The Reds, Rockies, White Sox, Twins and Athletics were all expected to contend for the postseason this year, but those teams are all at least nine games out of a playoff berth at this point. It’s safe to say they’re among baseball’s most disappointing teams, but they’re not the only clubs that have fallen short of expectations.
The Marlins expected more from Josh Johnson and Hanley Ramirez, who are both on the 60-day DL. The Astros are heading for the first 100-loss season in the history of their franchise and the Cubs and Dodgers aren’t contending despite having two of the game's biggest payrolls.
To one extent or another, each one of those teams has disappointed. Which one has been the biggest disappointment of all?
White Sox for sure, they were supposed to be a World Series contender. Twins are a close 2nd, but they were more because of injuries, the White Sox was just the players underperforming to an all new level.
I voted for the Twins. However, if I could vote twice, the other would definitely be the White Sox. Coming into the season I think everyone thought that the White Sox would run away with the division or it would be a close race between the Tigers, White Sox, and Twins. The White Sox were in it for a bit there, but they are now 9 games back (still in second, though) meanwhile the Twins have the second worst record in the AL.
It’s honestly very disappointing from a competitive standpoint (being a Tigers fan and all).
How about the RED Sox. Weren’t they supposed to be in beast mode this year? 2nd place…not so mighty with a $160 million payroll
Let’s not even worry that the Yankees spend over $200 million
for teams like the sox and yankees, the season stats in october. Who cares who finishes second.
not me!
image fail. that^ comment was from this prestigious manager
the a’s are up there for me, i liked them quite a bit going into this season. if this happens again next year i say they just rename themselves the oakland blue balls
Same actually. That was back when I thought Daric Barton and Cliff Pennington would break out this year. And I’ll probably say this again next year about Scott Sizemore and Kurt Suzuki
I was actually shocked by all the A’s love going into this season. I thought they’d be one of the worst.
Then again, I thought more promising things for the Orioles 🙁
pitching wins was my theory. it seemed to me they’d be able to scrap together enough offense to compete in the lowly AL West
wrong again
Twins. From winning a division and then falling to last place the next year and having one of the worst records in baseball.
At least they had an excuse, though – their two best players spent significant time on the DL.
Morneau missed many games last year, and Mauer has had a non-Mauer like season for the games he’s played. You can blame the injuries of course but it’s more so for inconsistency. Their pitching is awful.
They’ve scored a pitiful number of runs. As bad as the pitching is, it’s not the main problem.
Their 2nd to last in runs scored in the AL and their pitching has allowed the 2nd most runs scored in the AL. I’d say it’s about equal.
Mauer has used so many excuses for his pathetic year, he’s dipping into his $23 MIL/year to pay others to come up with new excuses.
I said it last year, and there isstill time for redemption, but that contract is looking about as bad as Dunn’s is right now.
If I thought for one second Mauer would catch half the time of his contract, I’d have said it was a good deal. But now it’s looking like his significant chunk of the twins payroll will haunt that team for years.
We’l see how the contract works out overall, but don’t compare it to Dunn’s. Mauer is having a down year for him, but that means he’s only hitting .288 as of today. It’s not his normal .324, but it’s an average that many players wish they had. That really can’t be said for Adam Dunn. And considering that Mauer was sitting at around .220 for a good while this season, I’d say he’s probably coming back around to normal.
I voted for the Twins because last year, the won 94 games. This year, there is a solid chance that they will lose 94 games.
he’s a perpetual injury risk who is already isn’t a good bet to catch full-time, his walk-rate is down 3-4% and he’s hit for juan pierre-like power this year. the batting average is the least of the concerns about mauer
here’s hoping he returns to form because i like the guy, but all is not well in minnesota and joe mauer is not even close to being the commodity he once was
My thoughts almost to the word.
Mauer isn’t a bad ballplayer by any means, but hrs always hurt, no longer plays a premium defensive position, and looks like his career year has already hit. Add in the fact he consumes 1/4 of the twins payroll(and that number may go up. It’s doubtful the twins stay at 100 mil) and that doesn’t bode well for the twins.
Even if he stays at 1B, he still has a higher salary by position than Cabrera and Gonzalez, and I highly doubt he will achieve their level of production in the future.
There are at least 29 teams who would gladly take Mauer off the Twins hands. Please run him out of town. Please, please, please…
no, there aren’t
Only way 29 other teams are going to be interested in Mauer is if the Twins are going to eat a good chunk of his contract. $23m/yr for a singles hitter who can’t stay healthy ~ not sure that is all that appealing, especially considering he probably won’t be behind the plate for the entire contract.
