Monthly Archives: November 2014

If the awards matter, why announce them like they don’t?

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MlbHlSqDerek Jeter’s retirement had many scribes pondering who will become the new ‘face of MLB’ and how the sport could do a better job at promoting its stars.

Consequently it was wonderful to see Mike Trout, unquestionably one of the most dazzling young players the sport has got, receiving his first Most Valuable Player Award a couple of weeks ago.

The news stories, online videos and TV coverage garnered by him receiving a trophy from a legend of the game in front of a packed crowd at a gala event would have been a good way to keep MLB fresh in the mind.

That’s not how the awards are dished out in baseball, though.

Instead, there was a bland press release and various TV networks interviewing him on a video link from his parents’ house. From the point of view of demonstrating Trout is really just ‘a regular guy’ then that approach may have some merit.

From the point of view of celebrating a great baseball talent, and convincing people he’s someone special they should be excited about watching, it’s as much use as a chocolate teapot.

A televised gala award evening to celebrate the recent MLB season is a blindingly obvious way to present all the major trophies, reliving the pennant races, the postseason and also all the other smaller stories that made up the year, as well as acknowledging again the people elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame that year.

Getting everyone together in a single place in the offseason might not be the simplest task, but it is certainly achievable and would be a great way to send-off the season in style, whilst getting people excited about next season in the process.

MLB does many things very well. Promoting its players is not one of them.

It was only recently that MLB decided it might be worth making a show of the early rounds from the amateur draft. They are starting to build that up as a televised event now and an end-of-season review extravaganza would be a positive next step to further promote the game’s emerging young stars and established names.

Quite simply, if MLB can’t be bothered to make a big thing of the awards, why would a casual sports fan care about them either?

Evaluating achievements

Irrespective of the ropy way they were announced, this year’s selections for the four main awards all gave reason to consider some of the subtleties around how achievements should be weighted when selecting a winner.

With the MVP awards, the main talking point was the decision to crown LA Dodgers pitcher Clayton Kershaw as the NL’s MVP alongside his now traditional Cy Young award. The fact that pitchers have their own prestigious award, and that they play in significantly less games over the season than a position player, does call into question whether a pitcher should win the MVP award.

The voting criteria makes clear that pitchers are eligible for the award; the case from there is how you measure a position player’s contribution against that of a starting pitcher. Starting pitchers may only take the ball one day out of five, but on that day they have a far greater impact on the game (delivering 100+ pitches) than a position player taking four or five at-bats and making a couple of fielding plays.

Giancarlo Stanton and Andrew McCutchen both had great seasons, yet neither were exceptionally above Kershaw’s outstanding performance for the Dodgers and consequently that made him a fitting choice.

There were fewer arguments around Kershaw’s NL Cy Young award success. In the AL version it was Corey Kluber who came out on top over Felix Hernandez. Both had excellent years so whichever way you went with those two there was a good case to say you had the right answer.

King Felix clearly has the more impressive track record over a number of seasons, which could be argued as being a crucial factor rather than just focusing on one exceptional campaign. Ultimately there’s a good case that Kluber had the slightly better season – for example, using Baseball-References’ WAR as a guide Kluber added 7.4 wins to his team over a replacement player, compared to Hernandez’s 6.8 – and if the award is there to honour the best pitcher that season then previous seasons should only come into it if there is really nothing else to separate them.

In the Rookie of the Year stakes, Jacob deGrom gave the New York Mets a rare reason to be cheerful and Jose Abreu was a similarly uplifting presence for the Chicago White Sox.

Abreu doesn’t quite fit the traditional image of a young, fresh-faced rookie. He made his Major League debut this year as a 27-year-old having defected from Cuba and came into the Big Leagues with considerable experience of playing in his homeland and on the international stage.

His unanimous selection as Rookie of the Year showed that his strict definition as a Major League rookie regardless of his previous experience was good enough for the voters. Considering the challenge he faced in competing against MLB pitchers and in adjusting to life in the States, it was a decision few could find much fault with.

