Monthly Archives: February 2013

World Baseball Classic 2013 Preview

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The 2013 World Baseball Classic begins in the early hours of Saturday 2 March, U.K. time. It promises to bring the same levels of excitement, drama, colour and passion that the previous events have delighted us with.

This is the third staging of the marquee tournament. It was first held in 2006, less than a year after the International Olympic Committee announced that baseball and softball would be dropped for the 2012 London Olympic Games.

Japan won the inaugural competition and then successfully defended their title three years later. They will be aiming to complete the hat-trick this time around as the tournament now settles into its schedule of being held once every four years.

2013 qualification

Sixteen teams were selected to compete in the first two WBC’s; however 12 additional nations were given the opportunity to qualify for the 2013 tournament. They competed across four, four-team groups in the second half of last year with each group containing one of the four teams that failed to win a game in the 2009 WBC.

Great Britain were one of the teams that entered the qualifying stage, but unfortunately Canada, the previous WBC entrant in the group, proved to be too strong for Team GB, Germany and the Czech Republic.

The qualifying stage did result in another European team being added to the traditional powerhouse duo of Italy and the Netherlands though. Spain got the better of France, South Africa and Israel in their qualifying group to make it into the WBC for the first time.

The teams and venues

This year’s WBC will take place in four countries: Japan, Taiwan, Puerto Rico and America (Miami, Arizona and San Francisco).

Between 2 March and 6 March, the WBC heads to Asia for two of the four First-Round groups. Japan will host China, Brazil and Cuba (the dominant force in international baseball for years, although going through a lean spell of late) in Pool A, with Taiwan (Chinese Taipei) hosting Australia, the Netherlands and South Korea in Pool B. The Korean team are sure to be desperate for success having lost out to Japan in the 2009 WBC Final after winning the 2008 Olympic Tournament.

The top two teams from Pools A and B will compete in Tokyo in a Second Round Pool (8-12 March) where the top two teams will earn a place in the Semi-Finals to be held at the San Francisco Giants’ AT&T Park on March 17-18.

Between 7-10 March the First Round action heads to Puerto Rico and the U.S.  Puerto Rico will host the Dominican Republic, Spain and Venezuela, whilst the U.S. National Team will compete in Arizona against Canada, Mexico and Italy.  The U.S. are seeking their first appearance in the WBC Final after losing a semi-final against Japan in 2009 and being knocked out in the Second Round stage back in 2006.

The top two teams from those two groups will then head on to Marlins Park, Miami, to compete for two spots in the Semi-Final stage. The Final takes place on 19 March.

The games

The full schedule of games is available on the Official WBC website. I’ve created an Excel version that lists all of the times of first pitch in U.K. time. The sheet includes a column stating the local (to the host venue) start date just to avoid confusion in case games are referred to in that way elsewhere.

[ilink url=”https://baseballgb.co.uk/wp-content/WBC2013Schedule.xlsx” style=”download”]2013 World Baseball Classic schedule[/ilink]

One quirk to note is that four of the U.K. time and dates have an asterisk next to them. There are two games on 9 Saturday U.K. time (3 a.m. and 10 a.m.) from 2nd Round Pool 1 and precisely which teams will play in which game will depend on whether the hosts Japan are involved. If they are, their game will be the later of the two.

It’s the same situation for two 2nd Round Pool 2 games (both Tuesday 12 in the States, although the second game begins at midnight U.K. time so technically is played on Wed 13 from our perspective). The U.S.’s game will be the later of the two if they are one of the four teams involved.

U.K. coverage

ESPN America will be showing live games throughout the WBC and judging by the first weekend’s schedule they will be bringing us a good proportion of the games.

Eurosport2 will also be broadcasting some games over the weekend beginning 8 March. There has been a bit of confusion as to whether these would be available in the UK or not, but it does now appear as though they will be. That’s a nice bonus for anyone who doesn’t have access to ESPN America but can get Eurosport.

It was expected that live coverage of games would be streamed on MLB.com, potentially to 2013 MLB.TV subscribers or courtesy of a specific paid-for WBC subscription. Disappointingly, that does not appear to be the case. The official WBC App can be downloaded from iTunes and allows U.S. based fans with an MLB Network subscription to watch the games online, yet there are no details for those of us outside the States and moderator comments on the official MLB.TV forum imply that only MLB Network subscribers will be able to watch.

It’s strange, to say the very least, that MLB.com would not give fans around the world an option to watch their premier international tournament online.

Let the games begin

The WBC really is a unique event. It’s the only international baseball tournament that includes current MLB players, allowing seasoned international players the chance to test themselves against Major Leagues and giving MLB players a rare opportunity to represent their country. Add in the special atmosphere generated by the passionate fans and it makes for a great mix.

Despite the disappointment of the potential lack of online coverage, the 2013 tournament is sure to be a wonderful addition to the baseball season once again.

