As mentioned previously, I forgot to make this post when the regular season ended so here it is.
But first, a final look at the sweet, sweet playoff tree:
Yeah, baby.
Our old friend Natanael Santana, who spent five seasons in our outfield and hit 108 homers and then was traded in 2030 to Philly for Alistair Hardy and ended up a free agent and spent most of 2031 in the minors, somehow exploded for 53 HR and 127 RBI for Toronto in a classic case of "who knew?".
And again, you can see why the postseason offensive dominance by the Rays was such a shock, given that it was a struggle all season to score runs. It was the pitching that carried them there, but the bats woke up at just the right time. Here are their pedestrian regular season numbers:
A lot of guys with adequate seasons but Solano was the only one who was above-average. Now check out their postseason numbers (sorted by OPS since WAR is wonky over short stints):
Yordan clearly took it to another level, Solano was almost as good and Adley carried us through the early rounds. An unsung bat in the mix was Williams, who seemed to always be coming up with hits to prolong innings or rallies. We hit 35 homers in 17 postseason games as a team, which really is something considering 162 regular season games saw 180 or barely over one a game.
Before things went sour for him in the postseason Rodriguez had one of the all-time great seasons by a reliever in franchise history and 3.4 WAR for a reliever is pretty much up there period. Otherwise we had a bunch of 5-inning-type starters who were quite good but often they couldn't make it through 5 and middle-inning guy Buckman came on to end up winning 15 games in relief. Their postseason numbers:
And you can see R-Rod's struggles in black and white, along with Watters who was brutal. Thankfully Ogando and Oviedo picked up the slack and the rest of the staff was very good including the dependable Buckman. They all get rings.
One area in which we're not championship-caliber is the farm system, which ranks in the mid-to-upper 20s MLB-wide. Our 2032 #1 pick Miller is seen as the top prospect, and as far as immediate impact goes Gurrola is a possibility as a leadoff type.
We'll talk more about him and the 2033 outlook in the State of the Team post coming up next.