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: Spring again

Leave a reply

WHGB11As Spring Training has got underway, so my regular Sunday catch-up begins again for another year.

Dreaded injuries #1

There is a morbid side to this time of year in which whenever you log onto MLB.com, your first thought is: I wonder if anyone picked up a bad injury overnight?

Amid the stories of uneventful Spring Training debuts for pitchers ‘just getting their work in’ and position battles for the 25th spot on a team’s Opening Day roster, it is news of injuries that take centre stage when they occur.

One of the first MLB.TV streamed game of Spring Training featured the New York Yankees and the Detroit Tigers and we immediately witnessed the sort of moment that every manager dreads:

It was a 95-mph fastball from the Yankees’ pitcher Luis Severino that hit Cameron Maybin‘s wrist and the result was a fracture and 4-6 weeks on the sidelines. It could happen to any hitter, especially this time of year when pitchers are trying out new pitches.

Harsh as it sounds, the Tigers would prefer the injury to happen to Maybin rather than Miguel Cabrera or Victor Martinez, but it still takes away from their outfield depth and creates an early headache for a team more dependent than most on good health this season.

Dreaded injuries #2

If that wasn’t bad enough, managers even have to be wary about their players when they’re not playing games.

The LA Dodgers’ great strength for this year seemed to be the depth of their resources, but that is being tested already with pitcher Brett Anderson suffering a recurrence of a back injury that will put him out of action for 3-5 months.

It’s the latest blow for a pitcher who has had an injury-plagued career. 2015 was kind to Anderson and he re-signed with the Dodgers over the off-season after they extended him a qualifying offer (the MLB-defined 1 year, $15.8m contract) to dissuade him from becoming a free agent.

The Dodgers now have three main starting pitchers, and plenty of money, unavailable to them. Anderson and his $15.8m are joined on the sidelines by Hyun-Jin Ryu (being paid $7m this season and potentially back on the field in May) and Brandon McCarthy ($11m this year and potentially back sometime in July).

It’s credit to the Dodgers, and their financial resources, that their season is far from sunk despite these key losses.

Desmond left to learn a new position

A change is as good as a rest, they say. Ian Desmond will be getting little in the way of rest this Spring following his move to the Texas Rangers that requires him to change his fielding position from shortstop to left field. Desmond made his debut in the #7 position on Friday and was glad that only one ball came his way, yet he will be putting in plenty of work to try to get accustomed to his new role over the next few weeks.

It was a strange decision by the Rangers to sign Desmond and move him to left field and the player’s agreement to it is largely due to simply wanting a job somewhere. We often highlight ‘walk years’ when a player excels in the season before he becomes a free agent, but Desmond’s 2015 was the exact opposite to that and once he turned down the Nationals’ qualifying offer, the draft pick a team had to give up to sign him made finding an opportunity difficult.

I’ll be looking at contract offers as part of revising the Baseball Basics for Brits Volume 3 about players and contracts. Desmond’s gamble on turning down the Nationals’ 7-year, $107m contract extension a year ago is likely to feature in the ‘when player’s wish they could turn back the clock’ section.

Maybe too soon for Manaea-mania?

We all know that you shouldn’t put too much stock in Spring Training performances, especially in these early weeks, and so A’s fans like myself won’t be touting pitching prospect Sean Manaea for a Cy Young Award on the back of his promising two-inning debut on Friday against the Rockies. However, there’s no harm in enjoying a youngster doing well, particularly ahead of a season where a .500 record would be a return to some form.

talkSPORT takes up MLB rights

British baseball fans should be retuning their DAB radios as part of talkSPORT’s plans to launch talkSPORT2 on 15 March.

Ex-MLB on 5 Live Sports Extra host (among many other shows) Nat Coombs will be presenting a new All American Sport Show on talkSPORT from Tues 22 March, 18.00-20.00, that will be well worth a listen.

And talkSPORT have the rights to broadcast MLB games too, with familar faces/voices Josh Chetwynd and David Lengel apparently lined up to be part of it. Further details on stations (talkSPORT, talkSPORT2 or a bit of both) and games covered will be announced in due course, but it’s fantasic news that a dedicated British-focused presentation of baseball will be available once again.

Checking in on London

And finally, as for MLB-related matters in Britain …

It was good to see MLB’s Murray Cook visiting the Olympic Stadium in London again, with talks continuing around MLB bringing games to London in 2017 or beyond.

WHGB: Looking back at April

Leave a reply

WHGB11I’ve heard plenty of people express surprise at it being May already over the past couple of days. April has seemed to have come and gone quite quickly and that’s especially the case for baseball fans.

You spend what feels like ages waiting for the new season to arrive and then all of a sudden realise you’re already one-sixth of the way through it.

Most MLB teams had played in the region of 22 games as the calendar turned to May and whilst that’s nowhere near enough to draw any meaningful conclusions, it’s a large enough number to produce plenty of performances worth noting.

In the National League, after the 30 April games had been concluded it was the St. Louis Cardinals who led the way with a 15-6 win-loss record.

Mark George described the Cardinals as “baseball’s equivalent of Germany’s football team” in our 2015 prediction feature and that’s a perfect way to describe the Red Birds. They have an excellent track record of bringing players through – not necessarily stars but good, solid everyday contributors – and there’s a culture around the team that more often than not means they are competitive, even if they don’t have the best team on paper.

