I still like our group, our core group of guys, going into next year," he says of the relievers. It is unlikely, though, that both Jeff Hoffman and Carlos Estevez will return.

The Philadelphia Phillies blew a golden opportunity to win their first World Series in over a decade this past season. President of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski thinks the team he built has enough good players.

Season postmortems can be rather sad affairs, in part because baseball's ultimate thrill mandates a marathon in the making, a season too long followed by a postseason that for all but one team is too short.