Category Archives: ‘Weekly’ Hit Ground Ball

Matt Smith’s Monday morning column, looking back at the previous week in MLB and looking ahead to the ‘early’ games scheduled for the week ahead

Weekly Hit Ground Ball: Unhappy Pirates fans, Unhappy players, Happy MLBTV fans

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We’re another week closer to pitchers and catchers reporting to Spring Training camp and, other than a few minor deals, we still haven’t seen much movement on the free agent market.

The continued deadlock is prompting plenty of discussion.  One comment included in a recent Jon Heyman article (attributed to a “player-linked person”, a phrase that tickles me more than it should) made me think more than most:

“MLB has done a good job convincing fan bases not to demand winning … Fans used to only care about winning. Now they say, “Is (the player/deal) worth it?”.

The juxtaposition of that sentiment with the fevered nature of the football January transfer window is striking.  Football fans always want their club to spend money (“if we could just sign one more striker …”) and normally only object to a rumoured deal if they think they should be buying someone better instead (i.e. someone costing more money).

We have to set that in the context of a pyramid league structure in which the threat of relegation means every team has a reason to spend – stoking the market as a result – but the potential for relegation also creates a risk of financial devastation (Portsmouth FC would be a good example for any Americans not familiar with such tales).

Such a risk doesn’t exist in MLB.

Every team has a budget and a bad decision or two on a free agent contract can hamper efforts to build and/or maintain a competitive roster for smaller market teams. No fan wants to see their team chucking money away on bad players. However, I’m beginning to wonder if some fans are increasingly more interested in how their team stacks up in the immediate analysis awards (praised for a good free agent deal, hammered for prospect package given up in a trade etc) than what the transaction will could their team regardless of the cost to the owners.

In 2018 the small market Tampa Bay Rays can afford to give San Francisco $14.5m to go towards Evan Longoria’s salary when they trade him away. Every MLB team is worth hundreds of millions of dollars and every MLB owner or ownership group has huge financial resources, more than enough to cover a bad free agent contract for a few years whilst still maintaining a competitive payroll.

This is no criticism of the data-led, evidence-based conversations on transactions, but maybe there is an argument that rather than creating greater scrutiny on team spending, it’s actually giving front offices and owners an excuse not to take chances and keeping money out of the pockets of players (who ultimately are the ones generating the record levels of revenue) and keeping it in the pockets of the owners.

Pirates fans want owner to walk the plank

You can pour over advanced statistical metrics, consider future payroll commitments and analyse potential success cycles in your division all you want; whatever the facts are, for fans none of them ease the feeling in their stomach – and their heart – when they see one of their heroes sat in a press conference wearing another team’s cap for the first time.

Pittsburgh Pirates fans knew that the day was going to come when Andrew McCutchen would be suiting up for another team, yet that hasn’t made it any easier. Coming hot on the heels of Gerrit Cole being traded to the Houston Astros, McCutchen’s departure to the San Francisco Giants has landed Pittsburgh in a depression broken only by anger.

Fans can accept players leaving, but what has come out this week is the bottled-up frustration of those that feel the club’s owner Bob Nutting refused to open the purse strings between 2013 and 2015 when the team made three consecutive play-off appearances.

The team had been in the bottom four of MLB payroll for all of the nine years prior to 2013 when they rocketed up to 25th of 30, followed by 27th in 2014 (no better way to celebrate your first play-off appearance in 21 years than by reducing your competitiveness) and then the heady heights of 24th in 2015 (where they’ve stayed in the two years since).

ESPN’s Buster Olney among others has made the fair point that just a few results could have changed everything: the NLDS Game 5 decider in 2013 and then the two Wild Card game defeats that followed.  Spending money to add another player or two would have not guaranteed anything either; however nothing’s worse than feeling that your team got close and then didn’t really try to give itself the best chance of going all the way.

A petition has been started that calls for MLB to force Nutting to sell the team, but sadly that request exposes the reality of the situation.  MLB ultimately is the 30 ownership groups and unless you’re really bringing embarrassment on the game – such as ex-Dodgers owner Frank McCourt – such local angst is of no concern to them.

So long as most owners don’t do anything so rash as spend their own money to try to win – the late Mike Ilitch let that cat out of the bag more than once – they can all sit back as their assets grow in value year on year and then laugh their way to the bank when they cash in.

Pace of play

It was inevitable that further pace-of-play changes would be implemented in MLB for the 2018 season, yet it’s increasingly looking likely that they will be imposed on the players rather than as part of an agreed approach.

The most important point with it all is that those of us that regular watch baseball are not the issue here. The reason Rob Manfred wants to force these changes through is his oft-touted research that pace of play puts off casual sports fans (in the US).  In that context it seems as much about being seen to do something (‘we’ve done x,y,z to speed up the games, come and watch …’) than lopping significant time off the average game length.

I can’t say I’m greatly convinced these changes will make millions more tune into a ballgame, nor do I really see pace of play as a huge problem, but I don’t see any harm in cutting down some of the wasted time where possible.  My main issue is the hitters and pitchers that blatantly take the proverbial when it comes to getting on with their job. Effectively penalising the worst offenders, rather than implementing a blanket pitch clock, would be a better approach in my book.

I thought I’d have a look at that by doing a quick bit of rough research to look at the state of play in 2017. I used FanGraphs’ Pace statistic which is a measure of the seconds between pitches for both hitters and pitchers based on PITCHf/x timestamps, so the numbers come with the caveat that they aren’t recorded in exactly the way the proposed 20-second pitch clock would start from.

For hitters, using 100 plate appearances as the minimum criteria produced a list of 435 hitters.  The Phillies’ Cesar Hernandez and the Mets’ Amed Rosario were quickest at 20.7/20.8 seconds, with the Astros’ Marwin Gonzalez the slowest at 29.3 (not that you needed the stats to suspect he was slowest if you’ve ever watched any of his plate appearances). The median average pace number for the 435 batters was 23.6 seconds. As that’s 3 seconds above the quickest pace number, I’ve used 23.6 + 3 as a cut-off point to see how many (and who) were beyond that, what we might call an acceptable level.

26.6 seconds and above produces a list of 26 hitters (6% of the total hitters in the sample).

Player Team Pace
Marwin Gonzalez Astros 29.3
Daniel Nava Phillies 29
Odubel Herrera Phillies 28.8
Logan Morrison Rays 28.3
Jorge Alfaro Phillies 28.2
Robinson Cano Mariners 28.2
Victor Martinez Tigers 28.1
Mark Canha Athletics 28
Hanley Ramirez Red Sox 27.9
Danny Espinosa (Multiple) 27.9
Kole Calhoun Angels 27.6
Nick Castellanos Tigers 27.5
Mitch Moreland Red Sox 27.5
Alex Avila (Multiple) 27.4
Gerardo Parra Rockies 27.3
Kurt Suzuki Braves 27.2
Corey Dickerson Rays 27.1
Bryce Harper Nationals 27
Avisail Garcia White Sox 27
A.J. Pollock Diamondbacks 26.9
Jett Bandy Brewers 26.9
Ryan Braun Brewers 26.7
Christian Vazquez Red Sox 26.7
Gary Sanchez Yankees 26.6
Evan Gattis Astros 26.6
Martin Maldonado Angels 26.6

Unsurprisingly there are quite a few catchers on this list.