It’s no surprise to see the Cardinals out in front early on and even though losing Adam Wainwright to an achilles injury – all but certain to rule him out for the rest of the season – is a big blow, they’ll find a way to stay in the hunt. That’s just what the Cardinals do.

The Los Angeles Dodgers are also an unsurprising division leader as they finished April with a 13-8 record, including 10-2 from 12 home games. Like the Cards, the Dodgers have had some bad luck with injuries as Yasiel Puig and Carl Crawford have landed on the Disabled List in recent days. Their large pockets create an expectation that they will be able to ride out any disruptions by filling any holes that emerge and we’ll see over the coming months how true that is.

Coming into the season, there was good reason to question their pitching staff behind Clayton Kershaw and Zack Greinke and those questions have already proved to be pertinent as free-agent signing Brandon McCarthy lasted only four games before suffering another injury, this time the dreaded elbow injury that requires Tommy John surgery and at least a year on the sidelines. Hyun-Jin Ryu is still to make his season debut as he recovers from a shoulder injury and the rumour mill is already swirling around potential pitching targets, most notably the Cincinnati Reds’ Johnny Cueto.

If the NL Central and West division are starting out as expected, it’s the NL East that provided the main story in April. The New York Mets flew out of the starting gates and rode an eleven-game winning streak to earn a 15-8 record and an early 4.5 game lead in the standings.

In contrast, the Washington Nationals stumbled through the month after being all-but crowned National League champions by many before a single pitch had been made. They’ve had a few injuries, not least Anthony Rendon who is making haltering progress in his rehabilitation from a knee injury, but nothing so disastrous as to give the team an excuse for their poor start. The positive thing for the Nationals is that there is still five months in which they can turn things around and they surely will do, yet so long as Matt Harvey continues pitching in his otherworldly way they shouldn’t expect the Mets to let them through without a fight.

As for the American League, the big surprise has come in the West where the Houston Astros clearly have had enough of being the butt of everyone’s jokes for the past few years. They finished April at 15-7 and have since added two more wins to their tally as part of a nine-game winning streak heading into Sunday.

None of the more-fancied teams in the division have hit their stride as yet and Houston’s start has the appearance of a good patch of form that’s just happened to come in April where it gets noticed more than usual (you could say the same of the Nationals’ poor form too). Still, Dallas Keuchel and Collin McHugh are showing signs that their potential shown in 2014 was real and there’s no doubt that this is a team on the up.

The Kansas City Royals are also showing that the promise of last season was no mere flash in the pan. I was one of the many doubters who thought that they would slip back a bit after last year’s heroics, yet they haven’t missed a step following the winter break.

The main story around the team has been their involvement in a number of heated exchanges with rival teams – notably the Oakland A’s and Chicago White Sox – and Yordano Ventura in particular has lost his head on several occasions. The Royals have a target on their back this year and teams are going to try to put them off their game. So far they have been able to keep on winning despite reacting to the situation, but it would be a risk to think they can continue to do that by puffing out their chests. They’ve got to be smarter than that because however macho they might want to be, it will cost them in the end through suspensions and losing players through injuries over the course of a season.

It’s fine to stand up for yourself, but if they believe in their ability then the best approach is to take the high road and rise above it. So long as they keep rising to the bait, other teams will keep on fishing and the Royals cannot afford to give ground with the Detroit Tigers looking strong again.

Finally the AL East has lived up to its billing in the sense of no one really knowing who will come out on top. The New York Yankees led the division as April came to a close with a 13-9 record, but the last-placed Toronto Blue Jays were only 2.5 games behind on 11-12. My guess is that it will come down to the Baltimore Orioles and Boston Red Sox, but the other three teams have enough about them to ensure they can’t be ruled out.

Weekly Hit Ground Ball: When the final day may not be the final day

1 Reply

WHGB11The final day of the MLB regular season is always tinged with sadness.

It’s caused by the realisation that the daily delight of baseball that has been a constant for the last six months is about to reduce to a trickle of playoff games and then a long baseball-free winter.

The one thing you hope for on this day is that there is one last hurrah, a gripping pennant race to be decided that will have you flicking between games and getting caught up in the drama.

The high-water mark of recent times to judge any final day against came in 2011. Here’s how I summed it up at the time:

“It’s just gone seven a.m. and while I’m tired I know there is little chance that I will be able to fall asleep again any time soon.

My head is still spinning from the most incredible end to an MLB regular season you could imagine.  The lack of sleep isn’t helping with my futile attempt to take it all in, but even if I was wide awake, I would still be shaking my head with disbelief and wondering if this has really happened.

In the early hours of Thursday, the Tampa Bay Rays somehow snatched the American League Wild Card from the Boston Red Sox

…

It was 5.07 a.m. in the UK.  That’s not a very sociable hour to be cheering or screaming in frustration, but anyone following the action would have found it impossible not to let their emotions get the better of them.

The Rays were one strike away from losing in the ninth inning of their game.  The Red Sox were one strike away from winning their game.  Somehow it is the Rays that have ended up winning the AL Wild Card.

I can’t summon the energy or concentration required to think much about the postseason right now.  All I know is that it has got a lot to live up to”.

I can’t imagine anything could top that final day – or very long night as it turned out to be for us in the U.K. – however the 2014 final day is set up to potentially come some way close to it.