BT’s acquisition of ESPN’s UK channels

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The announcement on Monday that BT has agreed a deal to obtain ESPN’s UK and Ireland television channels business, including ESPN America, creates some uncertainty as to what MLB coverage will be available in the UK.

What do we know?

The ESPN UK channel was on borrowed time as soon as ESPN lost the rights to Premier League football to BT from the 2013/14 season. As ESPN America is often purchased as part of a package with that channel, it was expected that changes would be coming in July or August for existing subscribers.

Monday’s announcement confirmed that ESPN are exiting the UK TV landscape by selling their channels and associated sport rights to BT. BT Sports will offer “at least one ESPN-branded channel” as part of their new service; however their commitment to providing “the best of US sports” currently only mentions “NCAA College Basketball, NCAA College Football and NASCA”.

The omission of MLB has to be seen as deliberate. It would be odd to forget it or to deem it unworthy of a mention considering it’s arguably ESPN America’s main premier U.S. sports offering at present (the NBA season ends in June – i.e. before BT take over – so can be left to one side for our purposes here).

Additionally, the press release states that the “non-UK ESPN America TV businesses” are being wound down by ESPN. ESPN America currently is broadcast “across more than 40 countries and nearly 19 million households across Europe”, as their press releases always state. Those existing European subscribers will be concerned by the plans and, if MLB isn’t carried by BT in the UK, then the potential option for us to be able to subscribe to a separate ESPN America channel will not exist.

The immediate impact

It’s all speculation from here until definite news is announced.  It may be that ESPN America subscribers in the UK simply will get the same service as normal until the end of July before then needing to switch over to the new BT Sports package where MLB ultimately will be covered.

The most immediate concern would be that the omission of MLB in the BT/ESPN America press release is due to ESPN America not actually having the rights to the coming 2013 season as yet.

I suspect most of us were assuming that they already had the rights, particularly as they are previewing the upcoming season, their website includes mention of 2013 Opening Day and they are broadcasting the World Baseball Classic this March.

Two years ago, ESPN and MLB announced “a multi-year extension of their current European television rights agreement”. The length of that extension was never published, as far as I’m aware, and it’s possible that it only covered two years (‘multi-year’ literally being more than one) and there isn’t yet an official deal in place for 2013.

That would be fine if it’s just a case of finalizing the details, especially as that would provide a simple explanation for MLB not being included in the BT/ESPN press release.  It’s probably still safe to assume that MLB will be on ESPN America for the start of the season, but there is an element of doubt to factor in if you were planning to become a new subscriber.

July/August 2013

The new BT Sports service will launch in late July, early August. If ESPN America ceases to exist at that point – and it looks like that will be the case – MLB’s final inclusion or exclusion from the BT Sports portfolio will become a pressing issue.

If it’s included then we’ll need to consider the pricing and availability of the BT Sports channels. There’s an expectation that these channels will be available across the main providers, but the devil will be in the detail as to exactly what is available and at what cost.

BT’s substantial investment in sports is being driven by their broader business plan to attract customers to their TV-broadband-phone service as part of their ongoing battle with Sky and Virgin Media. It’s surely reasonable to assume that you’ll get a better deal on these channels with BT than with their competitors.

If MLB isn’t part of the BT service, because ESPN didn’t have the rights to the 2013 season after all, or ESPN did have them but either BT didn’t want them or ESPN wanted to keep hold of them, we’ll either be looking at an alternative or stuck in limbo.

Looking ahead

One important point to throw into the discussion is that at the end of August 2012, MLB announced a series of major new TV contracts, including one with ESPN. The eight-year, $5.6bn contract begins in 2014 and whilst it predominantly relates to coverage in North America, it also includes international rights, something that MLB Commissioner Bud Selig stressed at the time. Those international rights were reported to cover “Europe, Latin America, Caribbean, Middle East, Africa, Israel, Australia, New Zealand, Pacific Islands and on Cruise Ships”.

If ESPN doesn’t definitely have the rights to the 2013 season as yet, it looks as though they definitely do have them from 2014 onwards.

Quite what ESPN’s strategy would be if ESPN America is scrapped remains to be seen. Depending on the contract terms, there are many ways in which ESPN could exploit those rights without having their own channel in each territory.  The European coverage is a tiny proportion of that overall $5.6bn contract and it’s not exactly going to be a priority for the MLB Office, but at the same time they will be expecting ESPN to put their ‘brand’ (a horrible term, I know) in front of fans and ESPN aren’t likely to have the rights and then just to sit on them.

Baseball is not the easiest sport for TV schedulers as the game duration can vary from 2 hours to 4 or more; however it’s not simply baseball-fan-bias that makes me describe MLB as a marquee U.S. sport. It’s a great option for a new group of sports channels, providing lots of hours of live sport at a minimal cost. As BT Sports are going to run at least one ESPN-branded channel, presumably including shows such as ESPN’s Baseball Tonight, it would make sense for live MLB coverage to be part of it.

