Searching for Solutions to MLB's 7 Biggest Messes

In less than two weeks' time, Major League Baseball's 2024 postseason field will be set, with 12 teams making the cut and 18 getting an early jump on offseason planning (if they haven't started already).

For most of the 18 on the wrong side of the fence, though, one needn't squint much to envision them turning things around in 2025.

The Texas Rangers, for instance, could be champs again with some better luck on the injury front.

Same goes for the Cincinnati Reds, who never had Matt McLain, only had Christian Encarnacion-Strand for a month, presently have an entire starting rotation on the IL and still somehow have a positive run differential for the year.

Also, a Bo Bichette bounce-back year before hitting free agency could do wonders for the Toronto Blue Jays, who have recently found a few gems in Bowden Francis and Will Wagner.

But then there are the other teams.

The ones who were basically eliminated from the playoffs before the regular season even began and who already feel like lost causes for October 2025.

The messes who need way more than just one key player to bounce back and some slightly better injury luck to become a contender.

What can we do to fix them ? These seven biggest messes are presented in descending order of 2024 winning percentage, so you'll have to scroll to the end if you're really just curious how in the world we would even begin to fix the White Sox.

The Good : Paul Skenes is the goodthat goes without sayingbut this entire starting rotation has some serious long-term promise.

Before they called up Skenes, Jared Jones was their breakout rookie pitcher.

Luis Ortiz has a 3.14 ERA in 13 appearances since joining the rotation.

Mitch Keller has been solid for three years now.

And that whole quartet is under team control through at least 2028.

That's quite the foundation, without even factoring in starting prospects Bubba Chandler, Tom Harrington and Braxton Ashcraft, who are presently putting in work down at Triple-A Indianapolis, ready to make their presence felt soon.

This could be one hell of a rotation for the next half-decade.

The Bad : Though there are a few bright spots in the lineupnotably Bryan Reynolds, Oneil Cruz and Joey BartPittsburgh has been in a constant state of needing to plug 5-6 black holes in its offense for almost a decade at this point.

The non-Reynolds portion of the outfield is a disaster.

Ke'Bryan Hayes has a great glove at third, but he has a .677 OPS since the beginning of 2021 and can never stay healthy anyway.

Save for Josh Bell having that awesome season in 2019, Pittsburgh's first-base situation has been a problem since 2000.

And a quality rotation can only get you so far.

(Just ask Mariners fans.) The Ugly : While several of these messes have at least experienced the postseason at some point in the past few years, Pittsburgh has gotten way too comfortable in the "never relevant" portion of the standings, on its way to a ninth consecutive season of finishing at least 13 games back in the NL Central.

(Yes, even in 2020 they ended up 15 games out.) Even when they start hot20-8 last year, 11-5 this seasonthey inevitably implode in emphatic fashion.

Getting that "here we go again" bad juju out of the clubhouse might be the most difficult part of turning things around.

The Solution : The Pirates need to sign bats.

Plain and simple.

Soon-to-be 38-year-old Andrew McCutchen has been arguably their best source of offense this season, and that certainly isn't sustainable for much longer.

Now, it doesn't have to beand almost certainly cannot be, given their financial limitationsJuan Soto or Alex Bregman.

But why couldn't Pittsburgh get a guy like Tyler O'Neill or Alex Verdugo on a four-year, $60M deal? Or if Paul Goldschmidt wants to play another two seasons in pursuit of 400 career home runs, what's stopping the Pirates from offering him a two-year, $25M contract? Throwing a combined $18.5M worth of one-year deals at Aroldis Chapman and Martin Perez last winter was a solid baby step, but it's time to make several actual, multiyear investments here to make sure Skenes has the chance to pitch in a couple of postseasons like Gerrit Cole did for them a decade ago.

The Good : The Nationals have one heck of a nucleus of young hitters.

CJ Abrams, Luis Garcia Jr.

and Keibert Ruiz are the ones who have shown over multiple years that they can provide some value on offense.

James Wood and Dylan Crews are the rookies already living up to the hype of being top-10 prospects.

Jose Tena and Andres Chaparro are the trade deadline acquisitions who have thrived over the past month.

