Monthly Archives: January 2016

Prospects looking good

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We’re at the point in the off-season when all the major signings have been completed and yet we’re still a few weeks away from players reporting to their respective Spring Training camps.

That makes it a good time to check up on some of the best young players in the Minor Leagues.

MLB.com only paid a passing interest in prospects until a few years ago when Jonathan Mayo was joined by Jim Callis on the site and they started to make a feature of the MLBPipeline section.

They’ve just announced their latest prospect rankings, listing the top 100 young players still with rookie eligibility alongside other breakdowns such as the top 10 prospects at every position and top 30 rankings for every team (the latter to be published soon).

There’s lots of great information to learn from and it’s really well presented, so it’s an excellent resource to tap into. The only minor criticism I have is that they don’t state the level of play in the stat lines for the players (you have to know which league the abbreviation refers to and what level of play that is, High-A, Double-A etc), which would be helpful to have at a glance rather than needing to read through the player comments in full first up every time.

There are other great sources of information out there (the prospect coverage on BaseballProspectus – subscription usually required for the prospect articles - and Fangraphs, MinorLeagueBall.com, Keith Law’s Insider work on ESPN.com – again requiring a subscription etc), but MLBPipeline is by far the most accessible and user-friendly prospect resource and is the place I’d recommend all baseball fans start at when wanting to learn about the young players in the Minor Leagues.

Here are a few initial thoughts from the top 100 rankings.

Those with the biggest pockets still value prospects

The Los Angeles Dodgers have had a strange off-season, but the fact that they have two of the top four prospects (Corey Seager at #1, Julio Urias at #4) is instructive on why they have tended to spend their money on shorter ‘win now’ deals rather than longer-term commitments this winter.

The ‘luxury tax’ on high-revenue teams means that it still makes sense to develop a core group of talented ‘homegrown’ players and then use their financial clout to add extra specific pieces to the puzzle and to sign the young players to contract extensions a few years down the line. We’ve seen Boston take that approach with prospect graduates Xander Bogaerts and Mookie Betts and the New York Yankees’ out-of-character shyness on the free agency market this off-season is also part of a plan for them to get younger over the next year or so and then spend money on free agents in future.

Texas keep on producing prospects 

The Texas Rangers have had one of the most celebrated farm systems over the past five years or so and their ability to keep re-stocking their ranks from the draft, international signings and picking up prospects from other teams is impressive.

The likes of Rougned Odor and Delino Deshields Jr (the latter picked up from Houston a year ago) played key roles in the Rangers’ charge to the AL West title in 2015, as did the trade for ace pitcher Cole Hamels that was made possible by them having a deep system from which to trade from.

The Rangers have five players in the MLBPipeline top 100 and they ranked top in the ‘Prospect Point’ list, all despite trading away three top 100 prospects to get Hamels.

Phillies rebuild taking shape

The Philadelphia Phillies finally bit the bullet and started a rebuild and that’s given them more prospects in the top 100 (7) than any other team, three of which were the players acquired in the Hamels trade.

The Major League team might not be much fun in the present, but the future does now look bright after a couple of years of directionless dithering.

The next golden era of shortstops?

The Houston Astros’ Carlos Correa and the Cleveland Indians’ Francisco Lindor both took to the Major League with aplomb in 2015 and immediately became two of the best shortstops around.

MLBPipeline’s number one prospect Corey Seager also impressed after making his debut in September for the Dodgers, especially when it came to his fielding. He’s one of six potential shortstops in their top 12 and, as with several of the others, questions remain as to whether he will remain at that position or move to third base.

Seager showed enough promise during his initial Major League appearances to suggest he can stick at the position for a while yet, and if so then we could be witnessing the next great shortstop era since the Derek Jeter, Alex Rodriguez and Nomar Garciaparra era of the early 2000’s.

Max Kepler – flying the European flag

Finally, we can’t overlook the one European player on the list. Kepler comes in at number 44 and he made his Major League debut on 27 September last year for the Minnesota Twins.

The German has been pegged as the best European prospect in years since signing a $800k bonus with the Twins back in 2009 and slowly but surely he has developed his game while climbing up the Minor League levels.

Kepler turns 23 on 10 February and hopefully he will keep improving and earn a regular spot on the Twins’ Major League roster as the 2016 season progresses.

MLB Commissioner confirms London 2017 talks

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We’ve been covering the rumours of MLB coming to Britain for a couple of years and they picked up again a few months ago with more definite reports on timescales and venues, namely the potential use of the Olympic Stadium in 2017.