Finally, the Baltimore Orioles’ Buck Showalter and Washington Nationals’ Matt Williams took home the Manager of the Year honours for the AL and NL respectively.

Showalter’s work with the Orioles has cemented his reputation as an excellent, experienced manager. In some respects this contrasts considerably with Williams for whom 2014 wasn’t simply his first year as a Major League manager, but a manager at any level.

His team led the National League with 96 wins and that’s a good starting point for any discussions on how successful a year a manager has had. Still, the impact that a manager can have in the standings is always largely determined by the roster of players he has at his disposal.

There is a school of thought that Williams made his share of mistakes this year. Had Williams been given his managerial break by the Arizona Diamondbacks – for whom he was a coach for several years before joining the Nationals – or perhaps a team like the Colorado Rockies, then I’m betting he would not have been any part of the Manage of the Year conversation.

The problem with that stance is that you end up penalizing a manager for having the benefit of a talented group of players to call on, as trying to put some subjective value on what a manager brings to a team is devilishly difficult.

Bruce Bochy would have been an obvious alternative for his postseason exploits, yet let’s give Williams some credit for leading the Nationals to 96 wins and wait and see if he can do it again in 2015.

Is MLB heading to London in 2016?

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Sadly the lack of TV and radio coverage of MLB in the UK this past season meant that we didn’t hear much from ace broadcaster Josh Chetwynd. However, with one off-season tweet he was able to create plenty of excitement among British baseball fans.

The pessimist in me worried that it might be too good to be true, but Matt Crawshaw quickly allayed those fears with confirmation that #MLBLondon is a definite possibility.

In response to the news, I’ve written a blog for the Huffington Post going into a bit more detail about a potential visit to London by MLB, following up on the tremendous success experienced by the NFL on these shores.

The Netherlands and Italy have been the two countries most frequently touted as a potential European destination for MLB and they are likely still the frontrunners. A trip to London in 2016 is only a possibility, but it’s wonderful news nonetheless as it reinforces previous reports that MLB is serious about coming over to Europe.

I don’t need to explain to anybody visiting this website just how exciting it would be to have MLB games played in London. And if the worst case scenario is a road trip to the Netherlands instead, count me in!

A new look for the website

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Bgb1415PostIf you’ve not found this post via a link on Twitter, you’ve probably just had a bit of a surprise.

Yes, it all looks a bit different, doesn’t it?

It’s been a while since I gave the website a new look and this one has been in the making for a few months. The dawn of the offseason was a good time to dedicate some hours to finalize it all as a distraction from the relative lack of baseball games to enjoy.

All 2,250+ posts from March 2006 onwards are still here, just with a new lick of digital paint. The formatting on some of the older posts may not be perfect, but I hope you’ll forgive me for not going through every single post from the archive. That would have been a big project in itself - I suspect we’re past the 1 million word mark combined over all the posts, which took me back a bit when I worked it out -  and the new design is primarily about moving forward.

The main change from a navigating point of view is that the home page is more of a designed offering, linking to recent posts and highlighting a few featured articles, rather than immediately taking you to lots of posts. More people tend to come to the site direct to a specific post via a link or search rather than hit the homepage and browse about, so immediately linking through to all the posts didn’t seem so important and not doing so means those who do visit the home page get a more tailored view.

The posts can still be found easily by clicking on the ‘All posts’ link on the navigation menu, or choose the relevant sub-category if you’re particularly interested in MLB, British Baseball or another available option.

The new site design is also intended to fit the current publishing routine. In years past there has been a variety of writers on the site and it’s now developed to being written mainly by myself, with some fantasy baseball offerings from Mark George and the odd piece of baseball history from Joe Gray courtesy of his Project Cobb press releases.

That’s fine with me, it’s so easy now to put together a good-looking blog that most people want to start and stick to their own place to follow their own muse however they wish. Still, if you’d like to join in, even just on an occasional guest basis, then please use the Get in Contact page to drop me a line.

