How Did You Feel About the 2016 Season? (Part 2)

Hello everybody, and welcome to Part 2 of this polling project. Here is a link to Monday’s Part 1, which dealt with teams in the American League. This is the National League half, so, if your favorite team or teams play in the NL, I would very much appreciate your subsequent participation! And if you like a team in the AL, but you missed the Monday post, you still have time to put in your vote before I get around to analyzing the results. This week is all about voting. The other votes you’ve made this week might come with greater stakes, but the individual votes here count for more. Be one of hundreds, after being one of millions!

This should all be simple. To effectively re-state from yesterday, I’m looking for a quick summary of your 2016 fan experience. For every NL team, there is a poll, and for every NL team poll, there are five possible answers. How did you feel about the season that was, when you consider as much as you feel like considering? What effect did the end have on the start or the middle? Are you easily excited by rebuilding movements? Did you just really love having season tickets for the first time? Don’t worry, you can’t get this wrong. Consider your feelings validated. Just let me know what those feelings are before you get on with the rest of your day.

All the polls are below. Click a team name to go straight to that part and bypass the others.

Braves
Brewers
Cardinals
Cubs
Diamondbacks
Dodgers
Giants
Marlins
Mets
Nationals
Padres
Phillies
Pirates
Reds
Rockies

=====

Braves

The 2015 Braves were weirdly relevant before they collapsed down the stretch. The 2016 Braves were the opposite — they made it clear they weren’t going anywhere from the very beginning, but they actually played some average baseball later on. What looked like one of the worst offensive teams ever started to hit, and then Dansby Swanson came around to remind everyone that the Braves really are trying to build something here. What was the sensation of watching baseball for baseball’s sake, when you knew from the get-go the playoffs were impossible?

Brewers

As with the Braves, the season went south in a hurry, but, as with the Braves, the season was never expected to go north. It’s been all about the rebuild, and this past summer saw the Brewers move forward with the process. Some young players blossomed into potential regulars, and other long-shots took the form of helpful role players. It’s never fun to rebuild and no fan base wants to lose a Jonathan Lucroy, so your Brewers response has a lot to do with your patience. Not every sports fan is a prospect dork.

Cardinals

The Cardinals missed the playoffs, finishing 86-76. The last time they missed the playoffs was 2010, when they finished 86-76. Before that, the last time they missed the playoffs was 2008, when they finished 86-76. Anyway, the Cardinals were frequently banged up, and as a consequence, they seldom got to take the field at anything resembling full strength. Still, they were in the hunt until the end, and there were some surprising standout performances, like those of Aledmys Diaz and Seung Hwan Oh. Is competitive baseball enough when recent history has raised your standards?

Cubs

The only thing — the only thing — I can imagine that would take anything away from the season is that the Cubs were the frontrunners from the start. They began as the favorites, so they never got that sensation of being an underdog. But, these are the Cubs. They were going to feel enough like an underdog. So. Pretty good year, all things considered.

Diamondbacks

The Diamondbacks had maybe the opposite year of the Cubs. The season was ruined by both organizational decisions and plain old bad luck, and as evidence of the latter, there’s A.J. Pollock basically missing everything after getting hurt in spring training. They already had so little margin of error that it was almost impossible to see the Diamondbacks in the race without their star center fielder. The season sucked. Too many of the players sucked. The life preserver came recently — they’ve rebuilt the front office. So one could at least consider 2016 something of a necessary evil. Perhaps that takes the edge off.

Dodgers

For the fourth time in a row, the Dodgers won the NL West, and they did it this year after once trailing by eight games around the end of June. On paper, coming in, there was no reason for the Dodgers to be seen as an underdog, but then the Giants caught fire and seemingly every Dodgers player got hurt. They rebounded to get healthy enough for the playoffs, and they took down the Nationals in a memorable NLDS. It all came to a screeching halt against the Cubs. Clayton Kershaw killed the playoff narrative, and then it came back to life. It was, in some ways, more of the same, I guess.

Giants

We all know this, but, anyway: best record in baseball before the All-Star break. One of the worst records in baseball after the All-Star break. The Giants’ start got them into the playoffs, and their series against the Cubs was intense, but, of course, it all came crumbling down when the bullpen, once again, couldn’t hold on to a late lead. The even-year magic ultimately lost the spark. This is a test of a fan’s patience with an unreliable bullpen. There’s probably no more infuriating way to lose.