And the oldest of the bunch is Ruiz, who turned 26 in July.

It's not a top offense yet, but they're working out the kinks and could get there next season.

The Bad : On June 24, the Nationals held a three-run lead over the San Diego Padres in the 10th inning.

A win would have pushed them half a game ahead of San Diego and into position for the NL's No.

6 seed.

Instead, they collapsed, and it was a two-pronged turning point that seemed to mentally break the team.

From that point on, the Padres have posted darn near the best record in baseball, while the Nationals have battled Miami and Colorado for the worst record among teams not as laughably awful as the White Sox.

Not exactly a case of a team building positive momentum at the end of a lost season.

The Ugly : They still owe Stephen Strasburg, Max Scherzer and Patrick Corbin nearly $200 million, none of whom will throw another pitch for this franchise after Corbin makes his final start this fall.

And while they're paying all that money to their former starting pitchers, the current rotation is a sad state of affairs.

They hoped that by now Josiah Gray (acquired in the Scherzer and Trea Turner trade in 2021) and Cade Cavalli (first-round pick in 2020) would be top-of-the-rotation options, but the former had UCL surgery in July and might miss all of 2025 while the latter is seemingly in a permanent state of rehabbing from injury.

The Solution : While they do still owe those three pitchers quite a bit of money, the financial constraints here are no longer anywhere near as dire as they were a few years ago, when it became clear they had to hit the reset button and part with the likes of Turner and Juan Soto to restock the farm system.

They may well be reluctant to invest nine figures in another starting pitcher, but they're at least in a spot in the balance sheet where they could go get a Corbin Burnes or a Max Fried, which could be a major step in the right direction.

Heck, replacing P.

Corbin with Corbin B.

could be an instant swing of about a dozen wins, considering one has gone 46-29 with a 3.00 ERA since the beginning of 2021 while the other is 30-63 with a 5.71 ERA during that same four-year stretch.

Adding one ace might not be quite enough, but getting an ace and a No.

3/4 starter in free agency while reaping the benefits of basically the entire offense getting one year closer to hitting its prime just might be the blueprint for a 2024 Kansas City Royals type of instant turnaround.

The Good : This is going to shock a lot of people who have paid zero attention to the Oakland A's this season, but did you know they had four players with 20 home runs before the end of August? Most are probably aware of Brent Rooker's slugging prowess, but Oakland also had Shea Langeliers, Lawrence Butler and JJ Bleday in that club.

At that time, the White Sox, Tigers, Nationals and Rays all had zero players with 20 home runs, and the only other team with four was the Diamondbackswho also ended August with 40 more runs scored than any other team.

Add Zack Gelof (17 HR and 23 SB) and Jacob Wilson (2023 first-round pick who was hit .401 in 79 minor league games before getting called up last month) to that core, and the A's absolutely have a little something percolating on offense.

The Bad : Save for flamethrowing closer Mason Miller, the state of this pitching staff is bleak.

Granted, it's much better than last year, when they allowed more than 900 runs in a season for the first time since 1997.

They're on track for more like 760 this year.

But after three years of rebuilding, they have yet to find a starting pitcher worth building around.

JP Sears figures to be their Opening Day starter in 2025, and it'll be a toss-up between him and Colorado's Kyle Freeland as far as which team's "ace" is expected to have the least productive season.

The Ugly : While the lineup has a nice foundation, the franchise is about to become a mobile home, transplanting to Sacramento for three years before their planned settlement in Las Vegas in 2028.

And, to put it lightly, the history of teams fresh off a relocation isn't great.

Of the 11 instances in the past century of a franchise relocatingA's twice, Braves twice, Brewers, Dodgers, Giants, Nationals, Orioles, Rangers and Twinsthe only one to reach the postseason within its first three years in the new home was the Brooklyn-turned-Los Angeles Dodgers winning a World Series in their second season out West.

But they also made the World Series in two of their final three years before leaving New York, which hasn't exactly been the A's experience as of late.

None of those teams spent three years in a temporary city, either, which is going to be such a bizarre dynamic.