All of which brings us back to the curious omission of MLB from the press release. Hopefully there is a simple, straight forward reason for this and it’s actually nothing to worry about.

The alternative is that that BT didn’t feel MLB fitted into their ambitious plans. In the long run it would be better for baseball fans that BT passes rather than provides a greatly scaled-down schedule; however, where would the TV coverage come from otherwise?

Not for the first time, baseball fans in the UK are left with unanswered questions.

Eurosport to show Spain’s WBC games

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Update: as per the comments below, it looks like the published schedule may not be correct and these games are only available on International Eurosport, not Eurosport UK. Hopefully we’ll get clarification soon

Baseball fans in the U.K. will have two TV channels on which to watch games from the forthcoming World Baseball Classic (WBC), with Eurosport joining ESPN America in offering live baseball from the premier international tournament.

ESPN America, as the home of MLB in the UK and throughout Europe, was the natural host for the WBC and they’ve already confirmed that they will be showing games from the event.

However, the news that Eurosport are also broadcasting some games as well is a real bonus.

The channel has shown baseball games in the past, from European Baseball Championship games to the World Cup, so there was always a hope that they might get involved.

Their online UK TV guide shows that they are broadcasting games on Friday 8, Saturday 9 and Sunday 10 March and a quick check of the WBC schedule reveals that Eurosport will be following the fortunes of Spain in these contests.

The Spanish national team will compete at the WBC for the first time in the third staging of the event after coming through a qualifying competition in September. Spain will join the traditional powerhouses of Italy and the Netherlands in representing European baseball at the tournament.

They face a very difficult task in emerging from their First Round group as they are up against Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and Venezuela, all of whom have several MLB All-Stars on their rosters. However, it will be a great challenge to compete against the likes of Yadier Molina, Carlos Beltran, Robinson Cano, Jose Reyes, Hanley Ramirez, Pablo Sandoval and Miguel Cabrera.

Details on MLB.com’s online coverage of the WBC are still to be announced. It is expected that a subscription package for the event, separate from the main 2013 MLB.TV Premium subscription, will be available to sign up to in the next couple of days.

Weekly Hit Ground Ball: Back on the diamond

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“Happy new year!”

To the uninitiated, Oakland A’s co-commentator Ray Fosse’s choice of opening phrase on Saturday would have seemed completely bizarre. Yet to his fellow broadcasters and all of us A’s fans listening, Fosse had got the sentiment just right.

We might have been 54 days into the 2013 calendar year, but Oakland’s first Spring Training game was the true beginning of the year.

For fans of any sport, the calendar is dictated by the season’s schedule rather than something as arbitrary as 31 December turning to 1 January. The effect is all the more pronounced in baseball because of the way the games keep on coming. This isn’t a case of a pre-season friendly one day, backed up by another seven days later over the course of a month before the competitive action begins.

Day One of Spring Training in baseball heralds the start of a daily routine –peppered with the occasional single day off here and there –that will last until the end of September, or into October for the lucky ten making it to the postseason.

Saturday was the first full day of all 30 teams taking to the field, but Friday was the first day of 2013 when you could listen to live baseball once again.

Spring Training is a time of optimism for every team and for some that optimism is better placed than for others.

The Cleveland Indians’ radio team on WTAM had every reason to be full of the joys of spring, even if the 2013 season may not end up with the Tribe pegging a playoff place. They had lived through the daily drudgery of last September, coming off a disastrous 5-24 August, with a team out of contention and no immediate hopes of making a splash in the coming offseason.

All it took was to read out the starting lineup for their spring opener against the Cincinnati Reds to put those desperate days behind them. “Wow, do things change in a short amount of time”, remarked one of the commentary team.

The WTAM crew were especially energised by their feeling that “there’s finally some personality in the clubhouse”. That’s particularly important for those broadcasting every day, but there was also a keen sense that there was a completely different atmosphere around the team, primarily due to the “non-stop talker” Nick Swisher. The commentators were quick to point out that personality doesn’t win you ballgames and Swisher, like the other new recruits, has to play well first and foremost. However if he performs on the field then maybe, just maybe, the energy and enthusiasm he and others can bring to the clubhouse can help the team too.

The early Spring Training games give fans the chance to see new players, and old players, in their new uniforms. It was typical that the first person to step into the batting box against Cleveland was the former Indian Shin-Soo Choo. He led off the game against Geovany Soto, something that momentarily caught me off guard when considering the unlikely prospect of the Texas Rangers’ catcher of the same name having changed teams and positions without me realising it.

Confusion comes easily at the beginning of Spring Training, as new Cleveland outfielders Michael Bourn and Drew Stubbs found to their cost when a fly ball landed between them. It was the classic radio commentary moment when the relaxed tone of an impending easy catch suddenly leaps in volume as “THE BALL DROPS BETWEEN THEM!”.

New outfielders were also causing confusion in the Atlanta Braves’ game against the Detroit Tigers, although this time it was among the Braves’ WFOM commentary team.

