Baseball Umpire
Credit: LonEMedia | ©commons.wikimedia.org
This is not a list of the best five teams in baseball for 2009, but a list of the top five teams who achieved the most considering their circumstances. Winning the championship is the ultimate goal, but each team has a different potential level, so this is a ranking of which teams achieved the most with what they had.
1. The Colorado Rockies- The Colorado Rockies won the NL Wild Card by going 92-70 despite having the 18th highest payroll in baseball going into the 2009 season. They did this despite their All-Star outfielder Brad Hawpe hitting only .240 after the break and Garrett Atkins putting on his best Andrew Jones impression, going from stud to thud overnight. At mostly the corner infield positions, Atkins gave the Rockies a .226 batting average with only 9 home runs.
Despite the lowly payroll and underachieving stars, the Rockies stuck together and even after not making the postseason in 2008, held onto as much of the core from the 2007 World Series team as possible. They tried to wisely add pieces to help out where they could along the way such as Jason Giambi who provided 11 RBI in 31 September at-bats. Winning 92 games is not easy to do in baseball and it eluded many talented big market teams such as the Detroit Tigers and the New York Mets.
2. The Philadelphia Phillies- The team went on to make it to the World Series for a second straight year despite having to deal with Brad Lidge's fall from grace as he became a liability with his 7.21 ERA and 11 blown saves. Despite hurting for pitching so much that they had to sign Pedro Martinez, they still won 93 games to take their division. How good was the Phillies pitching overall? There was a brief rivalry that developed between Pedro Martinez and Jamie Moyer. When those two are your options for a pitching spot, one being a Mets throwaway of all things and the other being old enough to remember the invention of sliced bread, then you know you accomplished something special to be able to make the Fall Classic again.
1. The Colorado Rockies- The Colorado Rockies won the NL Wild Card by going 92-70 despite having the 18th highest payroll in baseball going into the 2009 season. They did this despite their All-Star outfielder Brad Hawpe hitting only .240 after the break and Garrett Atkins putting on his best Andrew Jones impression, going from stud to thud overnight. At mostly the corner infield positions, Atkins gave the Rockies a .226 batting average with only 9 home runs.
Despite the lowly payroll and underachieving stars, the Rockies stuck together and even after not making the postseason in 2008, held onto as much of the core from the 2007 World Series team as possible. They tried to wisely add pieces to help out where they could along the way such as Jason Giambi who provided 11 RBI in 31 September at-bats. Winning 92 games is not easy to do in baseball and it eluded many talented big market teams such as the Detroit Tigers and the New York Mets.
2. The Philadelphia Phillies- The team went on to make it to the World Series for a second straight year despite having to deal with Brad Lidge's fall from grace as he became a liability with his 7.21 ERA and 11 blown saves. Despite hurting for pitching so much that they had to sign Pedro Martinez, they still won 93 games to take their division. How good was the Phillies pitching overall? There was a brief rivalry that developed between Pedro Martinez and Jamie Moyer. When those two are your options for a pitching spot, one being a Mets throwaway of all things and the other being old enough to remember the invention of sliced bread, then you know you accomplished something special to be able to make the Fall Classic again.
Comments
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Great article. I love your humourous style of writing. I would have left off the Yankees but to each their own!
Thanks Jolynee. I figured it would look weird to anyone who tried to read the article. I am glad the system is working again.
Nice job, Peter, easy to follow, even for someone who doesn't know baseball!
I was wondering about that, didn't think you were at a loss for words lol!
This article was not intentionally left blank by me, but must be a system error.
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