Welcome To The Off Season
Off season baseball is upon us, free agency is in full swing, and all 30 teams are now squarely focused on 2011. Our writers here at I-70 Baseball will be focused on the future as well but we have some unfinished business to attend to first. Before we take our look forward to 2011, we must first wrap up 2010.
The Cardinals and Royals opened up their seasons in very different places. The Cardinals were the odds-on-favorites to win their division and challenge for the top spot in the National League. Most experts predicted the Royals to show improvement over recent performance, but still fall well short of the top of the division.
By the time the dust settled on the 2010 season, the Cardinals would miss the playoffs in a season that many said would be considered a disappointment without a world series appearance. A second place finish to a surprise Cincinnati Reds ball club left the Cardinals reeling with an 86-76 record and a fan base that wondered what went wrong.
The Royals, on the other hand, would finish the season with a disappointing 67-95 record, but an optimistic fan base as they began to look to the farm system to produce some top talent. They would finish last in the division behind the Cleveland Indians, change managers, and start to restructure their roster.
The real story is how they got there. Which positions and players provided the positive spots and which provided the pratfalls? Who turned in the most impressive offensive season and which hurler would be the best for their team? That is what we will aim to shed some light on over the next ten days.
Starting on November 10 and running through November 20, the staff here at I-70 will break down the players at each position for both the Cardinals and the Royals. On November 19 and November 20, we will award our players of the year awards to the teams, with a position player and a pitcher being profiled for each team.
We hope you enjoy our look back at the 2010 season and our profiles of the various players that spent time with the franchises this year.
Bill Ivie is the editor here at I-70 Baseball as well as the Assignment Editor for BaseballDigest.com.
He is the host of I-70 Radio, hosted every week on BlogTalkRadio.com.
Follow him on Twitter here.