The first fly ball to left-centre posed the dilemma as to how they should call plays with two Uptons converging in the outfield. The obvious choice of referring to them as Justin and B.J. left one of the commentators a little nervous, joking that he didn’t know them well enough to be on first-name terms just yet. His colleague helpfully suggested he should take the Uptons out for a meal to get to know them a bit better. Perhaps B.J. could find a few dollars from his $75m contract to pick up the bill for that.

The WFOM team soon moved on from the Upton dilemma as the Braves’ pitching staff flirted with a no-hitter that the Tigers broke up in the top of the eighth inning. It’s a standard line in every commentary or game report that pitchers are ahead of the hitters early in Spring Training. There’s a certain logic behind the statement and it’s often true; however it can seem like a curse to a pitcher that has a bad outing.

The Seattle Mariners’ Hector Noesi was the first pitcher of 2013 to bemoan such bad luck. He gave up a grand slam to the San Diego Padres’ Jed Gyorko before departing with six runs against his name (4 earned) and only two outs recorded.

Thankfully for Noesi, he’ll be able to fall back on the argument that he’s just starting out, getting rid of the rust and maybe working on a new pitch without worrying about the results. The pressure and tension of the regular season can wait for now.

This is the time of year when we’re all just glad to have baseball back with us once again.

MLB.TV 2013 begins with 4 Spring Training games on Saturday

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Eight teams got their Spring Training under way yesterday and on Saturday the rest will join in the fun.

All 30 teams will be in action over 16 games (the L.A. Angels and Tampa Bay Rays are both fielding two split-squad teams) and four of these will be the first live games available via MLB.TV this year. The rest of the games should be available to listen to via MLB.com’s Gameday Audio or At Bat app.

To mark the occasion, here’s a brief guide to the teams playing in the televised contests today (times stated in GMT).

17.10. Nationals at Mets

Stephen Strasburg is scheduled to start for the Nationals, although in the first few weeks of Spring Training that distinction doesn’t mean much. He’ll pitch an inning – maybe two depending on the pitch count – before turning the ball over to the next hurler in line. Offseason recruit Denard Span will be donning a Nats uniform for the first time, while Shaun Marcum will do the same for the Mets.

18.05. Blue Jays at Tigers

Jim Leyland is planning to send out his likely regular season starting lineup today (Fielder, Cabrera, Victor Martinez etc) with Anibal Sanchez starting things off on the mound. Brandon Morrow will be the first Toronto pitcher.

18.05. Astros at Phillies 

Bo Porter manages the Astros for the first time against the veteran Charlie Manuel. Phillies fans will enjoy the sight of Chase Utley and Ryan Howard taking the field after both missed Spring Training last year, as well as a significant chunk of the regular season, due to injuries.

18.35. Rays (ss) at Red Sox

John Lackey is another player for whom a supposedly ‘meaningless’ exhibition game will actually mean a lot. He is scheduled to continue his return from Tommy John surgery by pitching an inning against the Rays. When a club is having a ‘split-squad’ day, as the Rays are today, you’ll often find more of the Major League regulars staying at home rather than travelling as part of the road squad. For that reason, Rays fans will have to wait a bit longer before seeing new recruits Yunel Escobar, James Loney and the exciting prospect Wil Myers as they will be playing against the Pirates instead.

 

Let the Spring Training games begin

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Don’t let the cold weather outside tell you otherwise. The long winter months are over.

Even if the gritters are out on the roads and going outside without a thick coat, hat, gloves and a scarf on is to risk catching pneumonia, from today you can always settle down in the evening and whisk yourself off to Florida or Arizona.

Whisk yourself off to baseball.

Spring Training games are similar to pre-season friendlies in football. They are not competitive games in any sense. They do not grab hold of your attention and are easy to walk away from well before the final out is made; however, that really doesn’t matter.

Just as the best pitchers will only look to pitch an inning or two early on in Spring Training, fans check in to a game for a few frames to ease their way into the long grind of the season ahead, albeit with the World Baseball Classic due to provide plenty of fireworks in the middle this year.

There are four games to start us off on Friday. At 18.05 U.K. time the Detroit Tigers begin their game against the Atlanta Braves. The other games – Cincinnati Reds v Cleveland Indians, Kansas City Royals v Texas Rangers and San Diego Padres v Seattle Mariners – all begin at 20.05.

None of these games are being covered on TV and therefore they are not available to watch on MLB.TV (plenty of games will be watchable on MLB.TV over the course of Spring Training); however there should be radio coverage via the MLB.com subscriptions and I’ve long been a great advocate of listening to ballgames. Just like with cricket, baseball suits the medium of radio perfectly and there’s little better than relaxing on an evening with a ballgame in the background.

Details of the MLB.TV subscriptions from a British perspective can be found here including lots of very helpful comments from baseball fans passing on their experience of using different connected devices.

