The 5 key players of the NL Central

Welcome back to our search for the key player for every team in baseball. If these players do well, their teams will do well. If these players flop, their teams will flop. I emailed every one of them a PDF waiver that limits my liability if they get hurt within minutes of me posting this, and it’s not my fault if it goes straight into their spam folders.

Don’t forget that these are usually right. From last year:

Royals - Wade Davis
If the Royals are really going to win the American League pennant, they’ll need to build a super bullpen. Davis needs to be a substantial part of that. Several relievers do, actually, because this team can’t really hit. Have you noticed that? They have one, maybe two, regulars who should be good for an above-average OPS. The rest of them are lousy-to-okay, and it’s not like they’re going to bunt and run their way to success in the postseason. They’ll need a super bullpen to paper over these deficiencies. Unless they start hitting a bunch of random dingers in the postseason, which, ha ha ha, I’d like to see that happen.

So wise, so prescient. So not fake. And now it’s time to find the key players for each team in the NL Central:

The Cubs can win without Baez. If he hits .189 with 20 homers and a .190 on-base percentage, the Cubs will have options. Ideally, those emergency options would involve Kris Bryant devouring pitchers whole, Tommy LaStella moving to second, and Baez facing more Triple-A pitching. They have Jonathan Herrera in a glass case, too, so it’s not like Baez is the only way the Cubs can succeed.

It’s just the most likely. Draw up a blueprint of the next pennant-winning Cubs team. You have the obvious heroes -- Bryant, Jorge Soler, Jon Lester -- but if Baez does nothing, all of those cats would have to do a little bit more. With Baez hitting, Kris Bryant doesn’t have to be Miguel Cabrera right away. He can be Aramis Ramirez or Todd Frazier if Baez is a productive force, and the Cubs will still be in great shape. Soler wouldn’t have to be Andre Dawson with robotic knees. There’s a trickle-down effect, and it makes the blueprint seem reasonable, if not likely.

All it takes is for Baez to overcome historically repugnant strikeout numbers.

Not something I would bet on, not yet. There could be a year or three of pain before Baez turns into a star. It might never happen. Note that Cubs fans love it when you bring up “Brandon Wood” every time they’re trying to express optimism about their team’s future.

It’s possible he’s been this key player for at least six or seven teams in the past. He’ll probably be the key player for six or seven more, if he can stay healthy. That if-he-can-stay-healthy disclaimer would make for a clunky nickname, but there would be some truth in advertising. He pitched the second-most innings of his career -- 162⅓ -- last year, but he wasn’t doing anything good until the second half, when he morphed into the Cy Young-type he was always supposed to be (and was for parts of 2013).

After nearly breaking 100 pitches through four innings on July 13 and getting the loss against the Reds, Liriano had a 2.20 ERA and 94 strikeouts in 86 innings. The Pirates were only 7-7 in those 14 starts, so it’s disingenuous to pretend Liriano was solely responsible for the Pirates’ second-half surge -- Edinson Volquez was even better, somehow -- but you saw a vision of a future in which the Pirates had dominant starting pitchers, plural. Gerrit Cole you expect, but if they can get one more ace going, their solid lineup can do the rest. They can play with the Cardinals, no question. They just need a little more pitching.

Liriano is their best bet. He’s not exactly a bargain at three years, $39 million -- the Pirates know he’s going to miss a month, regardless -- but he’s a great raffle ticket for a team that has plenty of safe, boring options in case their raffle ticket is covered in poison oak.

Jay Bruce is full of surprises. Did you know he’s still just 27? His birthday is in less than a month, sure, but he’s still a young player. He should still be in the prime of his career, if not still getting better.

Here’s another fun Jay Bruce factlet: Did you know he was ghastly last year? One of the worst players in either league, a liability at the plate and, according to the numbers, a core meltdown in the field. None of that makes any sense, considering that before last year he was one of the most consistent players in baseball.