Injury risk= 130 games per season as a catcher?
Singles hitter = .470 career slugging?
People need to stop reading the Star Tribune.
gee, i wonder if his slugging percentage is so high because of his career .324 batting average
his career ISO is .147 which places him among the prodigious power bats of pedro feliz and alexei ramirez. here are some other players with better career power:
michael young jose reyes brian roberts aaron rowand carl crawford jeff francouer and brandon phillips
and that’s not even regressing his power for how poor it’s been recently. but i don’t expect these facts to be able to pierce the bias of a man who questions whether or not joe freakin’ mauer is an injury risk
Do you realize how much a catcher with a career .400 OBP, 15-20 HR power, and who has averaged 130 games in the first 7 years of his career would be worth as a free agent?
Seriously, go find some catchers who averaged more games than Mauer in the first 7 full seasons of their careers and compare their numbers to Mauer’s.
And stop reading the Star Tribune.
k. and you go read something about joe mauer that’s dated later than 2009
OK, hang on.
2010….
584 PA/.327/.402/.469/65 BB/
53K’s
Release this man immediately!
112 games at catcher that year (now quick, cover your eyes, more facts coming)
one year and another serious injury later, he’s played only 50 games at catcher and there’s little confidence that he’ll ever return to the role full-fulltime. and this is his line: .288/.353/.363. walk-rate down, strikeouts up, power all but gone
BUT EVERYTHING’S GREAT HERE, NOTHING HAS CHANGED. NO REASON FOR CONCERN
They found a way to give more at bats to a batter who gets on base better than almost anyone in baseball without making him catch every game of the season? Scandal!
I bet the Giants have spent all season wishing they could have DH’d Buster a couple games or at least played him in the field a couple games and maybe, just maybe, they’d be in a very different situation…
You really shouldn’t throw one of your best hitters behind the plate for 130 games. Mauer put up 5 WAR in 2010. I don’t think pulling him out from behind the plate every once in a while is a terrible idea.
But, clearly, it’s Mauer’s fault that Bill Smith got nothing in return for Santana, nothing for JJ Hardy, and nothing for Wilson Ramos and now he’s going to give Cuddyer 15 million per. Shame on Joe Mauer for not having any sort of a team around him to keep the season moving if he dare succumb to injury.
Trade Morneau, while you’re at it. If you offer him to the Cubs for Soriano now, you might be able to get Alfonso before the Giants get their hands on him. I bet their next GM will give you Soriano, Bryan LaHair, and a whole bunch of other useless parts for Mauer and Morneau.
Don’t worry, they don’t get injured…
what in the world are you talking about
I’m talking about this campaign against Joe Mauer as though he’s the Twins problem. He has one bad season and everyone thinks the sky is falling.
everyone else, you mean? besides the people you’re talking to?
even if that were true, when replying to me you’d do better to focus on the things i actually say
How about this, “little confidence that he’ll ever return to the role”. Who has little confidence? Of course there will be some regression, they guy caught 140 games a year for a while, but who really doubts he’ll hit 10 HR in a season again or will slip below .400 OBP any time soon? There are a lot of questions, but I have yet to see a major analyst say anything about doom and gloom for Mauer’s future. Stark, Olney, Law, Posanski, Neyer, Fangraphs, B-R, please find me one credible source that has said this.
what a ridiculous thing to quote. read the sentence it’s from: “he’s played only 50 games at catcher and there’s little confidence that he’ll ever return to the role full-time”
the role of full-time catcher, not the role of being very good at baseball
Where are you getting “the guy caught 140 games a year for awhile”?
From Baseball-Reference:
2004 – 32 games
2005 – 116
2006 – 120
2007 – 91
2008 – 139 (career high)
2009 – 109
2010 – 112
2011 – 50 games
I am not saying he isn’t a good ball player or that he is the cause of the Twins problems. My original comment was there ARE NOT 29 Teams that would take Mauer.
Mauer has missed 281 games due to injury since his MLB debut, an average of being too sick to play roughly 35 games per season. If that isn’t an injury risk, you tell me what is.
You’re complaining because he’s averaged missing 35 games per season? You realize Gary Carter only averaged 130 games per season? Catchers don’t play 150 games per season.
You’re right. A player missing over a month of the season every year isn’t any sort of injury risk. And I’m Bob Ballard.
OK. You keep Drew Butera and Michael Cuddyer. Send Mauer and his 5 WAR per “injury-ridden” season elsewhere and see where the Twins wind up…
“maybe if i suddenly act like they’re all saying the twins should cut joe mauer i’ll look like the reasonable one. ha, i bet no one will even notice!”