After the games on Saturday there are still three key postseason matters to be decided:

  1. Who out of the St. Louis Cardinals and Pittsburgh Pirates will win the NL Central, with the ‘loser’ heading to the NL Wild Card game to face the San Francisco Giants
  2. Who out of the Detroit Tigers and Kansas City Royals will win the AL Central, with the ‘loser’ heading to the AL Wild Card game
  3. Who out of the Oakland A’s and Seattle Mariners will win the second AL Wild Card spot, with the winner facing the loser of the Tigers-Royals race, whilst the loser of the A’s-Mariners race seeing their playoff hopes dashed at the last.

If the results go the right way – or the wrong way depending on who you support – any or all of the three races could be tied after the teams have completed their 162 schedule meaning that a single 163 game decider will be needed.

In all three cases both results need to go the way of the chaser: them to win and their opponent to lose. And just to add to the drama, the key games today are all starting at different times.

In the National League Central race, the Pittsburgh Pirates begin their game against the Cincinnati Reds at 18.10. BST needing to win to keep their division title hopes alive. If they lose then the St. Louis Cardinals will be able to play their game against the Arizona Diamondbacks, starting at 21.10., with the freedom that they’ve avoided the Wild Card ‘play-in’ game. If the Pirates have won their game, all the pressure suddenly sits on St. Louis’s shoulders needing to win their game to clinch the division and knowing a loss will lead to a nervy game 163.

It’s a similar scenario in the American League Central, only in this case it’s the current division leaders, the Tigers, who get underway first. They start their game against the Minnesota Twins at 18.08, one hour ahead of the first pitch between the Kansas City Royals and Chicago White Sox.

As with the Cardinals’ scenario, if the Tigers win their game then the Royals’ result will be irrelevant and we would probably be in a situation (subject to the Tigers-Twins games going into extra innings) where the Tigers clinch the division while the Royals are still in mid-game. However if the Tigers miss their chance then it will be an anxious wait for them to see if the White Sox can do them a favour.

The same story could play out in the AL Wild Card race and that is the most tense of them all. At least in the other two races the ‘loser’ will have a Wild Card playoff place to soften the blow. There will be no such consolation prize for whoever misses out between the A’s and Mariners.

Oakland are in the ‘all we have to do is win’ spot and begin their game against the Texas Rangers at 20.05, with the Mariners starting their game against the LA Angels at 21.10. in the ‘we need the A’s to lose and for us to win’ spot.

The different start times mean that it’s possible all three cases will come to a calm conclusion as the evening progresses, with the first result in each deciding everything, yet you wouldn’t bet against the drama continuing right down to the wire.

It should be a great final day to the 2014 regular season, because there’s every chance that it will not be the final day of the regular season after all.

Weekly Hit Ground Ball: Nationals nicely placed

Leave a reply

WHGB11The Washington Nationals have the best record in the National League going into Sunday with 84 wins against 63 losses and it’s possible that some onlookers may not have quite noticed.

It’s a product in part on the differing expectations placed on the team this year compared to the previous two.

The 2012 campaign saw the Nationals playing playoff baseball for the first time since the Expos were shamefully taken away from Monteral and rebranded in Washington in 2005.

Their 98 regular season wins were a giant leap ahead of previous paltry totals, although the back-to-back seasons of 100+ losses in 2008 and 2009 were precisely what allowed them to acquire Stephen Strasburg and Bryce Harper as number one selections in the subsequent amateur drafts. This not only added two exciting young talents but also changed the whole atmosphere around the club, with the Nationals being picked up by the national media as a team on the rise.

Unfortunately for Washington, the achievement of gaining 98 regular season victories was quickly blown away by a a crushing 3-2 Division Series loss to the St. Louis Cardinals. Going out of the postseason early is always a blow, yet the manner of their defeat made it seem disastrous. They led 6-0 after three innings in the decider and, despite St. Louis’s efforts to chip away at the deficit, everyone in Nationals Park was on their feet heading into the ninth inning with a 7-5 lead waiting to celebrate.

Instead of jumping for joy, Nationals fans ended up drowning in despair as closer Drew Storen – another first round draft pick – went into meltdown and conceded four runs as the Cardinals prevailed 9-7.

An overall terrific season suddenly seemed like a disaster.

The then-manager Davey Johnson’s bullish ‘World Series or bust’ cry heading into 2013 came true in a sense when his team missed out on the playoffs completely last year and created question marks over just how good these players were coming into 2014. The appointment of a rookie manager, Matt Williams, as a replacement for the retired Johnson gave further cause for doubt.

Fans of the Atlanta Braves certainly felt confident about their chances of retaining their NL East crown. The division has produced some entertaining rivalries over the past decade and the latest battle for supremacy between the Braves and Nationals is as good as any before. Part of the needle between the two stems from the national attention on the likes of Strasburg and Harper and a feeling among many Braves fans that their team is unfairly overlooked, or more specifically that Washington get generous coverage that their actual performances don’t deserve.

So far this season only the most-biased Braves fan would deny that their team has been second best. The Nationals have a 9.5 game lead over the Atlanta Braves in the NL East and have earned this cushion without the fanfare that has previously surrounded the team. None of their players have especially gaudy conventional statistics, but what they’ve got this year is a whole assortment of players making good contributions, not least on a pitching staff that is right up there as one of the best in the Majors.

The Nationals were a much-hyped team in 2012 and 2013 and didn’t quite live up to expectations. Maybe this year, with less attention on them, might be the one where they make it all the way to the Fall Classic.

‘Crush’ Davis crashes

Thankfully MLB hasn’t been the subject of many negative news stories of late, the NFL has cornered that particular market among U.S. sports recently, but a drug suspension for a key player on a playoff-bound team is always likely to create a few waves.

In the case of the Baltimore Orioles’ Chris Davis, he has fallen foul of the drug-testers for a relatively minor contravention after testing positive for amphetamines. He even had a medical exemption for using the product, Adderall, prior to this season, so probably will avoid landing firmly in the ‘drug cheat’ class set by public opinion, even though his MLB-leading 53 home runs last season raised an eyebrow or two among the conspiracy theorists.

It’s the timing of the suspension that raises its prominence. A 25-game ban normally makes for a month out of action in MLB terms, but the Orioles only had 17 regular season games left when his ban came into effect on Friday. Baltimore have a comfortable lead in the AL East so his absence will not be felt too badly there; it’s the gap he’ll leave in the first eight playoff games, if they get through the best-of-five Division Series, that will be key.

How big a blow it will be remains to be seen. Davis has had a very disappointing season compared to 2013; however his ability to change a game with one swing of the bat is still there, as shown by his 26 home runs this season, and the Orioles only need him to get hot for a few days to turn a short playoff series around. The question will be whether Davis can contribute much in the second-part of a potential Championship Series after not facing competitive MLB pitching for a considerable length of time.

The Orioles’ all-but-certain AL East title will be a remarkable achievement considering the obstacles they have faced, particularly losing Manny Machado and Matt Wieters to injuries. If they reach the Championship Series, Davis may well find a place on the roster as Baltimore try to find what potential game-changers they’ve got left.

Playoff schedule

As we’re on the playoff theme, the postseason schedule was announced on Thursday.

The two Wild Cards will take place on Tuesday 30 September and Wednesday 1 October and although start times haven’t been announced for any of the games as yet, those two undoubtedly will be played at night in the States and therefore be early morning contests on Wednesday and Thursday for us in the U.K.

As for the World Series, that will start on a Tuesday night this year (so early hours of Wednesday for us), a day earlier than the Wednesday start we’ve become familiar with in recent years. Arguably the main impact from a British perspective is that it means Games Three to Five will be played in the early hours of Saturday, Sunday and Monday for us, which may make it easy to arrange to watch them live than the previous Sunday-to-Tuesday morning sequence.

Weekly Hit Ground Ball: The race is on

Leave a reply

WHGB11After close to thirty years spent languishing between false hope and no hope, fans of the Kansas City Royals have entered this September in an unfamiliar competitive position.

The unfamiliar encourages a sense of excitement but also trepidation.

However much Royals are trying to outwardly enjoy this season, inwardly there is bound to be a sense of foreboding. Good things don’t happen to their team. This isn’t really happening. It’s all about to come crushing down.

Watching Danny Duffy leave the mound at Yankee Stadium on Saturday after throwing a solitary pitch was the moment when those fears were realised.

Look beyond the largely irrelevant 8-11 win-loss record and you’ll see that Duffy has been excellent for Kansas City this season. It’s not just been the way Duffy has pitched but also that he’s finally broken through after years of promise since he was drafted back in the 2007 amateur draft.

He was one of a crop of young players that were hailed as the answer to the Royals’ many years in the doldrums and, up until now, like most of the rest he had failed to live up to the billing. This season, in deed and in the sense of hope, Duffy has personified the way that things have finally turned around for Kansas City.

Seeing him grimace in discomfort and exit early with a sore shoulder was the last thing the Royals needed, again both in terms of actual impact (losing him for the game and potentially the foreseeable future) and the demoralising effect this blow could have on the team.

Kansas City went on to lose that game against the Yankees 6-2 to compound their misery and yet there was a chink of light from Detroit where the Tigers failed to capitalise. Despite having their recently-acquired ace David Price on the mound – an addition thought at the time to hammer another nail into the Royals’ coffin – Detroit lost 5-4 to the surging San Francisco Giants, keeping Kansas City two games ahead at the top of the AL Central.

Duffy’s condition will be assessed further over the next few days to determine whether it was a mere blip or something that could see him miss extended time, potentially the rest of the season. If he is out for the year then he’ll be a big loss, yet maybe it won’t be a sign of things inevitably going wrong for the Royals and instead will show that this is destined to be the year playoff baseball returns to Kansas City, regardless of the obstacles that come their way.

The Royals’ emergence in the AL Central, where many – including myself – predicted another season of Detroit domination, is one of many great stories building to a crescendo this month.

Baltimore look set to win the AL East division for the first time since 1997, whilst in the AL Wild Card race the Seattle Mariners may just turn their offseason splurge on Robinson Cano into a first playoff appearance since 2001.

The Mariners are even catching up the Oakland A’s who looked certainties for a third consecutive AL West title before a startling collapse over the last month that has seen a rampant LA Angels team fly past to gain not only a lead in the division but the best win-loss record in the Majors.

The A’s were able to snatch a walk-off win on Saturday against the Houston Astros, turning around a 3-1 deficit in the bottom of the ninth inning, and that’s the sort of win that could spark an all-important change in fortune as we head into the last few weeks of the season. That’s what this A’s is clinging to, at least.

In the National League it’s been the Milwaukee Brewers playing the role of the A’s, plummeting from an unexpected stay at the top of the Central and seeing the St. Louis Cardinals resuming normal service at the summit. The Brew Crew have won only three of their past 16 games and now need to forget about what has gone. They are still firmly in the Wild Card race, a position they would have been delighted with if offered it before the season began, and need to somehow find a way to make that their mindset.

And as the regular season begins to wind down, the Philadelphia Phillies reminded us all on Monday that there’s something to play for every time you take the field. Their combined no-hitter was a rare enjoyable moment in what has been yet another poor season for a team that enjoyed so much success between 2007 and 2011.

The Texas Rangers are another team to quickly hit hard times after a recent run of excellent seasons. They were the first time to be eliminated from playoff contention this season and questions were already being asked about manager Ron Washington’s future before he stepped down for personal reasons on Friday. Wash had his game-management called into question at times, but there’s no doubt he was a manager that his players fought for and it’s one of the harsh realities of sport at the highest level that his time in charge will be remembered for the two World Series championships his time narrowly missed out on, rather than all of the other regular season success they had.

Weekly Hit Ground Ball: Royals for real

Leave a reply

WHGB11Sky Sports News have a habit of making mistakes on their MLB scrolling news section, such as mixing up team names with other U.S. sports or getting player names wrong.

Consequently when it popped up on Sunday morning at breakfast that the Kansas City Royals had a three game lead in AL Central and had won 24 of their last 30 games, I wasn’t prepared to believe it until checking the facts myself.

The doubt wasn’t just down to typical SSN sloppiness but also a reflection on the fact that you don’t associate the Royals with leading or winning much.

That’s not been their way for many years and yet, sure enough, they have overhauled the Detroit Tigers and have been playing some great baseball over the past month or so.

Based on Fangraphs, over the last 30 days the Royals’ batting production has been the second best in MLB based on a 5.5 Wins Above Replacement (WAR) mark, with only the even-more-unfancied Minnesota Twins bettering that with a 6.2 WAR. The pitching sits 10th based on WAR over the same span, more than holding their end up to support the hitters.

Over the season so far Alex Gordon has been the actual and symbolic leader of the Royals’ resurgence. He struggled initially when he made the Majors in 2007 whilst trying to live up to the expectations of being the next George Brett as a star Royals third baseman.

A move to left field and an impressive determination to learn from his difficult days has turned Gordon into one of the better players in the American League over the past few seasons.

According to FanGraphs, Gordon is having the best season of any position player in the Majors this season with a 5.8 WAR, bettered only by pitcher Felix Hernandez with a 6.2 mark.

Part of Gordon’s standing comes from a large boost due to FanGraphs’ calculations of his defensive value, which – purely from a sniff-test point of view rather than anything more studied – often seem a little overly generous to me.

Baseball-Reference’s version of WAR leaves Gordon sitting just outside the top ten of all MLB players this season and eighth among position players, which seems more appropriate. He’s not been quite the best player in the game, but he’s been among the elite and is having a tremendous year.

The Royals are also receiving an impressive return this season from James Shields and Wade Davis, the two players they acquired from the Tampa Bay Rays prior to the 2013 season for their best prospect Wil Myers in a deal that provoked considerable negative comment against the Royals’ General Manager Dayton Moore (whose track record had not built up much in the way of credit or benefit of the doubt, to say the least).

Despite finishing 2013 ten games over .500 with an 86-76 win-loss record, missing out on the playoffs yet again immediately cast more doubt on the wisdom of trading away Myers for short-term gains.

Royals fans will be more than happy with the decision if their team is able to hold onto their division lead and play postseason baseball for the first time in a long time, with Shields and Davis contributing handsomely to the effort from the mound alongside another pitcher, Jason Vargas, who has performed much better than the naysayers predicted when he was signed as a free agent over the past offseason.

In fact, the ESPN.com game report from the Royals’ win over the Texas Rangers on Saturday included this nugget from their Stats and Information team that shows Kansas City may well have every reason to be getting excited about their baseball team once again:

“Following Saturday’s games, the Royals now lead the AL Central by 3 games. This is the furthest into a season they have led the division by at least 3 games since 1985. That was the last time they made the postseason and the only season in which they won the World Series”.

MLB Commissioner Bud Selig has put ‘parity’ among clubs as one of the key cornerstones of his regime, alongside revenue-raising and labour peace. Like much else during his tenure, the positive value of Selig’s actions can be debated. Is this parity merely produced by mediocrity at the expense of seeing truly great teams battling it out and lowering the bar to reaching the playoffs with first the wild card and then the recent introduction of a second wild card team? If so, is that good for baseball or not?

Whatever your personal view, the Royals will be delighted to make the postseason regardless and it would be seen as a fitting end to Selig’s last year as Commissioner if it happened.

Weekly Hit Ground Ball: Hate for Harper

Leave a reply

WHGB11When you watch an MLB game on BT Sport or ESPN, the chances are high that at some point – probably more than once, in fact – you will see an advert containing the Washington Nationals’ Bryce Harper.

Harper is shown on the field with some of the greats of the game stood next to the likes of Babe Ruth and Ted Williams, all leading to the final statement:

“Bryce Harper is only 21 years old, but he already looks like a legend”.

It’s a neat feat of production skill to make his image seamlessly blend in with footage of the past and as a 30 second promotional piece for MLB and one of it’s young players, it works really well.

However, it doesn’t half rile up some people, especially Stateside.

