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Los Angeles Angels manager Mike Scioscia has decided to return to the team next season, choosing to forgo the opt-out clause in his contract, according to Jeff Fletcher of the Orange County Register.

“I’m coming back,” Scioscia simply said, per Fletcher.   

The longtime manager signed a 10-year contract extension with the team in 2009, though he can opt out of the deal at any point, per JB Blanchard of the Chicago Sun Times.

Scioscia, 56, has spent 16 seasons as the manager of the Angels, compiling a 1,416-1,176 record and leading the team to a World Series title in 2002. He’s also led the Angels to the playoffs seven times and was the American League Manager of the Year in 2002 and 2009, though the Angels have reached the postseason just once in the last six years. 

With a talented roster led by one of the game’s biggest superstars in Mike Trout and a new general manager coming in, Billy Eppler, another failure to reach the postseason won’t be viewed favorably by the front office or fans. While Scioscia’s track record speaks for itself, missing the postseason next year may take his future with the Angels out of his hands.  

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The Oakland Athletics aren’t in the playoffs after three consecutive prior appearances, but they aren’t wavering in their support of front office executives Billy Beane and David Forst.  

The team announced Monday that Beane was promoted from general manager to executive vice president of baseball operations, while Forst will move up to take over the GM post.

Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle weighed in on what the news means:

Only four clubs had a lower payroll than Oakland in 2015, per Spotrac, which has always been the case during Beane’s lengthy tenure facilitating the Athletics’ personnel decisions. Also serving as minority owner of the A’s, it was only a matter of time before Beane was given a gaudier label for the pioneering work he’s done.

Beane spoke recently about how coming up short as a player helped shape his philosophy as an executive, per CIO‘s Thor Olavsrud:

I’m a former player, allegedly, if you saw my stats. I was judged the traditional way: the eye test. I was measured by skills that weren’t really relevant to playing the game.

I was a misjudged asset in my own career. Then the whole world opened up to me. [Sabermetrics] turned the world and the game into a mathematical equation that was easy to understand. And now sports teams are trying to hire the same people that NetSuite wants to hire, that Google wants to hire.

That type of visionary, forward-thinking has helped the A’s stay ahead of the curve as sabermetrics have grown in prominence in recent years. It’s also helped keep the team competitive despite a dearth of financial resources other big-market teams enjoy to bring in top-tier talent.

Forst has been a staple in Oakland’s power structure, serving as an assistant GM for 12 of his 16 years with the organization. According to the team’s official website, Forst has helped Beane with all player acquisitions and evaluations as well as contract negotiations.

As commendable a job as Beane and Forst have done to date, unless the A’s have more money to play with, it’s hard to envision them achieving the ultimate goal of a World Series crown. This offseason ought to bring about numerous roster changes after the team posted a 68-94 record in 2015.

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The Los Angeles Angels’ 2015 season came to an end Sunday when they lost to the Texas Rangers, and they immediately turned their attention to the future in the aftermath.

The first order of business for the offseason is to establish a new general manager, and late Sunday the team named Billy Eppler to the vacant position.

The position is open because Jerry Dipoto stepped down in July and was recently named the general manager of the Seattle Mariners. Buster Olney of ESPN suggested the Angels have had their eyes on Eppler for some time:

Ken Rosenthal of Fox Sports said the team potentially delayed the announcement of Eppler as the new general manager because of the chance it could have faced the New York Yankees in the American League Wild Card Game. Eppler was New York’s assistant general manager.

The Yankees hired Eppler in 2004, when he was a scout for the Colorado Rockies. He worked his way up the organizational ranks and became the assistant general manager following the 2011 campaign, although he interviewed for the Angels’ position in 2011 before it was given to Dipoto.

