Come Rate Your Favorite Baseball Team
Below, please rate your favorite baseball team. Is that so hard?
In last Friday’s Effectively Wild podcast, we evaluated the Orioles against every other team. Of course, we did it subjectively, and we did it on the fly, but most of the time it wasn’t hard for us to make up our minds. The question we tried to answer 29 times: Would this given team trade everything for the Orioles’ everything?
I liked the exercise, but we only did it for Baltimore. That, in turn, left me wishing we had some information about the entire landscape. And so, per usual, this is where I’m bringing you into the fold. You all can provide that information about the entire landscape. Because our audience comprises fans of everyone out there, and you’re a knowledgeable bunch. So I’m very excited to see how you respond.
Beneath the fold, there are 30 polls, one for every organization. You probably have a favorite one. You might have a favorite two or three. For your favorite team(s), I’d like for you to select a rating, based on as many factors as you can imagine. This isn’t just about the short-term; this isn’t just about 2017. Think of it as a rating of your team’s overall outlook, weighted according to your own priorities. Consider the players on the roster today. Consider their contract statuses. Consider the strength of the farm system. Consider the financial resources available, and consider the people responsible for how all that money gets assigned. In a sense, it’s a different way of asking how many games you think a team will win over the coming five or 10 years. Is your organization looking awesome across the board? Is it miserable across the board? Do you love the future more than the present? Is the team competitive but approaching a cliff? How do you feel about that, personally?
With every one of these polling projects, I know that nothing is perfect. At the end of the day, you’re a fan, and you can know only so much. But it’s not like there’s way superior information available, and this is the easiest way to get it all in one place. In short: Please rate the health of your favorite baseball organization. Think about the players, young and old, and think about the people in charge of them. In a day or two, I’ll be able to analyze how everyone answered. And that’s going to be a whole lot of fun! Thank you in advance for your participation and enthusiasm. Onward.
To proceed directly to a specific team poll, click on the team’s name below.
Angels, Astros, Athletics, Blue Jays, Braves, Brewers, Cardinals, Cubs, Diamondbacks, Dodgers, Giants, Indians, Mariners, Marlins, Mets, Nationals, Orioles, Padres, Phillies, Pirates, Rangers, Rays, Red Sox, Reds, Rockies, Royals, Tigers, Twins, White Sox, Yankees
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Angels
Astros
Athletics
Blue Jays
Braves
Brewers
Cardinals
Cubs
Diamondbacks
Dodgers
Giants
Indians
Mariners
Marlins
Mets
Nationals
Orioles
Padres
Phillies
Pirates
Rangers
Rays
Red Sox
Reds
Rockies
Royals
Tigers
Twins
White Sox
Yankees
Jeff made Lookout Landing a thing, but he does not still write there about the Mariners. He does write here, sometimes about the Mariners, but usually not.
Mets fans who rated them a (2)…..what?? I thought I was maybe a little harsh with my (3)
That was probably a Yankee fan.
Yankees fans don’t generally dislike the Mets more than any other team. The NY rivalry is pretty one-sided. I root for the Mets when they are playing everyone except the Yankees for example. I don’t think I am entirely atypical.
I am a Yankees fan, and I agree. I view them as our National League little brother. That could change if the Mets win the WS soon, especially if they were to beat the Yankees in it. The Mets have generally not been a huge threat (until recently) and being threatening is a necessary component of rivalry.
If everything goes right, the Diamondbacks can win about 80 games. Yay optimism!
Wow, the trolls are out quickly. 10% of Cubs fans rated the team a 0! (while only 2% combined picked 1, 2, or 3).
I love when the troll data is so easy for me to throw out!
I’d like to believe that some Cubs fans are already bitter about the bandwagoners and anonymously wish they have never won because at least then the team was theirs, damnit!
haha
up vote for you sir!
After all those years of frustration and suffering? My guess is no: they care not one whit if some people jump on the bandwagon or not.
On the other hand, I have to concede in any group of fans there are masochists, so maybe you have a point.
Conversely, there are still many of us who still can’t believe it happened. Just today the Cubs subreddit had another “daily reminder that we actually won” post that was the top post of the day
That might be enough to give them a 4.
Phillies fan: gave a 2. Love em no matter what, and it’s their right,, but i’m not in favor of 1000PA from Saunders and Kendrick…even if the 2017 is better for it. I don’t see either as bringing value back in a mid-season trade, and I worry that they deprive young OF’s the needed opportunity
At first I thought you meant 1000 PA from Joe Saunders and Kyle Kendrick, which would indeed be bad.
I thought he meant Kyle Kendrick as well.
Jeff, would you consider including the raw vote counts for each option? I’m curious whether people have a cognitive bias towards some of the options, and whether some of the percentages are therefore more reliable than others.
lots of everything blows for the cubs, johnforthegiants has been busy…
Feedback on rebuilding clubs is interesting…you can look at White Sox as half-empty, because the team is going to suck in 2017, or half-full, because they finally picked a lane and are aggressively building for future….
Man, a lot of those White Sox fans are not seeing the big picture. They were never going to contend with that squad, and the return they’ve gotten on Eaton and Sale has their future almost as bright as the Yankees’.
As a White Sox fan, I actually found it difficult to decide between 2 and 3 because of the descriptors. Things legitimately aren’t in great shape; it’s still an open question which of the acquisitions will work out, so 2 seems reasonable.
I wouldn’t say that, all in all, the team is more good than bad. The situation is definitely better than it has been in the recent past with questionable patch jobs to the roster each offseason, but things are probably still more bad than they are good.
