deal for another year. That saved them $4 million, and unless they change their philosophy, there’s likely to be more soon. Manaea and Chris Bassitt, keys to the rotation this year, are both entering their final year of salary arbitration, and Chapman, Matt Olson, and Frankie Montas are all free agents after 2023. These are a lot of losses to replace simply by being clever with underappreciated Triple-A talent; the Rays do this, but their farm system churning out pitcher after pitcher has been key to them punching above their weight in the AL East.

Without replacing anyone they’re losing this year or have already lost, the A’s already have to make significant cuts to the payroll to get them back down to last year’s payroll. No sense in not playing pauper now, I guess, before they’ve squeezed a fancy new stadium out of the city to replace WhateverIt’sCalledThisYear Coliseum.

Player Projection Spotlight: Matt Chapman

A .210/.314/.403 line is decidedly unimpressive, but the good thing about Chapman is that his glove is so good that to be a drag, his offense has to be scraping the bottom of the barrel. The A’s may have to be satisfied with a rebound that features a low batting average, as his drop-off in play isn’t fueled by a freakishly low BABIP. His contact numbers really have gotten worse, as he’s become far more vulnerable to breaking pitches than he used to be. The dropoff across the board in exit velocity is a concern, but ZiPS still sees Chapman as young enough that this isn’t fatal — yet.

Los Angeles Angels (77–85)

The Big Question
Could the Angels build some semblance of an adequate team around Mike Trout? That’s been the question for the last decade, but one they need to answer affirmatively given how valuable their franchise player has been. That they haven’t done so successfully — they last made the playoffs in 2014 and last had a winning record in ’15 — is an organizational disaster; all they’ve gotten from the peak of the best player they’ve ever had is an ALDS sweep and a parade of bland 75–80 win seasons.

How It Went
Like the reboot of a movie franchise, the old superstar was injured, but a new superstar rose from his ashes in Shohei Ohtani. Now, he’s been a contributor before, but this was the first season we got to see that glittering promise of what happens if a player is a full-time star pitcher and a full-time star hitter simultaneously. Babe Ruth did both, but consecutively rather than at the same time, and Wes Ferrell only received scattered playing time when he wasn’t pitching. And yet the Angels once again generally stunk around their big star.

What’s Next?
The challenge remains the same. Now, the Angels can hope to have both Ohtani and Trout on the roster for the entire 2022 season, but even both of them might not be enough given the roster around them. Adding another six wins to the 2021 squad doesn’t get the Angels to the playoffs, and you can’t expect that kind of magical season to be Ohtani’s baseline, so a few of those wins, at least, are coming back off the tally. Meanwhile, Trout turned 30 in August and is no longer as durable as he once was.

If the Angels — or more accurately, ownership — have any sense, they will be among the most prominent players for free-agent talent this winter. The Albert Pujols contract is no longer available as an excuse, and Justin Upton’s $28 million disappears from the books in another year. After Trout and Anthony Rendon (also someone who is hopefully healthier for 2022), there are no gigantic long-term commitments once Upton is gone, aside from the obvious need to extend Ohtani, unsigned past 2023. Los Angeles has some good secondary talent on the offense, but there are a lot of needs on the pitching side of the equation. Steamer only sees two average starting pitchers and a thin bullpen, and while ZiPS isn’t official yet, it’s not any more optimistic (and arguably is even less so). It’s an exciting challenge for GM Perry Minasian, but only if he’s given free rein by owner Arte Moreno.

Player Projection Spotlight: David Fletcher

Fletcher has never been a star, but he’s a lot of fun as a throwback to an older style of hitter — no power, high contact — that is seen far less often in the modern game. After all, who wants to lose a fantastic term like “punch and judy” to the aether? He remained as good at connecting with the ball as he usually was, but he perhaps took it too a little too far in 2021. In the past, he had been very selective at the plate, but he started swinging at a lot more pitches of all types this year. Unfortunately, the decline in his discriminating taste largely led to worse outcomes when he actually hit the ball. Nobody would confuse Fletcher’s power with Javier Báez’s, but his average exit velocity of 82.3 mph was below that of the average pitcher at the plate (83.2).