For pitchers I used 30 innings pitched as the minimum criteria, which produced a list of 462 pitchers. The quickest from that group was Milwaukee’s Brent Suter (17.4 seconds) and the slowest was the LA Dodgers’ Pedro Baez (30.7).  So, there’s a bigger difference in pace among pitchers than among hitters, with the pitcher median average being 23.9 (those at the figure included Jake Arrieta and Clayton Kershaw).

When you look at the slowest pitchers one finding sticks out like a sore thumb (Rob Manfred would tell you a sore thumb caused by changing channel on the TV remote control).  Among the top 76 slowest pitchers, going down to an average of 26.3 seconds, only 7 were either predominantly starting pitchers or, in the case of Joe Biagini, made a decent number of starts.

Name Team Pace G GS
Matt Garza Brewers 27.9 24 22
Matt Andriese Rays 27.8 18 17
Sonny Gray (Multiple) 27.6 27 27
David Price Red Sox 27.1 16 11
Matt Shoemaker Angels 26.7 14 14
Vince Velasquez Phillies 26.3 15 15
Joe Biagini Blue Jays 26.3 44 18

And, yes, just as there were no surprises that Marwin Gonzalez was on the hitters’ list, David Price was a shoo-in to be on the pitchers’ one.

What you see though is that a lot of slower pitchers are relievers.  That’s no great revelation as relievers, due to the way they are used, are more likely to be deliberate with every pitch they throw; however it shows how pace of play can be affected by lots of things.  The increasing use of relievers for strategic purposes is likely but one part of that, due not only to the time taken for pitching changes and mound visits but also the more deliberate style of pitching.

Looking ahead to 2018 MLB.TV

Pace of play isn’t going to influence whether any of us are signing up for MLB.TV this year.

One of the landmark ‘baseball is coming’ moments for many of us every year is the day on which the MLB.TV subscription details are released.  MLB.com announced the packages and prices on 7 February last year, so we should expect to see the details in the next two to three weeks.

The 2017 main MLB.TV annual subscription cost $113.  We have to pay 20% VAT on top (which made it $135.59) and then factor in the dollar/pound exchange rate, so last February/March that worked out at approximately £108.  Things have turned in our favour over the past year on the dollar/pound front (as opposed to previous years of it going against us) and that same $135.59 would work out at at approximately £100, so a bit of a saving.

As part of settling a US lawsuit about TV subscriptions and blackouts in 2015/16, MLB had to agree to only increase their online subscription packages by 3% or the rate of inflation (whichever is higher, currently would be the 3%) year-on-year until 2020.

If we add 3% to the 2017 price ($113 plus $3.39, so let’s call it a US price of $116), include the VAT and take the current dollar/pound exchange rate into account then that would make for a UK cost of £102.  The team-specific subscription would be approximately £79.

We’ll have to wait for the official announcement to see quite what packages they will be selling and the price, so treat those as an educated guess for now; however, in theory the US prices should only go up a small amount and – due to the dollar/pound exchange rate – should actually work out a bit cheaper for us than a year ago.

Weekly Hit Ground Ball: Is the Hot Stove about to heat up?

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Compared to the weeks before it, the last seven days have been relatively busy in MLB.

None of the biggest names on the free agent market have found a new club, but there have been some free agent signings plus the deadline for salary arbitration submissions on Friday has created more certainty over payroll commitments and may well help to push the free agent and trade market on next week.

We can but hope.

Bruce to the Mets, Reed to the Twins

Two free agents came off the market with outfielder Jay Bruce reuniting with the New York Mets (after a couple of months with Cleveland) and the news on Saturday that reliever Addison Reed has agreed a deal with the Minnesota Twins.

Bruce signed a three-year, $39m contract and is the type of player who isn’t going to have people doing cartwheels on finding that their team has signed, yet is a decent experienced Major Leaguer and it turns out was available at a relatively reasonable price.

Bruce in the past has been a player who could get you some home runs but didn’t offer a huge amount of value otherwise. However, he had a good season last year combined with the Mets and Cleveland in what was his best year since 2013 with Cincinnati.  Although you may try to chalk that up to it being his ‘walk year’, FanGraphs notes that Bruce did display a new approach at the plate in 2017 and so the hope is he has made an adjustment that will continue to produce results.

The Mets are an interesting team to ponder for 2018.  Last year was nothing short of a disaster and there are so many fitness question marks over their pitching staff that it’s easy to just write them off.  You look at their roster though and you can put forward an argument that a Wild Card run might not be completely out of the question, albeit requiring a fairly long list of ‘ifs’ to work out in the Mets’ favour.

The Minnesota Twins are also a team that many seem to be overlooking.  They took everyone by surprise last season by winning an AL Wild Card in what turned out to be a somewhat weak race and so it’s understandable that there is doubt over whether they can back that up in 2018.

That shouldn’t obscure the fact that they’ve got some real talent on their roster though and Reed will certainly add to that list.  Rumours continue to swirl that the Twins are determined to add a quality free agent starter too this off-season and whilst I’d guess they will fall short in their pursuit for Yu Darvish, Lance Lynn or Alex Cobb could well fall into their price range and slot in very nicely alongside Ervin Santana and Jose Berrios.

Gerrit Cole

The Gerrit Cole trade story so far essentially goes like this:

  • He was on the verge of being traded to the Houston Astros
  • Then he wasn’t
  • He still might be
  • But he hasn’t gone anywhere yet
  • Although Buccos fans are expecting they’ve seen the last of him in their uniform

The Astros are in the best possible situation with a World Series win behind them, a talented roster in place and a strong farm system of Minor League prospects to deal from if they wish.  Whilst you could justifiably argue they don’t need much in the way of additions, other than an upgrade in the bullpen perhaps, that’s a very strong position in which to trade from.

[LATE EDIT: Cole is now an Astro!]

Arbitration explained

Friday was the deadline for salary arbitration numbers to be submitted and this prompted one reader query around quite how the MLB contract process works.  That’s one of many topics I cover in my Baseball Basics for Brits series, which I’ll be updating over the next two months. Here’s a basic guide to the MLB contract situation and how arbitration fits in.

When a player begins his MLB career he is under contract for six years, at the end of which he becomes a free agent unless he has negotiated a contract extension prior to this.

