Monthly Archives: February 2014

MLBTV 2014 Spring Training games

3 Replies

The day is almost here; live baseball returns on Wednesday as the first games from the Cactus and Grapefruit Leagues 2014 take place.

It’s a grey, miserable day as I write this here in the U.K. and yet tomorrow evening I’ll be able to watch and listen to the ‘Boys of Summer’ playing under glorious sunshine. There’s something incredibly relaxing about whiling away a cold evening indoors listening to games being played in the laid-back spring atmosphere.

Spring Training games are limited on MLB.TV simply because most of them are not televised in the States and therefore there is no broadcast feed for MLB.TV to show. However, this year there are over 200 games available to watch over the course of Spring and, as most games take place during the afternoon, the majority are played at a convenient time for us to watch.

Now, if you’ve been through even one Spring Training you’ll know that, particularly up until the second half of March, the games do tend to drift along in the later innings as the established Major Leaguers are swapped out for prospects (and non-prospects).

They are pre-season friendlies so the drama of competitive games isn’t there, but getting a chance to see some of the younger players is part of the fun of Spring Training, as is seeing players taking the field for their new teams and being able to revel in the simple pleasure of watching live baseball once again.

MLB.com has published an MLB.TV Spring Training schedule and I’ve created a version that lists the games based on the start times for us in the U.K.  The table below provides the MLB.TV games up to and including 9 March.

Two things to note in respect of the list below:

1. There are a few night games in there that begin in the early hours of the morning. I’ve put the date as being the date for us in the U.K. on which the game will start. So, for example, the night-game between the Orioles and Yankees that I have listed as 5 March actually takes place on 4 March in the States and will be stated that way on the MLB.com schedules. I’ve put these cases in itallics to highlight them.

2. The U.S. moves into Daylight Saving Time on Sunday 9 March, whereas we don’t switch to British Summer Time until Sunday 30. Consequently the time difference is reduced by one hour during the intervening three weeks and you’ll see on Sunday 9 March that there’s a switch to a number of games starting at just past 5 in the evening U.K. time rather than after 6.

 

Details about the MLB.TV subscriptions options for UK fans can be found here. Monthly subscriptions are available, albeit at a price that unsurprisingly makes it a fair bit more expensive if you use that method to watch the full season rather than going for the full annual subscription up front.

MLB At Bat 2014 is now available to buy for £14 for the year and that gives you access to radio commentary of every regular season and postseason game, as well as all Spring Training games that are broadcast on the radio, which is the majority of them. Whilst you will be able to access one ‘Free Game of the Day’ to watch via mobile devices with the £14 app during the regular season, you can only watch more games beyond this through buying the MLB.TV Premium subscription and then linking this to your At Bat app.

Listening to the radio commentary is a great way to follow a ballgame, just like some prefer listening to Test Match Special rather than watching TV coverage of cricket, and so the At Bat option should not be seen as a poor relation if budget or broadband capabilities make you think the Premium subscription is not for you this year.

I’ll be tuning into the Oakland A’s radio commentary team regularly throughout Spring Training to enjoy the games and catch up on all the breaking news about my team. Whilst you probably won’t listen or watch the full nine innings of a game during Spring, being able to catch a few innings here and there most days is the perfect way to gear up for the season ahead.

Weekly Hit Ground Ball: O’s add 2

Leave a reply

Much as I enjoy all the news and rumours that the offseason ‘Hot Stove’ brings, there’s a certain joy in knowing this is the last column I’ll be writing for just over eight months that is not influenced by actual games being played.

The Spring Training leagues begin on Wednesday. These are the main stories of the week or so leading up to umpires shouting ‘play ball’ once again.

O’s2

Baltimore Orioles fans had sat through the majority of the offseason waiting for their team to do something to give them hope for the season ahead.

That hope may have been about to run out before the O’s revealed their London Bus approach to the free agent market: waiting around for ages and then signing two at once.

Baltimore, like every team, was keen to add a starting pitcher and they did so in the form of Ubaldo Jimenez on a four-year, $50m contract.

Jimenez is an enigmatic player, switching between ‘Ubaldo the Magnificent’ and ‘Ubaldo the Mess’ like a change in the weather. Scouts explain that his complicated pitching mechanics make him more susceptible to ‘losing’ his delivery, as you sometimes see with cricket bowlers (England’s Stephen Finn would be a good recent example). When a pitcher struggles to repeat his delivery, he struggles to put the ball where he wants to and the result is walks and ‘hit me’ pitches.

