Having a good team is the sexiest way to kick off baseball's winter season. Your team and your fans have visions of pennants dancing in your heads, and the free-agent market looks like a buffet of awesomeness as you think about what big-name signings and acquisitions would make your good team into a great one.
But when you're an also-ran, the options are less exhilarating. A big signing may just make your non-contending team more expensive. A rebuild job may be a smart decision, but the moment you decide to start tearing up your team can be heart-rending and won't sell tickets for next season. These decisions need to be made one way or another, and frequently these will make up the turning points that decide if your team will someday become the 2016 Cubs or the 2016 Padres.
With that in mind, how have the bad teams in baseball done so far this winter? For each of these teams, 10 games out of the playoffs or worse, let's look at what they needed to be doing this winter, and how well they've accomplished that goal.
Arizona Diamondbacks (69-93)
The Mission: Rebuild the front office.
Arizona probably had a worse season than you'd have expected from their talent, but even if the team had gone 82-80 and missed the playoffs by a less nauseating margin, the same fundamental problem would have remained. Simply put, Arizona's front office was not remotely up to the challenges a modern front office deals with. Just stuffing an old player and an old manager into a front office and letting them throw some money around is, as plans go, a thoroughly archaic concept. Horse-drawn carriages were once an efficient method of transportation, too, but in 2016 they're more for romantic sojourns in Central Park, not for competing with tractor-trailers for shipping goods. To get where they're going, Arizona first needed to figure out where they actually are. And that's what they did, snagging one of the top GM candidates in Mike Hazen from the Red Sox. They also brought in Amiel Sawdaye (also from Boston) and Jared Porter from the Cubs to fill out the front office. Good moves, but their work is now just starting.
Chicago White Sox (78-84)
The Mission: Take apart the core.
The plan in Chicago had been simple: Add enough through free agency and trades to supplement a recovering farm system and make a few serious runs in the AL Central, one of the weaker divisions in baseball. Unfortunately for the White Sox, the pieces never came together, they never finished .500 with Jose Abreu or David Robertson or Melky Cabrera or Todd Frazier or Adam Eaton, and players like Chris Sale and Jose Quintana only got the briefest taste of winning early in their careers. Even if the plan was good -- I'd argue it was, though the execution wasn't always -- at this point it's just not happening. Chicago had to accept that their window was just about closed, and they had to get while the going is good. After all, the longer you wait to rebuild, the more painful it is because your tradable assets may have lost value.
And they did it! The plan isn't complete yet, but you don't trade Chris Sale and Adam Eaton as they did if you plan to just tinker around the edges. They may have varying ideas on the optimal way to get value out of Quintana, Robertson, Frazier and eventually Abreu, but there's no doubt that's the plan. Trading just two players so far, the White Sox already have a top-five farm system. The White Sox could end up with the best farm system they've ever had, or at least as far as I can remember.
Colorado Rockies (75-87)
The Mission: Set the stage for the farm system.
The Rockies have been a rebuilding team for six years, but they have had a distinct problem of nobody on the team apparently realizing it. One of the things that rebuilding teams need to do is move the players that contribute to the present, a time frame that ought to be important for such a team, for players that contribute to the future.
They did that with Troy Tulowitzki, but outside of that trade, have done almost nothing to get value from their veterans. What did they get after Justin Morneau's comeback season in Colorado? Nothing. Michael Cuddyer, having his best season at age 34 and leading the league in batting average? A sandwich pick. Jorge De La Rosa wouldn't fetch Kevin Gausman, but the Rockies just hung onto him. Dexter Fowler went for two mediocre MLB-"ready" players that were Triple-A-ready at best. And after just peeking at the edge of the wild-card race late last summer -- ZiPS had them peaking at a 2 percent chance -- that was enough for them to not trade do anything.
Now they've made the problem worse, picking up Ian Desmond for five years and $70 million, to play a position (first base) he'll have trouble ever being a league-average player overall. Mike Dunn, an ordinary left-handed reliever, was given $19 million. Everything else stays as it was. They've done a great job building the farm system and it's good enough that they can still burst a good season or two, but Colorado's ineptitude at the major league level has seriously damaged their chances of turning the team into a consistent, long-term challenger to the powers of the league.
Tampa Bay Rays (68-94)
The Mission: Set the table for a bounce back.
At 68 wins, 2017 was the closest the Rays have been to the bad old days of fighting the Orioles for the cellar every year. However, unlike some other teams, the Rays still had an argument for keeping the team together before throwing in the towel on the current core. They had no significant free agents after 2016 and the reasons the projections coming into last season had them around .500 were mainly still intact.
The Rays have been kind of quiet, but did make one interesting high-upside pickup in Wilson Ramos, who if healthy enough to eventually play catcher again, can help the Rays if they contend in 2017 or help them by being a valuable trade chit if they don't.
We'll still call this one incomplete; the Rays have the least payroll flexibility in the majors, probably worse than that of the A's, and we haven't reached the real bargain-bin portion of the offseason.
Los Angeles Angels (74-88)
The Mission: Find the team's identity other than just having Mike Trout.
With the weaker free-agent classes in recent years, the holes in the Angels' plan of "have Mike Trout, throw enough money around to make a .500 team otherwise" have become painfully apparent. Having an 80-win team and Trout makes you a playoff contender. Having a 70-win team and Trout is not.