OK, I’ll build a team of “injury ridden” batters worth 3-5 WAR and you build a team with the rest of the Twins and we’ll see who wins more games.
(Actually, there is a name for the team, I described: The Philadelphia Phillies).
You’re literally calling a 5 WAR player bad. You realize this?
i’ll realize it when you quote me saying that. if you can’t, then you should realize you’re talking to yourself
What is there to quote? Your theme is that Joe Mauer is falling apart and there’s absolutely no reason to believe that at this point. There isn’t a single credible source around baseball saying that.
that’s not the theme; you either will not or cannot read. maybe this is the real reason you resent people reading the tribune or whatever
No, I’m not complaining about that. He’s averaging missing 35 games due to INJURY every season, not just missing 35 games due to the average catchers rest.
So for Mauer, you can knock 35 games off his season for him being too sick to play, then on top of that add his rest days. Again, if someone who is injured for over 20% of the season isn’t an injury risk, tell me what is.
Now you’re adding games to the season. There are 162 games in a season. From 2005-2010, Mauer played over 135 games a season except for ’07 when he played in 110. He averaged about 15 games at DH per season except ’08 when he caught 139 games. So he was the starting catcher in about 75% of the games he played in. Where are these extra 20% of games you’re talking about? 20% of the season is 32 games. Was he also playing in another league we weren’t aware of? You said he was missing 35 games on top of catcher rest days?
Also, when Mauer posted a 5.9 WAR in 2010 despite missing a few games due to injury? That still means he was worth 5.9 wins above replacement. So even with the injuries, you have one hell of a valuable catcher.
There are 162 games in a season. Over the course of his career, Mauer has sat out 281 games thus far because of an injury.
I voted for the Rockies, though I debated the Reds as well. The Twins also looked like playoff favorites entering the season, so seeing them fall apart was a disappointment, too, though for some reason it doesn’t surprise me as much.
I also feel like the Rays would be a worthy candidate.
I wouldn’t say the Rays are a disappointment, because honestly, how many people thought the Rays were even going to be above .500 this year.
A lot?
Seriously, it’s not a huge surprise they’re probably not going to make the playoffs, but they’d probably be right in the thick of it if not for injury troubles earlier in the year. Honestly, a lot of people were pegging the Yankees to be the odd man out in the division when Lee signed with Philly and they started scrounging in the garbage bins to fill out their rotation.
they were supposed to have manny ramirez’s .400 wOBA in the middle of that lineup all year, too
phillies because they didn’t win 162 games
I can relate to this. If the Boston media and fanbase is any indication, it’s the Red Sox by a landslide considering they haven’t already won 100 games and mathematically eliminated every other team in the AL from playoff contention.
i blame j.d. drew
Twins. Despite some injuries they should’ve played a lot better
Has to be the Reds. Some people had them going to the World Series. With an MVP, the breakout of Jay Bruce, and all that young pitching, they were the only team on this list favored to win their division. Nobody thought the Twins would.
What were the White Sox supposed to do?
If Adam Dunn had a normal year, Sox would be in first place, easy.
Contending, but not winning the division easily. He isn’t the only player on that team to grossly underperform this year. Their are more hamstringing issues with that team than just Dunn.
I don’t know about easy, but they’d sure be in a better spot than they are now.
They are significantley back. They would be within four games of first with a regular Dunn. He wouldn’t have won that division by himself. He was overrated to begin with.
It’s the Rockies, for sure. Major steps backward by Ian Stewart and, until recently, Dexter Fowler, killed them. Plus, they sucked so bad during a stretch between the end of May and the end of July that they had to trade their ace in order to have any hope of rebuilding their somewhat depleted upper-level minor league depth.
White sox, Reds, Twins are my top 3.
Rockies were primed to take the NL West despite SF’s World Series victory in 2010. 2 young potential superstars locked up through their primes, Ubaldo Jimenez leading a historically strong staff (as far as the Rockies go) and a handful of young players ready to take that next step.
Welp.
Los Doyers.
I voted Dodgers. With legitimate candidates for MVP and Cy Young, they should at least be over .500
While I’m very dissapointed with how the season has been for my dodgers, I honestly didn’t really think they were gonna be competitive this year. I’m hoping that by next year mccourt will be living under a bridge.
i voted a’s for obvious reasons but my non biased answer is the reds
The Giants. Last year’s champion is now seven games back of the Diamondbacks in the division.