Jimenez is a quality pitcher when everything is in synch, such as during his 19-8 season with the Colorado Rockies in 2010 and last year with the Cleveland Indians. It’s unlikely, although far from impossible, that the Orioles will receive four consecutive seasons of Jimenez at his best, but one such season along with three decent ones would still make for a good return on their relatively modest $50m investment.

Jimenez was one of the group of players still on the free agent market in part because signing them involved giving up a valuable amateur draft pick. Nelson Cruz was also on that list until he agreed a one-year deal worth $8m with Baltimore and it’s no coincidence that the Orioles doubled-up on their free agent signings. Having already lost their 2014 draft first round pick due to signing Jimenez, Cruz will only cost Baltimore their less-valuable second round selection. He is slated to be the team’s Designated Hitter this season.

Bailey bonanza

The Cincinnati Reds signed pitcher Homer Bailey to a six-year, $105m contract extension this week (roughly an average of £202k per week).

Bailey was drafted out of High School by the Reds in 2004 and he has come through some growing pains since making his Major League debut as a 21 year old in 2007. The past two seasons, both of which included him pitching a no-hitter, have seen the big Texan develop into the quality starting pitcher that the Reds always believed he could become.

You could argue that he’s not quite an ace, even factoring in that his home ballpark is hitter-friendly (his career ERA is a full run less on the road than it is at the Great American Ballpark – 3.73 compared with 4.74), but if so then he’s at least very close to being one.

Last season he was 24th among pitchers in the Majors with his combined performances measured at 3.7 Wins Above Replacement (WAR), as per Fangraphs, a mark that put him 10th in the National League and second on his club behind Mat Latos (4.4 WAR).

Securing his services for the next six seasons at what is, based on the current market, a sensible annual cost is a good piece of work from the Reds, made all the more welcome due to it coming in an offseason where the team has been relatively quiet.

Add Bailey to the list that’s no longer on the list

As noted by ESPN.com’s David Schoenfield, Bailey is the latest player to be taken off the potential free agent list as part of a growing trend in which teams are signing their key players to contract extensions.

The most positive part of this development is that, as in the case of Cincinnati, it’s not just the clubs with the biggest pockets that are able to do this now.

The Reds’ 10-year, $225m contract with first baseman Joey Votto, signed in April 2012 and coming into effect from this season onwards, was the most significant deal  so far in that regard, alongside the eight-year, $184m contract that the Minnesota Twins agreed with Joe Mauer in 2011.

Thanks to rising national and local TV contracts, even teams outside of the leading media markets such as New York and Los Angeles have a chance of funding contracts that allow them to keep hold of at least some of their best players. That can make the free agent market a bit less exciting, but few fans will mind this if it means that there’s a better chance that their favourite players are not inevitably going to be snapped up by the big boys.

Braves keeping hold of their own

The Atlanta Braves are yet another example of this trend. They followed up their contract extensions with Freddie Freeman (six-years, $135m) and Julio Teheran (six-years, $32.4m) this week with a four-year, $42m contract with closer Craig Kimbrel and a seven-year, $58m contract with shortstop Andrelton Simmons,.

The performance value of a closer is always hotly debated when weighing up the amount of innings they pitch (including the postseason, Kimbrel has averaged 70 innings per season over the past three years) against their perceived importance and the fact that reliable outstanding closers are a very rare breed.

Kimbrel has been so dominant in the role that the Braves’ desire to keep hold of him is understandable, although the ever-present fear of a year lost to Tommy John surgery will make it more important than normal to wait and see if it was money well spent once the contract comes to an end.

As for Simmons, watching him play shortstop is one of the delights of the game and if he can at least hold his own at the plate, Braves fans will be delighted to have him on their team for years to come.

Greinke the Grouch

Finally, Spring Training will have a different feel to it this year for the Arizona Diamondbacks and Los Angeles Dodgers as they head over to Australia for two regular season games on 22-23 March.

The Dodgers’ Zack Greinke is not greatly enthused by the prospect, stating to ESPNLosAngeles.com “I would say there is absolutely zero excitement for it … there just isn’t any excitement to it. I can’t think of one reason to be excited for it”.

Hopefully he’ll enjoy it when he gets there.

How Rooney’s new contract compares with MLB contracts

5 Replies

The MLB offseason is always full of news regarding free agent signings and contract extensions that put figures in front of our eyes that are hard to believe.