Charlie Wilmoth of MLBTradeRumors.com discussed what lies ahead for the new man in charge in Los Angeles:

Eppler will inherit a situation in Los Angeles that is in some ways envious and some ways not. Tension between Dipoto and manager Mike Scioscia led to Dipoto’s departure, and the fact that Scioscia remained while Dipoto left suggests that Eppler will have to find a way to work with Scioscia, regardless of any differences that might arise. Owner Arte Moreno has a reputation for being heavily involved with baseball decisions. Also, the Angels don’t have a particularly strong farm system.

On the other hand, the Angels won 85 games this season and have a relatively strong talent base led by one of the one or two best players in baseball in Mike Trout. That’s a rare starting point for an incoming GM. Eppler will also have access to a big budget, as Moreno has rarely been shy about spending on top-tier free agents.

The ability to spend on top-notch talent is critical for a team like the Angels, which narrowly missed the playoffs this season and could be a piece or two away from championship contention. However, the farm system could take on more importance for Eppler as he settles into his new position.

Baseball America‘s John Manuel ranked the Angels farm system as only the 28th-best in baseball coming into the season.

While adding a marquee name or two from a free-agent class that will likely include All-Stars such as David Price, Johnny Cueto and others would be critical for Los Angeles’ immediate World Series chances, the farm-system ranking is alarming.

Eppler’s ability to bring in promising young players and replenish the entire organization from top to bottom could define his tenure.

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They say everything is bigger in Texas. This year, that includes the number of teams heading into the MLB playoffs.

For the first time since 1999, and only the third time ever, the Texas Rangers and Houston Astros will both participate in the postseason, with the Rangers going in as division champs and the Astros as the second American League wild-card team.

Texas secured its first AL West crown since 2011 with a decisive 9-2 victory over the Los Angeles Angels on the final day of the regular season. At the same time (literally, as all of Sunday’s contests occurred simultaneously), Houston lost 5-3 to the Arizona Diamondbacks, but snuck into the dance for the first time since 2005 because the Angels lost.

In a sense, then, Houston should thank its in-state rival. Yes, the Rangers snatched first place, a position the Astros held for much of the season, but Texas also pulled the ‘Stros along by defeating the Halos.

Regardless of the particulars, the bottom line is this: Both of the Lone Star State’s baseball squads are playoff bound. Coming into spring, basically no one saw that coming.

OK, sure, somewhere there’s a guy in a threadbare Nolan Ryan jersey who believed from the beginning. But most of us media types would have called this scenario far-fetched at best.

None of ESPN’s prognosticators tapped either Texas or Houston to snag so much as a wild-card berth, let alone win the West outright. Sports Illustrated ranked the Rangers the No. 24 team in baseball (out of 30), one slot ahead of the Rangers.

Houston was supposed to be a team of the future, blessed with burgeoning talent but still emerging from a stretch of futility that included three consecutive 100-loss seasons between 2011 and 2013.

Texas, meanwhile, was coming off a disappointing, injury-riddled 2014 campaign and lost ace Yu Darvish to Tommy John surgery in March.

The idea that these franchises would be jostling for first place was borderline absurd, as USA Today‘s Jorge L. Ortiz spelled out:

For one, the clubs have been division rivals for only three years, with the Astros switching leagues in 2013. And since they began playing each other in 2001, only once—11 years ago—have both finished with winning records. Before this season, hardly anybody would have put money on this year marking the second such occurrence, as both teams wound up more than 20 games under .500 in 2014.

So they exceeded expectations, to say the least.

Each team’s offense finished among the AL’s top five in runs scored. Houston did it by launching 230 long balls, tied for first with the big-bashing Toronto Blue Jays. And Texas rode veterans Prince Fielder, Adrian Beltre, Mitch Moreland and Shin-Soo Choo, its resurgent “big four,” as Adam Boedeker of NBC DFW dubbed them.

Houston’s pitching staff, anchored by ace and Cy Young contender Dallas Keuchel, paced the Junior Circuit in ERA. Texas, meanwhile, has an ace up its sleeve after nabbing stud southpaw Cole Hamels in a deadline deal with the Philadelphia Phillies.