The MLB At Bat app was launched on Thursday. The basic app – with news, scores, stats and video highlights – can be downloaded for free. MLB.TV Premium subscribers simply need to add their account details into the app to then use their subscription to watch and listen to live and archived games.

If you don’t fancy buying the MLB.TV subscription but want to follow games lives then you can pay $20 (£13) to upgrade to the premium services in the At-Bat app that will add live radio commentary streams. Apple device users have the option of a $3 (£2) monthly-recurring fee.

It’s worth restating, to avoid potential disappointment, that the only way you can watch the live video streams through the At Bat app is to pay for the MLB.TV Premium subscription as well (although there is normally one free live streamed game most days to enjoy).

If you think you might want to add the MLB.TV subscription later in the season (at a discounted rate) then think through how much you would use the premium At Bat app (i.e. the live radio streams) in the meantime before purchasing now. The $20 premium app features come as part of the MLB.TV Premium subscription so in a sense effectively you would be paying for this twice if you buy it now and then get the MLB.TV Premium subscription later. Still, if you plan to get MLB.TV Premium for the second half of the season and will listen to plenty of games before then, it might be well worth paying that extra $20/£13 to get the radio streams on your chosen device now.

Wilbur Wood’s 1971 season and 300+ Innings pitched

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Following on from Monday’s column, here is the full list of the best individual player seasons since 1946 inclusive, as valued by Baseball-Reference.com’s Wins Above Replacement.

 

Rank Player (age   that year) Wins Above   Replacement Year
1 Dwight Gooden (20) 13 1985
2 Steve Carlton+ (27) 12.1 1972
3 Carl Yastrzemski+ (27) 12 1967
4 Roger Clemens (34) 11.8 1997
5 Bob Gibson+ (32) 11.7 1968
6 Barry Bonds (36) 11.6 2001
Barry Bonds (37) 11.6 2002
8 Pedro Martinez (28) 11.4 2000
9 Fergie Jenkins+ (28) 11.3 1971
Cal Ripken+ (30) 11.3 1991
11 Bob Gibson+ (33) 11.2 1969
12 Mickey Mantle+ (25) 11.1 1957
13 Mickey Mantle+ (24) 11 1956
14 Willie Mays+ (34) 10.9 1965
15 Stan Musial+ (27) 10.8 1948
Joe Morgan+ (31) 10.8 1975
17 Ted Williams+ (27) 10.7 1946
Willie Mays+ (33) 10.7 1964
Wilbur Wood (29) 10.7 1971
Tom Seaver+ (28) 10.7 1973
Mike Trout (20) 10.7 2012

That’s an impressive group of players for Trout to be associated with.

There was one name on the list that I didn’t recognise. I started following baseball in 1998 and have devoured plenty of books about the history of the game since then, but Wilbur Wood’s name has passed me by until now.

He made his debut as a 19 year old with Boston in 1961 and up to the end of the 1970 season only 21 of his 365 Major League appearances had been as a starting pitcher. 1971 was his first campaign as a regular starter and his success showed that taking him out of the bullpen was the correct decision. He wasn’t a one-year-wonder either as his 1972 season was almost as impressive.

What really stands out though is the amount of innings he pitched as a starter. In five seasons, from 1971 to 1975, Wood amassed 1681.2 innings on his arm, at an average of 336 innings per season.

Such hefty workloads were simply par for the course at the time. Wood’s 1971 season rates very highly when using WAR but the AL Cy Young voters at the time rated two other players more highly that year. Oakland’s Vida Blue took the prize (8.7 WAR) and he made 39 starts and pitched 312 innings, whilst Detroit’s Mickey Lolich (8.2 WAR) came in second after starting 45 times and pitching 376 innings.

Justin Verlander has led the Majors in innings pitched in three of the past four seasons, including a career high of 251 innings in 2011. As they prepare for the 2013 season, the Tigers will be expecting their ace to pitch plenty of innings again this year, but it’s safe to say they will not be expecting him to go past 300 innings or even come too close to it.

Nor indeed would Verlander himself. His current contract expires in two years’ time and, considering the potential riches that lay in store, even a player as competitive as Verlander isn’t about to risk blowing his arm out with such a vast amount of innings in one season.

In today’s baseball, a star pitcher’s arm is worth too much – both to the player and the team paying him – to justify the potential injury risk. We may well have seen the end of 300+ IP pitchers.

Weekly Hit Ground Ball: Hope in Spring

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‘Hope springs eternal’, but in baseball spring is an eternal source of hope.

The sun beats down onto the backs of returning ballplayers in Arizona and Florida, some of the recipients driven by a winter of frustration, some emboldened by the confidence of success from the previous year.

It is the sense of renewal that makes spring such a glorious part of the baseball calendar. Everything starts again and that means anything is possible; however the past is always present in the mind and every player will have something to prove on the back of the 2012 performance.

Here are six players whose 2012 seasons, for differing reasons, will make following their fortunes in 2013 all the more intriguing.