For the majority of players, during the first three years of their initial MLB contract they receive the MLB defined minimum salary.  This typically increases slightly every year. In 2018 the MLB minimum salary will be $545k (just under £400k). A team is able to pay more if they wish. If they do it tends to be by a small amount – no one wants to pay more than they have to – although slightly larger raises can be paid occasionally if the player is exceptional.  The team may still only pay them a little bit more in that situation – $100k, say – but it’s more a matter of principle than the money itself.

For years 4 to 6 the player becomes ‘arbitration eligible’.  The player is under contract with the team regardless (unless they release him) but how much they will be paid is negotiated year-to-year (again, unless the team and player agree a multi-year deal instead).

The arbitration element kicks in where the two parties can’t come to an agreement.  There is a hard deadline at which both parties must submit the figure they want – this past Friday in this year’s case – and then an independent arbitration hearing will be scheduled.  Negotiations can continue right up until the hearing and in the majority of cases the two parties will come to an agreement.

However, if they still can’t agree then the hearing takes place with both sides arguing in detail why their submitted figure is appropriate.  The main reason why parties like to avoid this situation is that ultimately it results in the team having to explain why the player isn’t as valuable as he thinks he is, which is not a particularly comfortable situation. The arbitration panel will listen to the submissions and then make a decision on which of the two figures is fair.  They can’t just split the difference or suggest something else, either the player ‘wins’ or the team does.

An important part of this process is that there is an underlying principle that a player deserves to be paid more as he gains more service time in the Majors. In other words, if a player had a downturn in performance in his fourth year, he would still get a salary raise for his fifth year, albeit not so much as he would have done had he performed better.

What this means is that salary arbitration negotiations aren’t just about the coming season, but also about future arbitration seasons as – if it ultimately goes to the arbitration panel – the main consideration will be how big a raise from his previous salary that the player deserves.

For example: Team A wants to pay Player X £5m in his fourth year, Player X wants $7m. If Team A ‘wins’ and the player still performs well then the fifth year salary might be $7.5m and the sixth year salary $9.5m.  If the player won then his salaries might go $7m, $9m and $11.5m.  So the initial case wasn’t simply about a difference of $2m but actually a difference of $5.5m.

There are some additional variations on this process, the main one of which to be aware of is that the very best players (as defined by specific criteria set out in the Collective Bargaining Agreement) become arbitration eligible a year early.  These players are known as ‘Super 2’ players.

An elephant never forgets, and neither does agent Scott Boras

One such Super 2 is the Chicago Cubs’ Kris Bryant. Jon Heyman tweeted a message about Kris Bryant and the Cubs coming to an agreement on a one-year deal on Friday to avoid an arbitration hearing and stated that the team would like to do a multi-year deal with the player.

I’m sure they would, just as they would like to do a deal with him down the line to keep him as a Cub for years to come rather than lose him to free agency when that time potentially comes.

However, the latter point is firmly at the front of Bryant’s, and particularly his agent Scott Boras’s, mind.

Let’s not forget, the Cubs royally screwed Bryant over at the start of the 2015 season.  They deliberately delayed his debut for a couple of weeks solely so that he would be unable to accrue a full year of Major League service time in 2015 and his post-six year free agency would therefore be delayed by a whole season.

It would be fair to say that it’s the rules that are really at fault there – given that those are the rules, it was a logical business decision for the Cubs to make – but the Cubs still knew what the longer term impact on the player would be when they made that choice.

Bryant’s deal of $10.85m is a record for a first-time arbitration eligible player and you have to think that there is an acceptance on the part of the Cubs that they have to give a bit of ground in the circumstances.

Game times released

Fans could start doing a bit more planning for the regular season from Wednesday as MLB updated their regular season schedule by adding in game times.

They take on added importance to us based on the convenience of watching live games with earlier start times.  The details are subject to change, so you shouldn’t get too tied to first pitch times too far ahead, but we should be able to rely on the current start times for the opening series being accurate.

As already known, Opening Day on Thursday 29 March is going to be a baseball feast with the first game – Chicago Cubs at Miami – from 12.40 Eastern Time (17.40 our time) and the final two games – Cleveland at Seattle and Colorado at Arizona – getting going at 10.10pm ET (03.10 am for us).

Fans of 24 teams will be able to catch their opener at a convenient British evening time.  The San Francisco and LA Dodgers are the other two starting at night US time (7.08 ET, 00.08 am for us) making it six teams for whom their UK fans will need to be up in the early hours to see their season opener live. That shouldn’t be too much of a hardship though, especially as it’s Good Friday the following day.

If one of those final two games goes 3.5 hours we’d be looking at 13 solid hours of baseball by which to welcome MLB back.

Sounds good to me!

Weekly Hit Ground Ball: Back for 2018

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With November and December in the rear-view mirror, it’s time to get my weekly MLB column back up-and-running as we start looking ahead to pitchers and catchers reporting to their 2018 Spring Training camps and beyond.

The planned format for ‘Weekly Hit Ground Ball’ in 2018 is to be a round-up column of the key news stories and moments from the week just gone, with a few personal reflections along the way.

It will be published every Sunday morning and, once we get to the regular season, will also pick out a few of the most enticing games to watch on a Sunday evening in Britain – typically the best time of the week for us to catch live baseball.

The Not Hot Stove

The main news, of course, is the lack of news.  The so-called baseball off-season Hot Stove is barely simmering as the free agent market is taking time to develop, which has a knock-on effect on the trade market (and vice versa).

Now that the Christmas break is over, we’re starting to see an increase in rumoured offers to free agents – the interest of the San Diego Padres and Kansas City Royals in Eric Hosmer being a good example – and the feeling is we’ll start to see the dominoes falling over the next couple of weeks.

Much is being made of next year’s free agent class and the impact it is having on the market this off-season; however, it remains to be seen what effect that will actually have. Whilst there is undoubtedly some outstanding talent waiting in the wings – Bryce Harper, Manny Machado and potentially Clayton Kershaw topping the list – only a small number of teams are going to come out of the 2018/19 off-season with a big prize.

Even though teams will make decisions this year with next year’s market in mind, there is plenty of good talent out there this off-season. We’ll soon start to see teams identifying the right player for them at the right price. Not getting jam today in the hope of better jam tomorrow is smart if it works out, but teams looking to improve will be all too aware of the potential for the Yankees, Dodgers are their ilk to buy up all the best jam next off-season and leave them empty-handed.

Rockies in relief

The Colorado Rockies certainly aren’t waiting around as they have put plenty of money into their bullpen in recent weeks.

