The Dreaded Holding Pattern
The Dreaded Holding Pattern
When being good enough becomes dangerous
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The plane is nearing its destination when the pilot interrupts an otherwise unmemorable flight. “Folks,” he tells you, “there’s some weather up ahead, and air traffic control is asking us to sit tight a while. They’ve got us in a holding pattern. We’re going to be circling while we await further instruction.”
You burn some extra fuel while waiting for the all-clear. The flight lands safely.
The flight is also late.
In baseball, there are teams that circle the airport, never given clearance to land yet never burning all of their fuel. Unable to touch down on time, however, they are destined to lose their gate assignment and lose some customers along the way.
For travelers, it’s mostly a minor inconvenience.
For baseball teams, it means they’ve missed their connection. Stranded in a strange hub, they won’t make it home as the original itinerary intended.
I remember the holding patterns of 2012 and 2013 in Arizona.
We held regular conference calls with our pro scouts throughout much of the year, but as the July 31 trade deadline approached, the frequency and significance of the calls grew. The scouts’ assignments reflected the direction of the team, and our scouts were always eager to receive targeted trade deadline coverage.
Both years, the July phone calls had one theme: Let’s see what next week brings, then we might know more.
In 2012, the D-backs were coming off a 94-win campaign, only to hover around .500 for the entire season.
In 2013, the team spent all of June in first place. In fact, we spent more than nine consecutive weeks atop the NL West before the Dodgers seized control in late July.
Both years, our trade deadline transactions reflected uncertainty.
Does a wait-and-see approach ever portend success?
The positioning in the standings for the 2013 team was more a factor of other clubs’ struggles. In the end, the Dodgers won the division handily. An 81-81 record was good enough for an empty second-place finish in the desert. It was the D-backs second straight .500 season, and the bottom was about to fall out.
The wait-and-see game got us nowhere. Worse, in fact, it left us in neutral while other teams built for the future. Too good to tear it down but not talented enough to win meaningful games, we languished, unwisely holding onto memories of the 94-win season of 2011.
Those two seasons shaped the way I watch baseball today. There are teams like the Dodgers, Padres, Cardinals, Mets, White Sox, and Yankees that are built to win now. Feedback is more immediate for those organizations, whose performances (and presence or lack thereof) in October will represent their 2021 evaluations.
Then there are the Tigers, Royals, Orioles, and Pirates, each attempting to build for a brighter tomorrow and generally operating under the pretense that Major League wins this year are insignificant.
Somewhere in between are teams that — for any number of reasons — are not actively rebuilding but also aren’t contending. Some of these teams have had fleeting moments of success, like the Diamondbacks I was a part of; others have tried to reload on the fly; and one other team has Mike Trout and now Shohei Ohtani, so damn if they can do anything but try to change the tires while speeding down the freeway at 85 MPH.
(I’m not sure what’s up with the transportation-related metaphors, so let’s just move onto the baseball.)
The Blue Jays, Angels, and Rangers each have their own battles to fight, and each has handled them differently.
The Jays can’t help their geography, which groups them with the Yankees and Red Sox, as well as the always innovating Rays. The rough V-shape of their line in the above graph indicates that their more recent lean years had purpose, and there was a clear and realistic vision to get them back to competing for the division title.
Everyday players like Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Bo Bichette, Cavan Biggio, Marcus Semien, and George Springer illustrate the organization’s strategy to supplement homegrown talent with higher-priced established veterans. It’s working. The Jays are fun to watch and will remain that way for a while.
They’ve played .500 ball since moving (back) from Dunedin to their temporary regular season home in Buffalo. The Jays went 17-9 in Buffalo last season, though my guess is they’d benefit greatly from a return to Toronto.
Meanwhile, out west, the Angels need to win more games for the overall health and success of Major League Baseball. Mike Trout and Shohei Ohtani. Need I say more?
Okay, a little more: Trout and Ohtani are must-see TV any time they’re on the field. But even as the Angels claw back towards .500, they’re far off the Wild Card pace. The great challenge, however, is attempting to restock a farm system that was ravaged by a perennial all-in mentality. How do you rebuild with two of the best players ever in their primes on the roster? If I could answer that, I probably wouldn’t be writing right now.
The final team in this exercise is the Rangers. Texas won the AL West in 2015 and 2016, wrapping up a seven-year span in which they made the playoffs five times and went to the World Series twice. Before we get too critical, let’s pause and acknowledge that feat. There aren’t too many teams that wouldn’t trade places with them.
Of course, they haven’t posted a winning record since then. Last season was not kind to them, and this year hasn’t been much better.
I don’t know what kind of pressure the front office might be under, but no organization endeavors to open a new ballpark and win less than 40% of their games. One piece of encouraging news, I suppose: June was the first month this season in which the Rangers were not no-hit at home.
It will be a few years before the Rangers competitive window reopens, and the good news for them is they seem to know that. They’ll have a chance to accelerate the rebuilding process this month by selling off valuable players. Starting pitcher Kyle Gibson would improve any rotation and is sure to draw enough interest to stoke a bidding war.
The Rangers’ course of action comes without a guarantee, though.
For the past few years, I’ve become more enthralled by “the rebuild.” Most rebuilding teams have their own jargon, their own catchy slogan to pass off something established as original. How many times can we say “control the zone?”
The reality is that for every winner we’ll have a loser. The teams that correctly identify their competitive window and can react accordingly have the best chance at sustained success. I like how the Blue Jays have positioned themselves, and maybe being grounded in Buffalo will work out for them.
No Spin Zone
At a time when spin rates are occupying too much attention around the game, the Orioles called up an anti-spin rate pitcher.
Last week, knuckleballer Mickey Jannis made his Major League debut against the Astros. He entered the June 23rd game in the fifth inning with the O’s already trailing, 5-0.
Jannis pitched three-and-a-third innings, allowing seven earned runs, including three homers. He walked four, struck out one, and was designated for assignment less than 48 hours later.
You can see a few pitches from his outing here. His knuckler averaged around 78 MPH, but as the clip shows, his range was from about 67-82 MPH. There doesn’t seem to be a tremendous amount of fluttering life to his pitches, and I think the Astros’ bats confirmed that.
Regardless, that he arrived in the big leagues is a story worth celebrating.
Jannis was a 44th round pick in the 2010 draft. One thousand, three hundred and thirty players were selected before him. He toiled in the independent leagues for four seasons, developing the knuckler before finally attracting the Mets’ attention and landing on a minor league roster as a reinvented pitcher.
He has described his ideal knuckleball as having between zero and one rotation. While Gerrit Cole and Trevor Bauer face increased scrutiny as the spin rates on their four-seam fastballs drop, a knuckleballer is exactly what we need to lighten the mood.
I’m curious as to what Jannis’ rosin routine might be like. Check back next week for details.
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