The final point from a design perspective is that my trusty old BGB logo has been replaced by a simpler and, hopefully, quite stylish new logo that ties in with the colour scheme and overall look of the new site (the old logo is still on the Baseball Basics for Brits articles and I’ll update those at some point over the offseason).

I hope you like the new look and please let me know if you find any glaring bugs along the way.

Thanks for your continuing support of the website.

Cheers

Matt

Bonus baseball from Japan

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Just a couple of weeks after lamenting the end of the MLB season, some bonus baseball is on its way from Japan.

A team of MLB players, including Robinson Cano, Yasiel Puig and Evan Longoria, are heading to Japan for an All-Star series of games against Samurai Japan, which is essentially the Japanese national team.

The games will be available to watch live or on-demand online via MLB.TV, although there doesn’t appear to be any coverage in the U.K. via the BT Sport/ESPN channels.

Anyone who bought an annual MLB.TV subscription for the 2014 season will be able to watch the games as part of that package as the subscription term lasts until the 2015 Spring Training games begin, so you can continue to watch MLB.TV archives throughout the winter without a new subscription. New customers can buy an off-season subscription for $25 (approximately £16) that will also include 2015 Spring Training games.

There are seven games on the tour with the five official series games being bookended by two exhibition contests. The games all start at 9 a.m. U.K. time except for the last game of the official series on Tuesday 18th which gets going one hour later. That means it will be a role reversal for us and fans in the States, who will be facing the early morning start (4 a.m. Eastern Time) that we’re familiar with.

It’s doubtful too many Americans will be missing sleep to watch the contests live as the results don’t really matter; however, you could look at them just like Spring Training games.

When the Spring games come along we’re all so glad to see baseballl starting again that we can overlook the lack of fierce competitive spirit and enjoy them for what they are. The same goes for the Japan series: it’s bonus baseball at a time when normally we’d be having to do without.

In the case of the Japan series, we do also get the bonus of enjoying the different baseball culture on the field and in the stands that the Japanese provide. The crowds are more like very polite football fans, with lots of noise and songs for every player, than the typical Major League crowd in the U.S. The official series will visit three cities, Osaka, Tokyo and Sapparo, with the final exhibition taking place in Okinawa.

There should also be some good Japanese players on show to take a look at alongside the known Major Leaguers, not least pitcher Kenta Maeda who may be set to follow Masahiro Tanaka over to the States this offseason.

Complete schedule

Tuesday 11th – Exhibition game versus Hanshin Tigers/Yomiuri Giants

Wednesday 12th – Series Game No. 1

Friday 14th – Series Game No. 2

Saturday 15th – Series Game No. 3

Sunday 16th – Series Game No. 4

Tuesday 18th – Series Game No. 5

Thursday 20th – Exhibition game versus Samurai Japan

All games start at 9 a.m. except for the game on Tuesday 18th that starts at 10 a.m.

What’s next for the Rays?

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MlbHlSqEarlier in the week we looked at the impact that Joe Maddon may have on the Chicago Cubs now that he has been unveiled as their new manager.

But what of his former team, the Tampa Bay Rays?

The Rays endured 10 losing seasons starting with their debut year in 1998, including going 127-197 combined in Maddon’s first two years in charge. The team showed faith in Maddon and it proved well-founded as his reign brought six consecutive winning seasons and four playoff appearances, including a 2008 American League championship and a World Series defeat against the Philadelphia Phillies.

One of the rising stars of the 2008 World Series run was a young left-handed pitcher starting his Major League career out of the bullpen. David Price had been yet another first overall pick for the Rays in the amateur draft the year before, the prize ‘gained’ by virtue of being the worst team in MLB the previous year.

Price was one of the new breed in Tampa Bay, someone who personified the change from a struggling expansion team to a young club that fans could be proud of. He has developed into one of the very best pitchers in MLB, winning the American League Cy Young award in 2012, yet unfortunately for a team like the Rays such success comes at a price (pun not intended).