They re-signed free agent Jake McGee to a 3-year, $27m contract (approximately £127k per week), gave the same contract to Bryan Shaw (formerly of the Cleveland Indians) essentially to replace the departed Pat Neshek and then signed Wade Davis to a 3-year, $52m contract (approximately £245k per week) to replace Greg Holland (a free agent yet to find another team).

We all know that the performance of relief pitchers can be quite volatile year-to-year so committing this amount of money to three relievers is a risk.  However, the Rockies’ relievers played an important part in the club earning a Wild Card in 2017, so it’s not surprising that they’ve decided to spend money in that area in an attempt to keep that part of the team strong.

Here’s how the Rockies’ bullpen ranked in Fangraphs WAR over the past five seasons, alongside Colorado’s win-loss record:

2017 – 87-74 (2nd NL Wild Card) – Rockies relievers ranked 6th in MLB with a 6.4 WAR
2016 – 75-87, ranked 23rd (3.9)
2015 – 68-94, ranked 22nd (2.0)
2014 – 66-96, ranked 29th (-0.2)
2013 – 74-88,  ranked 10th (4.2).

The 2013 bullpen was pretty good, although not much else on the team was. The relief corps were led by Matt Belisle, Adam Ottavino and Rex Brothers, and looking through their stats reminded me that Roy Oswalt made 3 relief appearances for them that year.

The Rockies had a very positive 2017 despite their major free agent signing from the off-season not working out. Signing Ian Desmond to a 5-year, $70m contract with the intention of him playing first base looked a questionable decision to put it mildly. His progress wasn’t helped by several injuries and that was unfortunate, yet he didn’t play well when he was on the field either.

Desmond’s downturn didn’t scupper the Rockies in 2017, but the same probably won’t be the case in 2018 if their bullpen spending doesn’t produce the goods.  It’s a risk and a package of spending that plenty of writers have questioned, but there’s a bit of me that likes the fact that they’re at least having a go.

Phillies adding too

The Philadelphia Phillies are another team who have made a few dips into the free agent market, signing relievers Pat Neshek and Tommy Hunter and then adding former Cleveland Indian Carlos Santana on a three-year, $60m contract (approximately £283k per week).

The Phillies are a great example of how teams can go in cycles in MLB. They’ve been in rebuilding mode in the last five/six seasons after a dominant five-year run at the top of the NL East between 2007 and 2011 during which they made it to the World Series twice (winning in 2008).  They were in the top three or four of all MLB payrolls between 2010 and 2014 before slashing costs and heading into the bottom third of MLB spending over the past couple of years.

Now that their young talent is starting to emerge at the Major League level – Rhys Hoskins especially catching the eye last season – the Phillies are being linked with making a big move among the elite free agent talent in the next off-season.

However, there’s value in the Phillies adding some talent around their youngsters this year too and getting back into play-off contention in stages, rather than trying to make a big jump.  Money talks loudest, but a good jump forward in 2018 (maybe to 78/80 wins or so) may also help to convince a big free agent that the Phillies are heading in the right direction and that the new signing will not have to turn them around on his own.

More Marlins misery

The latest instalment in the Miami Marlins saga was revealed by the Miami Herald this week after they got hold of documents that Derek Jeter and his fellow Marlins’ owners sent around to potential investors.

Among other dispiriting revelations was the detail of Project Wolverine as it was called that set out the ownership’s hopes for boosting revenue whilst significantly cutting the MLB payroll and therefore promising investors a healthy return on their investment.

It just adds even more salt to the wounds for Marlins fans that the pain of seeing Stanton, Ozuna and Gordon traded away (with more likely also heading out of the door) and knowing that they will be sitting through more years of poor baseball from their team will all go to help line the pockets of rich investors.

It’s hard to imagine a fanbase being treated more poorly than what those that follow the Marlins have had to endure in recent years.

More writers joining The Athletic

The subscription-based sports-writing site The Athletic is continuing to add impressive names to their baseball coverage.  Most notable for me has been the full-time appointment this week of Melissa Lockard who for years has provided outstanding coverage of Oakland A’s prospects at Oakland Clubhouse.  She’s the new staff writer/editor of the San Francisco section of The Athletic.

If you’re a fan of multiple North American sports then a subscription for The Athletic is quickly becoming close to a must-have.  I only really follow baseball so, as with the ESPN Inside subscription over the years, in that situation it’s a bit more of a decision as to how much value you get when a considerable amount of coverage relates to sports you may not be greatly interested in.  However, the increasing amount and high quality of baseball coverage they offer has tempted me in, so I’ll update in a month or so as to value for money when it comes to pure baseball fans.

First impression is that the website easily allows you to select what sports/teams you’re interested in seeing stories about, so if baseball is your focus you can just choose to display those (and then amend/update it as you like from then on).

Books on the way

We’re also at the time of year when pre-season book purchases are being considered.  The two main titles I buy are the Baseball Prospectus Annual and the Ron Shandler Baseball Forecaster.  The usual UK book outlets have 15 January as the release date for the Forecaster and 9 February for BP.  I’m counting down the days, but you can find that the dates are pushed back a bit when it comes to UK online shops having them in stock.

It’s also worth noting that the price of Kindle versions of baseball books (probably US books more generally) can change quite significantly.  For example, when the Bill James Handbook 2018 was released the Kindle version initially was almost the same price as the paperback version (approximately £18), but a few weeks on the price was revised down to approximately £12. If you’re going the Kindle route – I’ve found over the years I tend to prefer getting paperback versions of stat-based books – you can often end up saving £5 or so just by waiting a bit before Amazon.co.uk adjusts the price.

What could Bryce Harper’s April lead to?

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As we head into the games on Saturday, the Washington Nationals hold the best record in the Majors at 16-7 (.696).

Whilst Ryan Zimmermann’s outstanding April catches the eye after a poor 2016 season, the figurehead for the Nationals’ great start once again has been Bryce Harper.

He’s hitting .405 /.519/.786 with 8 home runs through the first 23 games and if you had him down as your prediction to be the National League MVP this season, there’s reason to be confident that he’ll prove you right.

However, when I saw him at the top of FanGraphs’ WAR position player leaderboard, my first though was ‘didn’t he does this last year?’

This is Harper’s monthly breakdown from 2016:

Month BA OBP SLG OPS HR
April/March 0.290 0.410 0.710 1.120 9
May 0.200 0.420 0.360 0.790 4
June 0.280 0.380 0.420 0.800 3
July 0.180 0.300 0.320 0.620 4
August 0.310 0.400 0.540 0.930 3
Sept/Oct 0.210 0.330 0.320 0.650 1

In a sense the answer is ‘yes’ as he launched a load of home runs, but his strong batting line in April 2016 pales in comparison to the ridiculous numbers he has this year.

Looking at that table though, what stands out is how April was his best month. There was plenty of talk of potential injuries that Harper was playing through last season, so the next question to ask is whether last year was just a one-off?