The Solution : We can't solve the homelessness crisis that John Fisher has imposed upon this franchise, but perhaps he could spend a dime or two on pitching in the middle of this move? The A's presently do not have a single contract figure on the books for 2025.

Rooker's salary figures to spike from $750,000 to something more in the $4M-$5M range in his first year of arbitration eligibility, but they otherwise have nothing but flexibility with their spending.

We already pretty well know they won't actually spend in free agency.

They've never signed a free agent for more than $30M and have not spent more than $15M on one since Fisher became the principal owner nearly a decade ago.

But if they had any real interest in trying to win a title in Sacramento, they would make a pair of multiyear, mid-tier starting pitcher acquisitions similar to what Kansas City did last winter with Seth Lugo and Michael Wacha.

Bring back Sean Manaea and take both Andrew Heaney and Yusei Kikuchi from AL West rivals and you legitimately could have something brewing.

The Good : Prior to this season, the Angels had a top-10 Opening Day payroll in 20 consecutive years .

Granted, a whole lot of that spending was wasted on free-agent hitters who ended up being colossal busts.

But let's just say poverty isn't the reason they've gone 15 years since last winning a postseason game, and it isn't what is keeping them from piecing together a legitimate contender.

Also, they've been crushing it in the draft lately.

2022 first-round pick Zach Neto and 2023 first-round pick Nolan Schanuel are already two of the bright spots in this lineup, while 2024 first-round pick Christian Moore is already tearing through the minors with an OPS of nearly 1.000.

The Bad: The state of the Angels' pitching staff is far from heavenly.

Tyler Anderson had a good run in the first half of the season, but he has come back to earth in a big way and only has one year left on his deal anyway.

Patrick Sandoval and Griffin Canning are also both nearing free agency and both posted ERA north of 5.00 this season.

Reid Detmers is under team control for three more years, but he has an ERA north of 6.00.

Jose Soriano's transition from the bullpen to the rotation was a success...until he suffered a season-ending shoulder injury.

Top prospect Caden Dana tossed a quality start in his first appearance, but he got pummeled in the next two before getting shut down.

They also traded away Luis Garcia and Carlos Estevez before they became free agents and presently have very little in that bullpen worth getting excited about, save for flamethrower Ben Joyce.

So, basically, the Angels have Oakland's pitching situation and a worse offense.

The Ugly : They still owe Anthony Rendon more than $77M over the next two years.

They still owe Mike Trout more than $200M over the next six years.

They might set a franchise record for losses in a single season.

They're going to finish several games behind an Oakland A's team that had been intentionally terrible over the previous two seasons and that still has a payroll $110M less than what the Angels are spending.

We'll let you decide which part of that is ugliest.

The Solution : Cutting ties with Rendon might be the jolt this team needs.

Yeah, that's an expensive pill to swallow, but he can't stay healthy, he's providing little to no value for the 50ish games per season that he does play and he has basically become a symbol of this franchise's continually worsening failure.

Cutting him does nothing to save them money, but you can't put a price on clubhouse morale.

In addition to that, the Angels need to go get an ace.

Even with Rendon and Trout costing them more than $75M per year for the next two seasons, there's no question they have room in their budget to land a Corbin Burnes, Blake Snell, Max Fried or Roki Sasaki, if the latter is posted this offseason.

One splash signing of a pitcher wouldn't fix them, but it's a start.

The Good : There are actually two decent reasons for optimism in the Marlins, the first being that despite trading away Luis Arraez and Jazz Chisholm Jr.

and despite having by far the lowest-scoring offense in the National League, they've found some promising building blocks in rookies Xavier Edwards and Connor Norby.

The former is batting .324 and averaging nearly one stolen base for every two games played; the latter hit six home runs in his first 18 games after relocating from Baltimore at the trade deadline.

Good-ish news item No.

2 is that the Marlins have more than an entire starting rotation on the IL.

Neither Sandy Alcantara nor Eury Perez pitched this season.

Braxton Garrett and Sixto Sanchez each made seven starts.

Jesus Luzardo, Max Meyer and Ryan Weathers each made between 11-13 starts.

All seven are currently on the IL but should be back next season.

