Author: rincon

Among the 25 World Series champions since 2000, how did the 2003 Marlins land in this spot? 

There were concerns about Ivan Rodriguez’s health heading into the 2003 season, which is why he was still a free agent in January despite slashing .314/.353/.542 with the Rangers in 2002. The veteran catcher had been in the majors for 12 years at that point, and he had missed time due to injuries in each of the previous three years. Combining those concerns with what he was asking for in free agency left him out in the cold, and the Marlins offering a $10 million, one-year deal had his agent shopping around Japanese teams for a big-money deal instead of just taking it.

In the end, Rodriguez did accept Florida’s offer, and good thing for the Marlins. He was their best player in 2003, hitting .297/.369/.474 with 54 extra-base hits in 144 games, and helped lead them to their second World Series championship. He would take home NLCS MVP honors along the way, batting .321/.424/.607 in seven games against the Cubs. His 2003 campaign would earn him that significant free-agent deal he had been searching for: That offseason, Rodriguez signed a four-year, $40 million deal with the Tigers, and then helped lead them to the 2006 World Series.

The 2003 Marlins were far more than just Rodriguez. They also had Luis Castillo’s Gold Glove defense at second base to go along with an above-average bat. They had Juan Pierre and his MLB-leading 65 stolen bases. First baseman Derrek Lee bashed 31 homers. Mike Lowell posted an .881 OPS, and his glove at third was a reliable one. The Marlins also had 20-year-old rookie Miguel Cabrera, who batted .268/.325/.468 with 12 homers in his first taste of big-league baseball. Cabrera would hit another four huge homers in the postseason, including three in the hotly contested NLCS with Chicago.

The rotation was the true engine behind the championship Marlins, though. Rookie Dontrelle Willis made 27 starts and fell a single out short of qualifying on leaderboards, but his 3.30 ERA was second-best among regular starters behind Josh Beckett. Due to missing significant time with an elbow sprain, Beckett also didn’t qualify for leaderboards but, like Willis, he was just as much of an ace when he was on the mound. These two were joined by the average-or-better trio of Carl Pavano, Brad Penny and Mark Redman. The bullpen got a boost midseason in the form of Ugueth Urbina. The Marlins acquired him in a July trade with the Rangers, and he posted a 1.41 ERA over 33 games with them, and pitched another 13 innings in October.

The Yankees were the heavy favorite in the 2003 World Series after winning 101 games and defeating the loaded Red Sox in the ALCS. The Marlins had already downed the 100-win Giants in the NLDS, however, and crushed the Cubs’ dreams of ending their championship drought by winning Games 5, 6 and 7 of the NLCS. Florida then won the final three games of the World Series as well, beating the Yankees in six games and ending New York’s dreams of adding another banner to Yankee Stadium.

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Among the 25 World Series champions since 2000, how did the 2012 Giants land in this spot? 

The 2012 Giants won 95 games, three more than their 2010 cousins, but they were actually the lesser team. They outscored opponents by just 69 runs, and because of that, their expected record put them at just 88 wins. Obviously, the “extra” wins were in the bank, but we’re comparing the quality of teams that won a World Series this century. If there’s a time to pick nits and then explain those nits, it’s now.

The 2012 Giants might be one of the lesser champions of the century, but you can’t criticize Buster Posey even a little bit. In 2010, he was the Rookie of the Year backstop who helped lead the Giants to their first championship since 1954, when they were still playing in New York. In 2012, Posey was a monster, leading the National League in wins above replacement while winning a batting title and the NL MVP. 

Left fielder Melky Cabrera (.346/.390/.516), center fielder Angel Pagan (.288/.338/.440), third baseman Pablo Sandoval (.789 OPS) and first baseman Brandon Belt (.360 OBP) were the other lineup standouts. They helped this team have a well above-average offense, the strength of the club.