At the time, Joel Sherman of the New York Post expressed the popular sentiment when he suggested the trade was more about the future than the present. The Rangers were under .500 on July 31, after all.

“Texas envisions [Darvish] coming back from Tommy John surgery next year to team atop the rotation with Hamels,” Sherman wrote. 

That’s undoubtedly still true. But now, the Rangers can also dream about Hamels, who twirled a complete game on Sunday, pitching them deep into October in the here and now.

“What we went through to get to this point, unbelievable,” Moreland said after the clincher, per T.R. Sullivan of MLB.com. “We went through a lot of adversity just to come out to where we are on the last game of the season.”

If you’re in a glass-half-empty mood, you could point out that Texas faces a tough ALDS matchup against a potent Toronto club that won the season series against the Rangers and will doubtless come in as heavy favorites. 

For their part, the Astros missed an opportunity to wrest home-field advantage away from the New York Yankees, who lost on Sunday. Now, the ‘Stros must travel to the Big Apple on Tuesday for the do-or-die AL Wild Card Game.

The Astros will send Keuchel to the hill, per MLB.com’s Brian McTaggart. He’ll be opposed by Yanks ace Masahiro Tanaka, who recently battled a hamstring issue and has surrendered six runs in 11 innings over his last two starts, both New York losses.

But Houston would have been much better off playing at Minute Maid Park, as its dismal 33-48 road record attests. 

Forget all that for now, though. For the first time in the 21st century, the big league postseason features a Texas tandem. In fact, with two Missouri teams and two New York teams also making it in, three states account for 60 percent of the the 2015 playoff entrants. 

Texas’ representatives, however, are the most unlikely. No one gave them a shot a scant six months ago, and there were doubters until the end. But here they are anyway, drenched in champagne after Game 162. 

Regardless of what happens next, that’s a big deal—even by Texas standards.

All statistics current as of Oct. 4 and courtesy of MLB.com unless otherwise noted.

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The Houston Astros were a disaster in their first two years in the American League, with a combined record of 121-203 (including an abysmal 51-111 record in 2013), but they completely turned the corner this season and are heading to the playoffs.

Bob Nightengale of USA Today noted the Astros clinched a wild-card berth after the Texas Rangers beat the Los Angeles Angels on Sunday. The victory also sewed up the American League West title for the Rangers.

Jonah Keri of Grantland noted the Astros’ success was just a footnote in a strange 2015 campaign:

The Astros celebrated after the game, as shown by Brian T. Smith of the Houston Chronicle:

Hank Conger also had a good time following the game:

This is the first time the Astros have reached the playoffs since 2005, when they lost the World Series to the Chicago White Sox. This is also the first time the team will finish with a winning record since 2008.

Houston had to hang on for dear life after it lost 14 of its first 21 September games. As Jon Morosi of Fox Sports pointed out, the bullpen is to blame for eight of those losses.

That late-season debacle from Houston was head-scratching because it ranked seventh in the league in bullpen ERA entering play Sunday with Luke Gregerson shutting the door. If the Astros plan on making noise in the playoffs in tight, nerve-racking games, they will need the bullpen to perform like it did most of the season.

The bullpen is far from the only reason the Astros made the playoffs, though.

Dallas Keuchel anchored the rotation as the ace and set career highs in innings pitched (232), wins (20) and strikeouts (216) along with a career-best ERA (2.48) and WHIP (1.02). Keuchel’s 2015 season was his fourth in the league and represented something of a breakout campaign. He made the All-Star team and was dominant at Minute Maid Park, as ESPN Stats & Info noted:   

The Astros also traded for Scott Kazmir in July to be a quality secondary option in the rotation. The southpaw has postseason experience on his resume, so he will not likely be intimidated by the marquee October games ahead.

The offense was impressive throughout the season as well, with superstar second baseman Jose Altuve leading the way.

