Some teams are good. Other teams are bad. Sometimes, the difference is the performance of one player.
Obviously, for a team to win it must play up to its collective ability. But some players and some positions can be lynchpins; the difference between dominance and disappointment. Sometimes, a starting pitcher’s individual performance can mean the difference between a killer 1-2 punch and a rotation full of question marks. Other times, one hitter can turn a murderers’ row into a top-heavy mess.
Let’s take a look at cities around the NL who have a lot riding on the resurgence or resilience of one guy.
San Fransisco Giants, Matt Cain, SP
So right off the bat you’re going to think we’re crazy. How can Matt Cain be a lynchpin player on a team that won the World Series without him last season? It’s a fair question, but there’s an easy answer.
Last year, the Giants squeaked (by 6 games but still) into the playoffs as the second Wild Card, and then rode Madison Bumgarner’s unbelievable October performances to the championship. Cain, who went down with an arm injury early was a complete non-factor in the regular season and didn’t play in the playoffs at all. Beyond the fact that you can’t count on Bumgarner having The Best Postseason Ever again, it’s going to be an uphill battle for the Giants to even make the playoffs.
The Dodgers have improved and are coming off a 94 win season and a divisional championship, and the Padres are a whole new and vastly better team. It doesn’t seem like San Fransisco will be able to count on Tim Lincecum’s yearly no-hitter against a bad Padres lineup this year. On top of that, the Giants replaced All-Star third basemen Pablo Sandoval with Casey McGehee (not exactly an upgrade) and they’ll now be without Hunter Pence for a while after his broken arm last week.
Cain coming back healthy and effective is that much more important given the Giants’ rotation woes. Right now, behind Bumgarner, the Ace, San Fran has Tim Hudson, Jake Peavy, the unreliable Lincecum, the not very good Ryan Vogelsong, and the smoke and mirrors of Yusmeiro Petit. Besides Bumgarner, Cain is the only other guy that would be a guaranteed starter on any other team. A good year from Matt likely means the Giants will be able to hang with the Dodgers and blow past San Diego. A bad year means they’ll be outgunned by both those teams and will need an unlikely hero to propel them back to the playoffs.
Washington Nationals, Bryce Harper, OF
So we’ve begun this exercise by picking the reigning World Champs and the team with 2014’s MLB-best record. You’re likely thinking that we might not be as smart as you thought. But hear us out. Without Harper, the Nationals are a great team; solid from top to bottom with the best pitching in the league. With him, they could be a juggernaut; a team with power, speed, and defense to go along with a dominant starting staff.
With 6 guys who could all be All-Star caliber starters, no single pitcher is that important for Washington this season. And though it’s true that their lineup is deep and really good, Harper is both the biggest wild card in the mix and the most important player.
Say Harper hits .265 with 17 homers in 90 games this year after missing a bunch of time with a new injury. That basically happened last year and the Nats won 96 games en route to an NLDS loss (again). Say Harper hits .295 with 28-32 bombs in 155 games. Suddenly, the Nats have the 3-hitter that Jayson Werth simply isn’t and opposing pitchers are losing sleep two starts before they ace the Nats’ lineup.
In that scenario, Harper makes everyone around him better. If Harper is a monster, chances are Anthony Rendon and Denard Span are scoring a ton of runs at the top the order and stealing a lot of bags as pitchers focus in on Bryce. His left handed dominance likely means that Rendon and Werth, the righties flanking him in the lineup, are seeing a lot more left handed pitching which will help them too. If Harper hits for power and stays healthy–if he plays like he did in that NLDS when he launched 3 bombs including a splash down in San Fran–the Nats plan to go for broke in 2015 will look a heck of a lot safer.
New York Mets, David Wright, 3B
David Wright is treated (and paid) like a star, and is considered to be the face of baseball in NYC, if not the face of baseball as a whole. However, he hasn’t really played great. Last season, Wright hit .269 with only 8 home runs and, perhaps most damningly of all, posted a wRC+ of 100, making him an exactly average hitter.
Average will not be good enough for the Mets this season. New York hopes to contend for a playoff spot now that their rotation has nearly arrived in earnest, with Matt Harvey at the head and the young guns banging down the door. But the road isn’t easy with the Nationals and Marlins standing in the way. As I wrote a couple weeks ago, the biggest key for the Mets’ success will be their offense and the production they can get out of guys like Lucas Duda, Curtis Granderson, and Wright. But Wright is the captain, the $100 million man, and the anchor. If he produces like an All-Star, he can both propel and compensate for the hitters around him. The Mets’ chances this year are slim, but to fulfill expectations, Wright needs to have a huge season.
Miami Marlins, Marcell Ozuna, CF
Remember at the beginning when we mentioned that a lynchpin player can take a lineup from top heavy to a murderous? In 2015, no player better exemplifies that than Marcell Ozuna. Ozuna will presumably bat somewhere in the top 6 spots, flanking Giancarlo Stanton, Mike Morse and Christian Yellich, with a dash of Dee Gordon and Martin Prado tossed in. If you figure, and I do, that Stanton, Morse, Gordon and Prado are all known commodities with their individual pitfalls that lessen their overall intimidation factor as a group, Yellich and Ozuna are vital to how this lineup produces.
With Jose Fernandez due back from Tommy John surgery sometime this summer to compliment Henderson Alvarez, Jarrod Cozart, and Tom Koehler, this rotation was sneaky-good before the arrival of Mat Latos. With Latos and Dan Haren in tow, the rotation should be a sneakier-gooder(er) one. Last year’s rotation finished 11th in the NL in starter’s ERA. That should be better this year.
Offensively, Adeiny Hechavarria and Jarrod Saltalamacchia are both terrible names to try to spell with the pitcher’s spot figure to make an inept bottom third. In the NL, that’ll be fine if the top two thirds produce and back the revamped rotation. But if Marcell Ozuna struggles, it exposes the holes in Morse’s power stroke, Yelich’s subpar power, and Gorden’s low OBP tendencies, making the outlook far less rosy for the Fish.
Pittsburgh Pirates, Francisco Liriano, SP
If the Pittsburgh Pirates are going to be good in 2015, they’re going to need a bunch of things to go right. Their young, dynamic outfield needs to produce at the big league level and Josh Harrison needs to make sure that he’s more than a flash in the pan. But the key to their success, just like any other smaller market team, is their rotation–which is now led by Francisco Liriano.
When Liriano is healthy and on, he’s one of the best starters in baseball (see: Cy Young voting in 2010 and 2013), but he’s never pitched 200 innings. Is this the year that he finally puts all that talent together and leads the Pirates to the Postseason? He’ll need to be excellent as the rest of the Pirates staff is equally full of questions. Is Gerrit Cole ready to improve on that 3.65 ERA from a year ago or is he Mat Latos 2.0? Which AJ Burnett do we get this year? Is Charlie Morton going to pitch more than 150 innings? (If he does, will the Pirates be happy about it?) Did Vance Worley get any awesome new glasses this year?
In all seriousness, the Pirates can’t and won’t compete without Francisco Liriano doing good things. He’s their lynchpin.
We won’t guarantee it, given the complexities of baseball, but if any of these five make the All-Star team and continue that level of excellence through the second half, their team should be playoff bound. Each club has significant talent surrounding the players that we’ve identified as the lynchpins, but with enough questions that these individual performances will make (or break) the season. It also just so happens that these five teams could represent the NL in the playoffs next October. It seems unlikely now, but we’re just saying…
-Max Frankel and Sean Morash