At the time, MLB itself was being coy about all of this talk, in the standard ‘neither confirm or deny’ state.

However, that changed yesterday. MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred has just reached his one year anniversary after taking over from Bud Selig and he has been doing a series of interviews with different reporters as a result.

In one of these with the Associated Press, picked up by ESPN.com, Manfred directly confirmed the plans. As reported by ESPN:

“Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred told The Associated Press that the league is looking to play its first regular-season games in London in 2017.

“We are very interested in playing there, and we’re working hard on that one,” Manfred told the AP during an interview on his first anniversary as baseball commissioner. “I don’t think it will be an opener because of the weather issues. It would be later in the season.”

Baseball has been looking at the Olympic Stadium as a possible venue. Manfred wouldn’t discuss the possibility of shifting a high-profile matchup, such as Yankees-Red Sox, to England.

“We haven’t really settled on teams, and I don’t want to speculate about that,” he said. “Obviously, we want to make as good a first impression in Europe as we possibly can.”

So, whilst we don’t know which teams will be here, and it’s not confirmed as yet that everything will be in place for 2017, that definitely counts as strong reason to start getting excited.

 

Outfielders come off the market

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The top two remaining MLB free agents have come off the market in the past couple of days and so it’s worth revisiting the off-season review to take these signings into account.

The Detroit Tigers have firmly pushed themselves up into second place in the AL Central division, and become a real Wild Card threat, with the addition of outfielder Justin Upton on a six-year contract worth $132.75m (a shade over £93m, or approximately £300k per week).

We all know the story here: the Tigers’ 86 year old owner Mike Illitch has once again dipped into his savings and upped the payroll to try and win a World Series for Detroit.

The only knock on the signing is that Upton adds another right-handed bat to a lineup that already leaned heavily that way. It makes them a little more vulnerable against good right-handed pitching, yet, as Upton himself noted at the press conference to announce the deal, Miguel Cabrera doesn’t mind which hand the ball comes out of.

It rounds off a good off-season for the Tigers, one much needed after they fell down the trapdoor in 2015. The need for Cabrera and Victor Martinez to stay healthy remains; however they do at least have another good hitter now to help cover in case they miss any games.

The other major outfielder signing hasn’t been confirmed as yet, but the announcement of Yoenis Cespedes’ return to the New York Mets is just a formality.

Like many others, I had questioned whether the Mets’ owners would actually go out and spend some money to back up their great young pitching. The market has worked favourably for the Mets in the end. It looks like Cespedes never got the big offer he was hoping for and was therefore open to a return to New York that could give him another bite at the free agent cherry in a year’s time when there will be less free agent competition.

Although the headline figures on the reported deal are three years for $75m, only a bad injury or collapse in performance is going to prevent him from pocketing a $27.5m salary (£19.2m, or £369k per week) this season and then opting out of the remaining two years of the contract.

That should work well for both parties. Cespedes is a difficult player to rank because his highlight reel exploits (home-run hitting spurts, ridiculous throws from the outfield etc) tend to see him elevated to the position of a star attraction, even though his overall contribution in a season shows him to be a good rather than great player.

Adding a good player is always a good idea though. The claims that he turned down a larger offer from division rivals the Washington Nationals makes it all the sweeter for the Mets.

I’m not sure it tips the balance either way to any significant extent. The Mets’ roster still had a decent margin in hand over the Nationals on paper without Cespedes and, even though it would have made for an interesting story, adding him to Washington’s lineup at the expense of the Mets would not have made me elevate them ahead of the reigning champions.

That’s not to say the Nationals couldn’t put together a great season, with or without Cespedes, just that it’s hard to bank on them doing so following last year’s disappointment (and describing it as a ‘failure’ wouldn’t be overly harsh in the circumstances). Cespedes joins Jason Heyward and Ben Zobrist in resisting the Nationals’ overtures this off-season. There’s a sense of negativity around Washington at the moment, not just from Jonathan Papelbon’s continued presence either, and, more than most, they look like a team that needs to have a good April if they are to have a good season.

MLB Opening Day changes and MLB.TV news

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This Sunday we’ll be ten weeks away from the 2016 MLB regular season beginning.

That’s still a long way off, and wishing away ten weeks of your life isn’t the best approach to life, but we can at least be happy to see baseball slowly emerging on the horizon.

There have been two bits of news over the past couple of days that are of interest to how we watch the games.

The first is confirmation that MLB is changing their Opening Day format. In recent years we’ve become accustomed to the MLB regular season proper (i.e. excluding some earlier games taking place in other countries) getting underway with a single Sunday Night game before most of the teams then get going on the Monday.

That approach turns the opener into an event for the two teams involved, but it leaves most teams having to wait another day and, slightly selfishly, has always been a bit of a pain for fans like us in the U.K. You wait months for the action to start only to have to wait until gone midnight for the first game to begin.

Why couldn’t they play a game or two on the Sunday afternoon, as they do throughout the rest of the season?

Well, if you have had that thought in the past then the answer has arrived. There’s no great reason why they couldn’t and now they will.

At 18.05 UK time on Sunday 3 April, the Pittsburgh Pirates will host the St Louis Cardinals for game one of the 2016 MLB season. Two hours later, the Chicago Cubs will start an early interleague series against the Los Angeles Angels (EDIT: looks like the game on Sunday is actually an exhibition before they play ‘for real’ on Monday) followed one hour later by the Toronto Blue Jays beginning their defence of the AL East crown at the Tampa Bay Rays.

There will still be a Sunday Night game to enjoy and it promises to be a good one as we have an immediate re-match from the World Series with New York Mets travelling to Kansas City to take on the Royals. That will be a bit painful for the Mets, especially if the Royals are presented with their World Series rings in front of them, but that could be the catalyst for an exciting opener.

It’s how regular season baseball should be: several games going on that you can enjoy. It’s a brilliant move by MLB and should make that Sunday a real treat before then carrying on with a feast of baseball on the Monday afterwards.

Hopefully BT Sport will show a couple of those games and we’ll also have the wonders of MLB.TV to watch every game live too.

In that regard, some early news about the MLB.TV subscriptions has been reported. A recently settled court case around TV rights has offered up the news that MLB will be adding the option to buy a team-based MLB.TV subscription (i.e. paying to watch all of your chosen team’s games) at a provisional price of $90. The MLB-wide subscription is apparently going to be available for $110 which would be a $20 reduction from 2015.

I would guess that most people keen enough to pay $90 to watch all of their team’s games will see paying the extra $20 as an easy decision and it does make me wonder whether there’s more to those potential prices than meets the eye. We’ll have to wait and see on the details when everything is confirmed as to precisely what the final figures will be.

When looking at the US dollar prices, we do need to factor in the nasty surprise of a year ago when it became apparent that changes around tax in the EU meant that we now have to pay the equivalent of our standard 20% VAT on top, a not insignificant amount to add on.

We’d all prefer not to have to pay extra, but one way to feel a little less frustrated about it is to remember that everyone in the States has to deal with a variety of blackout issues (i.e. being blocked from watching games involving local teams – and often not very local teams – and those on national TV) that we are exempt from and that we get to watch all of the play-off games too. So we actually get quite a bit more from our subscription than those Stateside, which makes having to pay a little more for it marginally less annoying.

The MLB.TV subscription details are usually announced in mid-to-late February, so we should have all of the details in four weeks or so.

Off-season so far: American League

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MlbHlSqGetting on for two weeks ago we looked at the off-season so far in the National League.

When I made some notes for this article they began by stating that no major deals have happened since that point, yet on Saturday that changed with reports of Baltimore re-signing Chris Davis.

There are still a number of free agents on the market that you would have expected to have signed by now though and they may prove to be a difference-maker, especially if signed by a team in the American League.

Currently, whilst the National League has clear dividing lines between genuine contenders and the rest (at least so it appears, we’ve all learned that MLB is capable of surprising us), it’s much harder to nail your colours to the mast of many teams and say they are clearly better than their division rivals at first glance in the AL.

AL East: Boston bouncing back?

The main off-season story has been the two big moves made by the Boston Red Sox. After finishing dead last with a talented but underperforming roster, they’ve responded by signing the best free agent pitcher in David Price (taking him from the reigning division champions) and trading for arguably the best closer in Craig Kimbrel.

Bitter rivals the New York Yankees hit back by trading for flamethrower Aroldis Chapman and, even though he is likely to start the season serving a suspension for an alleged domestic violence incident, he will help to give them a fearsome bullpen as they hope their group of veterans can hold together for one more year.