What was missing from this club was the pitching that powered the 2010 championship. Matt Cain was even better than he had been in 2010, but Madison Bumgarner was just a bit above average, as was Ryan Vogelsong. Barry Zito was flat-out bad; Tim Lincecum was appreciably worse. The Giants didn’t upgrade on either of those two former Cy Young Award winners throughout the year, and it’s their performance that made the staff below-average overall.

This is what people mean when they talk about this era’s Giants possessing even-year magic, though. Lincecum was truly awful in the regular season, with a 5.18 ERA and the worst control of his career to that point. In the postseason, he threw 13 innings in long relief, including a 4.1-inning appearance in Game 4 of the NLDS, and gave up just one run. Zito kept his rotation spot for October, and in Game 5 of the NLCS went 7.2 scoreless innings in a 5-0 win. Then in the World Series against the Tigers, Zito allowed only one run in 5.2 innings. 

Lincecum and Zito were a drag on the Giants all season, until they were as much of a reason that they won the title as anyone else on the roster. 

Pablo Sandoval would win World Series MVP after slashing .500/.529/1.125 with three of his six postseason homers. He had a monster October in general, batting .364/.386/.712 with 24 hits and 13 RBIs. The Giants crushed the Tigers in the World Series, sweeping Detroit, but in the NLDS and NLCS were pushed to Game 5 and Game 7. That Tigers team won just 88 games, though, so that sweep is a bit of a push, as far as tiebreakers in these rankings go.

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Among the 25 World Series champions since 2000, how did the 2010 Giants land in this spot? 

They were the start of a dynasty, and the strongest of the bunch, too. Three World Series victories in five seasons began here, in Buster Posey’s rookie year, thanks to his production as well as huge campaigns from third baseman Aubrey Huff, who batted .290/.385/.506 with a team-leading 26 home runs; outfielder Andres Torres, who combined a more-than-solid .268/.343/.479 with an impact glove; and Pat Burrell, signed as a free agent after the Rays cut him loose in mid-May following an abysmal start to the year — he’d hit .266/.364/.509 with 18 homers in 96 games for the Giants. Posey was the star, though, slugging over .500 as a catcher and winning Rookie of the Year while picking up some NL MVP votes, all while taking charge of the pitching staff that was this club’s true strength.

Despite that group above, the Giants were an average at-best team offensively. Aaron Rowand and Nate Schierholtz were holes in the lineup, while Pablo Sandoval was a disappointment at third. Freddy Sanchez, Edgar Renteria and Juan Uribe hit just fine, but were not outstanding by any means — what made it all work, though, is that this was a fine defensive unit. And that strengthened a rotation where Barry Zito was somehow the weakest link.

Matt Cain and Tim Lincecum were co-aces at the top, with Cain posting a 3.14 ERA in 223.1 innings, while Lincecum was at 3.43 through 212.1 while leading the National League in strikeouts. Jonathan Sanchez actually produced a better ERA than either of them at 3.07, but over 193.1 innings — his starts were also a little less predictable, since he led the majors in walks allowed but also in fewest hits per nine. It was by no means a repeatable trick as the rest of his career attested, but he only had to get away with it once. Then there was 20-year-old Madison Bumgarner throwing 111 innings with a 3.00 ERA and 18 starts — it’s no wonder that Zito, having more of an inning-eating campaign than anything, didn’t stand out as a star in this group despite his name.

The bullpen featured a three-headed monster of Santiago Casilla, Sergio Romo and closer Brian Wilson: the worst ERA of the bunch was Romo’s, at 2.18, and the group combined for over six wins above replacement — an absurd figure for a trio of relievers that over their 192 innings as a unit, actually outperformed even the best rotation members on the club, two of whom picked up Cy Young votes. 

The Giants took some time to find their identity, but adding Burrell and Bumgarner in-season changed both the lineup and the rotation, and Wilson’s ascension into an upper-echelon reliever who ended up with more Cy Young votes than his more-than-capable rotation mates gave them that little extra boost. “Even-year magic” was often the refrain for this era’s Giants’ teams, but 2010’s championship was legit.