You argued your perspective well, and I found it worthwhile to read. But it’s very difficult for a top 3 farm system to fall below three regardless of their ML team’s situation in my book (This is all arbitrary, so obviously these are just differing opinions). Your future’s brighter than the present is dark, is what I’m trying to say.
I agree with you, and to be clear, I actually did vote 3. If I even had a point in my rambling, it was that I don’t think it’s a huge stretch to look at the higher degree of uncertainty in their situation (not to mention the continuing involvement of front office staff who have prolonged the suffering) and come away more skeptical.
I voted 3 because at least they seem to finally realize that the old plan of hoping for career years from a few random guys to support Sale and Quintana was not going to work.
I could not fault a two because the whole organization is still thin in position players (hopefully to be corrected in the next few weeks or months) and I am not completely convinced that they know how to develop talent and not just rush it to the big league club before it is ready.
Jeff, I was hoping this survey was going to be like what you guys did on EW. That is, Q1: Pick your team, and then a series of questions on would you trade your teams situation with all the other teams. You’d get some pretty amazing data from that.
Cubs fan, went with 4. I know it’s crazy because we won the championship for the first time in a couple of years. But a year ago the window seemed indefinite. There has been a heavy shift to short-term assets over the last year. Now it’s clear that the window is probably the next 4-5 years. The farm is deep but it’s almost entirely role players and depth pieces. So yes, things are great. But all good things must end.
A cubs fan unhappy that the team won’t be literally this good for-literally-ever is proof if I ever saw it that humans will always converge to a baseline level of happiness in every circumstance.
Shit, look no further than the Royals results. Two pennants and a world championship in the past 3 years earn a 2 out of 5. Brutal.
Royals fans have the right to be sad right now.
From Jeff’s description, the poll is forward looking (“not just 2017”, “for the next 5-10 years”). No doubt Royals fans are elated with the last few years, but I think I’d trade the Royals “everything” for about 25 other teams “everything” going forward.
Yeah, that makes sense, but I also feel like what happened in the past can influence future decisions. If I was a Royals fan, I think I would be okay with keeping this 2017 team mostly together for one more year. However, if they failed to make it to any world series with this core, I would be demanding they trade everyone and start building again. In other words, the outlook isn’t any better because the team won pennants, but my feeling about it would be.
There are Red Sox fans out there advocating for us to get another starter because our 8th guy isn’t perfect.
A few years ago (2012), one team (Padres) used seventeen starters. Fifteen started at least five games. There were two shoulder surgeries, a forearm surgery, and four Tommy Johns. As Abe Lincoln said in 1864, “You can never have enough pitching.”
As a fellow Cubs fan, I think 4 is a perfectly defensible score though I chose 5!. I think the major league talent is so strong for 2017-2020 that it outweighs the farm system. And if the Cubs are a 4, perhaps on the Dodgers and Red Sox are a 5, and that’s a pretty pessimistic view.
I think I get why some would say 4 but I’m a pretty solid 5 on the Dodgers right now.
O the joy of not attributing the lack of a world series title to institutional incompetence, individual unworthiness, or metaphysical phenomenon.
You should be an honorary Cub fan
I guess I was kind of hard on my team (the Orioles) when I rated them as a two. In retrospect, there are two ways at looking at it:
1) While the farm system is a mess and the long term outlook is bleak, there’s always the chance that they will fall out of the WC hunt and get a ton of prospects for players like Machado, Britton and maybe even Tillman and Jones. And enough of those prospects pan out in the long run.
2) The Orioles stay in the hunt for a WC berth before fading away during the last 4-6 weeks. Then they’ll have missed an opportunity to use their most valuable trade chips and the farm system remains in tatters. To that you can add: Showalter may decide not to manage much longer. Then it becomes a crapshoot if the organization finds a competent replacement or not. Given the history of managerial hires before Showalter, I see no reason to be optimistic on that score.
It seems that rebuilding teams have the most optimistic fans, even more so than perennial playoff fans….relative to win total.
It’s easy for fans to dream on the potential of the farm system.
I wonder how you can rate the Rays and Athletics organizations over the next 5-10 years?
Sure, things look bad—especially for the A’s when revenue sharing dries up next year. But what if they move to greener pastures, which seems like a distinct possibility?
What happens to both franchises when revenues go up?
Small nitpick – the results would have been easier to compare team to team if the bars had not been resorted by frequency counts. Easier to see “lot of blue on top” vs “lot of blue on the bottom” than to read the numbers on the bars for every team. Just my .02
I put the red Sox at a 3, only because your question specifically looks at the next 5-10 years and I think the team has a good chance of collapsing after 5 years. If the time line was less than 5 I would be an all out 5 though.
Red’s with a 1, Padres with a 0 — only 1 and 0 in baseball. Sorry guys. That’s gotta be rough.
Think the Rangers season has a bunch of question marks that if are answered positively will translate to a successful year in Arlington. However, this is hardly ever the case in baseball and see them finishing second or third behind the Astros.
I wavered between 1-2 for the Angels, but obviously it has Trout and Billy Eppler might be its 2nd best asset, so I went with the latter.
During his brief tenure upon taking over a barren, financially-handcuffed Angels squad, he’s added upgrades in Simmons, Maybin, Valbuena, Espinosa, Nolasco, and Maldonado, while taking fliers on interesting players like Jefry Marte and Alex Meyer, without sacrificing a draft pick or committing to large long-term salaries.
So here’s hoping Billy can continue to work his magic and build something in the next year or two, before the elephant in the room rears its head.
Any Yankee fan rating them below a 4 is fucking spoiled and doesn’t even realize it. Best financial situation in baseball and a top-tier farm system. Big whoop that they’re only projected to win 82 games this year. There are other things in this world besides this year. There’s three teams you would trade their situation for, tops.