Whether you think they deserve the sums of money they receive, there’s no doubting that sport is a lucrative business and those that play at the highest level are able to reap the rewards.

Manchester United confirmed that they had agreed a new 5.5 year contract with Wayne Rooney late on Friday evening and it makes for an interesting comparison with the financial deals struck in MLB.

The comparison is ‘just for fun’, as they used to say on TV programmes when they didn’t want to get into trouble for fleecing children (or more accurately, their parents) with expensive phoneline competitions.

There are many significant differences between the baseball and football markets that are reflected in the contracts that established players sign. At best we’re comparing different varieties of apples, if not comparing apples with pears (or potatoes, perhaps, in Rooney’s case).

One of those differences is that the baseball market is much more transparent. For example, the Cincinnati Reds signed pitcher Homer Bailey to a six-year contract this week and not only do we know the total value of the contract ($105m), anyone can head over to a resource like Cot’s Baseball Contract and see how that will be broken down, not just on an annual basis but the unique payment terms too.

Transparency is a dirty word in football. Most football transfers are ‘undisclosed’ and salaries are confidential. Journalists are able to get hold of some of these details, but more often than not you won’t get the full story and a player’s salary will vary depending on which source you go to. A cynic would suggest that being opaque on such matters is particularly handy considering the propensity of big earners in Britain to be ‘creative’ when (not) paying tax, but we’ll leave that for other websites to consider.

There’s a rare consensus on the main terms of Rooney’s contract, so accepting the caveat that this isn’t a direct comparison, we can at least put some numbers together and see how they stack up against similar baseball deals.

Rooney’s new contract is for 5.5 years and will pay him £300k per week, or more specifically £250k per week with an extra £50k for ‘image rights’. Newspapers are stating that the deal is worth £85m. Multiplying £300k by 286 weeks gives us £85.8m so there’s either some rounding down going on there or it’s possibly not a full half-year in the deal. We’ll put that to one side and use the figures £300k per week and £85m for the total contract value.

If we take the full contract value first then, at current conversion rate, the deal is worth a bit more than $141m. That would slot in around the 25th mark of the most lucrative in MLB history.

23. Cole Hamels, $144,000,000 (2013-18)

24. Carl Crawford, $142,000,000 (2011-17)

25. Todd Helton, $141,500,000 (2003-11)

26. David Wright, $138,000,000 (2013-20)

27. Johan Santana, $137,500,000 (2008-13)

As per Cot’s Baseball Contracts

Rooney’s deal would come in around about that of the recently-retired Todd Helton, although Helton’s deal began in 2003 so in relative terms was worth more money than that at the time of signing.

The contracts signed by Crawford and Helton were for more years than Rooney’s, so Cole Hamels’ six-year deal for $144m is probably the best comparison in that sense, including that they were both 28 years old when they signed.

If we take a slightly different approach and say Rooney’s average annual value is £300k multiplied by 52, then that gives him an average of almost $26m which would put him right near the top compared to MLB players.

1. Clayton Kershaw, $30,714,286 (2014-20)

2. Roger Clemens, $28,000,022 (2007)

3. Alex Rodriguez, $27,500,000 (2008-17)

4. Justin Verlander, $25,714,286 (2013-19)

5. Alex Rodriguez, $25,200,000 (2001-10)

Again, as per Cot’s Baseball Contracts

Hamels is joint-eleventh on the list with an average of $24m. Whichever way you want to slice Rooney’s average annual value, alongside the pound/dollar conversion rate, it doesn’t quite match the very highest annual salaries in baseball but is around the top ten.

It wasn’t too long ago that there were rumours Rooney might be asked to take a paycut to extend his existing contract, or at least reduce the basic wage and introduce more performance-based payments. A potential move to Chelsea over the previous summer and a disappointing 2013/14 season (so far) for United clearly gave Rooney’s advisers plenty of room to drive a hard bargain in a way that is perhaps not so easy to replicate in MLB (no ‘Champions League’ money pressure etc).

Not that the best MLB players are exactly struggling to pay their bills either. The best players in the major sports are only seeing their wages rise as TV companies spend ever-increasing sums on the rights to have them grace their channels.

Weekly Hit Ground Ball: Jeter to retire

1 Reply

One of the joys of this time of year is that none of us really knows what the season will bring; the possibilities are endless in Spring.

However, we do already know one thing that 2014 will be remembered for.

