What went wrong for the teams eliminated by the All-Star Break?
By Nob Bightengale
It's the All-Star Break now, and while MLR's best and brightest duke it out in Detroit, GMs are busy at work, retooling their teams for the stretch drive, hoping to wrap up a playoff spot or claw their way back into it.
But for four teams, their season was done before the break even started. What went wrong for these four squads? Read on to find out...
SAN DIEGO PADRES
The Padres finally got in the win column in Session 12, defeating Arizona 3-2 behind two RBI hits by Solf J. Kimblee, a Player of the Game performance by Caleb Athen, and a complete game by Richard Saks.
Unfortunately, there's not really a category this team is really good in. Their 4.19 ERA is tops in the league, and that's not great when 4 is generally agreed to be enough to win most games. But they've only really been blown out twice - 9-0 by the Brewers in Session 2, and 9-3 by Oakland in Session 4. No, what's really killed the Padres is an offense that's been colder than cold. You can't be slashing .200/.276/.348 as a team and expect to win much, especially with the league's worst DPA (258.29). Dwayne Stevenson has had a solid year, slashing .333/.379/.667, and Caleb Athen's been a welcome addition as well, but the lineup outside of them just hasn't been producing.
The squad in brown has scored just 21 runs this year. The next lowest is Cleveland at 30. That's just anemic.
LOS ANGELES DODGERS
The blue side of the City of Angels saw a start more explosive than a Michael Bay movie, with the Dodgers dropping 23 runs on the Padres, Cubs, and Expos in their first three games. Things were looking good...until they weren't. The Dodgers have won just once since, a 4-3 win over a similarly-slumping Brewers in Session 9.
Their slump has been...interesting. It was their offense that killed them in the first two games of the collapse, putting up one run against Texas and three against Colorado. After that, the pitching just fell apart. The team's given up an average of 6.43 runs per game since, and aside from Artie Ziff's quest to strike out everyone forever, the pitching has been unable to stay solid and consistent. Ronald Eagle Sr. and Geno Scaramucci both have ERAs north of 4, with Mooch's dangerously close to 5. Ziff, the ace of the staff, has seen his balloon to 3.64.
The Dodgers don't need everyone in their staff to be Ed Turner good, they just need to be good enough, and they just haven't been. Newcomer Lefty Louis has shown some promise, but small sample size and all that.
HOUSTON ASTROS
A five-game losing skid has ultimately turned the Astros' season from "meh" to "uglier than the average MiLR ERA." You pretty much knew they were waving the white flag on the season when they sent reigning league MVP Dakota Carolina Montana to the Cubs.
The Astros are kind of a less-bad Padres, in that there's not really a stat where they looked good, other than their staggering 22 stolen bases (only the Cubs at 18 are even within ten of that). Their ERA is only better than San Diego's, and their total runs are only ahead of the Padres, Cardinals, Pirates, and Indians.
Like the Dodgers, they do have one semi-bright spot in the rotation - Derek Bongiovanni, fifth in the league in average difference - but one blip isn't enough to carry a rotation. I know pitcher wins suck as a stat, but no pitcher on this squad has more than one. Jerome Garcia's been struggling, with an ERA near 4.98 (over a run higher than last season), and late addition Thomas Beowulf Jr. has not seen a great start to his MLR career, getting shelled for six runs in two innings in his debut against Texas before pitching a serviceable game against Detroit, which his team lost. I'll chalk that up to a case of "Beginners' Suck," though.
They've acknowledged their flaws and began mid-season rebuilding for next year, a respectable move by GM Sam Wood.
CLEVELAND INDIANS
Once again, this is a case of a team that just doesn't score runs. Course, it doesn't help when one of your games ends early due to a forfeit for too many autos, as Cleveland did in Session 9 against Oakland.
That's not to say this team doesn't have talent: Jericho Caulfield has been terrific all season, as has Ross Fire and Jackson Sanchez, and newcomer Markus Wölfe has shown some promise early in his career. The problem is, this team hasn't been able to cash in on opportunities, hitting .119 with runners in scoring position. Last year's Silver Slugger winner, GH Morello, struggled horribly before being traded to Milwaukee.
And sometimes you can keep a weak offensive team afloat with good pitching, but this team's rotation has been in flux all year, with a revolving door that's seen the likes of Daniel Collins, Penny Lane, and Cal Tiberius Jr. enter and/or depart. There's also the curious case of Whitt Bass's awful year by their lofty standards (4.78 ERA, compared to a 0.98 last season and a 2.33 in season 1). Artanis Jones has been solid for Cleveland since coming over from the Yankees in a three-team deal, including a shutout of the Diamondbacks in Session 10, but that move was probably too late for a major impact this year.
With Caulfield's promotion to GM to replace the departed Ethan Franklin (who's joined Kansas City as a pitcher), I think this team is in a good position to rebound next year after their midseason infusion of talent and activity.