As for the Toronto Blue Jays, there’s no doubt that losing Price is a blow to their hopes of retaining their crown, especially with him staying in the division. They haven’t done all that much over the offseason – the main moves seeing a reunion with pitcher J.A. Happ and a trade for reliever Drew Storen – and the plan is to hope for full seasons from Marcus Stroman (injured for much of 2015) and Troy Tulowitzki (a mid-season acquisition who also lost time to injury) and that their batting strength continues to come through for them.

I don’t think any of those three teams will be exceptional, but they all have a chance to win 91-92 games and take the division. I’d rank them as 1. TOR, 2, BOS, 3 NYY for now, although I just have a hunch that the Blue Jays might not quite live up to their 2015 season.

I’m putting the contender cut-off at that point even though Baltimore appears to have made a big move this weekend by re-signing Chris Davis. They went 81-81 with him last year and haven’t yet replaced starting pitcher Wei-Yin Chen (who has signed with the Miami Marlins), so don’t look a good bet to improve. Neither do the Tampa Bay Rays, who haven’t done little this off-season and look set to put together a good but not great team again, whilst still punching above their weight against teams with vastly greater financial resources.

AL Central: Royals reign, but can Tigers roar again?

The Kansas City Royals won the Central handsomely before winning the World Series and they have to be favourites again in 2016. Although they parted ways with mid-season recruits like Johnny Cueto (signed with the Giants) and Ben Zobrist (Cubs), they kept hold of Alex Gordon when he appeared to be leaving as a free agent and have added pitcher Ian Kennedy this weekend on a five-year contract.

Alongside the Royals winning it all, the AL Central in 2015 was marked by the Detroit Tigers collapsing after their run of dominance. That plays into two storylines for 2016.

The Minnesota Twins and Cleveland Indians ended up in second and third place respectively, yet being honest you would have to say they were just above average. Neither team has much in the way of money to throw around and they haven’t made significant signings to push forward over this off-season, with the main move being the Twins taking a punt on South Korean slugger Byung-ho Park. The Twins will be looking for youngsters Miguel Sano and Byron Buxton to excel, and the Indians to somehow find some runs to support their strong starting pitching, to try to keep in the running.

That’s going to be difficult because the Tigers have added Jordan Zimmerman to their rotation and revamped their bullpen, including signing closer Francisco Rodriguez. Add in some decent roster additions for depth, including outfielder Cameron Maybin, and they are back to the position of being favourites for second place and a shot at a Wild Card if Miguel Cabrera and Victor Martinez can stay injury-free.

The Chicago White Sox made plenty of moves over the previous off-season and they didn’t have the desired effect. You can understand why they’ve tried again, trading for Todd Frazier from the Reds and Brett Lawrie from the A’s, through wanting to take advantage of having one of the best pitchers in the league in Chris Sale. They need everything to go right to get back into the race and that’s a bit too much to rely on to predict they’ll do it right now.

AL West: Your guess is as good as mine

The West was taken over by Texas Rangers and Houston Astros in 2015 (strange as that is based on their locations, but that’s how the divisions shape up in the AL), so the question is can they stay in front?

They can as neither team has got worse over the winter, yet neither has made additions that would clearly keep them ahead either. The Astros have added Ken Giles as their closer in a trade with the Phillies, whilst the Rangers’ main move actually came before the mid-season deadline last year when they brought in Cole Hamels (also from the Phils).

So what about the chasing pack?

The A’s have completely revamped an awful bullpen and resisted the temptation to trade Sonny Gray, but it would be a stretch to push them too high up the predicted standings based on that. Last year’s third placed team the LA Angels traded for star shortstop Andrelton Simmons and will always be dangerous with Mike Trout and Albert Pujols at the heart of their lineup, although that potential makes it all the more surprising that they haven’t added further (yet) to really take advantage of the talent they do have.

In contrast, the Seattle Mariners have been very active this off-season. They re-signed Hisashi Iwakuma after it looked like he was off to the Dodgers and also traded for Wade Miley from the Red Sox to give them a potentially strong starting rotation. What will define their season is if their position player additions (including Nori Aoki, Adam Lind and Leonys Martin) provide a solid complement to the Cano-Cruz-Seager core, of if they make that trio’s contributions count for little.

I can genuinely see a way in which the Mariners get into the race here, and it’s not completely beyond the realms of possibility that the A’s could as well, so this is the most difficult division to predict. I’ll duck the issue and keep the five teams in their finishing positions of 2015 for now, as Spring Training injuries or late off-season additions could have more bearing on this division than any other.