There’s a growing group who look at Bryce Harper’s career so far, not least his performance in 2014, and start tapping furiously at the keyboard or on their mobile device to explain that Harper is not a legend and is instead an overhyped kid who hasn’t done anything to deserve being associated with such a label.

And it’s not just the online loonies and big-mouth media ‘personalities’ that are piling in. On Wednesday, Harper’s manager Matt Williams lost patience with the latest reporter to question if the outfielder might be better off heading back to the Minor Leagues to work on his game. Williams responded in no uncertain terms that this was not going to happen and that he was fed up of such nonsense being stirred up, stating his case so strongly that he felt the need to apologise the next day for his behaviour.

Harper has had to live with lofty expectations ever since he appeared on the front of Sports Illustrated in June 2009. At the time he was 17 years old, still at Las Vegas High School and a year away from even being eligible to be drafted by a Major League team. In baseball, where the college scene doesn’t garner anywhere near as much attention as the gridiron and basketball competitions, a player doesn’t receive such national recognition until they are making waves as a rookie in the Majors and this often comes when the player is around 23 years old and has ‘paid his dues’ in the Minor Leagues.

Harper essentially had a target on his back before he had ever got near a Major League field. He has been firmly under the spotlight since that point and every transgression, and he had a few where his competitive spirit – being kind to him – got the better of him, and every dip in performance was always going to be picked over.

In many ways Harper has always reminded me of Wayne Rooney, who gained national attention in the U.K. when he made his debut for Everton as a sixteen year old. They both come across as being a bit rough around the edges, not your usual permanently smiling completely media-savy young guys. They are precociously talented and the fire within then has a tendency to push them over the edge at times.

Harper has faced criticism for his 110% style that sees him banging heavily into outfield walls trying to make stunning catches (and then facing even more criticism the very few times he gave anything less than 100% running down the line), whilst Rooney has been accused of letting his team and country down by letting his temper get the better of him, most notably after being sent off for stamping on Portugal’s Riccardo Carvalho in a 2006 World Cup quarter final (and then criticised heavily when he wasn’t charging around and ‘showing passion’).

The comments in parentheses drive home the point: because of who they are, anything less than complete success will be jumped on.

Both of them have already benefited handsomely from all the attention with lucrative contracts and promotional deals, so there’s no need to take violin lessons so as to serenade their poor downtrodden souls. The criticism is also a back-handed compliment to them: we expect and hope for great things from them and we’re disappointed when they don’t do something special.

In Harper’s case, it’s valid to look at his numbers to date on their own and to say they are not of a legendary level yet. Across his first 312 MLB games he has produced a .268/.350/.462 batting line with 46 homers.

They are not outstanding numbers, but they are good numbers and the whole point about Harper is that he’s such a talent that he has played those first 312 games at an age when the vast majority of players who make it to the Majors were competing against High School, College and low minor league competition.

I suspect the majority of baseball fans do understand this and the analysts fighting back against the Harper haters shouldn’t lose sight of baseball being a compelling drama of heroes and villains.

A lot of the grief Harper receives is because sports fans enjoy having a pop at a talented young player who doesn’t wear their chosen team’s uniform. It’s the way it works: those looking at the game from a rational perspective criticise players that aren’t very good, those looking at the game from a fan’s perspective criticise opposing players precisely because they are very good.

It all makes sense in a moment such as happened on Thursday, a day after Williams’ defence of his outfielder, when Harper launched a two-run walk-off homer against the New York Mets. It was a dramatic, exciting moment, made all the more so because Harper is a lightning rod for attention, both good and bad.

And that’s exactly why MLB has him starring in a promotional video.

Weekly Hit Ground Ball: Dizzying deadline day

Leave a reply

WHGB11It’s the nature of most things these days that they are hyped to the moon. Promising something good isn’t good enough. It has to be the biggest, the best, the most controversial or outrageous to be worthy of anyone’s attention, apparently.

All of which leaves any sane person viewing any ‘big event’ with a healthy dose of scepticism. If you’re guaranteed excitement and drama, the chances are it will not live up to the billing; you might as well accept it to begin with and not get sucked in by the hype.

And yet every now and then that scepticism proves to be misplaced. The drama foretold really does unfold.

That’s exactly what we enjoyed last Thursday evening from the MLB trade deadline.

The British football transfer deadline is, ‘thanks’ to Sky Sport News, a ridiculous farce in which every minor potential deal is talked about as a major news story. ASBOs in waiting crowd around a gormless reporter at a dark training ground and get excited about a distinctly average player signing for an inflated fee who will soon become forgettable. Still, for that fleeting moment he gives the team the feeling that they are at least doing something and that’s all the matters.

It is still exciting if your team does happen to land a player who will genuinely improve the team, but there’s a lingering thought that most of the players couldn’t care who they play for anyway. The majority of transfers are characterised – fairly or not – by a player forcing his way out of the club, demanding his contract to be paid up in full alongside a loyalty bonus so that he can get a signing-on fee and a bigger salary at another team.

Nothing summed it up better than the sight of striker Peter Odemwingie sat in his car outside Loftus Road having driven himself to the club he wanted to join despite his present team, West Brom at the time, not having actually agreed to sell him. In that case ‘player power’ didn’t rule the day: Odemwingie’s move fell through and he was left looking like a prat and condemned forever more as the butt of many a joke.

