Thank you Joe! It is just so great to see Joe’s Week in Baseball back again. Who cares if the first time back was only a partial week? After you left the Athletic but promised to try to resume JWIB, I kept thinking maybe I had somehow missed it in my inbox. Great to have it back again, hopefully for the duration of the season and playoffs.
Just the tiniest of nitpicks -- the 2011 NL Wild Card team was the Cardinals (90-72), not the Giants. They beat the NL Central champion Brewers in the NLCS and won the World Series.
Was coming here to say that! It's actually kind of a funny error since that was the last time St. Louis won the World Series, something Joe alludes to at the beginning.
Joe, I've loved your writing for a long time and so I was excited to see what interesting things you would have to say about the Cardinals (my favorite team), but alas, you just went to the old and tired "Cardinals Devil Magic" angle that every other national writer seems to turn to when discussing the team.
The Cardinals were the wild card team in 2011. They then played and won a rather famous world series against the Rangers. The Giants finished behind the Cardinals and Braves in the standings.
Juan Soto is incredible, and watching him compile these historic stats even as the rest of my Nats fall apart is infuriating. I just about go into fits every time I see some insufferable Yankees fan on twitter post their amateur photoshop of Soto in pinstripes, but I can't deny that it's more likely than not he leaves our mess of a franchise.
This Nats fan comforts himself that at least they aren't the Pirates, selling off all of their great players well before they are eligible for free agency. How do fans in Pittsburgh keep watching their team, knowing that there is no chance they will ever reach the playoffs again? And then I see that list up there, with many Wild Card appearances from the Pirates, not all THAT long ago. Huh. Are the Pirates not actually "doomed" into the indefinite future? Was it a terrible GM that hurt them badly, or the pandemic? Is it something that might be fixed again in the future, or is there indeed no reason at all to expect them back in the playoffs for the next decade?
Has there ever been a team to lose so many top-notch players? Losing Scherzer, Harper, Rendon, and Trea Turner is a lot of WAR to leave any franchise. I understand the fiscal dynamics, and non-Dodgers teams can only pay $30M/yr to so many players at once, but it still hurts to lose all those stars. Soto on top of that would be too much.
The one franchise that comes to my mind as a prime shedder of talent was ... (pages flipping) ... the same franchise. The Montreal Expos lost Andre Dawson, Vlad Guerrero, Pedro Martinez, Randy Johnson, Gary Carter, and Larry Walker, who are all HOFers, not to mention very good players like Marquis Grissom, Moises Alou.
Of the top 10 career WAR for position players, here is the list of the WAR for Expos/Nats to the left of the slash and later team(s) to the right:
Carter: 55.8 WAR for the Expos/14.3 WAR for later teams
Raines: 49.1/20.3
Dawson: 48.4/15.4
Guerrero: 34.7/24.8
Rendon: 30/TBD
Harper: 27.8/11.8 and counting for the Phillies
Trea Turner: 20.3/TBD
Walker: 21.1/51.6
Past these 8 players, Tim Wallach and Ryan Zimmerman were their only top 10 career WAR earners that didn't earn much/any WAR on later teams. You can add Pedro (20.2/61.9, mostly for the Red Sox) to that list. You can't fault them for Randy Johnson, because his two years in Montreal earned 0 WAR, and his breakout season for the Mariners was four years after he left the Expos. Incidentally, Soto is at 17.3 WAR at 22 years old but barring injury will dramatically add to that total.
Would any other franchise come close to that list?
On the plus side, there was gnashing of teeth in DC when Ian Desmond (16.2 WAR) and Jordan Zimmermann (19.5 WAR) left, but the Nats dodged a bullet by not signing either of those players to long term deals. Desmond had negative WAR and Zimmermann only 0.9 WAR after leaving.
As an aside on the Nats, 2019 was worth a lot, but Corbin and Strasberg have the potential to be huge drains down the road.
The '95 Rockies were 77-67.
I also wish the A's had kept Semien. They'd be in a playoff spot.
I've always hated the Cardinals.
I love JWIB. I know it's football season too, the football 100 is good... but here's how I rank Posnanski content:
1. Baseball
2. Non-baseball non-sports stuff (family, Springsteen, anecdotes from life in journalism, infomercial reviews)
3. All other sports stuff
4. Is there anything else?
Thank you Joe! It is just so great to see Joe’s Week in Baseball back again. Who cares if the first time back was only a partial week? After you left the Athletic but promised to try to resume JWIB, I kept thinking maybe I had somehow missed it in my inbox. Great to have it back again, hopefully for the duration of the season and playoffs.
Just the tiniest of nitpicks -- the 2011 NL Wild Card team was the Cardinals (90-72), not the Giants. They beat the NL Central champion Brewers in the NLCS and won the World Series.
Now that the 2011 wildcard has been fixed, he has to update the comment on 2014.
Was coming here to say that! It's actually kind of a funny error since that was the last time St. Louis won the World Series, something Joe alludes to at the beginning.
Joe, I've loved your writing for a long time and so I was excited to see what interesting things you would have to say about the Cardinals (my favorite team), but alas, you just went to the old and tired "Cardinals Devil Magic" angle that every other national writer seems to turn to when discussing the team.
I don't care. As the old saying goes, "Better to be the recipient of Devil Magic than good."
They write Devil Magic because the Cardinals (and the Yankees) have Devil Magic. Stop using Devil Magic and people will stop saying it!
The Rays have Devil Magic of a different kind... Devil Ray Magic.
The Cardinals were the wild card team in 2011. They then played and won a rather famous world series against the Rangers. The Giants finished behind the Cardinals and Braves in the standings.
Juan Soto is incredible, and watching him compile these historic stats even as the rest of my Nats fall apart is infuriating. I just about go into fits every time I see some insufferable Yankees fan on twitter post their amateur photoshop of Soto in pinstripes, but I can't deny that it's more likely than not he leaves our mess of a franchise.
This Nats fan comforts himself that at least they aren't the Pirates, selling off all of their great players well before they are eligible for free agency. How do fans in Pittsburgh keep watching their team, knowing that there is no chance they will ever reach the playoffs again? And then I see that list up there, with many Wild Card appearances from the Pirates, not all THAT long ago. Huh. Are the Pirates not actually "doomed" into the indefinite future? Was it a terrible GM that hurt them badly, or the pandemic? Is it something that might be fixed again in the future, or is there indeed no reason at all to expect them back in the playoffs for the next decade?
Has there ever been a team to lose so many top-notch players? Losing Scherzer, Harper, Rendon, and Trea Turner is a lot of WAR to leave any franchise. I understand the fiscal dynamics, and non-Dodgers teams can only pay $30M/yr to so many players at once, but it still hurts to lose all those stars. Soto on top of that would be too much.
The one franchise that comes to my mind as a prime shedder of talent was ... (pages flipping) ... the same franchise. The Montreal Expos lost Andre Dawson, Vlad Guerrero, Pedro Martinez, Randy Johnson, Gary Carter, and Larry Walker, who are all HOFers, not to mention very good players like Marquis Grissom, Moises Alou.
Of the top 10 career WAR for position players, here is the list of the WAR for Expos/Nats to the left of the slash and later team(s) to the right:
Carter: 55.8 WAR for the Expos/14.3 WAR for later teams
Raines: 49.1/20.3
Dawson: 48.4/15.4
Guerrero: 34.7/24.8
Rendon: 30/TBD
Harper: 27.8/11.8 and counting for the Phillies
Trea Turner: 20.3/TBD
Walker: 21.1/51.6
Past these 8 players, Tim Wallach and Ryan Zimmerman were their only top 10 career WAR earners that didn't earn much/any WAR on later teams. You can add Pedro (20.2/61.9, mostly for the Red Sox) to that list. You can't fault them for Randy Johnson, because his two years in Montreal earned 0 WAR, and his breakout season for the Mariners was four years after he left the Expos. Incidentally, Soto is at 17.3 WAR at 22 years old but barring injury will dramatically add to that total.
Would any other franchise come close to that list?
On the plus side, there was gnashing of teeth in DC when Ian Desmond (16.2 WAR) and Jordan Zimmermann (19.5 WAR) left, but the Nats dodged a bullet by not signing either of those players to long term deals. Desmond had negative WAR and Zimmermann only 0.9 WAR after leaving.
As an aside on the Nats, 2019 was worth a lot, but Corbin and Strasberg have the potential to be huge drains down the road.
Time to be that guy:
"either the Dodgers or the Yankees will be the best wild-card team ever"
"either the Dodgers or the Giants will be the best wild-card team ever"
Man, the Yankees must haunt your ever waking hour.
Actually, the Cardinals were the Wild Card in 2011, not the Giants. The Cardinals went on to win the World Series.