Mike Trout (Los Angeles Angels)

When we witness a player excelling at a young age it is too tantalizing not to look ahead and wonder just how good he will become. Sportsmen often hit their peak in their late-twenties, so it is natural to see Mike Trout’s incredible performance as a 20 year-old in 2012 as a starting point for our expectations.

Yet how realistic would that be? Whilst experience and physical maturity could hone Trout’s remarkable talent even further, the level of competition in MLB must put a limit on how far he can improve.

It’s possible that Trout could have a long and successful career and never quite top 2012. If we use Baseball-Reference’s Wins Above Replacement (WAR) as our measure then Trout’s season (10.7 WAR) is the joint-17th highest in a single season since the end of World War Two. Of all the many thousands of individual player seasons from 1946 onwards, only 16 have been better judged by WAR.

Upon considering that staggering fact, no baseball fan can help but be fascinated by what Trout will serve up as an encore in 2013.

Roy Halladay (Philadelphia Phillies)

Whilst Trout was dazzling as a young star in the AL West, Halladay was struggling as a veteran star in the NL East.  2012 arguably was his worst full season since 2000.

A tough year as a 24 year old can be recovered from, as Halladay’s exceptional career since shows. Fighting back from a disappointing season when you are 36 is a much more difficult task. Halladay was clearly hampered by an injury to his right-shoulder and he has entered Spring Training with a revised training regime, adjusted pitching mechanics and a positive frame of mind.

Every player is in ‘the best shape of their life’ coming into Spring Training and it could be overly optimistic to consider 2012 as a mere bump in the road, but Halladay’s previous excellence means he deserves the benefit of the doubt. If the Phillies are to challenge the Washington Nationals and Atlanta Braves in the NL East, they need ‘Doc’ to return to somewhere close to his previous form.

Jemile Weeks (Oakland A’s)

What a difference a year makes. Twelve months ago, Weeks came into the A’s Spring Training camp all set to become the leading face of the club. His impressive rookie campaign in 2011 had earned him an extremely rare compliment: the A’s General Manager Billy Beane described him as the one ‘untouchable’ asset on the roster that he wouldn’t consider trading.

In Oakland’s home season-opener against the Seattle Mariners, Weeks led off the bottom of the first inning with a single and the A’s TV commentators were quick to state that they expected big things of the second baseman in the season ahead.

Instead, Weeks played so poorly that he was demoted to Triple-A on 21 August and he was relegated to cheer-leading duty as Oakland secured a surprising AL West division title.

Weeks was defiant at the time of his demotion, stating: “at the end of the day, I’m going to be a star in this game, man. You’ve got to have your ups and downs. It just makes the story so much sweeter when you come back. I don’t want to expand too much on it, but you’re looking at a star, period”.

If Weeks is to live up to his own billing, he needs to have a big bounceback season in 2013. That includes simply winning a starting job during Spring Training.

Tim Lincecum (San Francisco Giants)

In 2012, Lincecum played his part in helping the Giants to their second World Series title in three years. However, the two-time Cy Young Award winner’s role was to chip in with 4.2 innings of relief pitching during the Fall Classic having lost his place in the starting rotation after putting up a 5.37 ERA over 33 regular season starts.

Lincecum will be a free agent at the end of the coming season and if he is to earn a lucrative new contract he will need to show that his disappointing 2012, and the declining speed of his fastball, was just a blip.

He turned up to the Giants’ Spring Training camp with his trademark long hair cut short, either as a sign that he is smartening up his act or that he is trying a reverse-Samson approach to regain his powers.

Aroldis Chapman (Cincinnati Reds)

Lincecum was temporarily moved from starting to relief pitching for the 2012 playoffs and one of the biggest National League stories in Spring Training will be the Reds’ plan to take the opposite approach with their ‘Cuban missile’.

When Cincinnati won the race to Chapman’s signature in January 2010, their offer of a 6 year, $30.25m contract reflected the scouting reports that he could become a dominating starting pitcher. So far they have harnessed his blazing fastball/slider combination out of the bullpen to great effect and he took to the role of closer superbly last season, striking out a scarcely believable 122 batters in just 71.2 innings (15.3 K’s per 9 innings).

However, a quality starting pitcher that can give you 200 innings in a season, plus a potential dominant postseason start or two, is more valuable to a team than 70 innings as a closer and the Reds have decided now is the time to find out if Chapman has what it takes.

With Cincinnati all set to be in a tight NL Central battle with the St. Louis Cardinals, it will be interesting to see how much patience they have before deciding to move him back to the closer role.

Carl Crawford (Los Angeles Dodgers)

Here’s a question for you: will Crawford come into Spring Training this year happier than he did two years ago?

Back in 2011, he met his new Boston Red Sox teammates for the first time flush with a 7 year, $142m contract and full of excitement about what he hoped would be a successful new chapter in his career.  From the outside, everything was perfect, but there was a lingering doubt as to how Crawford would adapt to playing in the media hothouse of Boston compared to his days with the underdog Tampa Bay Rays.