One more year for Jeter

The announcement on Wednesday that this will be Derek Jeter’s final season was a major news story and, particularly considering it was telling us something that’s not actually going to happen until later in the year (my instant reaction to the mass coverage was to mis-read it and I thought he was retiring there and then), that goes to show just how big an impact he has had on the game.

ESPN’s Jayson Stark summed it up by drawing on research last August that overwhelming placed Jeter as the recognised ‘face of MLB’. As Stark put it:

“How does any sport replicate what Derek Jeter has meant to baseball over the last decade and a half — and still does? Is that even possible?

Oh, the Yankees will find another shortstop. There’s a 100 percent probability of that. And Jeter will find stuff to do that probably doesn’t involve spending 14 hours a day curled up in a chair playing Sudoku.

But where does baseball find the next Derek Jeter? Good luck on that”.

It’s difficult to judge from the U.K., where generally you are either a dedicated baseball fan or don’t pay it any attention whatsoever, but clearly Jeter has meant a lot to baseball in terms of its image to the casual fan in the States and, with so many entertainment options out there competing for people’s eyes, ears and money, that’s an important factor that MLB needs to grapple with.

Yet the very nature of sport means that legends come and go. Even if there isn’t necessarily a ready-made, obvious replacement – as Stark suggests is the case here – other players will emerge in time to take on the mantle. MLB will produce new icons, but it won’t be so easy for the Yankees to find another Jeter and what he represented.

He was part of a group of players that created a new era in the rich history of the New York Yankees. There are some similarities here to Manchester United’s ‘Class of ‘92’, documented in the film released last December.  In both cases, you had a group of very talented young players who came through together and, for a period, personified the team. Beckham, Scholes, Giggs and co became Man Utd, just as Jeter, Rivera, Pettitte, Posada and co became what you thought of when you thought of the Yankees.

Not only was that felt by the fans, particularly of the respective teams, but you got a sense that it was felt by players that joined the teams too. Star players coming into the dressing room or clubhouse generally had to fit in with the culture and example that was set by those core players.

Jeter is the last of the fabled ‘core four’ and whilst the Yankees may well use their spending power to put together championship-contending teams in the years to come, it will be a while before they, or potentially any other team, brings through such an incredible group of players that define an era quite like this group has.

A.J. to the Phillies

A.J. Burnett won a World Series with Jeter and the Yankees in 2009 and in 2014 he’ll be pitching for the team that they beat. The Philadelphia Phillies have continued their offseason trend of adding veteran players by bringing in the 37-year-old pitcher on a one-year deal.

If he pitches as well as he did in the past two years with the Pirates then the Phillies will be more than happy with their $16m investment, yet it’s difficult to shake the feeling that the deal would make more sense for a team with a genuinely good shot at making the playoffs this year.

And it’s difficult to shake the feeling that the Phillies’ General Manager Ruben Amaro Jr. is misjudging his roster if he’s putting his team in that category.

Hamels hobbled

The Phillies certainly have some reason to hope that they could get in the Wild Card race, but they need their ageing roster to stay healthy and they suffered a blow this week when Cole Hamels, one of the younger veterans at 30 years old, revealed he has a shoulder injury that could see him miss most of the first month of the season.

Iwakuma injured too

Injuries to pitchers is a depressingly familiar theme each Spring and the Seattle Mariners are also cursing their bad luck early in Spring Training. Hisashi Iwakuma, who had such an impressive season in 2013, has injured his right middle finger and will miss 4 to 6 weeks, meaning he won’t be ready for the start of the season.

The Mariners do have some talented young pitchers to call on and my favourite scouting work of the week came from their ace Felix Hernandez, who described James Paxton as “a funky lefty dealing over the top, throwing 97 [mph]” and Taijuan Walker as “a big dude throwing cheese”.

The Mariners also lost outfielder Franklin Gutierrez for the coming season due to a recurrence of a “gastrointestinal problem”, or as new manager Lloyd McClendon put it: “his health was not cooperating with him”.

Late start for Latos

The Cincinnati Reds’ Mat Latos is another pitcher who started Spring in exactly the way he hoped he wouldn’t. Latos felt a twinge in his left knee during some workouts on Tuesday and underwent minor arthroscopic surgery on Friday. The Reds hope it will only sideline him for 10 days or so, but any setback is a worry for a team that had a relatively quiet offseason and is mainly relying on the players they had last year combining to have a better year in 2014.