So, unlike most of the teams on this list, Miami doesn't need to restock seemingly its entire pitching staff.

It just needs to get healthy.

The Bad : Edwards, Norby and Jonah Bride have been solid midseason additions to the regular lineup, but the offense as a whole remains a serious issue.

The only players left on the roster with at least 10 home runs this season are Jake Burger and Jesus Sanchez, both of whom whiff in at least a quarter of their plate appearances and are struggling to maintain a .300 on-base percentage.

And it only gets uglier from there as you make your way down into the bottom half of the lineup.

The Ugly : Health problems or not, the pitching staff was dreadful this season, on pace to allow more runs than it had in any season since 2007.

While they did have four relieversTanner Scott, A.J.

Puk, Bryan Hoeing and Huascar Brazobanlog at least 24 innings with a sub-3.00 ERA, the Marlins traded all four of them away ahead of the July 30 deadline.

Moreover, even when they were available this season, Luzardo, Garrett, Meyer and Sanchez all had ERA of 5.00 or worse, so who's to say whether getting them healthy for 2025 would even be a blessing or a curse? Perez (Tommy John surgery in April) likely won't be back until at least the All-Star break, either.

The Solution : Part of the solution could be waiting in Triple-A Jacksonville.

Deyvison De Los Santos isn't regarded as a top-tier prospect, but he is closing in on 40 home runs and 120 RBI for the year.

He went from Arizona to Miami in the Puk trade, and he could be a major addition to the 1B/3B/DH mix in 2025.

If they're serious about trying to contend next season, though, it's going to take more than a healthier starting rotation and the addition of one minor-league slugger.

We can already assume they aren't going to go out and get a Juan Soto, Pete Alonso, Alex Bregman or Willy Adames in free agency, but the Marlins could make smaller splashes for guys like Gleyber Torres and Michael Conforto, the latter of whom should turn things around by going anywhere other than San Franciscohe has an .817 OPS on the road compared to .621 at home this season.

Sprucing up the bullpen is a must, too, and there are plenty of respectable relievers they could target to accomplish that goal.

If they spend a little bit to bring in three or four of them, it could make a big difference.

The Good : Larry Walker and Todd Helton aren't walking through that door, but Brenton Doyle had a breakout year, Ezequiel Tovar improved upon what was already a great rookie season in 2023 and the corner infield tandem of Ryan McMahon and Michael Toglia is solid.

They need the 2023 version of Nolan Jones to resurface after what was a dreadful 2024 campaign from the left fielder.

But if that happens and they can drum up one more solid bat to replace Charlie Blackmon as the primary DH, the Rockies reasonably could have one of the better offenses over the next few years.

The Bad : There are still four years left on Kris Bryant's seven-year, $182M contract, and it's looking clear at this point that Colorado will be getting no return on that investment.

One bad contract does not a dumpster fire make, but it's symbolic of where they are at as a franchise, whiffing completely on the big signing that had everyone scratching their heads from the moment it was announced.

The Ugly : Pitching remains a permanent issue for this franchise, and with no end in sight.

Not a single pitcher on this roster who made at least one start in 2024 has an ERA below 4.44.

And three of the five guys who made at least 18 starts this seasonAustin Gomber, Cal Quantrill and Dakota Hudsononly have one year of arbitration eligibility left before they hit free agency anyway.

They did finally get Antonio Senzatela back for the first time since May 2023.

They should have German Marquez back in the mix next season.

And 2023 first-round pick Chase Dollander has lived up to the hype thus far in the minors and plausibly could be the best starting pitcher this franchise has ever had.

That's not a high bar to clear, though, with the Rockies about to complete their third consecutive season of allowing the most runs in the majors.

The Solution : The Rockies have posted five winning seasons dating back to 2001, which are not coincidentally the only five seasons in which they allowed fewer than 4.69 runs per game.

Of course, there's a fine line between making the diagnosis of "the pitching needs to improve" and actually coming up with a solution to that near-annual problem.

Even if they have the funds to sign a starting pitcher or two, no free-agent pitcher in good standing wants to go to Colorado.