The dream turned into a nightmare as a poor 2011 season was followed by an injury hit 2012. Crawford recently admitted to his feelings of desperation, stating: “I knew with the struggles I was having, it would never get better for me. I just didn’t see a light at the end of the tunnel. It puts you in kind of a depression stage. You just don’t see a way out”.

Thankfully for Crawford – and for the Red Sox – the dollar-dispensing Dodgers provided an unlikely way out with their summertime mega-trade. The outfielder is still rehabbing from elbow surgery and may not be ready for Opening Day, but 2013 will offer Crawford a chance to get his career back on track.

Could Cleveland be your team?

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Monday was the first official day for players to start reporting to their respective MLB Spring Training camps.

As the day began, we didn’t know which camp Michael Bourn was going to be reporting to in the coming days as he remained a free agent despite being one of the prize pieces on the market.

By the end of Monday we found out the answer and it wasn’t one many would have guessed heading into the offseason. Bourn became the latest acquisition in a surprisingly active winter by the Cleveland Indians, agreeing terms on a four-year, $48m contract (approximately £147k per week).

Cleveland lost 94 games in 2012, with only AL Central division mates the Minnesota Twins losing more in the American League (96), and finished 20 games behind the division-winning Detroit Tigers. They’ve got a lot of ground to make up in 2013 if they want to compete for a playoff spot, but that challenge, combined with their busy offseason, makes them an appealing option for any British newcomer looking for a not-too-obvious team to call their own.

The Indians’ projected pitching rotation dampens the enthusiasm and ensures that they will not be shaking off the underdog tag anytime soon. Justin Masterson couldn’t repeat his impressive 2011 showing in 2012, whilst Ubaldo Jimenez’s 42 starts for the Tribe since being acquired from the Colorado Rockies during the 2011 season have been underwhelming to say the very least (5.32 ERA). Spying the names of Brett Myers and Daisuke Matsuzaka alongside Zach McAllister in the projected rotation makes you realise it’s not going to be the most fearsome five in the AL this year.

But you don’t need to be Ian Drury to find reasons to be cheerful.

With Bourn following Nick Swisher’s lead in signing on with the Cleveland club, the Indians bagged two of the best position players on the free agent market this offseason. Those headline player moves came after the Indians pulled off something of a coup by convincing Terry Francona to become their new manager.

The unique pitching prospect Trevor Bauer should be taking one of those rotation spots at some point during the season and he’ll have a good outfield behind him with the presumed new centre fielder Drew Stubbs sliding over to right field alongside Bourn, with the presumed new right-fielder Swisher now likely to spend the majority of his time fielding at first base.

Add in Asdrubal Cabrera, Carlos Santana and Jason Kipnis and there’s definitely some talented players for a new fan to immediately take a liking to.

Cleveland also played in the joint-ninth highest number of pre-midnight U.K. time games (21) during the working week last season, so there should be plenty of chances to catch their games live at a convenient time.

If you’re not keen on jumping on board with an established winner and prefer a plucky team with an outside chance of causing an upset this year, Cleveland may well be the team for you.

Weekly Hit Ground Ball: The King’s reign continues

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The endless taunts from Yankee fans could be brushed away at the time, but deep down they created a sense of hopelessness and dread.

The New York Yankees, or some other big-spending team, were going to snatch Felix Hernandez from the Seattle Mariners and there was nothing M’s fans could do about it.

They had lost their best players before (Ken Griffey Jr., Alex Rodriguez, Randy Johnson etc) and, however much they tried to hold on to Felix’s proclaimed desire to stay, it was crushingly inevitable that Hernandez would follow.

But then on Thursday evening, suddenly everything changed. We found out that King Felix’s reign in Seattle will continue for years to come.

The news wasn’t quite as definitive as first appeared. USA Today’s Bob Nightengale tweeted that the Mariners were on the verge of agreeing a record seven-year, $175 million contract with their ace. That staggering headline sum was then reduced by later reports, such as from ESPN’s Buster Olney, to be a five-year, $135.5m contract extension (in practice it’s the same as Nightengale’s figure, with the other two years and $39.5m being what Hernandez has remaining on his current contract) and then ‘MLB sources’ clarified that an agreement actually hadn’t been reached just yet.

All of which was simply clarifying the precise details. The conclusion is the same: in the coming weeks Hernandez will sign a contract that ties him to Seattle for the next seven years and will pay him a little short of £111m, or just over £300k per week for the duration.

Away from the objective analysis, there is always something joyous in seeing a team retain their star player. Fans have become conditioned to expect their heroes to walk away, leaving them with mere memories and a desolate mix of rejection and betrayal. It’s an emotional and irrational viewpoint, but that’s part of what being a fan leads you to.

When Stan Musial passed away recently, much was made of him being a one-team man and his place in St. Louis Cardinal folklore partly as a result. Albert Pujols was held in the same regard by Cardinal fans until the Los Angeles Angels waved $240m in front of his eyes a year ago.