Price spent most of the 2013/14 offseason waiting to be traded, knowing that the low revenue Rays would not be able to keep hold of him beyond the two years remaining on his contract. Surprisingly a deal never materialised, but it was only delaying the inevitable and, sure enough, Price joined the Detroit Tigers as the trade deadline loomed at the end of July.

Sad as it was to see him go, Rays fans understand that their team simply doesn’t have the money to keep hold of all of their young players when they get to free agency. Trading Price to get some new, younger players made sense and gave fans hope that they could continue to be a thorn in the side of their more illustrious AL East rivals.

What they didn’t expect was that one month after the end of the season they would lose both their highly-thought-of General Manger, Andrew Friedman, and then their manager (the latter leaving in part due to an opt-out clause activated by Friedman’s departure).

First the big pocketed Detroit took Price, then the staggeringly wealthy Los Angeles Dodgers took Friedman, then the big-market – despite low recent spending – Chicago Cubs took Maddon.

With all this turmoil coming after their worst season since 2007, has the Tampa Bay Rays’ run come to an end?

There is only so long a team can punch above their weight and Rays fans may fear that Friedman and Maddon are jumping from a ship that, whilst maybe not being about to sink, is about to drift off into the backwaters for another ten-year spell in the doldrums.

The Rays’ recent successful period was built on high amateur draft picks acquired in their years of poor performances. Those high picks have dried up whilst the Major League team was enjoying winning ways and prospect experts generally have been underwhelmed by their draft crops of late.

For a team desperately weighed down by an unattractive dome stadium with less-than-ideal transport links, success on the field hasn’t brought significantly larger crowds and the revenue that goes with extra bums on seats. Consequently the spectre of a potential franchise move has grown in recent weeks and although the team has played down any thoughts of an imminent move away from Florida, questions remain as to whether there is a local market to support an MLB team long term.

The soon-to-be former MLB Commissioner Bud Selig has stated that one of the legacies he hopes to have left is an MLB in which fans of every team have genuine reason to believe next year may be their year, accepting that all teams go through down years every now and then.

The Pittsburgh Pirates and Kansas City Royals have been part of that argument in the last two seasons by turning long losing runs into playoff appearances. However, the Tampa Bay Rays were the real shining beacon, holding their own against the Yankees and Red Sox through good amateur drafts, clever trades and bold, innovative management.

The Rays’ current predicament may show the limit to what MLB’s parity can achieve. Even the teams with the most money don’t get it right every year; the lower market teams have much less margin for error. It’s just the law of the jungle that at some point a team like the Rays will see their top employees snatched away by the big boys.

But maybe there is more hope for Tampa Bay than all this suggests.

Latching onto a football example, every man and his dog was predicting oblivion for Southampton after they lost their executive chairman Nicola Cortese and manager Mauricio Pochettino and then sold most of their best players prior to this season. What was overlooked was that their success was part of a wider culture developed at the club that still remained despite the departure of those individuals.

Friedman and Maddon’s reputations were not simply down to working alone. One quality every successful manager in any line of business must possess is the ability to build a good team around them and, by all accounts, the Rays’ Front Office and coaching staff contain plenty of bright minds and good people.

The Rays have announced a short-list of candidates to be their new manager. Whoever succeeds Maddon will have big shoes to fill and there will be an adjustment period as the whole club moves on. Yet far from being the end, this may just be the start of a new beginning for the Rays, even if that’s difficult to imagine while getting used to their former manager wearing another team’s uniform.

Maddon made for the Cubs

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MlbHlSqDuring his recently-ended tenure with the Tampa Bay Rays, Joe Maddon became known for unusual antics designed to make sure coming to the ballpark never got stale for his players.

Various guests were invited into the clubhouse, from magicians to a 20-foot python, and there were occasional fancy dress team flights to keep players loose, and to raise some money for charity to boot.

What can we expect now that Maddon has officially been named as the Chicago Cubs’ new manager?

Don’t be surprised if one of the first guests into the Wrigley Field clubhouse is a goat, designed to help break the dreaded ‘Curse of the Billy Goat’ that has left them waiting for a World Series since 1908 and counting. Cubs players may also need to start researching 1908 fashions to prepare for their team flight to recapture the era in which the north side of Chicago last won the Fall Classic.

