About midway through the playoffs I realized I forgot to post this after the Rays' loss in the tiebreaker game which ended the regular season, so here goes now:
Michael Brantley won the AL batting average crown, but that was more to do with what he did in Houston as he hit .290 for us. Randy Arozarena was the AL steals king.
Our team stats:
Anyone who followed along will not be surprised we were one of the best teams for run prevention and despite several trades to try and improve the offense, one of the worst teams when it came to scoring runs, hence the mediocre record. We were also a terrible road team (and not that great defensively, which is unusual although we did trade away defensive stalwarts like Kevin Kiermaier and Brett Phillips).
The "hitting" stats:
Wander was fine, and Randy Arozarena had a good second half, but man these numbers are brutal. Brandon Lowe got his homers but nothing else, Mike Zunino regressed as expected, and none of the acquisitions were anything special - if Josh Bell had decided a little sooner than the last 10-14 days of the season to come to life, we might have easily made the playoffs.
The pitching stats:
Our young starting corps did the job as you saw above that we were 2nd in the league in runs allowed, even if they were kind of homer-prone and it always seemed those homers came in big spots (although with the lack of offense every spot was a big one). Jalen Beeks had a wondrous year out of the pen, and Taylor Rogers was the one midseason acquisition who really got the job done. This starting group will be joined by Tyler Glasnow next season, so pitching will be a continued strength but man we have to figure out how to build an offense. The payroll will be low, especially since we either deal or non-tender the likes of Ryan Yarbrough and Yandy Diaz, projected for a combined $7M which will leave us projected at $60M and perhaps enough money to bring it a bat or two. We're also going to need a catcher with Zunino a free agent and asking for a ridiculous amount to extend.