Like the Athletics, the Pirates are an organization that must rely on smarts in place of money for them to compete. They are in a slightly better position than Oakland because they have enough money to tie up some of their young stars. Andrew McCutchen signed such a deal a

In some ways, we are all sad to see Ruben Amaro Jr. out of Philadelphia. When he was released as general manager, he left a trail of snark behind him long enough to go from Philadelphia to Boston (where he landed as a base coach for the Red Sox). He

The outfield is deep, and for that reason, it isn’t combined with another position in the Like Him Less, Like Him More series. At shortstop, I chose not to discuss the rankings disparity for Manny Machado as it appeared the result of some rankers not ranking him at that position.

Organizations in baseball get certain reputations for doing things well. Some organizations get known their ability to develop hitters while others get known for their ability to develop pitchers. The richer franchises get known for buying their talent. The flip side are those teams that belong to those on the

The great thing about sports is their unpredictability. We can crunch numbers and utilize more and more advanced analytics, but that only tells us why someone succeeds as often as they do and how often they will succeed. It won’t tell us exactly when they will succeed or the relative

The Cardinals are one of the model franchises in the big leagues. They’ve established a pipeline of talent that consistently seems to produce one or two surprise players every year. Yet, they also have a consistent pool of veterans that keep them in the pennant race. The Chicago Cubs have

The Tampa Bay Rays are one of the more successful have not franchises in baseball. A large part of their success has been their ability to develop their own talent. Yet, they may not be the best developmental franchise in baseball. The key to their success has been their ability

I’ll start by addressing the elephant in the room. I did not discuss the sizable gap in ECR and my rank of Manny Machado. It appears some experts aren’t ranking Machado at shortstop, and that’s the reason for the ECR of seventh at shortstop. Moving on, a pair of Cardinals

The New York Yankees are the very antithesis of a breakout team. They advanced to the wild card round of the playoffs last season, so this isn’t a knock on their ability. It’s just that they might be the oldest team in the league in terms of their position players.

We have now profiled every team in the AL Central and it shapes up to be the most competitive division in baseball. The Twins came within a few games of making the playoffs last season and most of their lineup is still young and on the come. Most of the