Marlins

The Marlins got to spend a little time in the hunt, and one of the stories of the season was Ichiro’s pursuit of 3,000 hits. Christian Yelich was great, again, and this time he was joined by a resurgent Marcell Ozuna. The Marlins put a competitive product on the field, and they even at times acted aggressively to try to support a winner. But the winning stopped too soon, and then Jose Fernandez died too soon, in one of the most devastating accidents in modern baseball history. There’s no way for me to mention this without feeling horribly insensitive. I still don’t know how I’m supposed to talk about the Marlins. But the brightest point of the season might’ve been an emotional home run hit in tribute to a teammate who passed away at 24. Sometimes the world just sucks.

Mets

The Mets were built around pitching, and then almost all of the pitching got hurt. So it’s a very small miracle the Mets survived to see the postseason, even if they lasted but one single game. They were one of the more fun follows down the stretch, with the no-name rotation replacements getting the job done, and of course there were 30 starts from Noah Syndergaard. Bartolo Colon hit a homer. In more unfortunate twists, the Mets gave a job to Jose Reyes, and then just last week Jeurys Familia was arrested on a domestic-violence charge. Not every fan considers those things the same way.

Nationals

It was a resurgent season in DC. The season before was a disaster, but the environment proved to be different under the leadership of Dusty Baker, and the Nationals won 95 games. They won 95 games even with a relatively mediocre version of Bryce Harper. Anthony Rendon was awesome. Daniel Murphy was awesome. Trea Turner was awesome. For the Nationals, it was a near-total team effort, and in the playoffs they pushed the Dodgers to the brink. But ultimately, again, the Nationals couldn’t get out of the first round. At some point I imagine that becomes disproportionately frustrating.

Padres

This year the Padres leaned into the rebuild. Even though they won six fewer games than they won in 2015, they were supposed to be good in 2015, and 2016 brought no such illusions. The Padres were basically out of it by the last week of April, but fans did find a way to rally around what excitement there was. Wil Myers became something of a fan favorite, and others fell for Travis Jankowski. They shed James Shields. They got an interesting return for Fernando Rodney. They got a strong return for Drew Pomeranz, and they got a good amount of talent for Andrew Cashner. They got rid of some of their commitment to Matt Kemp. Oh, and the GM was revealed to be terribly unethical. The Padres aren’t boring.

Phillies

No rebuild got off to a better 2016 start than the Phillies’ did. In the first quarter of the season or so, you could look at the Phillies and almost see a 2017 contender. They weren’t under .500 for good until the first day of June. It felt like it was going to be an excellent step forward, but from June on, the Phillies had the worst record in the NL. Aaron Nola had an injury scare, and it remains unclear whether Vincent Velasquez can start long-term. Maikel Franco didn’t improve, and opponents did stop walking Odubel Herrera. All the pressure, though, was off. And you know who just had the quietest 4-win season? Cesar Hernandez just had the quietest 4-win season. There was real substance.

Pirates

The year that Searage magic wasn’t so magical. Just as it was unfair before to give Searage all the credit for the Pirates’ success, it’s unfair to blame Searage for all that went wrong. Some pitchers remained effective, anyway, and I don’t know what Searage is supposed to do about Andrew McCutchen dropping 5.1 WAR. This was an in-between season in Pittsburgh, where the Pirates just couldn’t get into a groove. Still, they did manage to welcome some young players who could conceivably help the Pirates return to the playoffs right away. The organization has limited margin of error, but the next wave is arriving.

Reds

Reds pitchers finished with a negative WAR. That had never before happened. Much of the most brutal damage happened early — the second-half Reds were actually respectable. They had the same second-half record as the Astros, and they had the NL’s fifth-best second-half Pythagorean record. Bright spots did, eventually, emerge, and Joey Votto had another one of those out-of-this-world statistical hot streaks. It wasn’t a six-month calamity. Yet every time the Reds played the Cubs, I think it became depressingly clear how far away the Reds really are from being a title contender.

Rockies

These Rockies weren’t good, but they were probably the most good they’ve been since 2010. These Rockies demonstrated that a team in Colorado really can win, maybe, and, at long last, the major-league product got to make use of a wave of talented young pitchers. Throw in a breakthrough rookie season from Trevor Story and you can see how the Rockies could finally be on a real path. At the end of the day, it’s not fun to watch a baseball team that loses more than it wins, but it can help an awful lot if you believe the club is headed in the right direction. I’m going to leave that to the Rockies fans.