Ah, but Major League was filmed in 1989. Form 1994 onward, the Indians/Guardians have been one of the game's better organizations.
Teams like Cleveland and Houston show it can be done - finally stop decades of poor culture to where the good culture survives through multiple eras.
I'm not really ready to put Houston in a higher category though. The Killer Bs era was pretty much like the '08 Phillies etc. - more of a one-off. What they have done a good job of is staying the course despite changing GMs and now many players. But we're really only talking about the last seven years (preceded by 9 years of losing, only some of it on purpose).
Houston is a pretty big market these days though. 8th currently though 4-10 (Philly through Boston) are all pretty close now.
https://oaaa.org/Portals/0/Public%20PDFs/OAAA%202021%20NIELSEN%20DMA%20Rankings%20Report.pdf1
Note - baseball markets are different because they often include whole regions outside the major market.
Cleveland is smaller of course. They had the second nice stadium after Camden Yards in the early 90s so they were a bigger revenue team compared to market size for a few years. The last 15-20 years they have really been an average team that can compete in a weak division. Both Central divisions are really full of small market teams and more easily winnable.
Houston has always been a big market. Under previous ownership (and in the old stadium) they were basically the Phillies, a cheap and underachieving club relative to the city. Only difference is Houston is less of a baseball town (historically and climate-wise). Now it's big enough they even moved the minor league team to the 'burbs.
If only Cincinnati or Pittsburgh could have figured out what Cleveland did.
None of these small market teams can truly compete in MLB, and none of the under $100,000,000 teams have ever won a championship I don't think (at least not in recent years when >200,000,000 is a normal high payroll). But the Guardians have only had three GMs since 1991 and they all have been successful, with no real hiccup once Shapiro left. And Hart played a role in good Rangers and Braves teams (even if his Rangers tenure is was not itself a hit, and his Braves role more advisory).
Actually, in forty-six seasons going back to 1977, the Astros have had just fourteen losing seasons and four of them were during the tanking era and the tanking years (2011-14) were preceeded by two losing seasons when Wade tried to win but built a loser. Prior to 2009, the Astros had only one period where they posted a losing record two years in a row (1990-91). And, they went to the Postseason nine times in twenty-six years from 1980-2005, So, I would say that even before the current management, the Astros have been a consistently good organization with a good culture. And, you have to wonder if all that tanking was really necessary considering how the Astros had a good culture and a knack for figuring things out fairly quickly.
I would agree that that Braves (since 1991), Indians/Guardians (since 1994) and Rays (since 2008) have been fairly recent "building a culture" success stories. If only we could build a good culture.
Well, I lived in Texas for 20 years and have a lot of Astros fan friends, and they always viewed the team under Drayton the same way we viewed the Phillies under Giles, and definitely viewed him as cheap (the Randy Johnson trade excepted). Of course, the two front offices were also joined at the hip.
Wasn't really even Wade's fault - again, much like the Phillies, ownership wasn't ready to cut the cord on aging legends. And in both cases many of Wade's players panned out for the team that fired him.
I'm sure fans of any number of other teams would look at the Phillies' success over the last 50 years and think we've had it pretty good. Two near-dynastic eras, two fun outlier runs (if you don't consider '83 to be part of the previous era), five trips to the World Series, two rings. A lot of downs in that period too but it's not a track record that screams bad owner or bad culture.
I don't think this Luhnow/Click era maintained any culture from the previous eras. It was a total knockdown to the studs. It was also an import of both Cardinals culture and analytics culture. And of course, it also involved cheating (but then they said that about the Phillies and Charlie too).
I guess the grass is always greener someplace else. I think Astro fans are nuts to complain about the last fifty years and, as much as the Phillies madden us, we probably haven't had it all that bad compared to a number of other places. In fact, take away the franchise's thirty-one year dark ages (1918-48) when Baker and Nugent were either too cheap or too broke to make the Phillies even competitive, the Phillies have been pretty run-of-the-mill.
Question...Do the Blue Jays have an advantage when playing at home based upon the number of players who are not able to play on other teams? Have there been any real reports put out showing how the "missing" players have helped Toronto increase the odds of winning home games.
What do other teams in the AL who are battling them for playoff spots feel about these games?
What about any playoff games, will there be a number of players getting vaccinated in Sept if there is a chance they may have to play in Toronto a few games?
People kind of stopped talking about it (in America) after the Yankees players got vaccinated. And it just hasn't been that many teams/players. The Reds and Twins each had four. Jays won the Reds series (2-1), lost the Twins series (2-1). Their home/road record is basically normal for a contending team (.581 at home .487 road).
But yes: The Red Sox blew a big game when they were without their closer and one other player and lost the series 1-2.
certainly not before the Phillies series, and given the way things are going, probably not at all. If anything they might start requiring boosters (which they should, if you're going to require anything) or the new Omicron-specific vaccine (though that's not likely to be ready before the playoffs).
But that's a different (if dormant) thread.
Albert Pujols and Miguel Cabrera have been named All-Stars. I think that's great. The fans want to see them.
In 2001, MLB failed to do the same for the retiring greats Cal Ripken and Tony Gwynn. The fans voted Ripken in anyway, but while they invited Gwynn, they honored him in street clothes and didn't put him on the team. I thought that was poor. Ripken homered in the game.
I remember reading someone arguing against including Ripken in 2001 because Scott Brosius had better numbers!
Every now and then MLB creates special extra roster spots for retiring greats. I know they did it in 1983 for Bench and Yastrezmski. They should have done that for Ripken and Gwynn in 2001.
That was a great trade the Braves just made. Waters was blocked and they picked up the 35th pick, in which $2.2 million of slotting goes with it. Nice thinking.
gm
Agree. The consensus also seems that it is unlikely Waters will hit enough to be a regular, so this is a trade of a defensive CF at a position where the Braves have depth and some minor pieces for a very high compensation pick (35 overall).
The Phillies may not have the upper minors depth to pull this type of trade off, but one wonders since they never seem to try (especially in years where they start out down a draft pick).
Brief Athletic analysis of the deal: