A look at the players of the AL Central who will either lead their team to success or down an open manhole.
Rather than come up with a dumb, new framing device for the remaining five of these, I'm just going use the same words as last time. We're looking for the season from a player that's most likely to correlate directly with the success of his team. As goes (player), so goes (player's team).
The unspoken flaw with this idea is that the answer is always the team's best player. Every header could list the team's best player, and underneath could be a paragraph describing how horrible it would be if the team's best player got hurt. I'm counting on your willful suspension of disbelief on this.
Here are the bellwether players of the AL Central:
Detroit Tigers - Joe Nathan
Oh, it's so stupid to put a reliever on one of these lists. Do you know what will happen if Nathan stinks the joint up in April? The Tigers will find someone in May. Do you know what will happen if Nathan stinks the joint up in May? The Tigers will find someone in June. It's not like they'll roll into October with Nathan blowing every other save, begging fans to be patient.
The luxury of being an unaccountable columnist, though, is that I can talk about the intangibles as if they're tangible. And if the Tigers' bullpen is a hot chamberpot right at the beginning of the season, there will be vocal sniping from the fans and ruh-rohs in the internal monologues of anyone who was on the team last year. If it's a mess at the trade deadline, there will be pressure to package whatever prospects might be left for a very expensive Jonathan Papelbon. If it's crumbling in September, the panic will be something that can power a medium-sized factory.
Nathan is 40, but he's also one of the better relievers of his generation -- someone a lot closer to Hall of Fame votes than you might think. He fits the profile of someone who could last for a couple seasons after hitting 40, so don't leave him for dead. And the bullpen as a whole is probably deeper than it gets credit for. Joakim Soria is excellent when healthy, and both Joba Chamberlain and Al Alburquerque are solid-to-excellent mid-innings options when they're healthy. It's not a Saw movie yet.
If the closer struggles, though, everyone gets a promotion through incompetence, and the one area the Tigers were expected to work on this past offseason will be scrutinized mercilessly.
Kansas City Royals - Kendrys Morales
This was Mike Moustakas for the last ... 17 years or so. He is ageless, forever on the brink of justifying his prospect status from a past life. For this season, though, we'll focus on one of the players the Royals picked up to improve the offense. You can sub in Alex Rios -- it's basically the same idea. The Royals are taking a chance on two previously productive players coming off lousy seasons. If both of them stink, the Royals are in trouble.
It's not like this is a sentence that makes sense: "The Royals will have a tough time replacing the production of Billy Butler and Norichika Aoki." Those were contributors, certainly, but the Royals aren't exactly replacing peak Johnny Damon and Carlos Beltran, here. Still, they'll need to get offense from somewhere. It was a nifty magic trick to win the pennant with a team that hit 95 home runs in the regular season, but it was a magic trick performed by Gob and he's looking at the audience with wild I-can't-believe-that-worked eyes. If Morales (or Rios) are duds, there's almost no way it'll happen again.
Morales is a great gamble -- he had very nice seasons in both 2012 and 2013, and his comp-pick-befouled 2014 shouldn't be held against him too much -- but he's still a gamble. If it works out, Dayton Moore will continue to look like the genius we always suspected he was, deep down. Really, really deep down. If Morales repeats last season, the Royals' chances to repeat as even the wild card would be in rough shape.
Cleveland Indians - Brandon Moss
The Indians roster is solid, so very solid. It's not a flashy lot, assuming that Michael Brantley and Corey Kluber aren't going to contend for major awards every year, but it's just so well-organized and whole. Every position is filled with someone who should be there. The question marks are greatly limited. This is the Toyota Corolla of teams. Like, the "S" version with the spoiler and hella cool sideboards, but still a Corolla. It might not win the race, but it's not as likely to be on the side of the road with steam coming out of it.
In the middle of that order is Moss, who is one of the herky-jerkiest players in baseball. He's been a prospect, a flop, an All-Star, a second-half disaster, a would-be postseason hero, and now he's an Indian. He was a perfect, low-cost/high-upside fit for what the Indians are trying to build, but like Morales up there, he's still a 31-year-old who might have already chosen the wrong path at the crossroads back there.
Imagine a healthy, productive, dinger-besotten Moss, though, right there in the middle of the order, happy to be out of O.co Caverns and in a park that doesn't swallow runs whole. He'll have Brantley and Carlos Santana on base when he comes up. He'll have Yan Gomes behind him if he gets on base. It's a beautiful dream for Indians fans.
It's a fragile one, though. If his second half was a desperate warning, not a blip, it'll take the Indians a few weeks to figure it out. They might not have that much time in a super-competitive AL Central.
Chicago White Sox - Jeff Samardzija
That might be a fake tweet I just made. We'll let history decide for us. Still, the most famous White Sox fan in the world has a point. We're talking about a pitcher with three full seasons as a starting pitcher, only one of which was truly exceptional. That season was last year, sure, but that's all the evidence we have to suggest he's leagues better than, oh, Chris Capuano.
Wait, there's one more piece of evidence: He throws really hard. He throws fuzzy breaking balls and fuzzier fastballs, and he misses a lot of bats. Okay, so there's a lot of evidence, and last year was just results catching up with stuff. One of the reasons the projection systems still hate the White Sox, even after their active offseason, is that Samardzija is still a mystery. There's still a chance he's just another arm in the middle of a rotation, not an All-Star about to become a perennial All-Star.
If the White Sox make the playoffs while Samardzija has an up-and-down, 100 ERA+ kind of season, something else will have to have gone right that I can't really imagine right now. Jose Abreu with 60 homers or Hector Noesi throwing 200 quality innings, something like that. If they make the playoffs with Samardzija having a season as strong (or stronger) as last year, it will make a load of sense. That's how the script was written in the first place.
Minnesota Twins - Ricky Nolasco
I was asked for some advice about the truly hopeless teams in baseball for this video, and after the Braves and Phillies, a third team would really have made sense. It's the Rule of Three.
I couldn't push any of the other teams over the ledge, though, including the Twins. I'm skeptical of their lineup, even if it was stealthily productive last season. I'm not a fan of their decision to give up a pick and many millions for Ervin Santana, not when they would have a much better idea of how to spend that money next year, when the kid cavalry arrives. But they're not a wasteland. They might not be especially close. They might even contend.
If they do that, Nolasco will have to pitch like his FIP, not his ERA. Either he's the unluckiest son-of-a-gun in the world, or he's walking around with a sandwich board that reads, "FIP doesn't work for everyone." One of the problems, though, is that his FIP was wretched last year, even though it was a full run lower than his ERA.
Nolasco pitching well and preventing actual runs, not phantom shouldn't-be runs, would mean the Twins would have someone behind Phil Hughes. And my problem isn't with Santana, just the contract and the timing. He should still contribute. And in a rotation with a rejuvenated Nolasco, those contributions might be just what the Twins need. If the offense from last year is for real, and the other four teams in the division spend their time beating each other up ... hey, this could work.
It all starts with Nolasco. Which isn't a sentence that fills Twins fans with confidence. Still, he's being paid like someone who should help. Weirder things have happened. Like a team giving him a huge deal in the first place. Weirder things have happened.
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