In the end, Fletcher lost 44 points of isolated power from 2020 and saw his walk rate cut nearly in half, and that was not compensated with comparable increases in batting average. I’m actually more optimistic than ZiPS is here, as I see his 2021 issues stemming not from a lack of ability but from leveraging that ability in a way that utilizes it to the fullest. You can fix an approach better than you can fix a lack of talent.

Texas Rangers (60–102)

The Big Question
Unfortunately, the biggest question for the Rangers — just how long a full-scale rebuild would have to be — was one that could not possibly have been answered in 2021. Their attempted quick retool to coincide with the opening of the new stadium failed miserably, resulting in the need to start from scratch. And with the cupboard nearly empty of major league talent and a farm system that was still only middle of the pack, Texas’ goal in 2021 was simply to remain moderately interesting for the fans as the front office addressed some serious long-term problems.

How It Went
Texas assembled a reasonably competent bullpen, but one made up of journeymen and veterans rather than the farm paying out dividends. Neither Jordan Lyles nor Mike Foltynewicz showed enough life to fetch a return in a trade this summer, but Texas was able to turn Kyle Gibson into Spencer Howard once the Phillies grew desperate for pitching. Adolis García filled the fun side of the equation by hitting 31 homers and driving in 90 runs, but he’s already older than Joey Gallo, rather one-dimensional, and more likely to fill Renato Núñez’s role with the Orioles a few years ago rather than be someone who is one the roster three or four years from now. Nathaniel Lowe showed life at times, but not so much that he’s obviously the long-term answer at first base. Willie Calhoun still hasn’t shown he can actually hit in the majors, and Nick Solak remained as inconsistent as he was in 2020.

What’s Next?
The biggest concern about the Rangers — and the same one that has hindered Baltimore’s rebuild — is how few answers they got about their young hitting. No position players on the major league roster took the type of step forward to make you say, “OK, now that is a franchise guy.” Outside of Josh Jung, Yohel Pozo, and Justin Foscue, there are scant few hitters in the system I feel better about now than I did in March. That doesn’t mean the rebuild is a failure, but it means that the Rangers still are very, very early in that sorting-out process; little so far has stuck to the wall. At this point, Texas needs to hoard young talent like it was premium toilet paper in March 2020 and hope for the best.

Player Projection Spotlight: Dane Dunning

It wasn’t quite the season for Dunning that Texas hoped for after his triumphant return from Tommy John surgery for the White Sox in 2020. He missed time due to injury, but at least it was an ankle problem this time around rather than a scarier elbow or shoulder issue. ZiPS sees him as a good bit better than his 2021 ERA and doesn’t think that he “earned” his poor .338 BABIP based on his play-by-play data.

The next step is to stay healthy for 150 innings or so, which would be good news for a franchise that has suffered from a woeful lack of it lately. I think the key for Dunning to take the next step is better consistency from his changeup; his sinker is impressive, but it’s more the vertical type rather than one with the notable fade of Morton’s or Blake Treinen’s, and it could be a consistent tool against lefties. Please, no sinker versus two-seamer wars in the comments!

Job Title: Professional Scout

Department: Player Personnel
Reports To: Director, Player Personnel
Status: Exempt
Dates: Must be available to start by January 1, 2022.

Primary Objective: Responsible for providing support and assistance to the Director of Player Personnel in all facets of player evaluation. Read the rest of this entry »

Like the majority of the people reading this, I spent my weekend doing little other than watching baseball. The possibilities for real chaos were endless, and while none of the various bingo balls fell our way for a meaningful game on Monday, the season still ended with plenty of drama and interesting tidbits.

Clayton Kershaw Walks Off The Mound

In the midst of the exciting games with all sorts of playoff implications, it was a jarring moment when Kershaw came out of Friday night’s start against Milwaukee with what is being described as forearm discomfort. Based on both his and Dave Roberts’ post-game comments, whatever is going on with one of the best left arms in the history of the game is not good, and his 2021 season is likely over. As far as his Dodgers career, that’s still to be determined; his contract expires after the final out of the World Series.