They almost have to hope they can get lucky with a reclamation projectsomeone who used to be darn good, but due to injuries and/or recent ineffectiveness is hitting free agency (or the trade block) at the low point of his career.

Someone like Walker Buehler.

For what it's worth, he hasn't even pitched well in Coors Field over the course of his career.

We're talking a 5.65 ERA in 57.1 innings, most of which came back in 2018-21 when he was otherwise a Cy Young candidate.

It could be a disastrous marriage.

But maybe they could overpay Buehler enough Spotrac puts his market value at one-year, $3.7M, so it wouldn't need to be another Kris Bryant-sized deal by any meansto try to make him the ace of their staff.

(They could also take on a different type of reclamation project by signing Trevor Bauer or Julio Urias, if either one is actually allowed to ever pitch in the majors again.

Though, they, too, had some of their worst career numbers at Coors Field.) The Good : While most teams in full-blown tank mode will rid themselves of any established talent that will be hitting free agency before the next time the roster seems capable of making a legitimate postseason push, Chicago does still have All-Star center fielder Luis Robert Jr.

under contract for at least one and possibly up to three more seasons.

The White Sox also have All-Star southpaw Garrett Crochet via arbitration eligibility for the next two years.

Maybe they just keep that duo, but they will likely be used as offseason trade chips, which should help further restock a farm system that is already leaps and bounds ahead of where it was two years ago.

The Bad : Of the 19 pitchers who have logged at least 19 innings of work for the White Sox this season, only two have done so with a sub-4.00 ERAErick Fedde (3.11 before he was traded to St.

Louis) and Garrett Crochet (3.02 ERA before the All-Star break; 6.46 since).

The silver lining is that the aforementioned improved farm system is top-heavy with pitching promise.

However, we'll see if 2022 first-round pick Noah Schultz or 2024 first-round pick Hagen Smith actually become staples in this rotation at any point.

The Ugly : En route to what is easily going to be the record for most losses in a season since 1900, the White Sox have had three 12-game losing streaks and just one four-game winning streak.

They were already 19 games below .500 by the time they won back-to-back games for the first time this seasonthis coming on the heels of a pathetic 101-loss campaign.

It wasn't long ago that the White Sox were a contender, winning 93 games in 2021.

Sure feels like a lifetime ago, though, as there has been nothing worth rooting for lately.

Heck, they can't even root for draft position.

Thanks to the new rule prohibiting large-market teams from picking in the lottery in consecutive years, the White Sox are setting futility history for what will merely be the 10th overall pick in next summer's draft.

The Solution : There's simply no quick-fix solution here.

At least for Kansas City's incredible turn-around from a 106-loss mess to a likely postseason team, they already had a couple of young stars to build around in Bobby Witt Jr.

and Cole Ragans.

But even with those foundational pieces and even after spending more in free agency ($110.5M) than the rest of the AL Central combined ($91.5M), it's still baffling that they've been able to pull it off and they remain very much the exception to the rule.

And, well, this White Sox team is a whole lot worse than that Royals team was last year.

Still, perhaps they can do a few things this offseason to lay the groundwork for possible relevance in 2026.

Because while this team feels hopelessly broken, the franchise isn't exactly broke.

The White Sox entered 2022 with the seventh-highest payroll , per Cot's Contracts, and they ended both 2022 and 2023 with a 40-man competitive balance tax payroll north of $200 million.

Yet, the third-highest contract figure on the books for next season is the $5M buyout they're going to be paying Yoan Moncada.

USA Today's Bob Nightengale reported over the weekend that the White Sox plan to cut payroll in 2025, but that doesn't mean they're going to completely sit out free agency.

They could make significant investments in Shane Bieber and John Means, knowing full well that both of those free agents will likely miss most, if not all of 2025 while recovering from their Tommy John surgeries.

And they could trade Robert and Crochet for a decent haul of players who might actually help the team in 2027 and beyond.

Yes, that means the White Sox would be quite terrible again next season, but that's probably going to be the case no matter what they do this offseason.

Might as well at least have a plan while residing in MLB's basement next time around..

This article has been shared from the original article on bleacherreport, here is the link to the original article.