Life certainly will not be dull for Cubs fans now that Maddon is in charge, but these colourful antics are just a minor part of his reputation. He was instrumental in turning a burgeoning franchise that didn’t know what it was like to win into a team of overachievers, able to more than punch their weight against the big-spending behemoths in the AL East.

What his departure will mean for the Rays is a matter for another article. Suffice to say, they are sad to see him leave and there are reports that the speed of his signing with the Cubs after he opted out of his contract has made the Rays consider taking action against the Cubs for potentially tapping him up.

Tampa Bay have every right to stand up for themselves and if they can get something out of the Cubs then it’s worth trying; however the accusation could be dismissed on the basis that Maddon and his agent Alan Nero had no need to engage in any behind-the-scenes shenanigans. Having earned the reputation as one of the best managers in the game, no elicit phonecalls were needed to know that plenty of teams would have strong interest in employing him once he invoked his opt-out clause.

Maddon clearly would have preferred to go straight into a new managerial post if an appealing opportunity presented itself quickly, but if not he could have taken a job as a TV summariser (ESPN and Fox would have been falling over themselves to make that happen) and bided his time.

In that sense, the Machiavellian act of the Cubs’ Front Office to sack incumbent manager Rick Renteria, who they sheepishly admitted “deserved to come back for another season”, seems a little less harsh.

Maddon was precisely the sort of manager the Cubs should have been looking to acquire as their rebuilding project starts to bear fruit. In the long run it was better for everyone for the Cubs to be blunt and to stick the knife into Renteria’s chest rather than leave a sword constantly dangling over his head whilst Maddon sat summarising games in a commentary box.

The justifiable sympathy towards Renteria makes the way it has been handled seem distasteful to a degree, yet that will soon be forgotten (by everyone except Renteria, at least) once the team reconvenes at Spring Training and the Maddon era with the Cubs begins.

No one needs to warn Cubs fans against getting ahead of themselves and planning their 2015 playoff game plans. Even the most wide-eyed optimist would be cautious about counting their chickens when they haven’t seen an egg hatch for over 100 years.

However, they will all notice a genuine rise in excitement around their team’s prospects – in more ways than one – and, whisper it quietly for the curse believers, it’s an excitement that’s well-founded.

The Chicago Cubs are on their way up once again, with added clubhouse guests and fancy dress orders.

On to the offseason

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MlbHlSqAfter the 2014 MLB season was brought to a close by the San Francisco Giants enjoying a title-celebrating parade for the third time in five years, attention immediately switches to the offseason and the hopes of players, managers and teams eager to put themselves into a situation where they could be spraying the champagne at this time next year.

Recent history suggests the Giants will take 2015 off to give the other teams a chance and offseason activities could have a strong bearing on which team takes the opportunity before handing the trophy back to San Francisco in 2016.

Scherzer leads the pitching class

This year’s pitching free agent market is topped by Max Scherzer, Jon Lester and James Shields. Scherzer will be the most important domino to fall as, rightly or wrongly, it’s assumed that Lester is most likely to head back to Boston after a brief spell in Oakland, whilst Shields – a very good starting pitcher – doesn’t quite have the elite-level performance of the other two pitchers.

Talks of a contract extension between the Tigers and Scherzer ended prior to the 2014 season with a proposed six-year, $144m deal not being agreeable to one or both parties. From the pitcher’s perspective that’s likely to be the lower end of his expectations now, meaning that whoever wants the dominant right-hander is going to have to make an enormous investment.

Whilst the usual suspects (Dodgers, Tigers, Yankees, Red Sox) will be in the mix, the Mariners’ signing of Robinson Cano last year showed that other teams can emerge ready to spend big to take advantage of an increasingly rare opportunity to sign a premium player.

Hitters hitting free agency

As for position players, the list is led by two Venezuelans (Pablo Sandoval and Victor Martinez) and an infielder from the Dominican Republic (Hanley Ramirez).

