Power Rankings
The Middle of the Pack

Before getting back to the power rankings, I would like to briefly address a couple of Twins rumors popping up in several newspapers and blogs. Supposedly, the Twins are interested in Alfonso Soriano to be a big bat in the OF/DH spot down the stretch. The logic behind the rumor consists of Soriano’s toolsy makeup matching up with Terry Ryan’s toolsy fantasies, and nothing more. Like last July, I do not believe that the Twins are ready to sell the farm to get Soriano, but will keep Jim Bowden on the line as a last resort. Bowden hamstrung himself by building an expensive team of older players with little chance of contending who all hit free agency this off-season. Now, he has to start making trades, and may have to settle for less than value for the big ticket items if teams sour on his asking price at the last minute. Seattle and Detroit are said to have balked at giving up their top prospects for Soriano, and Minnesota will probably not break the trend. Perhaps that means they will be inclined to give up a couple of mid-range pitching prospects, like Adam Harben, J.D. Durbin, and Boof, from their copious array of hurlers as a fallback in case Bowden cannot work out a better deal and risks getting nothing in return. If that is the strategy Ryan will employ, it is not a bad one, since they have so much pitching that even a marginal rate of successful conversion into major league talent will mean several of the lower level pitchers will be blocked on their way to the majors. Trading for Reggie Sanders or some similar B-rate pickup makes little sense because it would mean paying lots of marginal dollars and prospects for a very small marginal upgrade that would almost certainly not make the difference between playoffs and fishing boats. The more likely deployment of those minor league pitching resources is to fill in the gaps from within, as noted twice in the Pioneer Press this week. If Silva or Baker continues to struggle, Ryan could call upon fast-rising Matt Garza to bookend the rotation with another 22 year old. Garza has flown through the minors this season, from when my dad watched him pitch in Ft. Myers in April to a couple of good starts in Rochester at present. Garza may benefit from that “once around the league” maxim that says a new pitcher will trick hitters more than the obverse. Due to the weakness at the back of the rotation, that move could mean more wins down the stretch than an upgrade over a pretty decently deep outfield, and it does not surrender any future resources. Now, back to the regularly scheduled power rankings.

It Can’t Hurt To Dream

21. Cincinnati Reds- My opinion of the Reds was made pretty clear in this space recently, so I will keep it short and sweet. The lineup, which was a source of strength with plus bats C, 3B, SS, LF, CF, and RF lost a good deal of its luster by giving away 1/3 of those bats for 70 innings of relief help for the rest of the year. They marginally upgraded their defense in the process, but they have easily put themselves at a 2-3 win deficit for this trade just due to the fact that the players they gave up will play so much more. Now they are one Griffey injury away from becoming a very pedestrian offense that leans on Aaron Harang and Bronson Arroyo far too much. I keep thinking back to 2005 Baltimore with this team- a hot hitting offense goes cold and it exposes an overrated pitching staff. Not that I think the Reds are about to approach 90 losses, but I have a foreboding feeling about their chances of finishing .500, even as they sit squarely in the Wild Card hunt.

20. San Francisco Giants- Year after year goes by, and we still only have one thing to say about the Giants: this team will go as far as Barry Bonds can take them. As recently as 2002, that meant all the way to the World Series, but we saw the horrific reality that is the “rest of the Giants” in 2005, and it was not pleasant for anyone, except maybe Dodger fans. The rest of the players will fluctuate between mediocrity and semi-star status as average players tend to do. J.T. Snow, Marquis Grissom, and Rich Aurillia all had their moments in the sun batting in similar lineups. Brian Sabean has a talent for finding an incredible abundance of remarkably average players, so there will always be a handful of guys filling that mantle, and Pedro Feliz has joined Ray Durham to play out that string this year. All the while, a downtrodden, tired, nearly indicted Bonds has done as good of an impersonation of a megastar slugger as any injured 41 year-old is going to do. His .247 batting average hints at a lost step, some trouble spots in his swing, and a little bad luck, but let’s not ignore the .472 OBP, and slugging .500 is not shabby. For what it is worth, his recent surge has probably ensured that Jason Schmidt is not going anywhere for the rest of the year, securing the top of the rotation with one of the league’s top starters this year. After early season struggles, Matt Cain and Matt Morris have been acceptable mid-rotation guys, and Noah Lowry and Jamey Wright do what they have to do to remain 4th-5th starters in the majors. Throw in a strong but lucky year from swingman Brad Hennessey (2.63 ERA, 26/25 K/BB), and the Giants can pretty credibly eat up a large number of innings. In a division once again without a clear favorite, a roster chalk full of unremarkable respectability might just get it done, especially if accented by a hot streak from the silhouette of a classic swing. If Bonds collapses, or even struggles, though, forget about it.