Altuve followed up his incredible 2014 performance—in which he posted a .341 average on the way to the American League batting title—with another All-Star campaign. He is an electrifying base stealer, but he also set career highs in home runs (15) and RBI (66) in 2015. He sets the table for the rest of the order, comes through with critical hits when his team needs a win and covers plenty of ground at second. 

Altuve was the engine driving the offense, but Evan Gattis deserves plenty of credit, too, after he posted career highs in home runs (27), RBI (87) and triples (11). He earned praise from his manager in the process, per Richard Justice of MLB.com:

The Astros lineup brings serious punch, and Gattis, Luis Valbuena, Colby Rasmus, Carlos Correa and Chris Carter all reached the 20-homer plateau. If Altuve continues to get on base and this impressive group of sluggers drives him home, Houston will make some noise in the playoffs.

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As the Seattle Mariners begin to evaluate things to prepare for 2016, the fate of manager Lloyd McClendon remains up in the air with new general manager Jerry Dipoto. 

Continue for updates. 

Dipoto Undecided on McClendon

Saturday, Oct. 3

According to USA Today‘s Bob Nightengale, there are conflicting feelings between Dipoto and other executives about what the future holds for McClendon in Seattle:

McClendon, who was hired by the Mariners in Nov. 2013, has had a disappointing run as manager. He led the team to an 87-75 record last season, finishing one game behind Oakland for the second wild-card spot. 

Things fell apart in 2015 for the Mariners, who enter the season’s final two days with a record of 75-85, marking the sixth time since 2008 they will finish with a losing record. 

ESPN’s Jim Bowden noted that he spoke to Dipoto recently, with the Mariners new GM saying he wanted to take some time to get to know McClendon before making any final decision. 

Seattle is in a tenuous position heading into next season, as the team will clear nearly $45 million in payroll from 2015. Dipoto has a lot of decisions to make about the coaching staff and 25-man roster to get the team back in playoff contention. 

McClendon’s future will be determined by how well he is able to connect with Dipoto on a baseball level. He’s a veteran manager with seven years of experience under his belt going back to his days in Pittsburgh, but the lack of success in that time does leave him with a lot to prove in the meeting room.   

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A disappointing season for the Seattle Mariners is ending with injury woes for star second baseman Robinson Cano, who will have offseason surgery for a sports hernia.

Continue for updates.

Cano Surgery Set for Oct. 13

Friday, Oct. 2

According to Larry Stone of the Seattle Times, Cano has played through a sports hernia since July and will have surgery Oct. 13 to correct the problem. Bob Dutton of the Tacoma News Tribune reported Cano will need six weeks of recovery time.

Per Ryan Divish of the Seattle Times, the Mariners knew this was a possibility and ran tests to make sure they had a definitive answer before the offseason. MLB.com’s Greg Johns added the former All-Star will play for the Mariners in their final series this weekend against the Oakland Athletics.

Cano got off to a dreadful start this year but is finishing strong, and his second-half performance looks even better when considering what he has been dealing with.

The 32-year-old is hitting .332/.388/.540 with 14 home runs since the All-Star break. He may not be the MVP-caliber hitter he was during his prime years moving forward, but his turnaround this season does provide hope that there’s plenty of gas left in the tank.

After signing a whopping 10-year, $240 million contract with the Mariners in December 2013, Cano was expected to post superstar numbers. To this point, that hasn’t been the case.

A healthy Cano, to go along with a solid pitching nucleus led by Felix Hernandez, gives the Mariners a nice foundation to build around. The front office has to find the right pieces to go around them to make a playoff push in 2016.

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The Texas Rangers were eight games back of the Houston Astros for the AL West lead on Aug. 1, but a late-season run of epic proportions vaulted them back into the pennant chase and the postseason party for the first time since 2012. 

On Thursday, the Rangers secured a playoff spot with a 5-3 win over the Los Angeles Angels. The victory also shrank their magic number to clinch the AL West down to one. 