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Among the 25 World Series champions since 2000, how did the 2015 Royals land in this spot? 

The Royals have a reputation as lucking their way into a championship with seeing-eye singles, but that’s not fair. They won 95 games because they were a really good baseball team.

The offense didn’t stand out, but .269/.322/.412 in a league batting .254/.317/.405 isn’t nothing, especially considering that they had a top-five pitching staff in no small part thanks to the defense of the hitters that put up that line. Lorenzo Cain was a vacuum out in center, and Salvador Perez’s reputation behind the plate was already deserved. Alcides Escobar, Jarrod Dyson and Omar Infante weren’t lighting up the scoreboard, but they made up for that deficiency with their defense. Kendrys Morales mashed plenty at DH, and players like Alex Gordon and Eric Hosmer did well on both sides of the ball, like Cain, with Hosmer even winning a Gold Glove.

All of this powered a pitching staff led by an impossible bullpen, the kind that helped influence the ones you see in the modern game. Wade Davis was the best reliever on the team and its most valuable pitcher, despite being a setup man. In 67.1 innings, he posted a 0.94 ERA, making him the only pitcher on the staff to receive any Cy Young votes, as well as the only pitcher out of five Royals players to pick up any MVP votes. Kelvin Herrera and Ryan Madson weren’t Wade Davis-level good, but no one was: they were excellent in a vacuum. On top of that core, there was the actual closer, Greg Holland (3.83 ERA), as well as Franklin Morales (3.18 ERA) and former starter Luke Hochevar. The pen had enough going for it that the Royals could deal Brandon Finnegan and his 2.96 ERA at the deadline for upgrades elsewhere without skipping a beat.

And it wasn’t just the bullpen: Edinson Volquez had the second-best season of his career, while Yordano Ventura and Danny Duffy managed to be above-average, and the oft-injured Chris Young shined in the starts he was able to make. Jeremy Guthrie was rough in the regular season but a non-factor in the playoffs, a little bit of addition by subtraction. Johnny Cueto was added at the trade deadline, and while he wasn’t the ace that the Royals were hoping for, he was still an improvement over the likes of Guthrie.

This was a deep pitching staff that upgraded its weakest part, supported by a high-quality defense and a lineup that was going to be more productive than not. This was a better team than the 2014 edition, which also made it to the World Series — there was no fluke here, just a good plan seen through to the end. There were seeing-eye singles, sure, but hit by the kind of batters who were brought in for that sort of thing. They won the ALCS handily against the Blue Jays in six games before taking out the Mets in five in the World Series.

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Among the 25 World Series champions since 2000, how did the 2005 White Sox land in this spot? 

The squad don’t get the respect they deserve, in part because of their being a one-and-done act. The 2005 club made the postseason, the first time the White Sox had earned a berth since 2000, which was itself the first time since 1993. And that had been the first time since an entire decade before, which was Chicago’s first appearance since 1959, when they lost the World Series. The White Sox don’t make the postseason often, is the thing, and never have: the World Series was an even more significant rarity. The 2005 World Series, though, was an even longer championship-less streak than 2004’s vaunted Red Sox, as Chicago was in the 1917 Fall Classic and won, and did not do so again until this 2005 squad.

Unlike Boston’s win, which featured stars in the lineup — David Ortiz! Manny Ramirez! Johnny Damon! — and in the rotation — Curt Schilling and Pedro Martinez — the White Sox were, comparatively, just some guys. This isn’t meant to be dismissive, either, but to give you insight into why one is looked back upon as this magical thing full of memories, and the other is, comparatively, forgotten about. The 2005 White Sox did not have another championship win a few years later: they were just the 2005 White Sox.