The following provides Harper’s batting lines over his career so far per month (I’ve left out HR’s as April would understandably be boosted by his 2017 total compared with the other months).

Month BA OBP SLG OPS
April/March 0.324 0.431 0.638 1.069
May 0.264 0.405 0.545 0.950
June 0.304 0.387 0.505 0.892
July 0.236 0.344 0.393 0.737
August 0.286 0.376 0.482 0.858
Sept/Oct 0.290 0.384 0.518 0.901

The first thing to note is that he doesn’t exactly get into a slump at any point, although he looks mortal in July for some reason, but the stats show that April has been his best month and that he hasn’t matched his start the rest of the year. His 2017 numbers boost the April line too, of course, but the trend is there regardless.

The MLB season is a 162 marathon and we hear a lot about how the games, and heat, catch up with everyday players as the season goes on, so it’s worth considering if this is a more general trend. Firstly, we can look at the other great young position player in the Majors, Mike Trout.

Month BA OBP SLG OPS
April/March 0.305 0.391 0.558 0.948
May 0.306 0.386 0.568 0.955
June 0.349 0.431 0.605 1.036
July 0.319 0.413 0.610 1.022
August 0.289 0.401 0.525 0.926
Sept/Oct 0.280 0.413 0.511 0.924

Although his batting average goes down in August and September (again, down is relative here), his on-base percentage is higher and there’s certainly not the clear difference we see with Harper’s numbers.

Trout and Harper may be linked as the two great players of their generation, yet they’re not identical hitters so let’s complete the research by looking at batting lines across the whole of the Majors in 2016.

Month BA OBP SLG OPS
April/March 0.249 0.319 0.405 0.724
May 0.255 0.319 0.414 0.733
June 0.263 0.328 0.432 0.760
July 0.252 0.318 0.413 0.730
August 0.259 0.323 0.428 0.751
Sept/Oct 0.253 0.322 0.411 0.733

We’re bringing together a total of 184,580 plate appearances here and the averages, by their nature, will smooth out the exceptions, so this doesn’t show that Harper is unique in hitting better in April, but it does show there isn’t a wider trend that this is part of.

However, there has been one notable season from Harper in which he didn’t peak in April: 2015.

Month BA OBP SLG OPS HR
April/March 0.286 0.440 0.545 0.985 5
May 0.360 0.495 0.884 1.379 13
June 0.370 0.452 0.691 1.143 6
July 0.300 0.440 0.575 1.015 5
August 0.327 0.460 0.449 0.909 2
Sept/Oct 0.333 0.469 0.747 1.216 11
Season 0.330 0.460 0.649 1.109 42

There was no drop-off from April there, in fact he went bananas in May with 13 homers. Harper does tend to get into home run grooves – as do most power hitters – but when you can hit two homers in a month and still put up an OPS of .900, as he did in August, it goes to show that he is much more than ‘just’ a home-run hitter.

Harper’s 2015 season won him an MVP award. He’s going to have a post-April tail-off this year because he’s hit .405 /.519/.786 in April (with a couple of games to go) and you can tail off quite a bit and still put together a great season.

Yet his other-worldly start does make me excited for what numbers Harper could put up this season and what that could mean for the promotion of baseball.

Harper is exactly the sort of player who could grab the attention of sports fans in countries that don’t currently concentrate much on baseball.

Even if his performances on the field don’t quite manage that, the contract he signs when he becomes a free agent at the end of next season certainly will.

Weekly Hit Ground Ball: Colon, Miller and a Windy City World Series

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WHGB11Many of us in the UK have been treated to a weekend of glorious weather, so this week’s column will be short and to the point on three stories that caught my eye from Saturday’s games.

Bartolo Colon hit a home run

The pro-DH/anti-DH arguments are well known and many are firmly set in their position. For some people, the many wasted plate appearances of pitchers without much of a clue or hope with a bat in their hands just add up to too much to make the occasional bright spot worthwhile.

Not for me. Let’s be honest, there are a significant minority of position players in the Majors right now who aren’t much to write about with the bat so creating an extra 15 batting positions (i.e. all 15 NL teams adding an extra hitter to replace the pitcher) every day won’t lead to 15 more stars being created.

I am quite happy to live with aimless at-bats when it leads to occasional moments like this …

Shelby Miller won a game

I’ve cursed this man’s name many times over the past month having ignored my gut feeling and drafted him on my BGB Fantasy League team. Miller hasn’t just been disappointing considering what the D-Backs gave up in the trade to acquire him, he has been terrible on any measure.

The Yahoo fantasy competition had regularly been publishing notes of ‘x’ number of managers having dropped Miller, but I felt like if I was going to drop him after a few bad games, I should never have drafted him. That’s not to claim this is disciplined fantasy management in action – quite the opposite, I’ve been blindly hoping he will come good out of a combination of stubbornness and desperation – yet I had chosen my path and I was going to keep going down the road until I really had no choice but to call it a dead end.

Miller’s scheduled start on Saturday against the Atlanta Braves, his former team, was the moment of truth. If he couldn’t look vaguely useful against this current Braves batting lineup then I’d be left with little choice. Maybe it was the pressure of potentially being dropped from my Cheddar Chasers that inspired him, maybe not; either way his 6 innings pitched with 4 hits and 2 runs allowed meant he finally contributed something positive.

The 2 walks to 1 strike-out don’t bode so well for this continuing, but he’s earned another week on my team at least.

A Windy City World Series?

That the Chicago Cubs beat the Washington Nationals again to move to 23-6 wasn’t much of a surprise as Joe Maddon’s men are playing exceptionally well.

It’s the way that the White Sox are continuing to confound predictions that is really standing out. Chris Sale moved to 7-0 by mowing down Minnesota in a 7-2 victory on Saturday, leading his team to a 21-10 record.

Few people saw the White Sox’s emergence coming and the doubts around them may prove to be valid; however for now it’s fun to imagine a World Series between the two Chicago teams.

Weekly Hit Ground Ball: One Month Gone

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WHGB11One month of an MLB season isn’t enough to draw any conclusions other than how teams have played over their first 25 or so games.

That doesn’t mean we can’t learn something from how teams have started the season though.

The Chicago Cubs have flown out of the traps to show that they are quite happy to shoulder the expectations of being favourites to win the National League. If there’s a 17-6 start you can believe in, it’s this one put together by the North-siders.

Jake Arrieta’s continued brilliance was noted here last week, but the player who has really shone so far is Dexter Fowler. It was a big surprise when he re-signed with the Cubs in the off-season as it looked like he was bound for Baltimore. The Cubs wanted him back as their lead-off hitter and to cover centrefield to allow Jason Heyward to play is natural position in right field.