ESPN Stats & Info broke down just how improbable the Rangers’ return to the postseason is by referencing their early-season struggles:     

Bleacher Report’s Scott Miller offered up some praise for Rangers manager Jeff Banister following the win:

Utility pitcher Anthony Bass passed along a celebratory picture from the locker room:

Dallas Mavericks star Dirk Nowitzki also joined in on the congratulatory parade: 

To put the accomplishment in perspective, the Rangers became just the fourth team in the last 30 years to gain sole possession of first place in their division beyond the season’s 144th game, according to Elias Sports Bureau (h/t ESPN.com). The three teams that accomplished the feat prior to the Rangers were all bounced in the divisional round of the playoffs. 

Ever since the trade deadline, Texas has resembled a completely different beast. While a 42-46 pre-All-Star Game record didn’t provide much reason for optimism, the Rangers bounced back and throttled the opposition by going 18-10 in August. Since the All-Star break, Texas has posted a cumulative mark of 45-26. 

Although the Rangers’ biggest trade-deadline splash revolved around the acquisition of left-handed ace Cole Hamels, the team’s most noticeable improvements beyond July 31 came at the plate. After batting .247 as a team in the 88 games prior to the break, Texas experienced a revival that pushed its second-half batting average toward .270. 

Shin-Soo Choo has been particularly hot of late, as his batting average and on-base percentage have both spiked in concert with the Rangers’ ascent up the American League ladder. In September, Choo is batting over .400 with an on-base percentage in excess of .500. 

“He’s got a gap-to-gap approach,” Rangers general manager Jon Daniels said, according to the Star-Telegram‘s Jeff Wilson. “It doesn’t matter lefty or righty or off-speed. He’s locked in. You see the difference it makes when you have him on base. It changes the whole dynamic.”  

On the mound, Hamels has offered Texas’ pitching staff an added dimension. Since arriving in Arlington, the 2008 World Series MVP has gone 6-1 with a 3.86 ERA. 

Buoyed by Hamels’ experience on the big stage and his well-rounded arsenal of pitches, the Rangers have the ability to play the role of postseason disrupter—especially if Colby Lewis and Yovani Gallardo raise their games under the bright lights of the second season. 

Factor in Prince Fielder’s big bat and Adrian Beltre’s wealth of talent on an offense that ranks among the league’s best, and Texas is in prime position to keep its positive momentum churning. 

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Seattle Mariners ace Felix Hernandez is done for what’s left of the 2015 season after exiting his last start with a minor elbow injury, per Bob Dutton of the News Tribune in Tacoma, Washington.

Continue for updates.

Mariners Shut Down Hernandez

Wednesday, Sept. 30

With Hernandez unable to make another start this year, he’ll snap what has been an extremely impressive streak, per Greg Johns of MLB.com:   

Hernandez previously dealt with tightness in his right quadriceps. The injury caused him to leave an April start against the Oakland Athletics early. He didn’t end up missing any scheduled outings because of the issue, though.

The longtime Mariners star has been highly durable throughout his career. With 31 starts this year, he’s made at least 30 starts in 10 consecutive seasons. King Felix has also been one of the league’s best pitchers over that stretch, highlighted by winning a Cy Young Award in 2010.

Since the season is almost over anyway, it makes sense for the Mariners to be extra cautious with Hernandez. The franchise inked him to a massive extension in 2013, so risking further injury to him in meaningless games would be unnecessary. 

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When an actor gives a poor performance on Broadway, unflattering reviews and an unsatisfied audience usually follow.

That is the natural order of consequences. All an actor can do in response is prepare, come out the next time and give a better performance. That is the extent of what fans and critics can ask.

The same goes for professional athletes. But when those ugly outings come during the postseason, the stage is infinitely bigger than any Broadway has to offer. Poor performances on the field can lead to more significant consequences, including helping getting a team eliminated from the playoffs and/or making a player expendable from a roster. The boos are also inevitable.