19. Seattle Mariners- The Mariners are a team that had me fooled at the start of the year. I saw the mathematical projections and the scouts’ notes and thought they all painted slightly too rosy of a picture for a team that had only a couple of notable bright spots: Felix Rodriguez and Ichiro. In reality, King Felix and Richie Sexson have performed well below their projections and the team has still outperformed my expectations. How? Almost every other player on the roster has been just a little bit better than generally expected, whereas I had them all performing just a little bit worse than generally expected. In other words, their reasonable upside topped out at around 85 wins and bottomed out at about 72. I opted toward the latter, but the team has found its way closer to the former thus far. Jose Lopez arriving a little early and slugging .448 is part of the equation, so is Ichiro’s .342/.398/.444 line. Raul Ibanez has been downright revelatory, hitting a remarkable .281/.347/.536, and the team has stayed impressively healthy, with 8 of their 9 regulars appearing in at least 84 of 92 games so far. Perhaps that workload will wear them down eventually and press a short bench into service, but we shall cross that bridge when we get too it. After all, injury prevention is a skill in itself. On the pitching side, King Felix has obvious struggled with a 4.89 ERA, but Jamie Moyer and Gil Meche have kept their ERAs under 4.00 despite weak peripherals. It may be time for some pitching attrition, but do not underestimate the run suppressing power of SAFECO park, a consideration which makes the team’s collective offensive overachievement markedly more impressive.

18. Milwaukee Brewers- The Brewers were one of my favorite teams before the season because it looked like a complete lineup, top to bottom, with a deep bench and some really solid pitchers. All that remained for Doug Melvin was to cobble together another average-plus bullpen out of spare parts, and the Brewers would push the Cards for the division and someone in the East for the Wild Card. Specifically, I had them finishing with 84 wins, a number that still looks reachable if not terribly probable. What went wrong? I can identify two fatal errors that I believe account for most of the difference between what I projected, and where the Brewers will most likely finish (currently 4 games under .500, but with a much larger run deficit, they project to about 75-78 wins at this rate). The first difference is completely my fault: I do not have a scout’s eye for defense, and the defensive metrics which I trust are neither terribly predictive nor reliable. The Brewers have been the fifth worst defensive team in the majors this year, struggling in the OF, at 2B, 1B, and SS with J.J. Hardy on the DL. Really, only Corey Koskie has been a plus defender among their regulars, and although they are not especially terrible anywhere, the cascading inefficiencies add up to a lot of outs given back to the other team. Perhaps I ought to have seen an OF of Carlos Lee, Brady Clark and Geoff Jenkins losing a step and not covering enough ground. By the same token, maybe it was obvious that Rickie Weeks could not survive on pure athleticism, and little Cecil could not survive on pure technique- although, if I had to have one of each type, putting them adjacent to one another may minimize the effect. Whether or not those struggles were predictable, the less foreseeable development has been the pitching staff and its injuries. Ben Sheets was supposedly healthy coming into the season. I even saw him go all out on a few fastballs early in spring training, for what it is worth. Tomo Ohka did not look like a key cog in the machine, but keep in mind that a player’s value over replacement level is a very relative term- a team that can plug its rotation with Francisco Liriano, Scott Baker, and Boof Bonser is better equipped to handle a pitching rotation meltdown than one reliant on a vast array of retreads and have-nots. A team can expect to start more than five starters over the course of a season, but the Brew Crew has already cobbled together a cumulative 12 man rotation, including sub-replacement contributions from Jorge De La Rosa, Dana Eveland, and Ben Hendrickson over a combined 12 starts. Having Sheets and Ohka rejoin the stable trio of Capuano, Davis, and Bush at the front of the rotation would be a huge help, and would make up for a lot of the defense’s shortcomings by missing more bats and causing less stress through homeruns and walks. The offense is not the problem- at 444 runs, they sit right in the middle of the NL, a good place for a supposedly balanced club to be. The problem is preventing runs, and the Brewers have to do something about their starting pitching durability and their defensive efficiency before they can move on to the next stage of being a contender, and this concern is very important considering that their week defensive infield is supposed to be the offensive centerpiece of the team for years to come.

Everybody On The Bus!