2010: 124 OPS+, 573 PA
2011: 118 OPS+, 664 PA
2012: 121 OPS+, 633 PA
2013: 120 OPS+, 697 PA

A player like that, entering his age-27 season, is incredibly easy to predict. It’s the screensaver that comes on when the spreadsheets are processing the projections for the harder players. Instead, he dropped his Mentos in a Diet Coke at the opera, and everyone within a substantial radius was irritated and/or disappointed. His right knee was apparently the culprit, as he came back after just 14 days following surgery in May.

At season’s end, manager Bryan Price and general manager Walt Jocketty admitted the knee affected Bruce pretty much all season. He wasn’t playing in pain, but the lack of strength robbed him of his power and put him in a serious funk overall.

His 2014 season made Bernie Worrell say, “Damn, that funk is just too serious for my tastes. Do you have any Counting Crows?” But at least everyone can blame the knee. It’s nice when there’s an injury that can be held responsible, so long as it goes away, and everything points toward a rebound season for Bruce. Which is good, considering the Reds still have a chance to pitch and hit a lot better than we expect. If Bruce (and Joey Votto and Brandon Phillips) can rebound, even if just a little, maybe, just maybe, they’ll hit enough and stay healthy enough to win.

There are any number of Matts to pick here, but Holliday is the one because he’s almost underrated and unnoticeable. When I scroll through the Cardinals lineup, it goes something like ...

1. Matt Carpenter
2. Jason Heyward
3. (obvious #3 hitter I mentally skip because I take him for granted)
4. Matt Adams

Holliday is a faceless #3 hitter, an extra in the movie about a more interesting #3 hitter. He just keeps hitting and playing and hitting and playing, stopping only when a moth gets stuck in his ear. In the postseason, he tries to break tiny second basemen and catch baseballs with his wiener, but in the regular season, he’s just that guy who always seems to be hitting an extra-base hit in the middle of the Cardinals lineup.

He’s 35, though. There are no chronic injury concerns, no strikeout-rate red flags to worry about. Everything suggests another typical Holliday season other than the age, but it’s an age that should help us stop taking him for granted. A 35-year-old doesn’t have to keep hitting just because he used to in the past. A 35-year-old doesn’t have to stay healthy just because he used to in the past. And once Holliday is out of that Cardinals lineup, it looks a lot less daunting.

The reason it looks daunting in the first place has to do with Holliday, even if it’s easy to ignore that part. A good season from him means the Cardinals will be unsavory, off-putting, and contending again, in their own special way. A bad season from him means we’ll probably appreciate just what he’s meant for the Cardinals over the last six years.

Ryan Braun is the obvious candidate, but one of the better-kept secrets in baseball is that the Brewers have the lineup depth to survive another un-Braun season. From Carlos Gomez and Jonathan Lucroy at the top, to Aramis Ramirez and Adam Lind in the middle, the Brewers have done a commendable job filling their lineup with players who should be in a major league lineup. The trick, now, is to pitch well enough to support them.

On August 22, I included Lohse on an underrated baseball player list. It was both a list of underrated baseball players and an underrated list of baseball players, and here’s what I wrote about him:

Lohse is a control maven who pitches to contact, which is, well, I fell asleep writing that sentence. But he’s not boring in the awful Twins way; he’s actually good. He’s one of the 25-most valuable pitchers in baseball over the last three years, matching up favorably with pitchers like Johnny Cueto, Zack Greinke, and Adam Wainwright.

He finished the season with a 107 ERA+ (boring), 3.54 ERA (yaaawn), and somewhere between two or three wins above replacement (wait, that’s really good). The rest of the Brewers’ rotation is filled with high-upside question marks. It’s an impressive collection of “maybe they’ll make the All-Star team, maybe they’ll allow five runs a game?” pitchers, really. Considering that, they’ll need their sinker-chucking rock to keep chucking sinkers the way we’re all used to.