Prince Fielder has experienced all of that. The Texas Rangers’ high-priced designated hitter, a front-runner for the American League’s Comeback Player of the Year Award, has dealt with the criticism that has come with his shoddy postseason numbers with the Milwaukee Brewers and Detroit Tigers, the latter of which traded him after the 2013 season.

“I got kids, man,” Fielder famously told reporters while explaining how the hurt from the 2013 ALCS elimination loss to the Boston Red Sox, the last time Fielder appeared in the playoffs, wouldn’t linger.

His responses still do not sit well with his former home fans.

Prince Fielder bounces weakly to first. Already in postseason mode. #igotkidsman

— Motor City Bengals (@MCB_Tigers) August 20, 2015

“You have to be a man about it,” Fielder added two Octobers ago after he hit .182 in the ALCS. “I have kids. If I’m sitting around pouting about it, how am I going to tell them to keep their chins or keep their heads up when something doesn’t go their way? It’s over.”

When told Tiger fans might not embrace that kind of response, Fielder fired back with an age-old athlete adage: “They don’t play.”

Fielder does, but it has been at an entirely pedestrian level during the playoffs over the course of his otherwise impressive career. He has played in 39 postseason games and accumulated 164 plate appearances with the Brewers and Tigers since October 2008.

In no series has he hit higher than .278, and his career slash line is .194/.287/.333 with a .620 OPS, five home runs and 11 RBI. He has not homered in his last 20 games (84 plate appearances). He has one extra-base hit in his last 18 and has not driven in a run in his last 18. Also, in his last 16 games (65 plate appearances), he has struck out 12 times against three walks.

But to have any kind of working relationship with Fielder is to understand his unwillingness to show public frustration or question his own abilities. That attitude stretches to his team, as he showed Monday after the Rangers’ third consecutive loss.

But his comments following the 7-4 loss to the Tigers could have very well summed up his attitude toward his postseason disappointments. He is stoic in both defeat and triumph when the microphones are turned on, downplaying virtually every question hurled his way.

“Worry doesn’t do anything,” Fielder told reporters Monday. “It just makes everything seem bigger than it is.”

Everything about Fielder’s career has been big, though. From his stature (5’11”, 275 lbs) to his home runs—he was the youngest player to ever hit 50 homers in a season when he did it at 23 years, 139 days—to his $214 million contract over nine years, to his playoff failures.

Even his injury last season was a big one. He had a herniated disk in his neck and had surgery in May of last year to fuse two of the disks in his spine. That injury, which started to bother him for the first time in 2012, severely limited his production in 2014 and chopped his season to just 42 games in his first with the Rangers after never having played fewer than 157 contests in any of his previous eight full seasons.

At the time, the injury was significant enough for everyone, including Fielder, to wonder if he would ever be the same slugging, intimidating middle-of-the-order behemoth he had been in those previous eight years.

“There’s doubts,” Fielder told Tyler Kepner of the New York Times last weekend. “You have neck surgery, you don’t know where you’re at. You haven’t played in a year or so, you don’t know where you’re going to be.”

“You worry a lot,” Fielder added. “Anytime someone does surgery, let alone on your spine, it’s a little weird.”

This season has been a wonderful bounce-back campaign. Any doubts have evaporated in the Texas heat as Fielder’s batting average has been no lower than .300 since the third game of the year. His power numbers have been down—his 23 home runs would be the lowest full-season total of his career—but he is getting on base at a .381 clip, reminiscent of his Brewer days that earned him that enormous contract with the Tigers.

But we have seen these kinds of award-worthy seasons from Fielder before, and we have also seen them devolve into ugly postseasons. That cannot happen this time around, assuming the Rangers qualify as the AL West champions or through the wild-card route. The Rangers are not a good enough team to overcome one of their most valuable players performing as Fielder has in past Octobers.

For the Rangers to have a real chance to advance in these coming playoffs, Fielder has to continue being the offensive force he has been his entire career, including this season.

All quotes, unless otherwise specified, have been acquired firsthand by Anthony Witrado. Follow Anthony on Twitter @awitrado and talk baseball here.

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