Last season, the Royals were the most unexpected team in the playoffs and used that momentum to win the Wild Card game and eventually find their way into the World Series. This year, that role has been taken on by the Astros, as they barely hung on to a Wild Card in a year they […]

To be the final team knocked out of the playoffs isn’t a terrible spot to be in, even if it may be heartbreaking at the time. The Angels were a largely forgotten team this year with the Mariners (the consensus pick going into the season), the Astros’ early and the Rangers’ late success stealing the […]

No one thought the Twins would finish above .500 this year, with most picking them to finish dead last in an extremely deep AL Central. Instead, they contended far longer than the dark horse favorite White Sox and Indians and buried the 2014 Central champion Tigers. While they got knocked from contention in the second […]

The Indians went into this season expecting to win, but fell into a hole after a couple poor months that even the annual Terry Francona bounce couldn’t get them out of. For the third straight season, the Tribe fell short of the real playoffs despite having one of the best pitching staffs in baseball and a few […]

You often hear about NFL or NBA teams possibly not trying to win as hard as they could in order to raise their draft place (the Browns #FailForCardale campaign has been very divisive), but rarely does the topic come up in baseball. This has generally been because the fan bases that create this narrative don’t […]

The Cinderella story that didn’t happen, many writers picked the White Sox to finish near the top of the AL Central with some even picking them as a dark horse for the World Series. Of course, not all fantasies can come true and the reality of the Kansas City Royals was just part of the […]

The Columbus Clippers are in the International League playoffs this year (up 2-1 against the Indianapolis Indians in the best of five series) and while that might not be big news on the national level, their approach to making the games more interesting was. During games three and four of the five game series against the […]

The Reds went into 2015 with dreams of competing in the AL Central and the knowledge that if they didn’t, they wouldn’t have many more shots in the future with the current roster. Instead, they were more than ten games out of the Central lead at the end of May and things never got better […]

As mentioned earlier this week and fairly consistently throughout the season, the American League Wild Card race remains the most competitive in all of baseball. Since August 17th, the Yankees, Rangers, Blue Jays, Twins, Orioles, and Angels have all held one spot or the other and while Toronto and New York have played well enough […]

The current standings in baseball are weird. The second Wild Card was added to increase interest in the final month of the season by keeping more teams in the running and it is doing that, but only in the American League. Without it, the Yankees would be running away with the sole Wild Card, four […]

The rumors first started about August 21st that Indians president Mark Shapiro could be headed to Toronto and now, it appears that it will in fact be the case. The Blue Jays’ current president Paul Beeston, who has been with the team in some capacity since 1976, was nearly forced out in the previous off-season, […]

The Cincinnati Reds are a mess. The sit 27.5 games back in the NL Central, 21 back in the Wild Card race, and are further hampered by the fact that the three best teams in the National League currently reside within their division. While they had initially expected to compete for the division this year, […]

When Carlos Correa made his major league debut for the first place Astros in June and crushed two home runs his first week, many dubbed him the next Alex Rodriguez and closed their minds to the AL Rookie of the Year race. The 20 year old, slick fielding shortstop was the best we were going […]

Continuing on with the spree of waiver trades, Cincinnati Reds outfielder Marlon Byrd has been traded to the San Francisco Giants in exchange for AA pitcher Stephen Johnson. The Giants’ regular right fielder, Hunter Pence, was placed on the disabled list on August 18th and with Angel Pagan also on the DL, they were in […]

The AL Wild Card race has been close all season (unlike some other less exciting Wild Card races in baseball this year), but thanks to a busy trade deadline, it appears some teams may finally be separating from the crowd. While the Blue Jays are the obvious reflection of that statement, winning eight games in […]