In that one year, though, that was more than enough. Paul Konerko slugged 40 home runs and posted a high on-base percentage in a season he would only exceed in quality once in his 18-year career. Aaron Rowand wasn’t much of a hitter, but he could defend like no one else in center, and A.J. Pierzynski similarly hit enough for a catcher while also handling the pitching staff exceptionally well. Jermaine Dye wasn’t much of a defender and Frank Thomas spent time at DH (until his season ended early with a foot fracture) but both brought the offense. Tadahito Iguchi and Juan Uribe split the difference a bit, while Scott Podsednik stole 59 bases to help make up for his lack of power, and he also reached base at a 35% clip, too. The offense wasn’t good, no, but it had enough going for it to get by, especially with a defense designed to make its pitchers into out machines.

All four of Mark Buehrle, Jon Garland, Freddy Garcia and Jose Contreras threw between 204 and 236 innings, with Buehrle leading the league while Garland and Garcia both got over the 220 mark. None of them were strikeout pitchers, but they all put the ball in play, with regularity, in places and ways that the strong defense behind them could get to it. They were a very different squad than 2004’s Red Sox, but nearly as impressive: they won 99 games, and swept the sequel to that Boston team en route to the World Series, too. While Podsednik wasn’t much of a hitter in-season, in October, he hit .286/.397/.551 with 2 homers — his only two of the year. Like with the team as a whole, the timing was just right.

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Among the 25 World Series champions since 2000, how did the 2021 Braves land in this spot? 

The Braves won just 88 regular season games, but remember that they had to play a huge chunk of the season without Ronald Acuna Jr. Acuna, in just 82 games, put up 3.5 wins above replacement while batting .283/.394/.596 with 24 home runs, 17 steals and 44 extra-base hits overall. Not having a full season of that guy will bring any team’s wins down.

That’s part of what makes the Braves winning the World Series without him so remarkable: they didn’t have Acuna around after July 10, as he tore his ACL midseason, and they still won it all. One of the best players in the league — Acuna would win MVP the next time he was fully healthy after a normal offseason of prep, in 2023 — just ripped out of the lineup at the halfway point.

Having Jorge Soler to fill in as the Braves right fielder was a huge help: Atlanta picked him up before the trade deadline while he was batting just .192/.288/.370 for the Royals, and he mashed to the tune of .269/.358/.524 with 14 homers in 55 games with the Braves. Not quite Acuna numbers, no, but Soler made sure there was no hole there, and then ended up winning World Series MVP after posting an 1.191 OPS with 3 homers against the Astros. Third baseman Austin Riley had his breakout year, winning the full-time job and bashing 33 homers in the first of three consecutive six-win seasons. Freddie Freeman, in his final season with the Braves, was Freddie Freeman: constantly on base, plenty of power and responsible for a .304/.420/.625 showing with five homers in the postseason. 

The offense was fine overall — just average, basically, but with some heavy hitters. The defense helped make up for that, with Riley, Ozzie Albies, Adam Duvall and Dansby Swanson all positive contributors there, while players like Soler hit more than enough to offset what they lacked in the field. This unit did more than enough to help their pitchers, at the plate and with their gloves — it was the staff that was the true star of this club.

Max Fried (3.04 ERA) and Charlie Morton (3.34 ERA) led a rotation without a true standout ace, but that got the job done thanks to depth and a stellar bullpen. Behind Fried and Morton was rookie Ian Anderson (3.58), while Drew Smyly and Huascar Ynoa didn’t rack up innings, but were at least average and better than that, respectively, in the starts they did make. The bullpen was loaded: Will Smith closed things out and did a great job of things, but it was setup men Luke Jackson (1.98 ERA in 71 games) and Tyler Matzek (2.57 ERA in 69 games) that comprised the bridge between the starters and Smith.

Another thing about 88 wins: these Braves took down the 95-win Brewers, 106-win Dodgers and 95-win Astros to get their title. And they went 11-5 doing it, too.

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Among the 25 World Series champions since 2000, how did the 2023 Rangers land in this spot? 