In complete contrast, most trades in MLB happen without a player’s say-so. Austin Jackson was merrily standing in centrefield at Comerica Park on Thursday playing for the Detroit Tigers, the team he’s been with since the start of 2010, before he was called off the field mid-game and told he had been traded to the Seattle Mariners.

There was nothing he could say or do other than hug his team mates and start to pack his bags.

Asdrubal Cabrera was at Progressive Field, the place he’s called home since 2007, looking ahead to his team’s game against the Seattle Mariners when he found out that he wouldn’t be donning the Cleveland uniform that day after all. Instead, he sat on his own in the concourses outside the clubhouse and quietly took in the news that he would be moving to Washington.

That photo sums the emotions up well. Cabrera is moving to the current NL East division leaders and so it’s a good opportunity for him – rather than being traded away to a cellar-dweller as can sometimes happen – yet that doesn’t soften the initial blow of leaving behind the people and places you’ve become so accustomed to being part of your daily life.

Before we feel to guilty about taking such pleasure in players being cast hither and tither, they are of course doing what they love and getting paid very handsomely for the privilege.

In fact, it’s sometimes the amount that they are getting paid – or soon will be upon signing a free agent contract – that leads to a team trading them away.

Jon Lester’s preference clearly was to be a lifelong Red Sox player, yet he was unable to come to agreement with the team on a contract extension so he was traded to the Oakland A’s in the first shot of a thrilling deadline day of dealing. Both Lester and Boston have stated that their separation may not be forever and that they could still be reunited this offseason when he becomes a free agent; however you have to assume that if Boston couldn’t find a figure they liked when negotiating exclusively with the pitcher, they’re even less likely to once other suitors get involved.

There was even less chance of David Price staying with the team that drafted him and for whom he’s played his entire career so far. The Tampa Bay Rays probably couldn’t even afford his 2015 salary in his final year before free agency, so he was dealt in a three-team trade to the Detroit Tigers (the Seattle Mariners being the other team involved). The Tigers are not exactly shy at spending big on players, although as with Boston and Lester they were unable to agree a contract extension over the past off-season with Max Scherzer.

Acquiring Price will make it easier to part ways with Scherzer this offseason, both in having a ready-made replacement for 2015 and giving them another opportunity to sign an ace-level pitcher to a multi-year contract.

Seeing where Lester and Scherzer end up over the offseason, and if the Tigers can reach a deal with Price, will be fascinating, but the free agent market will struggle to match up to this past trade deadline.

Waiver deals

And don’t forget that the trade deadline is only a partial deadline, as deals can still be completed, just not in such a straightforward one-on-one team negotiation process. MLB Trade Rumors explains the process well here.

Weekly Hit Ground Ball: Over to the ‘Era Committee’

Leave a reply

WHGB11You would have thought this was a weekend in which the Baseball Hall of Fame could do no wrong.

Cooperstown promises to be the host to one of the most memorable induction ceremonies of recent times, in which the careers of well-respected greats in managers Bobby Cox, Tony La Russa, Joe Torre, and players Tom Glavine, Greg Maddux and Frank Thomas will all be honoured.

However, Saturday’s announcement regarding changes to the Hall of Fame voting process have needlessly created a distraction from what should be a completely positive celebration of baseball’s history and all the good that the Hall should represent.

The controversy was created by a press release that was quickly thrown under the harsh spotlight of modern day social media:

“The National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum’s Board of Directors today announced changes to the rules for election for recently retired players, reducing the length of stay on the ballot for players from a maximum of 15 to 10 years, while installing a new balloting and registration process for Baseball Writers’ Association of America voting members.

The changes, effective immediately and to be reflected in 2015 Hall of Fame voting, are the first made by the Hall of Fame to the voting process since 1991 and just the second time the Baseball Hall of Fame has amended the rules for election since 1985”.

I’ve long been of the opinion that for the Major Leagues, where everything is documented and covered in so much detail, the 15-year ballot rule was a nonsense.

The Hall of Fame should be there to celebrate the elite, the select group who stood out from the rest. Opinions are the lifeblood of sport and so there will never be complete agreement on every player defined as a ‘great’, but if it takes 15 years of debate for 75 per cent of the voters to be convinced that someone deserves to be in the Hall of Fame then – unless the voting process is either completely inept or completely corrupt – designating them as such makes a mockery of the entire process.

The decision to reduce this period is welcome and whilst I would still consider ten years to be on the long side, it’s a sizeable step-change in the right direction.

However, there is deep suspicion surrounding the reasoning behind making this decision now and it is this that has caused the ensuing controversy.

A player remains on the ballot each year if they receive support from at least five per cent of the voters. If they go through the now-reduced balloting period yet don’t cross the 75 per cent threshold to be elected, they then move on to another process. As the Hall of Fame puts it: “Candidates would then move to the Era Committee system for review in perpetuity”.

The naming of the group as an “Era Committee” is instructive for our purposes and the kicker then comes in how the Hall of Fame has decided to implement the changes with regard to those currently eligible for election.

“Three candidates presently on the BBWAA ballot in years 10-15 will be grandfathered into this system and remain under consideration by the BBWAA for up to the full 15 years. Don Mattingly (15th year in 2015), Alan Trammell (14th year in 2015) and Lee Smith (13th year in 2015) will be eligible to remain on the BBWAA ballot for a maximum of 15 years of consideration”.

There is a clear and simple logic to ‘grandfathering’ those candidates who currently exceed the new ten year cut-off mark, but by doing so the Hall has very specifically excluded a lot of other players from the new system.