Contract extensions

Ending on a more positive note, two young players had a very good opening week to Spring Training by agreeing contract extensions with their respective teams.

Outfielder Michael Brantley signed a four-year contract extension with the Cleveland Indians worth $25m, whilst pitcher Julio Teheran agreed a six-year, $32.4m extension with the Atlanta Braves. The deal with Teheran follows the eight-year contract extension signed by first baseman Freddie Freeman recently as the Braves try to keep hold of their core young talent for years to come.

A history of the Leicester Green Sox (1954–64) told via cuttings

Leave a reply

John Varnam got in touch with me a few weeks ago mentioning that he had pulled together a history of the Leicester Green Sox Baseball Club (1954–64), primarily based on a collection of cuttings, a copy of which he could send through to me along with various other items of British baseball memorabilia. This post details some of these generous additions to the Project COBB collection. Continue reading →

Weekly Hit Ground Ball: Season Number Eight

4 Replies

Baseball is on its way. The Superbowl has been and gone, MLB.TV subscription details have been announced and teams are starting to head to their Spring Training camps in Arizona or Florida.

The long winter months are tough to get through, but we’re over the worst of it and can now look ahead to what is certain to be another incredible MLB season.

I’ve been covering MLB in a weekly column, ‘Weekly Hit Ground Ball’, since 2007 and will do so again in 2014. It’s undergone various format changes over the years to hopefully keep it fresh, including changing from being published on a Sunday to a Monday.

This season as standard I’ll be going almost full circle and returning to something close to the initial format where I used the column to bring together all of the major stories, plus other things that caught my eye, in one bundle.

That approach is going to be flexible, so if one major story dominates the news agenda in a given week then I’ll devote the entire column to that, but by and large I’ll try to touch plenty of bases in the column and will chip in with a post or two during the rest of the week if a particular story deserves to be covered there and then rather than waiting for Monday (or Sunday, as I’ll occasionally be putting it online a day earlier, such as this weekend).

With that explained, let’s head on to the main stories of the last few days.

Arizona extensions

I mentioned last week that I had picked up the Baseball Prospectus 2014 book and the first two team essays – on Arizona and Atlanta – have proved quite prescient.

The Diamondbacks were the first team to open their Spring Training camp due to their participation in the early MLB season opener in Australia.

The BP essay focused on the futures of General Manager Kevin Towers and Manager Kirk Gibson. Both were due to enter this season with only one year remaining on their contracts and with some question marks over whether they would be with the team in 2015.

It was thought that they would need to use the 2014 season as an extended trial to prove they were the men to take the team forward in the coming years; however those thoughts were pushed aside this week as both received contract extensions.

The D-Backs are in an interesting position having finished dead on .500 in each of the last two seasons and with the Dodgers’ spending making them strong favourites for the NL West division again.

Arizona need to find a way to take the next step and to push for a Wild Card spot and if they don’t it would call into question whether the contract extensions, Gibson’s in particular, were a good decision. Acting early does at least mean there will be no distractions if the season doesn’t start brilliantly for them, so in that sense clearing up the issue could work in their favour.

Arizona have improved their chances of a mounting a decent challenge by agreeing to a two-year deal with Bronson Arroyo. Their starting rotation was in need of support and Arroyo’s brand of solid if unspectacular work should meet the need well.

Eight years for Freeman

The Atlanta Braves’ chapter in BP 2014 centred on their young core of players and impending dilemmas the team would face in trying to keep hold of as many as possible.

Stage one in that process was completed this week as the team agreed an eight-year, $135m contract extension with first baseman Freddie Freeman. It’s the most lucrative contract in the team’s history and shows how much faith they have in the 24-year-old.

His age is crucial to the deal for the Braves. Freeman finished fifth in the NL MVP voting process last season and yet you could have a long argument over whether he’s really an elite young player worthy of $135m or ‘just’ a very good one. The key point is that either way it represents good value because the Braves are going to be paying that money when he’s in his prime.

The Braves also agreed a two-year, $13.3m deal with outfielder Jason Heyward. He was already under contract with the team for those years, and it may prove difficult for Atlanta to keep hold of him beyond this point, but this at least puts to bed any arbitration wrangling.

Which camp?

There are still a number of free agents who don’t yet know which Spring Training camp they will be heading to.