17. Atlanta Braves- What is more reliably hot in July, the northern hemisphere or the Atlanta Braves? Depending on how figuratively you want to interpret the question, it is perfectly legitimate. Once again, a team we had left for dead in June is now only five games under .500 in a volatile NL Wild Card race, going in the opposite direction as Milwaukee. Remember when they were 13 games under .500 and about 10 pitchers short of a big league staff? Those days are gone now, and Bobby Cox is looking as good as ever. I cannot tell you how he does it, or even that it is him doing it, with any certainty, but when a team gets prime performances from unexpected places every single year, the manager deserves some credit. Edgar Renteria returned from AL purgatory, accumulating 33.7 runs of VORP to make people forget that Rafael Furcal ever existed, and his rightfully maligned defense in Boston is back above average in Atlanta, according to BP’s defensive rate. Wilson Betemit and Adam Laroche have hit for enough power to join Brian McCann as a legitimate supporting cast for the Joneses. Even Horacio Ramirez and Chuck James have gotten in on the act, giving them something resembling a major league rotation to put in front of that Crash Davis-esque bullpen (in terms of notoriety). While the 11.5 game deficit is real, the Braves are only 4.5 games behind in terms of run differential, and run second to the Padres in the Wild Card race in 3rd order wins. They do not get credit for those wins, but they do tend to predict future success, so look for the Braves to stay hot for a while. The irony of ironies would be for the Braves lose out to the Mets in the NL East, but finally win the World Series. Would everyone just pretend that they won the division that year, too, like they do for the 1994 season?

16. Arizona Diamondbacks- For the D-Backs, it is all about the rookies, and not in the “let’s give up on this year and play for the future sense.” The remnants of the old front office in the desert are both good- young studs like Conor Jackson, Justin Upton, Carlos Quentin, Stephen Drew, and Chris Young (actually from Josh Byrnes’s trade)- and bad- big money tied up in players who are distinctly over the hill, like Shawn Green, Luis Gonzalez, Craig Counsell, and the huge amounts of money being paid to Russ Ortiz to not pitch for them. Releasing Ortiz shows a recognition of the ability to deal with sunk costs, so they might as well go all out and play their best players, regardless of tenure or salary. The natural response is to point out that the team is hardly out of the race, trailing the Padres by only one game entering play on the 22nd. And I agree, they should play for this year, and the team is in the enviable position of having their future arriving right now. They are better off playing their young players than their old ones right now. The turnover started with when they handed Drew the shortstop job, but unloading Green’s salary for anything would probably give them more production out of Quentin, and moving Eric Byrnes at his peak value would pave the way for Chris Young. Brandon Webb is a true superstar pitcher, maybe the best in the game this year, giving the team a fallback stopper when they struggle. The rest of the staff, however, could use some reinforcement. They are the team who finally put their trust in Juan Cruz for more than two or three starts, and he has paid dividends. Miguel Batista has been solid, but is not a long-term fix. Without better options, guys like Claudio Vargas and Enrique Gonzalez will have to do while the front office looks for more pitching. Ultimately, the D-Backs are a dark horse for this year, probably a tick behind the Padres, Giants, and Dodgers for this season. Their major-league ready talent, though, gets competition from only the Dodgers, setting up plenty of interesting pennant races- and perhaps a new rivalry- in years to come.

15. Cleveland Indians- Almost every Twins fan I know felt utter hatred toward the Indians in the early ‘00s for blocking the road to the postseason with heartbreaking defeat after heartbreaking defeat. Oddly enough, once the White Sox became the dominant contender to the Twins, Minnesota fans quickly forgave and forgot, seemingly giving the Indians their collective blessing for being a team built from the ground up with lots of charismatic players, much like the Twins. I cannot even begin to guess how many Twins fans from varied and unrelated backgrounds have commented that they hate the White Sox, but that if someone has to beat us, it might as well be the Indians. To that end, it is sad to see the team struggle like it does. It seems like every time I watch one of their games, something goes horribly wrong, like Sabbathia’s start against the Twins a few nights ago, when the game was lost in an inning with two walks, a hit batsman, two errors, a dropped tag at the plate on a sac fly, an infield hit, and two big two-strike hits. While many of these events will be recorded in a box score and inputted to stat sheets worldwide, their remarkably bad timing and sequencing will be largely reserved for the tortured hearts and minds of Tribe fans. The team has performed so far below its component performances that they have an 11.2 win deficit against their projected third order wins- Pittsburgh’s 4.8 is next worst. The Indians had a similar fate last year, when they took the best run differential of the regular season with them to their fishing boats in October while they watched the overachieving White Sox dominate the playoffs which could have been theirs. I am not calling for Mark Shapiro to blow up a team with several legitimate superstars, particularly Hafner, Sizemore, and Martinez, though there clearly need to be some changes made around the edges. Aaron Boone is a drain in every sense, and Andy Marte would be much better at the hot corner today, tomorrow, and for the rest of his career. Casey Blake has played well this year, far better than Todd Hollandsworth and Jason Michaels at the other OF corner, but his value can get no higher, and this will not be the year the Indians win the division. When looking at a team with the best hitter in the league and its own version of a young Bernie Williams to go with a half-decent pitching staff, you automatically consider them a contender. I had to think long and hard about my ranking of the Indians, and I think I have been relatively generous considering their record, even though they could be much better.