The challenge for the Angels is how to build at least a borderline contender around Trout, and they still haven't been able to figure that one out. Cameron Maybin and Danny Espinosa are good pickups, but supporting cast members for a team with only one leading man. That works for a Bond movie, but not a baseball team.
Atlanta Braves (68-93) and Philadelphia Phillies (71-91)
The Mission: Stay the course.
At the start of the winter, Atlanta talked big about free agency and being a contender in 2016. That was a worrisome thing for the Braves. Yes, they had a solid second-half, but this wasn't a young team that blossomed after an abysmal first half. The pitching, the actual young part of the Braves, actually pitched worse over the second half. What improved was the offense, going from a .649 OPS to a .774 OPS after the All-Star break, mostly made up of players who made up the seventh-oldest offense in baseball -- and every other top-10 oldest offense was on a contending team.
The good news is that the Braves have mostly avoided doing anything silly, like start trading off prospects for big-name veterans. Sure, they signed Bartolo Colon and R.A. Dickey, but they're really just there to soak up some innings while they develop their pitching staff and won't stand in the way of anyone good.
The bad news is that they really haven't done much to further their ongoing rebuild. The few wins that Matt Kemp and Nick Markakis have to contribute are more valuable to a contender than on the Braves. Adonis Garcia, already in his declining years, falls into the same category. If we go by pass/fail, the Braves did successfully stay the course, but in a manner as unambitious as possible.
It may count as cheating to give the Phillies to same offseason plan as the Braves, but their standards for success this winter are similar. Most Philadelphia veterans with value are long gone. The pieces of the rebuild are in place and now it's mostly a matter of waiting and not screwing things up, things the Phillies have accomplished this winter. Yes, the team was 71-91 in 2016, but the 62-100 Pythagorean record was more telling of where this team is.
Oakland Athletics (69-93)
The Mission: Flip the script.
At one point, the Beane-led A's were one of the most imaginative teams in baseball. But if I'm being completely honest, even as someone who is thankful that "Moneyball" sped up the sabermetric revolution, Oakland has become one of those water-treading teams, far more like the Rockies than I'm happy admitting. Like the Rockies, Oakland's problem isn't that they make a lot of horrifyingly bad moves -- they don't. They still occasionally collect diamonds in the rough like Khris Davis or Rich Hill or Danny Valencia, and frequently rightly trade those types for prospects when the situation calls for it.
But the team's appetite for upside has been diminished considerably, and too often they settle for mediocrity. Ryan Madson? Billy Butler? John Axford? How was that ever going to work out for the A's? And that has mainly continued this winter. Yes, Yonder Alonso came back at a relatively inexpensive salary, but how does he ever help the A's get back to contending? He turns 30 in April and is still looking for his first season as a league-average player. Matt Joyce? The time to get a player like that is before the comeback season, not after.
No, the A's don't have a lot of money to spend. A team like that needs to either have a great farm system or consistently look for upside plays and eschew the middling veteran shuffle. The A's of today do not do this.
Minnesota Twins (59-103)
The Mission: Don't panic.
In 2015, the Twins exceeded expectations considerably, winning 83 games. While the team didn't do anything completely crazy last winter like try to coax Torii Hunter back for another deceptively good (yet sub-replacement-level) season, there was a bit of optimism about the near-term future of the team, one that was crushed by losing 103 games.
The Twins' goal ought to have been to keep on their rebuilding course and not let the 24-win drop in the standings result in any rash moves. But so far, so good. The team still sees the need to trade Brian Dozier, one of the brightest parts of their 2016, and they made a significant front-office upgrade, bringing in Thad Levine, one of baseball's top executive prospects, to turn the good '90s front office built by Terry Ryan into a good 2010s office for their future.
Milwaukee Brewers (73-89), San Diego Padres (68-94), Cincinnati Reds (68-94)
The Mission: Kick rebuilding up a notch.
The last three teams on this list fit together as a group simply because they're all at roughly the same place in their rebuild. Breaking down the team had already been decided, now the goal for each team ought to have been to continue the process of cashing in their veteran players for value.
The Brewers continued what they executed very well at the trade deadline, getting five years of a league-average third baseman and a couple prospects for Tyler Thornburg, a reliever designed to seal wins the Brewers won't have. Ryan Braun hasn't been moved yet, but it's also not an ideal market to move him with a number of similar players available. Eric Thames was one of the sneaky-good signings this offseason; if he's good, a slugger with a three-year, $16 million contract can be flipped easily for more prospects, but if he's not, it's only $16 million.
San Diego had a terrific summer, but a fairly quiet winter so far, only trading catcher Derek Norris to the Nationals. But like the Brewers with Ryan Braun, the Wil Myers market is a tricky one right now, so it makes sense to hold onto him for a while and though they haven't moved Yangervis Solarte yet, they've been exploring trade possibilities. The Padres remain on the rebuilding track, though a reclamation project or two would be nice in a rotation that is going to be terrible practically no matter what in 2017.
The Reds have done just about nothing this winter, neither convincing Brandon Phillips to waive his no-trade clause -- the Nationals turned out quite happy that he didn't last winter, given Daniel Murphy's season -- nor making a serious effort to move players like Zack Cozart or Dan Straily. Though I guess one could say that's a good thing given the returns they got for Aroldis Chapman and Todd Frazier. Cincy is no closer to the next good Reds team than they were in September, so on that front it hasn't been a successful winter yet.