The No. 7 pick in the 2006 draft out of a high school in the northern suburbs of Dallas, Kershaw came onto my radar that summer, when a veteran scout told me that he was the best pitcher at the complex level he’d ever seen over decades of experience. My first in-person look came the following spring during his full-season debut with Low-A Great Lakes. He reached Double-A that year as a teenager, and even though he walked nearly five batters per nine innings, much of that was the fault of minor league umpires who had no idea how to call a pure 12-to-6 curveball with more downward action than they had likely ever seen.

The first time I watched Kershaw for professional purposes came in March 2014 in a spring training game against the Padres. He was horrible, allowing nine base runners in his three innings of work; it was early, and he hadn’t ramped up. I still remember my report: “Fringy command of fringy weapons. Likely Cy Young candidate.” He’d go on to win his third in four years that season.

Read the rest of this entry »

This is the sixth installment of this year’s Team Entropy series, my recurring look not only at the races for the remaining playoff spots but the potential for end-of-season chaos in the form of down-to-the-wire suspense and even tiebreakers. Ideally, we want more ties than the men’s department at Macy’s. If you’re new to this, please read the introduction here.

As noted in the boilerplate introduction above, it is the primary goal of the Team Entropy project to root for extra baseball beyond the 162-game regular season. While the complicated scenarios involving more than a single isolated head-to-head tiebreaker game may be farfetched, appreciating the sense of possibility for greater things as events unfold is part of the package. This is as much about the journey as it is the destination, which so often remains abstract. There have been just three winner-take-all tiebreaker games played since I began this project in 2011.

The secondary goal of the Team Entropy project, and part of appreciating that sense of possibility, is to have at least some portion of the playoff picture at stake on the final day of the season. On that note, we have already achieved some level of success, as we enter the final day of the 2021 season with four teams still battling for the two AL Wild Card berths — one of which is attempting to make its first postseason in 20 years — and with the NL West title still in doubt as teams with 106 and 105 wins attempt to avoid a do-or-die Wild Card game. Read the rest of this entry »

Quick Sunday update. The Yankees lost on Saturday, furthering the potential for chaos, and the four-way tie is an increased possibility, at 6.5%. The chances of bonus baseball overall now stand at 57.6%. Good news for us and good news for the Rays, who will play one of these four teams later this week. It’s not something that’s captured in projections, but it’s interesting that if the Rays go full B-team, it reduces the chances of a tie, and as a result, a slight reprieve for the team they eventually play. Jameson Taillon is back in as the starter and Joan Adon looks to be Washington’s starter, which is to Boston’s benefit according to the projections.

The NL West remains unresolved, but simple: if the Dodgers win and the Giants lose, they play a tiebreak game. ZiPS has a 19.8% chance of a tiebreaker game, with the overall division as San Franciso 90.0%, Los Angeles 10.0%. Freddy Peralta is being held back for the playoffs with Brett Anderson going today. It makes sense too; it’s in Milwaukee’s interest to leave one of these teams more susceptible to getting knocked out of the playoffs by the Cardinals later this week.

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Below you’ll find today’s ZiPS stretch run update. For details on just what’s going on here, please refer to my original article describing all these mathnanigans.

American League Wild Card

The Yankees and their bats were largely quiet against the Rays on Friday, but they still basically control their own destiny as the team in the first Wild Card spot, albeit the one with by far the toughest opposition. The Blue Jays fended off a late-inning Baltimore rally and held on to the win, but the Red Sox winning was just as damaging to Toronto’s playoff hopes as the Jays’ win was helpful. Toronto’s still one-in-five to make the postseason, but needs some help now; since the Blue Jays are already assumed to be strongly favored to beat the Orioles, they get an even larger boost from a Nationals win. Read the rest of this entry »

The Mariners are entering the final weekend of the regular season with their best shot since 2016 at breaking their infamous postseason drought, having gone 18–8 in September and won 11 of their last 13 games after losing a crucial series to the Red Sox mid-month. Earlier this morning, Jay Jaffe took a look at the bigger picture for the Mariners, their negative run differential, and the historic positive turn of their playoff odds. But this climb up the standings wouldn’t have been possible if it weren’t for some unheralded performances by a number of players on their roster.