There are doubts about Ramirez’s abilities at shortstop, yet his contributions at the plate are there for all to see and he will be in demand by any team wanting to upgrade the left-side of their infield. Sandoval also comes into that equation too. He is understandably a fan favourite in San Francisco and you would expect his offseason to begin with talks on a potential new contract to remain a Giant. If that doesn’t come to fruition then plenty of teams will be quick to act.

As for Martinez, he will be in much demand after an exceptional 2014 season and would be a welcome addition to any lineup, although you would expect him to land with an American League team where he can spend a good proportion of his time as a Designated Hitter.

Trade targets

The starting point with potential trade targets is always players who are currently scheduled to become free agents after the upcoming season. Outfielder Yoenis Cespedes is on that list and, if the rumours are to be believed, he could be on the move again only a few months after being traded from the A’s to the Red Sox.

In contrast, Jason Heyward has known nothing else than playing for Atlanta so far in his Major League career; however his status as one of the few Braves players that hasn’t signed a contract extension in the past 18 months puts his future with the team in question. The Braves will see what offers are on the table for Heyward if they aren’t confident of being able to keep hold of him beyond 2015.

On the pitching side, the key team may be the Cincinnati Reds would had a disappointing 2014 season and will need to assess what their plan should be over the next few years before deciding what to do with Johnny Cueto and Mat Latos, who both have one year left under contract.

Away from those candidates, the most exciting name that keeps cropping up is the Miami Marlins slugger Giancarlo Stanton. We all know the Marlins are a team that trades players away and Stanton is exactly the sort of talent that a team would be prepared to part with a bundle of valuable prospects for. Whether there is any real possibility of him changing teams this offseason, or if it’s just reporters and fans having fun dreaming up potential blockbuster trades, will be one of the key storylines over the next couple of months.

Cubs on the up?

The 2014 season was the Chicago Cubs’ fifth consecutive losing year, but there were signs that the rebuilding project set in motion by Theo Epstein and Jed Hoyer is starting to have a positive – rather than depressingly negative – effect on the Major League team. Top prospects Jorge Soler, Javier Baez and Arodys Vizcaino all got some Big League playing time and others will soon be joining them, not least third baseman Kris Bryant (arguably the best prospect across all 30 teams) and shortstop Addison Russell.

So, there was already reason for optimism when looking ahead to 2015, but the confirmation on Friday that Joe Maddon has been installed as their new manager will raise expectations even further. It says a lot about the Cubs’ ambitions that they weren’t going to let the fact that they already had a manager, Rick Renteria, get in the way of grabbing one of the most high-profile managers in the Majors.

It will be interesting to see if the Cubs continue that aggressive approach and decide to jump into the free agent market to add a few experienced players to help jump-start their return to being contenders.

Motor City moves

Recent offseasons would suggest the Detroit Tigers will be one of the more active teams. The presence of two of their best players now sitting at the top of the free agent lists makes that a certainty, whether that’s in spending large sums to bring Scherzer and/or Martinez back or in replacing them.

David Price was acquired at the trade deadline in July and they may look to sign him to a large contract extension if Scherzer looks like he will be out of reach. Torii Hunter is also a free agent so another outfielder will be on the shopping list as well as a few more darts being thrown at the reliever dartboard in the hope that they might finally hit a bullseye (or even a double) after too many years of failing bullpens in the Motor City.

Opportunities for all

Whilst the Cubs and Tigers will be two teams worth watching in particular, in truth every team must be looking at the current MLB landscape and weighing up the increased odds of having a successful season. The Giants and Kansas City Royals proved that coming through the Wild Card route doesn’t put you at a significant disadvantage against the division winners.

San Francisco’s success may suggest they have a winning formula, but it feels more like we’re now moving into a climate where there aren’t any truly dominant regular season teams on a consistent basis and, with a few exceptions (Colorado being the most obvious), there is genuine reason to believe that a team can make a playoff bid and then go all the way.