The 2023 World Series was not the first the Rangers had appeared in, but it’s not like the franchise had made a habit out of getting there, either.

They joined MLB in 1961 as the Washington Senators before moving to Texas for the 1972 season, switching from the AL East to the AL West in the process. They would not make it to the postseason for the first time until 1996, then again in ‘98 and ‘99, but didn’t make it past the Division Series in any of those appearances. It took until 2010 for Texas to reach the postseason again, but when they did, they made it all the way to the World Series before losing to the Giants, then miraculously got to the Fall Classic again in 2011, only to fall to the Cardinals. After missing the postseason from 2017 through 2022, the Rangers reached meaningful October baseball once more in 2023, and this time they — finally — won it all.

The Rangers could pitch, especially after acquiring Jordan Montgomery from the Cardinals mid-season: that gave them a rotation with Montgomery (2.79 ERA in 11 starts), Dane Dunning (3.70 ERA in 35 games and 26 starts) and Nathan Eovaldi (3.63 ERA in 25 starts), along with some slightly above-average arms in Jon Gray and Andrew Heaney. Impressive, considering that they started the year with Jacob deGrom but lost him to Tommy John after six starts, but picking up Max Scherzer at the deadline in addition to Montgomery for eight stretch-run starts helped them deal with that major loss. 

The real strength of the team, other than an almost-weakness turned into depth through a couple of in-season trades, was the lineup. They had the top offense in the AL and second-best in the majors, and much of that credit belongs to the trio of Marcus Semien, Corey Seager and Adolis Garcia. Both Semien and Seager were in the AL MVP mix — but understandably lost to Shohei Ohtani — while Garcia slugged over .500 and led the team in homers, while trailing only the aforementioned Ohtani among AL hitters. Mitch Garver, in a part-time role, hit .270/.370/.500 as well, while shortstop Josh Jung posted a .781 OPS. While Seager was the clear standout that was head-and-shoulders even above Semien and Garcia offensively, like with the rotation, the lack of real holes was the key to the Texas attack. Nearly all of these hitters could hurt opposing pitchers, and they did.

The Rangers did not have an easy road to the World Series. They had to defeat the 99-win Rays in the AL Wild Card Series. The 101-win Orioles awaited them in the ALDS, but they were vanquished, too, in a three-game sweep. It took seven games to defeat the Astros, who, like Texas, went 90-72, but owned the tiebreaker and therefore became AL West champions. So while the 84-win Diamondbacks might come off as a weak World Series opponent, the Rangers were tested plenty before ever getting to the championship round.

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Among the 25 World Series champions since 2000, how did the 2004 Red Sox land in this spot? 

This team is one of the great stories of this century, in the same way that the 2005 White Sox and 2016 Cubs are — organizations that have existed as long, if not longer, than Major League Baseball itself, and had gone without championships for almost the entirety of the league’s existence. Unlike the Chicago clubs, the Red Sox came close to winning the World Series, again (1967) and again (1975) and again (1986) since the advent of color television: even though their championship-less run was shorter than the Cubs’ own and more successful than that of the White Sox, it was painful in a more recent and more recognizable way.

Then the Yankees defeated the 2003 Red Sox in a heartbreaking — for Boston, anyway — Game 7 ALCS loss only added to the proceedings. The 2004 season was different for everyone involved. The 2003 lineup had already added Bill Mueller, Kevin Millar and David Ortiz to a group including Johnny Damon, Jason Varitek and Manny Ramirez, with Ortiz becoming a star after he won the everyday job as the designated hitter, but the Sox brought on more after the loss to New York. Boston added Curt Schilling over the offseason, giving them a co-ace to pair with Pedro Martinez. They added Mark Bellhorn to play second base, and he produced a .373 on-base percentage, while rookie Kevin Youkilis appeared in 72 games with a .367 mark. The Sox traded homegrown star Nomar Garciaparra midseason for shortstop Orlando Cabrera and first baseman Doug Mientkiewicz to shore up their defense, which was the weak point on a team that could certainly hit.