Can’t really call it disappointing when an overachieving team with no offense doesn’t repeat the same miracle the next year when they didn’t upgrade their weakness in the slightest. Maybe call their Management disappointing, but the team did the best they could when the management declined to sign a couple of decent bats (and write off Zito, thus clearing up a bunch of active payroll space).
Ummm, so tell us about this “write off” process which allows you clear up payroll space??? The team just decides in the middle of a bad contract that they don’t want to pay it, and it just goes away??? I’m sure there are a lot of teams with inflated FA contracts would be interested in this accounting procedure….
There’s a concept in economics called “sunk cost”. Feel free to look it up, it’s a real thing that people who do things with money use whenever you want to account for your useful money you can spend in other ways, to remove it from the places you’re stuck spending money you can’t re-allocate.
In another way of thinking, deferred money doesn’t count towards any payroll. It’s a sunk cost. If you’re paying Bobby Bonilla (like the mets are!) right now, several millions of dollars per year, you’re not counting it on the current payroll. You’re counting it as a sunk cost, which is basically how the Giants need to treat Zito.
You owe the guy 45 million bucks? You’re never going to trade him or get any more value, just pay him the 45 mil off and consider that a sunk cost, part of doing business. Don’t account it towards this year’s 90 million dollar payroll because you’re not getting value from it and you’re not using it.
I promise you, many teams use interesting accounting. It’s an actual thing. Most of the time they don’t do it with the highest paid player on the team so it’s never something anyone sees.
Just because you pay off that $45MM right now for Zito to walk, and it doesn’t technically count against the active payroll, doesn’t mean that it is necessarily going to free up a relatively similar amount to use on the payroll for the active roster. If they take an up front hit of $45MM doing what you suggest, you can bet the active roster payroll will be pared back. That $45MM is still an expense and the team has a budget to spend on player expenditures, active payroll or not. Plus your argument was that they didn’t do this before this season, so the amount left on Zito’s contract at that time was more like $60MM.
I understand that different accounting techniques can be used to defer payments, etc. Those techniques are generally more useful for sports with salary caps. The Giants aren’t close to the luxury tax threshold, so that doesn’t really apply.
At the beginning of this year, the best way for the team to try to get something out of that terrible contract was to hope Zito could be a servicable 5th starter. He had shown at times that he was capable of doing that. True, they were never going to get close to the production equivalent of that awful contract, but there is some value in being a .500 5th starter. Those guys don’t grow on trees. As it turns out, he wasn’t able to even do that. The Giants now might look at paying Zito to walk if they think he can’t be a servicable starter, but it wasn’t a bad strategy at the beginning of this year, IMO.
Also, in regards to last year — despite what they are putting on the field this year, last year the team had a league average offense and arguably the best pitching in the league. Hardly makes their championship year a “miracle.”
I vote for the Angels.
i voted for Tony Reagins
I had the Rockies down but there are a lot of contenders. I forgot how highly I thought of the WS before the season started. Those were the days when Adam Dunn was going to hit 50 HR’s and Alex Rios was going to build upon his 2010 campaign. What a complete and utter disaster this year has been.
How are the Cardinals not on this list??
They weren’t the preseason favorites in the division. Most outlets had them third.
Yet the Astros and Marlins are listed?
They are. It’s called “other.”
It has to be the Reds, with coming so close last year you just had a feeling that they would do better this year. The Twins are a disappointment, as are the Giants, but every other team has done about what most people expected.
The Sox by far IMO. Coming into the season, the pitching staff has a whole looked to be the best in division and the addition of Dunn looked to put the Sox over the top. Unfortunatly the Sox have dug their own grave, there were no serious injuries such as the Twins, Marlins, etc, they simply did not perform. It’s even more dissipointing when you look at how well the Sox pitching has been thus far. The only consistancy the Sox received out of the lineup all season was Konerko. That won’t get the job done.
The White Sox motto (from their PR department) for the year was “All In” and the GM Williams was gambling that this team was going to do great from the start so they can boost attendence numbers. They were talked about as the team that were going to give the AL East a run for their money in the playoffs with the lineup of Dunn, Konerko, Rios and Quientin. Definately the biggest bust.
The Red Sox should be on the list because Frank McCourt lost out on a bid to own them a number of years ago. So therefore, the Dodgers get my vote.
Pokey called. He wants to know what you did with the rest of the LSD.
Does. Not. Compute.
the dodgers and the white sox. on paper, at the beginning of the season the dodgers had a legitmate starting rotation, and at this point have a cy candinate, they also have an mvp candinate. I thought the white sox were going to be world series bound, i had them with the red sox in the alcs but it just was a dissapointing year for them.