From a season-long perspective, the Mariners’ offense has been lackluster, with a wRC+ of 94, ranking tenth in the American League. That went up to 103 in September, but the driving force behind the improved offense has been excellent performance in tight situations. Seattle has the most clutch offense in recorded MLB history (WPA records only go back to 1974), which goes a long way toward explaining the team’s 33–18 record in one-run games this year.

Clutch hitting can take a team far, but it’s not something that can be counted on every night. Luckily, the core of the Mariners’ lineup started hitting extremely well during the final month:

After shuffling through a number of early-season contributors, the lineup stabilized after the All-Star break — something that coincided with Kelenic’s second call-up from Triple-A after his rough debut in May. The hits didn’t start falling immediately after his return to the majors; from July 16 through the end of August, he posted a .181/.263/.315 line (a 65 wRC+) with a 30.5% strikeout rate. But something clicked once the calendar turned over to September, with Kelenic hitting .242/.321/.537, good for a 135 wRC+. His strikeout rate dropped to 25.5%, he launched seven home runs, and more than half of his hits went for extra bases.

Read the rest of this entry »

Below you’ll find today’s ZiPS stretch run update. For details on just what’s going on here, please refer to my original article describing all these mathnanigans.

American League Wild Card

The Yankees have now reached the point where a win nearly clinches a playoff spot, though it doesn’t make one a mathematical certainty. With one more win, the Mariners and the Red Sox would both have to sweep their weekend series and the Yankees would have to lose out in the tiebreaker in order for New York to miss the playoffs. Similar to our probables grid, I’ve tentatively put in a short outing for Luis Severino on Sunday. The Yankees have been mum about their starter plans for that game, and as the team most likely to cement the top Wild Card spot before Sunday, they could also go total slop time so that they have as much strength as possible before next Tuesday’s play-in. Read the rest of this entry »

This is the fifth installment of this year’s Team Entropy series, my recurring look not only at the races for the remaining playoff spots but the potential for end-of-season chaos in the form of down-to-the-wire suspense and even tiebreakers. Ideally, we want more ties than the men’s department at Macy’s. If you’re new to this, please read the introduction here.

The Mariners haven’t reached the postseason since 2001, and all season long, our Playoff Odds have strongly suggested that their drought — the majors’ longest active one — will continue. But as we head into the final weekend of the 2021 season, they’re on a 10-1 tear that has interjected them right into the thick of an American League Wild Card race with a decided East Coast bias. With the Yankees sweeping the Red Sox in Boston and then taking two out of three from the Blue Jays in Toronto while the Red Sox somehow dropped two out of three to the Orioles in Baltimore, we now have four teams separated by three games from top to bottom, with just three to play for each:

This is not a drill! I’ll get to the mechanics of how this will be sorted out soon enough, but first, I’m taking the opportunity to spotlight the Mariners’ unlikely run and the trends they’re up against. This isn’t a dive into individual performances; elsewhere on FanGraphs today, Jake Mailhot has a closer look at what’s fueled their September run. Here I’m looking at the bigger picture. But first, an illustration of the Mariners’ Playoff Odds over the course of the season:

It’s been awhile since the Mariners were anywhere close to this position. While they went 89-73 just three years ago before slipping below .500 in both 2019 (68-94) and ’20 (27-33), that ’18 squad fell eight games short in the AL Wild Card race and finished 14 games behind the Astros in the AL West race. They did finish three games back in the AL Wild Card race in 2016, going 86-76 while both the Orioles and Blue Jays went 89-73, but they were a distant nine games behind the Rangers in the AL West. Not since 2003, when they went 93-69 in Lou Piniella’s final year at the helm, have they come as close by both routes to the postseason; that year, they finished three games behind the A’s in the division race and two behind the Red Sox in the AL Wild Card. And not since that 2001 team set a modern record with 116 wins have they qualified for the playoffs. Read the rest of this entry »