It was presumed that A.J. Burnett would be staying at home and beginning retirement, but in the past couple of weeks it has emerged that he fancies giving it at least one more year. A return to the Pirates does not appear to be on the cards, leaving the Orioles, Phillies and Blue Jays as the likely main contenders for his signature.

Ubaldo Jimenez and Ervin Santana are also on the radar of teams seeking an additional starting pitcher. Jimenez has been heavily linked with a move to Toronto although no deal has been struck just yet.

Seattle bound

Fernando Rodney reportedly has found a new team in time for the beginning of Spring Training after agreeing a two-year contract with the Mariners.

Seattle are also seen as the team keenest to end outfielder Nelson Cruz’s stay on the free agent market.  Cruz has been characterised as the booby prize this offseason with the assumption being that one team desperate for a right-handed bat will hand the 33-year-old a multi-year contract they’ll soon come to regret.

After taking their $240m plunge with Robinson Cano there’s a sense that the Mariners need to add at least one more bat to the mix in 2014 and that they may be the team to pay Cruz.

Another victim

Sadly it’s always only a matter of time in Spring Training before a pitcher’s season is cut cruelly short before it has even begun as their elbow gives way and Tommy John surgery is required.

This spring’s first victim, the Padres’ Cory Luebke, is doubly unfortunate as he is undergoing the operation for a second time after his recovery from the first operation didn’t go to plan. Luebke has been out of action since May 2012 and it will be 2015 before he has any chance of getting back out onto the field.

Good news at last

Finally, that rarest of things: a news story about Alex Rodriguez that is good for baseball. Rodriguez has dropped his lawsuit and accepted a season-long ban for his alleged part in the Biogenesis drug case. The game didn’t need the sideshow of an ongoing bitter legal dispute this year and we can now all concentrate on positive news such as the teams heading back to Spring Training camps.

MLB.TV 2014 subscription details announced

65 Replies

Whilst for the players and coaches the upcoming new season is heralded by reporting to Spring Training camps, for baseball fans the sign that the new season is on its way comes in the form of the MLB.TV subscription details being announced.

MLB.com published that information today and the headline is that it’s basically the same package, for the same price, as in 2013.

Two subscriptions to choose from

Once again there are two different subscriptions.

MLB.TV Standard provides live and on-demand access to HD-quality viewing of every single game of the MLB season. The annual subscription cost is $110, which at the current conversion rate is around £67.40 (slightly less than this time last year).

MLB Premium gives you the same features as MLB.TV standard but with the ability to use MLB apps to use your MLB.TV subscription on a host of different devices. For this, plus the ability to select either the home or road feeds (useful if you find one of the commentary teams annoying), you pay an extra $20 and this works out at just under £80.The subscription includes the At Bat 14 app for Apple devices, Android devices and Windows Phone 8, which otherwise normally sets you back £9-£10, so you’re effectively paying for the app by upgrading to Premium.

All games available

It’s worth stressing that whilst North American customers are blocked from watching local games (and ‘local’ is extremely widely defined in some areas) and various national TV games, we in the U.K. are not subject to these blackouts and can therefore watch any we care to enjoy. This includes all of the postseason games. That’s an important point to note as this isn’t mentioned prominently in the main MLB.com promotional materials due to it not applying to customers in North America.

Around 200 Spring Training games will also be available to watch, with the limitation here simply being that a lot of the Spring Training games are not broadcast on TV and therefore there is no feed to watch.

As well as watching the games, you can also listen to the home/radio feed. Normally you can buy a specific Gameday Audio subscription for approximately $20 that just provides the radio coverage, as well as in-game graphics, although details on that are generally released closer to the start of the season.

On which devices?

Going down the Premium route to be able to watch the games away from your PC monitor is a real plus, but it’s worth keeping an eye out on which of the listed devices will be available for UK customers.

Over 70 comments were posted on last year’s article here about the MLB.TV subscription details and many came from fellow British baseball fans reporting issues and solutions to connecting up to various devices. Please do post a comment if you’ve got any useful information and experience along those lines to help out.

The issue is normally down to whether the MLB app is available via the specific device, aside from the normal At Bat 14 app that will definitely be available on Apple devices, Android devices and Windows Phone 8.

In some cases it won’t be available in the UK, or you may need to find a workaround (such as changing the region settings on your Smart TV etc). There is a list on the MLB.com FAQs that’s worth consulting although probably stops short of confirming whether it will definitely be available on your exact Smart TV/DVD.