While Pedro Martinez wasn’t at his best, his performance was still good enough for fourth in the AL Cy Young race. All told, 157 of Boston’s 162 starts were made by their five rotation regulars, and it was this depth combined with their overall talent that led them to 98 wins. Derek Lowe looked like the odd man out compared to Schilling, Martinez, Tim Wakefield and Bronson Arroyo, but he was more unlucky than anything and still racked up 33 starts and 182 innings. In the postseason, he was as valuable as anyone else: Lowe posted a 1.86 ERA over 19.1 innings and four games, including using his past closer experience to shut the Angels down in relief in extras in Game 3 of the ALDS. He started Game 4 against the Yankees, the first step toward Boston’s comeback from down 3-0 in the series, and was the winning pitcher in Game 7 after throwing six innings of 1-run ball in New York.

The Red Sox swept the Cardinals in the World Series, despite the immense talent of an opponent that was inarguably better than many of the actual champions this century has seen. The 2004 Red Sox don’t get extra credit for the narrative of their comeback or for breaking the curse of Babe Ruth, but taking down the star-studded ‘04 Cardinals? That’s an objective point in their favor.

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Among the 25 World Series champions since 2000, how did the 2019 Nationals land in this spot? 

It makes sense that the Nationals won the World Series in a year in which Stephen Strasburg threw over 200 innings. The only other time he managed the feat, in 2014, the Nats went 96-66 and won the NL East, but lost to the Giants in the NLDS. A healthy Strasburg was a rarity, but also meant good things — there were reasons the organization was so intent on protecting his arm. The hope was that all the protection would pay off someday, and in 2019, it did. Strasburg paired with co-ace Max Scherzer and was joined by Patrick Corbin and Anibal Sanchez for one of the great rotations in the league. The bullpen was nowhere near as good, but with four starters who could give the Nats length, it didn’t have to be.

The lineup, too, was good, but it was the rotation that made everything work. The Nationals didn’t lack hitters, but the likes of Anthony Rendon (.319/.412/.598 with 34 home runs), Juan Soto (.282/.401/.548 with 34 homers), Trea Turner (.298/.353/.497 at shortstop) and Howie Kendrick (.344/.395/.572 in 121 games) were sometimes canceled out by below-average offensive players at four positions — you’d think they would have been better than sixth in the league in runs scored and just a bit above-average by adjusted OPS given Rendon, Soto, Turner and Kendrick’s performances, but Matt Adams, Brian Dozier and Victor Robles dragged things down, and Yan Gomes, while a quality defensive catcher, was still a bit below-average offensively even for the position. 

Still, with that core group and a rotation that, as a unit, posted a 3.53 ERA and averaged over 5.2 innings per start, the Nats were able to weather those issues just fine, to the point that they outscored opponents by 149 runs, anyway. Similarly, while the bullpen was full of holes, it also had Sean Doolittle closing games out — he finished an NL-leading 55 games — a 42-year-old and still productive Fernando Rodney as well as Daniel Hudson, who shined in the second half after the Nats acquired him from the Blue Jays at the trade deadline. Hudson posted a 1.44 ERA across 25 games and 24 innings in his two months in the pen, and then pitched in 10 of the Nats’ 17 postseason games. While he allowed four runs, three of those came in one appearance: seven of his 10 postseason games were scoreless outings.

The Nationals took down the Brewers in the Wild Card Game, then toppled the 106-win Dodgers in the NLDS, three games to two. A sweep of the Cardinals in the NLCS brought them to the organization’s first-ever World Series, even dating back to their time in Montreal, and then they were able to defeat, in a dramatic seven games, the 107-win Astros. The Nationals might have had some weaknesses and won a wild card, but there is no denying the quality of the competition that led them to their first-ever championship.

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