The comparisons between the two are as obvious as they are clearly unfair. No one knows for sure whether Musial would have ‘remained loyal’ to the Cardinals had free agency existed in his day and, frankly, when you stop and think rationally for a moment it’s difficult to doubt that Stan the Man would have made the same decision if placed in the same position.

Away from the emotion, the only way a team can keep a star player is to pay them somewhere close to what they are worth on the market, even if the player may be willing to accept a little less than the maximum available if that means staying somewhere he enjoys and where his family are settled.

In the case of Pujols, the Cardinals were not willing to come close to the Angels’ offer and so the two parted ways. St. Louis made a business decision and it was an entirely understandable one.

Are the Mariners making a similarly defensible decision in investing so much money in Hernandez? Giving a long-term contract to a pitcher comes with significant risk due to the potential of an injury to both make them miss a substantial amount of games and then not to be able to recapture their previous dominance.

Weighing up the risk is not an easy process. Hernandez has had a clean bill of health since making his Major League debut as a 19 year old in 2005. It says a lot about the precariousness of pitchers that such a positive attribute can lead to the pessimistic prognosis that the amount of innings he has therefore pitched (1620.1 in the Majors so far) may mean that an arm injury is, if not around the corner, coming along the next street. The Mariners know Hernandez’s condition better than anybody, so they are best-placed to make the call.

Seattle are not likely to challenge for a playoff spot in 2013, but every organization’s goal is to develop a winning team and to do that you need to have good players. There has been a theory over the past couple of seasons that the Mariners should trade Hernandez because of the current team’s lack of competitiveness. It’s one I didn’t subscribe to.

If you trade an established star, not simply a good Major Leaguer but one of the very best starting pitchers, you do so in the knowledge that the prospects acquired may never pan out (see Justin Smoak, who the Mariners insisted on receiving from the Texas Rangers when they traded Cliff Lee). You can still build a team of talented youngsters by trading other players (as the Mariners did last year with Michael Pineda) and making good selections in the amateur draft (as the Mariners have done with their three highly-touted pitching prospects Danny Hultzen, James Paxton and Taijuan Walker).

When you’ve got an elite player they should only be traded if a) you know you have no chance of keeping them for longer, b) you get completely bowled over by an offer you cannot refuse, or c) the player is in his early 30s and he’ll be well in decline before you are competitive again.

For all but the very poorest teams, paying one elite player $20m-25m shouldn’t tie the hands of the GM from putting together a competitive roster, especially with the new national TV contracts coming on stream. If the Mariners’ young pitchers, and hopefully a few hitters, develop then King Felix will be the perfect player to lead the way in a year or two. And if everything comes together out of nowhere – as with the Orioles and A’s in 2012 - in a year before that then the M’s will increase their chances of making the opportunity count by having an ace that no team would want to face in the playoffs.

From an objective point of view, and from the emotional fan’s perspective, Seattle’s decision to commit to their King makes complete sense.

Rounding the bases

It’s a blow to Venezuela and the World Baseball Classic, but King Felix’s decision to skip the event is entirely understandable considering his ongoing contract negotiations. Even though the idea that the WBC creates much of an increased injury risk has been debunked – players regularly complain about the current off-season/Spring Training regimen and it’s not as if it’s the product of rigorous, meticulous research – getting the contract sorted with no distractions has to be the priority.

One of the most obvious arguments against the WBC injury claim is that there is no cut-and-dried way to prevent injuries and they are simply a part of sport. The St. Louis Cardinals’ Chris Carpenter is the latest example of this truism and it looks like this latest setback will end the veteran’s career. It’s been a fine career too and his period with the Cardinals, after starting with the Blue Jays, had a strange symmetry.  His first three years with the team ended in a World Series triumph in 2006 and after missing virtually all of 2007 and 2008 through injury, he gave the Cards another three strong years that again culminated in a World Series victory in 2011.

Whilst the Mariners were set to invest in King Felix, the Houston Astros continued their crusade to field a ‘Major League’ team for as little money as possible by trading Jed Lowrie to the Oakland A’s. The Astros’ General Manger Jeff Luhnow is pursuing a much-needed rebuilding strategy, however MLB and the Players Association should be demanding answers as to what is happening with the revenue that the Astros will generate this year – and more pertinently the money they will receive through national TV contracts and other pooled resources – beyond what is spent on the projected $25m Major League payroll and the limited money they are allowed to invest in amateur talent drafts under the new Collective Bargaining Agreement.

The protracted sale of the organization to a group led by Jim Crane was indicative of the doubts some MLB owners had about Crane’s business past and you would expect they will be pressing to have the Astros’ plans put under considerable scrutiny. Astros fans will be hoping the money is being set aside to fund future free-agent spending and to keep hold of some of the young talent they intend to develop over the next few seasons. Cynics will suspect that might not be the case and Crane’s recent claim that the Astros lost money over the last five years doesn’t inspire much confidence.