That couldn’t have gone much better so far. His .431 Batting Average on Balls In Play (BABIP) is ridiculously high, suggesting he’s finding a bit of good luck with balls finding holes, so we shouldn’t expect him to keep up this pace, yet he’s a great fit for this lineup and should continue to have a good season for the Cubs.

The NL East unsurprisingly is led by the Washington Nationals and New York Mets. Neil Walker has had an eye-catching first month in a Mets uniform thanks to his 9 home runs; however the man he replaced, and who’s now with the Nationals, Daniel Murphy has also had a strong start with his new team. As with Fowler, consideration of Murphy’s batting line of .365/.426/.576 has to take a high BABIP into account (.408), yet it’s good to see him getting off to a positive start.

As expected, it’s been the pitching staffs that have led the way for the Mets and Nationals. Stephen Strasburg has looked excellent in the first five starts of his final season before hitting free agency, whilst the Mets’ Noah Syndergaard – despite taking a loss against the Giants on Sunday – has been dominating.

The big surprise has been the 15-10 start put together by the Philadelphia Phillies. No one’s expecting them to keep it up and it’s case of enjoying it while it lasts for Phillies fans, especially with the early form being shown by young starters Aaron Nola and Vincent Velasquez. They have also gone 7-5 against the Nationals and Mets so far, so if they can show some better form than expected and take some further wins off those two teams, they could have some influence on deciding if one of the Wild Cards heads to an NL East team or not.

Meanwhile the NL West is currently a three-way tie with the Colorado Rockies, San Francisco Giants and LA Dodgers all on .500 records. Nolan Arenado and Trevor Story have combined for 21 home runs so far for the Rockies. Story has racked up a mountain of strike-outs in the process so there may be some concern that he’ll get too homer happy and have too many poor at-bats to make the longballs add up to much. It’s a long season though and we’re now going to see pitchers making adjustments in how they pitch to him, so let’s see if Story can counter that.

In the American League it’s the White Sox who are joining the Cubs to make Chicago the place to be for baseball in the early going. All of the fuss around Adam LaRoche’s retirement has very quickly been forgotten following an 18-8 start. Few saw this coming and that would suggest it’s not likely to last, yet we saw how the Minnesota Twins were able to keep in the AL Central hunt last year despite all evidence pointing to them fading away (that seems to have started in April 2016).

The White Sox have an excellent 1-2 punch in Chris Sale and Jose Quintana, they’ve started well despite Jose Abreu struggling through April, and their record includes 3-0 sweeps against the Blue Jays and Orioles so you can’t put it down to beating up on bad teams. Let’s see where they are in another month’s time – Mat Latos in particular looks ripe for regression – before making writing them off too quickly.

As for writing teams off, should we start penning an obituary for the Rodriguez, Sabathia and Teixeira era in the Bronx? The Yankees are not playing well and when it’s older players such as Carlos Beltran, Jacoby Ellsbury, Brett Gardner, Alex Rodriguez and Mark Teixeira that aren’t contributing much, you do have to question whether it’s just a slow start or an inevitable decline from an ageing core. Aroldis Chapman will be back from suspension soon to join Andrew Miller and Dellin Betances in a formidable bullpen trio in the recent Kansas City Royals mould, but how far can that take them when they don’t have the Royals’ fielding ability to help keep games tight?

The Yankees’ slow start will be all the more galling for the Boston Red Sox’s charge to first place in the AL East. Their offence is really firing at the moment and David Price’s 6.14 ERA is misleading in the extreme as to how well he is pitching. What isn’t so obvious for Boston is whether the rest of the pitching staff will be able to back up Price and the batting lineup to keep the strong start up.

Equally questionable is who wants to win the AL West. Although the Texas Rangers are reigning champs and lead the way with a 14-11, they don’t look like a team that will break away from the pack and everyone but the Houston Astros is closely in pursuit at this stage.

The Astros look a classic case of a team that brilliantly jumped ahead of schedule in 2015 and may now take a step back before moving forward yet again in 2017. They’ve allowed more runs than any other team in the AL (124 over 25 games, basically 5 per game) and Carlos Gomez is one of several regulars in the batting lineup that has battled injuries and poor form so far.

It’s unlikely they can recover from an 8-17 start to get back into the play-off race, but we’ve seen in recent years that MLB can throw up plenty of surprises.

Weekly Hit Ground Ball: Cubs and Arrieta getting even better

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WHGB11My start to the day involves making some breakfast, turning on my iPad and then clicking on MLB At Bat to start reading and watching what happened overnight in MLB.

If your At Bat is set to default to the scoreboard, as mine does, there is a handy feature in which a special event gets flagged so you know which game to start at. That was the case when checking the scores on Friday morning and the ‘No hitter’ sign was there in red next to the game between the Chicago Cubs and Cincinnati Reds.

It wasn’t as surprising as most no-hitters because the match-up suggested it was more than a possibility. Jake Arrieta no-hit the Dodgers on the way to a Cy Young Award last season and the rebuilding Reds are not in great shape, so put the two together and the odds of Cincinnati coming out on top weren’t great.

No-hitters don’t happen every day though and as the innings roll on the pressure builds.

In some ways they’re a bit like a 147 maximum break in snooker, appropriately enough with the World Championships currently ongoing in Sheffield. As the feat comes into view, pots that otherwise would be approached with ease suddenly become more difficult because of what’s at stake.

The difference with a no-hitter is that it’s not just the pitcher that’s under pressure as the outs start to mount, but all of the fielders behind him too. It’s an individual achievement but one made possible due to the work of a team.

Arrieta’s performance against the Reds was an escalation of excellence following his first three starts. He held the Angels score-less over seven innings in his season-opener on 4 April, went seven innings again in his second start against the D-Backs where he did allow three runs but got the win all the same, and then pitched eight score-less innings against Colorado.

The signs are ominous for the rest of the National League. It couldn’t be denied that the Chicago Cubs had an excellent squad of players heading into the season and to argue against them meant somehow trying to construct plausible scenarios in which things could go wrong. The season-ending injury suffered by Kyle Schwarber early in April was one example of how the best-laid plans could come undone, but the depth that the Cubs have meant that their opponents needed several players either not to take a step-forward (such as Kris Bryant and Addison Russell) and/or others to take a step back.

Arrieta was the highest profile name among the latter group. It was not that you could reasonably hope for him to suddenly become an average pitcher, just that he might regress from being ridiculously good to merely good.

Four starts into his 2016 season and Arrieta looks determined to match, if not somehow better, what he did in 2015.

His complete dominance of the Reds came after the Cubs took two from three in St Louis in what was arguably the first strong test they’ve had so far this season. It must have been galling for the Cardinals to have former teammate John Lackey come back and beat them 5-0 not only with the ball but with the bat as well and even more so when they lost the second game of the series 2-1 with both of Chicago’s runs being batted in by pitcher Jason Hammel.

