It feels strange to say that the team formerly owned by George W. Bush — and who invited that despicable war criminal to throw out the first pitch of Game One — is the “leftist pick” to win the World Series. And yet here I am.
See, I have a soft spot for this Texas Rangers team, even though I’ve never cared much for this organization. Much has been made about their turnaround — the Rangers lost 102 games in 2021 and 94 last year. But as I talked about with Evan Drellich last week, much of the fun has been sapped from “worst to first” stories in baseball, as tanking and “competitive windows” have taken over the sport.
But the Rangers didn’t really do that. Even though this is their first playoff appearance since 2016, they never really tanked. Most of that time, they weren’t really dreadful — just kind of mediocre. In 2019, for example, they didn’t even trade their best starter, Mike Minor, at the deadline, because they thought they were in contention at the trade deadline. But they finished under .500.
The conventional wisdom, for a team facing a string of mediocrity, is that the only way to turn things around is to first get a lot worse, and spend half a decade accruing cheap young talent through the draft and international signings. Instead, Texas said “Screw that” and just signed a bunch of superstars. After losing 102 games in 2021, they signed Corey Seager and Marcus Semien. People thought that was pretty dumb. That’s not sustainable! It’s not efficient! You have to optimize! And they didn’t get much better last year.
But they were undeterred! They went out and signed Jacob deGrom and Nathan Eovaldi. They committed over $700 million to just those four players — and it worked! Now they are in the World Series! Let that be a lesson to anyone who tells you tanking is the only way to build a championship contender…
Anyway, here’s everything from Undrafted this month:
Can’t say everything came true just as I hoped this postseason, but at least the Astros lost…
It was tough to say goodbye to The A-Rod Chronicles, but we may one day revisit the subject. If you haven’t listened to the full podcast series, please do check it out. It’s pretty good, if I do say so myself…
Covering sports’ latest “toxic workplace,” and why the repeated exposure of them is likely to have diminishing returns in a capitalist system.
Stop making shows about owners! Winning Time could have been so much better!
Thanks to Evan Drellich for joining me to talk about the Houston Astros. If you haven’t read his book, I highly recommend it. It’s rare for a sports book to really look at how teams (and corporations generally) are run.
Some thoughts on why this postseason has been so “random.”