And they are the very players for whom the passage of time is currently seen as being crucial to evaluating their place in Cooperstown.

From Barry Bonds to Roger Clemens, Mark McGwire to Mike Piazza, the players of the so-called ‘steroid era’ are now more likely than ever to spend a decade in isolation. There’s no question that the issue of drug-taking – who did and who didn’t, what effect it had on their performances and whether ‘cheating’ by a little or a lot makes a difference anyway – is an extremely difficult one for those wanting to evaluate the best players.

The easiest approach of ignoring rumours and simply voting based on performances is attractive in some ways, especially as many were happy to turn a blind-eye to suspicions of drug use when it suited all to enjoy the ride and not to be the one to potentially kill the golden goose in the post-1994/95 player strike period. However, you sense that those who played the game without resorting to any drug-use would feel betrayed by such an approach.

So instead voters are left pondering a series of difficult questions to deal with, and it seems like the Hall has come to their rescue by making their ‘get out of jail free’ card easier to play. Let the debates play out over ten years, keeping players on the ballot without ever making a firm decision on them, and then leave it to the ‘steroid era committee’ to sort it all out for you.

That will be better for the voters, but will be a travesty to those players who deserve to be in Cooperstown but may now be condemned to a long wait and then a suggestion of gaining entry by the back door.

Weekly Hit Ground Ball: Second half begins

Leave a reply

WHGB11With the All-Star festivities behind us, we move into the unofficial ‘second half’ of the MLB season and a six-week period where teams compete – on the field and off it – to get themselves into a promising position before September and the final month of the regular season.

The off-field competition comes in the form of the battle for reinforcements, as teams look to add an extra piece or two that could make the difference between a playoff spot or sitting at home throughout October.

Trades on the way?

So far the trade market has been quiet besides the Oakland A’s two-pitcher swoop at the beginning of July. The A’s AL West rivals the Los Angeles Angels are the only other team to make a notable move of late in signing Huston Street (who started his career in Oakland) from the San Diego Padres on Friday.

Talk continues to surround the Tampa Bay Rays’ pitcher David Price as the most lusted after potential prize. The Rays have found a bit of form of late – winning 14 of their last 19 games prior to Saturday – to keep alive some vague hopes of staying in the playoff hunt in what’s been a very trying season, yet realistically they are firm outsiders to get back to the postseason.

Whether Price stays with the Rays will be determined by another team’s willingness to part with a couple of leading prospects and a useful Major League player. Seattle, in part with the A’s and Angels in mind, are the team most frequently linked with Price at the moment, although doubts over Price’s desire to sign long-term in Seattle could be a determining factor on the Mariners’ confidence in giving up the necessary package of players to acquire him.

Mariners moves?

Seattle are an interesting team to keep an eye on in the stick-or-twist stakes.

There’s a measure of pressure on them to reinforce their extravagant off-season capture of Robinson Cano. Whilst the long-term nature of that deal means 2014 isn’t the be-all and end-all, the second Wild Card gives them an opportunity to immediately put a big mark on the plus side of the ‘Cano gamble’ ledger.

Heading into Saturday’s games, the Mariners sat third in AL West, nine games behind the division-leading A’s, but their 51-45 record was good enough to see them sitting in the second Wild Card seat, 2.5 games ahead of a gang of four competitors. It took a glance at their section on the Baseball-Reference website to remind me that the M’s haven’t made it to the postseason since their great 116-win campaign of 2001.

They don’t appear to have a particularly deep roster when you search far past the leading lights of Cano, Kyle Seager, Felix Hernandez and Hisashi Iwakuma, yet strong performances from those players and decent contributions from the supporting cast could be enough to keep ahead of a pack of teams that also have their share of weaknesses, if Seattle could add one extra significant player.

Having waited since 2001 to get back to the playoffs, it’s not unreasonable to expect a bit of impulsiveness to creep in and for the Mariners’ Front Office to decide now is the time to take a shot.  Whether they do or not, and whether it works out for them, will be one of the most interesting storylines to follow as the 31 July trade deadline quickly approaches.

All-Star action

The American League representative in this year’s World Series will benefit from home field advantage this year after the AL’s 5-3 victory in the All-Star game at Target Field.

Much of the event was dominated by Derek Jeter as many took the opportunity to celebrate his career before he retires at the end of this season. It was an enjoyable moment seeing the fans, and the players, applauding Jeter as he came to the plate to lead off the bottom of the first inning.

We can all take our own view on the ‘groove-gate’ saga, both on whether Adam Wainwright did deliberately give Jeter a good pitch to hit and – if so – whether that was the right thing to do, but it did reinforce the point that the All-Star game is an exhibition and that’s how it should be.

The idea of ‘making the game count’ to reduce the number of players that opted out may have been well-intentioned, but when we get to October the fact that home-field advantage was decided by the game will once again feel wrong. I would revert back to it going to which of the two teams had the best win-loss record of the regular season, although the emerging idea of using the overall interleague play record could work too.

The long goodbye

Keeping on the Jeter theme, the Yankees announced that they will be holding a special pre-game ceremony on 9 September to honour the Captain. With CC Sabathia done for the season due to a knee injury and Masahiro Tanaka landing on the Disabled List with a dreaded elbow problem, it may be that the ‘long goodbye’ will be the central focus for Yankee fans by the time we get to the end of September in the Bronx.