Just like we always see a few teams surprise the baseball world every year, we also see teams that are supposed to be good but disappoint us. It’s not so beautiful watching a club go through misery for six months because of a poor start to the season, whether it was bad luck or bad decision making.
In 2015, the Seattle Mariners finished 4th in the AL West after missing the playoffs by one game the year before. Their poor play led to manager Lloyd McClendon getting fired at the end of the season. The Arizona Diamondbacks went through the same thing in 2016 after improving their win-loss record by 15 games in 2015, they went 69-93 and manager Chip Hale was fired a day after the season ended.
Teams who get busy in the offseason adding pieces go into the next season with the mindset of improving and being a force to the rest of MLB as they fight for a spot in the playoffs, but that doesn’t always go according to plan.
In this article, we’ll look at teams that took big steps towards promise coming into 2018 but could disappoint us and take a step backward.