The Cubs have won two of three against the Reds heading into the final game of the series on Sunday and they will then start a home-stand including 3 games against the Brewers and 3 against the Braves. If the Cubs win today and then go 4-2 in their six-game stay at Wrigley – a quite reasonable projection – they’ll be on an 18-7 record at the end of play on 1 May.

The month of May will bring sterner tests, not least six games against Pittsburgh and series against the Nationals, Giants, Cardinals and Dodgers, but the Cubs are doing exactly what the pre-season projections suggested they might.

Although no team wins a division in April or May, opponents may already be raising the spectre of the Billy Goat Curse as the only thing that could prevent Arrieta and Chicago from making a return to the play-offs this season.

Weekly Hit Ground Ball: 0-10 Avoided

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WHGB11Friday was a night of relief for the Atlanta Braves and Minnesota Twins.

They were both staring at the indignity of beginning the MLB season with ten consecutive loses and managed to avoid that fate with timely victories. Both teams also followed up their first wins with a second on Saturday to start bringing some semblance of hope for their fans.

The terrible 0-9 start was no surprise for the Atlanta Braves who have specifically designed this team to be close-to-hopeless.

For all of the good that MLB has done in recent years to bring parity and hope to many teams, the rewards (never mind lack of penalties) that incentivize teams to completely blow up their Major League roster to build for the future is one that needs addressing.

There is a clear logic to what they’re doing, as there was to the way the Chicago Cubs and Houston Astros broke everything down to start again a few years ago, but with so much money flowing into the sport it’s difficult to justify teams charging fans Major League ticket prices, and earning Major League revenue from national and local TV networks, whilst fielding Triple-A teams.

A balance needs to be struck between helping teams to rebuild and not encouraging teams to deliberately field poor teams. One way would be to strip teams of early first round draft picks if they are not within a certain percentage of the wins amassed by best team in their league, or at least in their division. That would be a good way to avoid the unappealing race to the bottom where teams want to have the worst record so that they get the number one pick in the following year’s draft.

Maybe ‘tanking’ as it’s known will be addressed in the new Collective Bargaining Agreement? For now though, the Atlanta Braves will spend their final season at Turner Field putting out a team that only diehard fans will have the least bit of interest in watching.

The Minnesota Twins have been on a similar rebuilding project, yet their surprising second-placed finish in the AL Central last year raised hopes that a return to the good times may be closer than was predicted.

We’ve not seen much evidence to support that just yet, even though there is a group of young players there that can help to turn things around to a certain extent and give Twins fans a reason to watch – and enjoy – their team this season.

Gaining wins when the going’s good

We should also be mindful of the quality of opposition different teams face in the early going, particularly when it comes to the pacesetters.

In the American League, both the Baltimore Orioles and Chicago White Sox have started well and both have done so in part by winning games against the Twins and Tampa Bay Rays. Five of the Orioles’ 8 wins so far have come against those two teams, whilst the White Sox swept the Twins in a three-game series and are 1-1 against the Rays heading into Sunday’s series decider.

Baltimore will live and die by the longball this season and we saw how effective a plan that can be on Friday when they clubbed five against the Texas Rangers in an 11-5 victory. Whether they can mount a challenge in the AL East for the whole season will come down to how many of their homers are of the one-run variety.

The Orioles placed a large bet on ‘hack and hope’ by adding Mark Trumbo and Pedro Alvarez this off-season to a lineup not blessed with much patience as it was and their 8-4 loss to the Rangers on Saturday – when they out-homered their opponents 3-0 – showed the other side of their approach.

Equally in the National League, the Washington Nationals’ 9-1 start, with a seven-game winning streak on the go, has been fueled by going 5-0 against the Braves and taking the first two games of this weekend’s series against the similarly-rebuilding Philadelphia Phillies.

Every win counts the same in the standings and the Nationals can only beat the teams put in front of them, but it was always likely they would get off to a good April based on the strength of the schedule they would be facing.

After today’s game against the Phillies they travel to Miami for four-games and then have three against the Twins and three more against the Phillies. By the 29th it’s quite likely that Washington will have a win-loss record of something around 15-6. They’ll then start a 10-game road trip against the St Louis Cardinals (3 games), Kansas City Royals (3) and Chicago Cubs (4) and we’ll have a better handle on their early season promise once they’ve faced some sterner opposition.

Equally the 4-6 New York Mets will have an opportunity to gain ground on their rivals during the same period. After finishing their series against Cleveland today, they have three games in Philadelphia, three in Atlanta and three at home against Cincinnati. The reigning NL Champions need to follow Washington’s lead in taking advantage of three of the weakest teams in the league this season.

Weekly Hit Ground Ball: Opening week stories

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WHGB11Whether it was Rajai Davis battling the snow to make a catch in the outfield, Tom Wilhelmson getting smacked around by his former teammates – and then thrown out of the game for throwing at one of them – or Kyle Schwarber suffering a season-ending knee injury, the Opening Week of the 2016 MLB season has not been easy for some, but it’s certainly been eventful.

Story of the week

Where else could we start than Trevor Story’s first four games in the Major Leagues. Whilst his home-run hitting streak came to an end on Saturday, his six long-balls had already made him the big story of the week, all the more so thanks to him having a surname ripe for puns and headlines.

It will be said time and time again this month that we should not get caught up in April performances. Players and teams can get hot for days or a few weeks at any point during the season and it’s easy to exaggerate the real significance of this when that hot streak comes so early in the season.

We saw a similar event ten years ago. Then it was the Detroit Tigers’ Chris Shelton who hit five home runs from the first four games of the season. He hit only 11 more across the rest of the season and played just 50 further Big League games across 2008 and 2009 before his Major League career came to an end.

Later that same month, the Texas Rangers’ Kevin Mench hit a home run in seven consecutive games and left some wondering if the streak would ever come to an end. It did, of course, and he subsequently hit only five more bombs across the rest of the season with the Rangers and Milwaukee Brewers before playing out the final 179 games over the next four years during which he hit eight home runs in total.

Not much was expected of Shelton or Mench. In Story’s case, it was already thought that he could provide some legitimate power to the Rockies’ offence. His Baseball Prospectus 2016 capsule noted that he had amassed some high strikeout totals in the minors that could carry across the Majors, but “in between some awkward flails at wayward breaking balls he’ll inflict serious damage”.

Six homers in four games certainly falls under the definition of “serious damage”. Like all young players he will go through some growing pains as pitchers learn and exploit his weaknesses and he will then have to adjust his approach, but there’s reason to believe that Trevor’s story won’t end on these first four games and there will be plenty of chapters to enjoy in the years ahead for him at Coors Field.