Strange claiming the Dodgers have one of the “game’s biggest payrolls” when they are 12th on the total payroll list this year. That’s not even in the upper third.
I voted for the Cubs, and will continue to do so for the next 100 years.
100 years? Man, you truly are indestructible
I’m like the wind, man. I’m everywhere!
Pirates. Just because of the start they got off to
Agreed. If they had been terrible the whole season, I would have just thought nothing of it because that’s what I expected. But it was just heartbreaking to see how far they’ve fallen recently.
What were those 120 people expecting the Astros to be like this year?
I don’t know. .500? There abouts. Deffinitley not 100 wins.
.500 seems wildly optimistic to me. Even if you didn’t expect them to trade off veterans, I can’t imagine not seeing them as one of the handful of worst teams in baseball.
Even as an utterly disappointed Dodger fan, I’d have to go with the Twins or Reds.
I didn’t anticipate the Twins to win the division this season, but to be 25 games under .500 is ridiculous. And the Reds to be an under .500 after winning the NL Central is a bit of a shocker, too.
I get that the White Sox have disappointed, but they’re still above .500 and in 2nd place. Doesn’t qualify them for “most disappointing team”, in my opinion.
Didn’t expect much from the A’s, Cubs, Astros or Marlins, and I felt the Rockies were being overrated in the preseason. There was just no way they were going to make it with that pitching staff, and it was unreasonable (IMO) to expect CarGo to reproduce his 2010 numbers.
I’m a bit surprised the defending world champion Giants are absent from this list.
Probably because the Giants are still contending and don’t have one of the largest payrolls in baseball. Oh, wait… never mind.
I’m shocked at how bad the A’s have been. They were only a dark horse, but you’d think adding a couple solid bats and some great relief pitching to the best defense in baseball would’ve accomplished something. Their defense couldn’t even come close to repeating their ’10 performance.
someone explain to me why the cubs are getting a ton of votes. do cubs fans really think that they had a superb team going into the season? i expected them to win 75 games
Really, the Twins are leading this? I’m pretty sure that most people had the White Sox, Rockies, Reds and Cardinals doing much better than them. It’s hard to feel disappointed in a team that you had no confidence in what so ever and performed poorly for the entire season. I’d say that Cleveland was even a bigger disappointment as they had that red hot start and couldn’t keep it up.
Went with the Fish.. A staff that had multiple injuries, then others who once again failed to live up to billing and an over worked BP for the ones who the count on the most.
Lots of Twins votes here, but to quote an old, old Charlie O’Finley saying from decades ago..
They went into the season (once again) with a rotation inwhich 1 SP could break a pane f glass with his FB (Liriano). That should have sent shock waves from the start. the Twins seem to like that type of starter for some reason (junk throwers) but they have to be perfectly on their game, big ball park or not. Can’t throw all of this onto Morneau and Maur.
At least the Twins win something this year. Most disappointing team of the decade is more like it. And I am a HUGE Twins fan saying this, Gardy needs to go away and take all your coaches/best friends with you. Who cares about your Manager of the Year award you are the manager that let Joe Mauer pull all this crap this season with his pathetic excuses for not playing. And to think Joe Mauer chose baseball over football, he would have never made it through a practice at Florida State. No more milk commercials time for the nyquil and band-aid commericals for Joe.
I just can’t get past the train wreck that is the Dodgers these days. Going to Chavez Ravine these days is like going to the worst bush league stadium. It’s pathetic. McCourt can’t leave fast enough. And I’m not even a Dodger fan. So disappointing.
Mariners, because they couldn’t capitalize on that close race. Only were a 1/2 game out in late June. 17 Game losing streak? Longest two weeks of my baseball fan life.
Anyone not voting for the Twins simply doesn’t have a valid point.
The Twins went from a team with great hitting and above average pitching, to an injury ridden bunch. This was totally unexpected considering what they’re capable of.
logic fail
how was it totally unexpected? IT was mostly caused by injuries… (brace yourself for my neck point) injuries, for the most part, are unexpected..
Ish happens.
I voted for the Marlins, because of all teams on the list, it was if the upper brass was more to blame then player performance..
I mean they traded Maybin for peanuts and Uggla for sunflower seeds, after a 2010 they had a lot to build on, the organization really failed to capitalize on any momentum.
plus, now they’re super thirsty
I voted for the Reds because they had won the division last season and even though the Brewers got Greinke, I still thought the Reds would battle it out with them. My 2nd place vote would be the Rockies. I thought for sure that Carlos Gonzalez, Tulo and Ubaldo would carry the team to the post season.