From my perspective, my solution a year ago was to buy a cheap Roku box. The LT version originally retailed at £50 but can be picked up for quite a bit less than this (for example, at time of writing you can buy one from PC World for £30) and the MLB app is available on this for UK residents.

That option has become even cheaper with Sky Now’s TV box. BSkyB bought a stake in Roku and their basic Sky Now TV Box is essentially a rebranded Roku LT available for just £10. Some apps are not available through the Sky Now TV Box that you can get through the standard Roku box, most notably Netflix, but the Sky Now TV complete channel list does include the MLB.TV app, so it should be fine for your baseball viewing.

Other coverage

There was some concern about the amount of baseball we’d be able to watch on TV when ESPN America disappeared on 1 August last year and was replaced by the ESPN channel as part of the BT Sport package.

Thankfully there was little difference in the number of live baseball games on offer with some, including most of the World Series games, actually being broadcast on one of the two BT Sport channels, so there will still be a decent TV option for baseball fans if paying for a baseball-only subscription is not for you.

There’s still no sign of any free-to-air coverage, unfortunately, although hopefully BBC Radio will be continuing their baseball coverage on 5 Live Sports Extra again this season.

A great way to follow the baseball season

I know I write this every year, but it really is true that if you’re a baseball fan and haven’t gone down the MLB.TV route before, take the plunge if you can and you’ll soon wonder how you ever got by without it. £80 for the Premium subscription is not loose change and the value for money comes from how much baseball you want to watch, or are able to watch, over the course of the year.

If you only want to catch a couple of games per week then you might not feel the expense is worthwhile and, if the option is open to you, a BT Sports subscription might give you all the want.

However, if the want to watch plenty of baseball throughout the year, particularly dipping in and out of lots of games over the course of an evening, then MLB.TV is a great choice to consider.

From Spring Training to the World Series, you get eight months of live baseball and even at four games a week (based on an average of 4 weeks in a month), you’ll get 256 games for your money at about 30p per game. And that’s before tacking on the on-demand games to get through the offseason.

My Premium subscription will be renewed automatically and I can’t wait for the games to get underway so I can dive into the feast of baseball once again.

Baseball in the digital age

13 Replies

The latest ‘baseball is coming’ moment of my offseason arrived this Sunday morning as I sat reading the new Baseball Prospectus annual over breakfast.

At first glance, the 2014 edition is a return to form for BP. I’ve been buying their annual season starter since 2005 and the 2013 edition was the first time that I was left disappointed. The team essays that had previously been used to delve into all manner of subjects – from statistical research articles to the more quirky trivia around a team – were turned into generic summaries, whilst the player comments had lost their zip and, in some cases, their amusing spite.

I wasn’t the only reader to feel this way and thankfully BP have listened and made positive changes for 2014, in particular by handing over every team essay to a different person to bring their own viewpoint and writing style to the mix. I’ll put together a full review in the next few weeks, but the short version is that you shouldn’t let any understandable disappointment of last year’s effort put you off buying it this year.

If you go to Amazon.co.uk you’ll find that the book is not due to be published until 26 February. However, search for ‘Baseball Prospectus’ and then click on the ‘Kindle Books’ tab and you can see that the e-book version is available to download already. It’s currently listed £12.47 for the e-book compared with £15.24 for the paperback.

I do miss the initial pleasure of taking the 600-page tome out of its packaging and thumbing through it for the first time, but the convenience of the e-book version is undeniable (no long wait at the local Post Office depot to pick it up, not being weighed down on the work to walk when you want to read it at lunch time etc) and that includes being able to click a button and have it on your device within a minute.

Patience is a virtue, but after three long months without baseball games to watch I think I can be forgiven for not wanting to wait another month before being able to delve into the book.

It’s another example of how the digital age of the last 15 years or so has transformed the way baseball fans outside of North America can follow the sport. It wasn’t long ago that you had to go through specialist retailers and pay over the odds for imports if you wanted to get hold of books or magazines. Now we can access them almost as readily as fans in the States.

We should also learn more about the 2014 MLB.TV subscriptions in the very near future. Last year the details were announced on 5 February, so there’s a good chance we’ll find out what features will be available, and at what cost, in the coming week or so. I’ll review the offerings here as soon as they are released.

The next time you shake your head at the thought of some of the rubbish the internet and other digital devices have led too – from selfies to Twitter abuse –, it’s worth remembering that the 2014 baseball season is on its way and, thanks to to the internet, we’ll be able to enjoy it in full from Britain.