Slide rule

After Chase Utley broke Ruben Tejada’s leg in the high-profile 2015 NLDS game between the Dodgers and Mets it was inevitable that a new rule would be introduced.

It was also inevitable that it would cause some problems early in the season; however, few could have predicted those problems would come in two game-ending plays during the first week.

The first occasion between the Rays and Blue Jays was more clear-cut once the emotion of the game was removed and John Gibbons’ embarrassing ‘wearing dresses’ comment was rightly condemned. Jose Bautista made his slide into second base and then clearly went to grab Logan Forsythe’s leg with his hand. That’s not breaking up a double-play, that’s intentionally interfering with a fielder.

 

The ruling that ended the Houston Astros’ ninth-inning rally against the Brewers on Friday night was not so clear-cut. It was clear in the sense that Colby Rasmus broke the new rule by sliding past second base, but not in the sense of complying with the reason for bringing the rule in. The infielder was at no risk and had no intention of trying to turn a double-play, yet the umpires correctly applied the rule as it’s now worded and awarded the Brewers a double-play to end the game.

It’s safe to say that some clarification on how the rule should be interpreted will be provided by MLB in the next couple of weeks to bring it more in line with expectations.

It’s equally safe to say that having games end on a replay review is one of the most jarring compromises to be accepted alongside the benefits of the replay system.

DH in the NL? Not for MadBum

The debate around whether the Designated Hitter rule should be extended to the National League has some very entrenched views on either side.

Personally, I like to see professional athletes having to work on different facets of their chosen sport – skillful rugby players needing to get their tackling and positional sense up to a level where they’re not a liability etc – and I’m quite happy to live with pitchers getting over-matched if that means they have to develop their ability to get a good bunt down.

It also means that the pitchers that can hit get to enjoy themselves occasionally. Madison Bumgarner did just that against Clayton Kershaw yesterday with a home run to left-field, the second time he’s taken Kershaw deep.

MadBum won that battle, but Kershaw and the Dodgers won the war that day with a tenth-inning 3-2 victory.

Weekly Hit Ground Ball: Good Friday by name …

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WHGB11Good Friday loomed like a bad omen this week.

The schedule of MLB Spring Training games that day included starts for four pitchers on my recently-drafted fantasy baseball roster. Poor performances, or worse an injury or two, seemed a certainty.

Jon Lester was on the mound for the Cubs against the Brewers, Jose Quintana was pitching for the White Sox against the Mariners, and the Indians-Diamondbacks game featured Corey Kluber and Shelby Miller.

Consequently, the latter had to be my choice for the evening’s entertainment, forgoing an Oakland A’s appearance for pitching prospect Sean Manaea against the Angels in the process. Such was my enthusiasm that I grabbed a pencil and a blank scorecard and got stuck into some Spring Training score-keeping practice.

Shelby Miller was a bit sketchy to start with, including plunking Cleveland’s catcher Yan Gomes on the shoulder in the second inning, but his defence helped to keep runs off the board. Wellington Castillo negated a first-inning lead-off single by Tyler Naquin by foiling an attempted stolen base and Miller’s infielders turned a double-play in the second inning.

Miller settled down from there and produced the highlight of the game with a reflex catch on a come-backer between his legs to end the fourth inning. It’s not often that I would dish out a scorecard star for a Spring Training game, but this effort deserved one.

Cleveland’s Naquin did hit a homer off him to lead-off the sixth inning and to celebrate being told that he would make the Indians’ opening day roster earlier that day. He was their first-round draft pick in 2012 and should be a good stand-in whilst Michael Brantley continues his recovery from shoulder surgery.

As for Kluber, the 2014 AL Cy Young winner gave up 11 hits across his six innings of work, yet that was predominantly due to the way he was pounding the strike zone and that’s far from a negative in the pre-season period. He struck our four D-Backs around Jake Lamb‘s second-inning home run before things unravelled a bit in the sixth inning.

Yan Gomes showed off his excellent arm behind the plate by gunning down Socrates Brito twice and also pouncing on a swinging bunt by Castillo in the fourth inning to get the lead runner at second rather than taking the safe out at first. Gomes’s 2015 campaign was hampered by a knee injury, yet he appears healthy now and is one of many reasons why Cleveland shouldn’t be overlooked in the AL Central and Wild Card races this year.

Miller and Kluber’s outings left me breathing a sigh of relief, as did Lester’s strong start against the Brewers and Quintana’s seven K’s against the Mariners.

It wasn’t such a good day for the A’s, as Mike Trout smacked a first-inning homer and the Angels prevailed 11-3 whilst Oakland made four errors to go alongside the three they coughed up the day before.

Friday might not be the last time this season that I turn to my fantasy team players to offer some crumbs of comfort following a bad day at the office for my ‘real’ team.

The scorecard

Here’s a scan of my scorecard, completed up to the middle of the seventh inning when Shelby Miller came out of the game. The ‘fch’ reference at the start of Cleveland’s seventh inning stands for fielding changes. It’s standard practice in spring games for managers to make plenty of player changes in the later innings and – knowing that this was almost certainly going to be the last half-inning I was going to keep score of – I didn’t bother to make a note of them.

You can download and print off the scorecard I used here.

Other MLB notes

For all the grief that Arizona’s front office has received this off-season, their aggressive winter could pay-off especially if the Dodgers’ terrible luck with injuries continues. It was announced this week that Andre Ethier will be out for 10-14 weeks with a fractured tibia, whilst catcher Yasmani Grandal is unlikely to be ready for Opening Day due to an arm injury and Howie Kendrick battles with a leg injury.

The New York Yankees are another big spender who go into the final week of Spring Training with some significant question marks over their roster. Ivan Nova is in a battle with CC Sabathia for a spot in the rotation that appears to be coming down to which one doesn’t look quite as bad as the other. Nova didn’t do much to help his case on Friday by giving up three home runs against the Orioles. Sabathia is a far-from-ideal candidate to move to the bullpen so that may factor into the equation.

Things are very different for the other New York team. Earlier on Friday, Noah Syndergaard was in dominating form against the Cardinals, striking out nine over six innings.  Yankee fans will be sick of hearing about the stunning starting pitcher lineup of the Mets, yet in Syndergaard’s case that may be preferable to him competing against them with the Blue Jays. Toronto wanted to win in 2013 and so gave him up in the package to acquire the 2012 NL Cy Young winner R.A. Dickey in 2012/13 off-season, but it’s hard not to think about the 1-2 punch they could have had with Syndergaard and Marcus Stroman.

Finally, ESPN covered the Mets-Cardinals game on Friday and there was plenty of talk about the Redbirds’ rivalry with the Chicago Cubs. You get the sense that St. Louis are charged up by everyone hailing the Cubs as the best team in MLB heading into this season. Every one of the 19 games they will play against each other during the regular season will be an event.