The Last Place Baseball Team Most Likely To Move Up In 2017

It is not all that rare in baseball for a team to suffer back to back seasons in last place in its division, and it happened to two clubs in 2016. What is unusual, however, is the fact that both of those teams actually reached the playoffs just the season before their two consecutive last places finishes.

The Cincinnati Reds ended up at the bottom of the National League Central last season, just as they had done the year before. It was a long fall for a team that had reached the postseason in 2014, losing in the Wild Card round.

In the Junior Circuit the Oakland Athletics finished in the cellar of the West Division, their second consecutive term in that unenviable spot. Like the Reds, they too had just a year before reached the playoffs only to fall in the Wild Card game.

Four other teams of course joined Cincinnati and Oakland at the bottoms of their respective divisions, and some of them will likely finish there in 2017 without some serious changes. One of them is the team who finished with the worst record in all of baseball, the Minnesota Twins.

In spite of finishing in the middle of the pack in offensive categories such as home runs and batting average, the Twins will need to make a major pitching upgrade in order to avoid a second straight last place finish in 2018. The Minnesota staff had a Major League worst 5.08 earned run average, and it featured only one starter (Ervin Santana) who had any consistency. That was the biggest reason the club lost its first nine games, had just one winning month the entire season, and finished ten games under .500 for every other month.

At the bottom of the East was Tampa Bay who, like the Twins, will probably stay there in 2017. That pessimism is for a different reason, mainly because of the quality of clubs in their division. Toronto, Baltimore, Boston, and New York were all four in the playoff hunt until the last week of the season, meaning the Rays will have a hard time trying to climb over one of them to avoid last place.

In the National League, which had two playoff teams in 2016, the Padres have a decent chance to overcome at least one of the other two. Neither the Colorado Rockies nor the Arizona Diamondbacks finished over .500, but San Diego might still have difficulty surpassing them next year. After all, the Padres did not have a single month where they won more games than they lost and finished last in runs scored.

Most likely to move up in their division are the Braves, who after a terrible start ended up at the bottom of the N. L. East. In spite of being second to last in runs scored and finishing in the lower half in team earned run average, Atlanta played over .500 for the second half of the season.

Although they will not be favorites to beat out the New York Mets or Washington Nationals at the top of the division, the Braves are the most likely 2016 cellar dweller to avoid the basement next year. That could be bad news for the fans of the Philadelphia Phillies, a club currently in the midst of rebuilding.

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