There’s a term that public opinion researchers use called “the mushy middle,” and it’s a turn of phrase that keeps popping into my head when I look at the MLB standings.
In the pollster’s world, the term is used when looking at an issue where there are groups of people on either side that feel very strongly, and then a large group in between that have no particular leanings, and could go either way.
When I look at baseball in 2014, what the term “mushy middle” means to me is the significant grouping of teams that are neither excelling and establishing themselves as part of the elite, nor floundering towards the bottom of the standings. They are the teams that are probably too far back in the divisional race, but still in the equation for the Wild Card.
As the day begins, there are currently 19 MLB teams sitting within seven games of a postseason berth, and 16 teams with a record of .500 or better. At the same time, there is only one team that has played over .600 ball this year, and those Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim as recently as last year were relegated in the group of also-rans.
In the new era of two Wild Card slots, this is the first season that the Toronto Blue Jays find themselves in this middle group, so it’s been a revealing experience to sense what it feels like to be packed in with that group like a cycling peloton.
This year’s Jays seem like a team whose true talent level sits in the mid-80’s in terms of wins, and while such a team would have languished far behind the powerhouse Yankees and Red Sox in the last decade, they now find themselves within a hot week of grasping a ticket for October baseball.
It’s possible that if we were still in the one Wild Card paradigm, the Jays might have given up the ghost and even moved players, and they’d likely have company among them as more of those teams in the middle would still feel far from competing. It could have made for a boring stretch.
But the current reality means there is far more meaningful competition around the league, not only for wins on the field but also for positive outcomes off the field. The battle for talent or even marginal upgrades is made that much more fierce by the notion that two-thirds of the league still has World Series aspirations for this year, and even this year’s cellar dwellers could reasonably imagine themselves in the middle next year, if not the top tier of teams.
Blue Jays fans continue to struggle with the notion that the team could not acquire help before last month’s non-waiver trade deadline! Plus, they didn’t manage to find a single roster addition of any consequence over the three ensuing weeks of waiver wire deals. Even those who are sympathetic to the front office likely find themselves in disbelief at the notion that there isn’t a half-decent bullpen arm or bench player to be had.
There is a level of suspicion that maybe GM Alex Anthopoulos has found himself frozen out by other teams, whose rumoured requested returns of multiple top young players seems out of alignment with what they eventually receive in return. Then again, that’s likely a function of our hometown perspective on the quality of talent found in Marcus Stroman, Aaron Sanchez and Daniel Norris.
At the same time, a look around the league shows that many of the major free agent acquisitions from recent seasons have done well in eating up a large chunk of payroll, but few have really shone brightly or led their teams into the premier echelon for this season. Among the top 20 hitters in terms of wins above replacement, only Robinson Cano stands out as a player acquired through big offseason spending, while on the pitching side, there’s Yu Darvish and maybe Anibal Sanchez and even more tenuously, Phil Hughes.
(You could certainly argue that Nelson Cruz might be an excellent example of an offseason acquisition that has paid dividends, but that one-year deal is as peculiar a signing as any in recent years.)
It seems that this is part of a new reality for baseball. Make that a newer new reality that makes the precepts of Moneyball seem almost quaint at this point. The conventional wisdom from just a few years back on how to build your team, or the nature of competitive windows, or the market for talent acquisition seems less relevant, though without a clear answer as to what the alternative directions might be.
Drafting, developing and retaining your own talent will never go out of fashion. But the small differences that distinguish the teams in the mushy middle from those that will compete in the year-end tournament are difficult to pin down. If you look at key contributors like Max Scherzer or Josh Donaldson or Hyun-Jin Ryu or even the Jays’ own José Bautista, they came somewhat unheralded and from very different development streams, but are playing a big role in propelling their teams’ chances.
Beyond building to ensure success, the crowded marketplace for talent and wins means that injuries and dumb luck can have an even more profound effect on the outcome of a season. There must be thousands of ways to play well enough to make it to the mushy middle, and still more to make it to the top.
But there’s also an infinite number of ways to find yourself on the outside looking in.