Potential stars at shortstop

Leave a reply

The ‘Friday Farce’ would be a good way to describe 31 January.

Sky Sports News revels in the way they’ve, largely single-handed, turned the football transfer deadline into a crazy soap opera, in which kids crowd around reporters that talk excitedly about the vague possibility of transfers involving mostly average players.

It doesn’t matter who the player is nor what impact they have on the team they join – and often the impact would be found to be minimal were Sky Sports News to investigate that side of the event, which for obvious reasons they do not – all that matters is that the thirst for player signings is quenched.

Even leaving aside comparisons with the bizarre freak show that is the football deadline day, we’re in a lull for MLB news with the top free agents off the market, a dearth of exciting trade rumours and Spring Training camps still waiting to open for another couple of weeks.

Thankfully the space has been filled by turning attention to the best young talent heading towards a Major League field either this coming season or a few years down the line.

MLB.com published their 2014 Prospect List on 23 January, Baseball Prospectus published theirs for free, alongside a separate breakdown page, four days later, whilst ESPN.com has been publicising Keith Law’s  prospect coverage that is available with an ESPN Insider subscription.

Two other main sources of prospect information, Baseball America and John Sickels’ Minor League Ball, will be adding their lists to the group in the coming weeks, although Sickels’ list will be later than usual this year.

All three of the published lists so far have placed outfielder Byron Buxton as the best prospect in baseball. Buxton is a part of the Minnesota Twins’ farm system and his ranking provides an excellent example of how the amateur draft is designed to allow teams currently not competing the chance to restock.

The Twins had the second overall selection in the 2012 draft due to their 2011 MLB season struggles. They used that pick, and a $6m bonus, to sign Buxton and in doing so have acquired an exciting talent who hopefully will be dazzling Twins fans for years to come.

Buxton has been invited to the Twins’ 2014 Major League Spring Training camp and whilst it’s more likely that he’ll begin his Major League career in 2015 (he’s just turned 20 and 2013 was his first year of professional baseball), his skills and rapid development mean that there’s a chance he could be playing at Target Field by the end of this coming season.

One thing that leaps out from the two freely available lists, MLB.com and Baseball Prospectus, is the number of shortstops that are high in the rankings.

  • Xander Bogaerts – Boston Red Sox. BP rank: 2, MLB.com: 2
  • Javier Baez – Chicago Cubs. BP: 4, MLB.com: 7
  • Carlos Correa – Houston Astros. BP: 5, MLB.com: 8
  • Francisco Lindor – Cleveland Indians. BP: 6, MLB.com: 10
  • Addison Russell – Oakland Athletics. BP: 7, MLB.com: 12.

Bogaerts made his Major League debut last August and became the youngest player to take the field for the Red Sox in a playoff game later that season. He’s a good bet to win AL Rookie of the Year honours this season and whilst the others are a bit further away from the Big Leagues, there’s clearly some promising shortstops on their way.

Shortstops tend to be the best athletes and, especially in the Minor Leagues, teams will give those players every chance to stay at the position until they reach a point where it’s felt they will struggle too much there defensively in the Majors.  Reports suggest all of the five prospects mentioned above have a good chance at staying at the position, but it’s not simply their own talent level that will be the determining factor.

The Texas Rangers’ Jurickson Profar was the consensus pick as the best prospect in MLB a year ago. He played at shortstop in the Minors but the Rangers prefer Elvis Andrus at that position and therefore Profar has switched to second base at the Major League level. Similarly, the Baltimore Orioles’ Manny Machado is now thought of as an elite third baseman, yet he was an outstanding shortstop prospect who moved across to the hot corner as the Orioles already had J.J. Hardy playing at short.

Bogaerts switched between third base and shortstop with the Red Sox at the end of last season, although he is expected to be the full-time shortstop this season with Stephen Drew being a free agent and unlikely to return. Among the other prospects, Baez is the only one with an obvious blocker at shortstop in the shape of Starling Castro so a move to third base could be on the cards for him.

The point about prospects is that for now they are all about potential. Plenty of highly-regarded youngsters don’t live up to the lofty expectations placed on them, even if those expectations were justified at the time. We shouldn’t be too ready to proclaim a return to the days when the likes of Derek Jeter, Alex Rodriguez, Nomar Garciaparra and Miguel Tejada were creating shortstop superstar stories, yet there’s a chance another golden crop of shortstops is just around the corner.