The MLB Hall of Fame and a problem that won’t go away

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We’re now a few days on from the results of the 2016 American National Baseball Hall of Fame ballots being announced.

Ken Griffey Jr and Mike Piazza will be inducted into Cooperstown this summer and both are fully deserving of the honour.

Griffey was always a certainty to be elected at the first time of asking and the only point of intrigue was whether he would be the first player voted in unanimously. He fell three votes short, being named on 437 of 440 ballots, and whilst it’s reasonable to query why he wasn’t selected by those three voters (as it’s reasonable to expect all voters to explain how their ballots), it shouldn’t take any attention away from the joy of Griffey’s election and celebration of his wonderful career.

Griffey’s percentage of 99.32 is a new record and this was picked up on by the BBC World Service, who invited me to comment on this historic event on their Sport Today programme on Thursday (the programme will be available on the BBC iPlayer for British residents for 30 days from transmission, with the Griffey section being on in the last five minutes or so of the show).

The Sport Today programme was also drawn to Griffey’s historic election in the context of baseball’s so-called steroid era and him being a standard-bearer as someone who ‘did it the right way’.

As I stated on the programme, the problem with it all is of course that the lack of drug testing prior to 2003/2004 means there often is little solid on which to base a judgement as to whether someone used drugs or not.

Griffey’s fellow 2016 class member Mike Piazza embodies this problem. He was elected at the fourth time of asking despite having a strong claim to being the greatest hitting catcher in the history of MLB to date. The case against him really came down to suspicions that he may have used steroids during his career.

Even in the case of someone like Griffey, the era in which he played means that there will always be some suspicion around the exceptional players of that time simply by virtue of them being exceptional.

That’s what really makes things difficult from the point of view of the Hall of Fame. Every era has great players and they deserve to be recognised as such, otherwise we may as well just whitewash the era out of baseball history altogether.

Except in a few cases of admissions of guilt (such as Mark McGwire) and strong evidence (Barry Bonds being the main example due to his BALCO links) there’s simply no way of knowing if a great player in that era took drugs.

What is even more difficult is deciding if suspected drug use was part of their greatness.

That will be irrelevant for some: a cheat is a cheat and whatever the actual ‘performance enhancement’ amounted to, the intent is enough to do for their Hall of Fame case. I’m sympathetic to this stance, but when it comes to the Hall of Fame I struggle to reconcile it with the fact that so many people in baseball at the time willingly turned a blind eye to it, and that the game benefitted handsomely as a result.

Would MLB be the multi-billion dollar industry it is today after the devastating 1994/95 player strike had it not been for McGwire and Sammy Sosa’s ‘run for 61’ and other such exhilarating moments that captivated people and brought them back to the sport? We’re often happy to judge other Hall of Famers by the era in which they played so are we being honest with ourselves by blacklisting certain players or is it just easing the conscience after the event?

There isn’t an easy answer to any of this.

Although there are signs that a growing number of voters are now simply casting ballots based on performance regardless of drug-use suspicions, that’s probably not going to result in a consistent approach to all players.

Certainly in the case of Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, despite their vote percentage increasing this year, it will result in truly outstanding players not being in the Hall of Fame (whatever your thoughts on their alleged drug use, it’s difficult to make a credible case that they were not players of immense talent), whilst slightly lesser players are elected despite being guilty of the same alleged cheating.

As the process comes around every year for the foreseeable future, we’re just going to have to accept that the Hall of Fame will present a skewed version of the era and future generations will need to delve deeper into the history rather than relying on the designation as a Hall of Famer to tell you who were the greats of the age.

Off-season so far: National League

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MlbHlSqIt’s a good time to review how the MLB teams are shaping up now that we’ve passed the end-of-calendar-year hump in the baseball off-season

Some teams have already completed the bulk of their winter shopping; however there are still some good free agents on the market and where they end up could have a domino effect in encouraging rival teams to keep up.

This part of the review focuses on the National League.

In 2015, the Central division was the star of the show as the St Louis Cardinals, Chicago Cubs and Pittsburgh Pirates all made it into the post-season. The LA Dodgers and New York Mets were relatively comfortable winners in the West and East respectively, with the latter being crowned as the NL Champions in the play-offs before losing to the Kansas City Royals in the World Series.

NL Central – Cubs on the prowl

Although the Cardinals won the division last year, all of the talk was about the success of their bitter rivals the Chicago Cubs and how their exciting young group of players had blossomed ahead of schedule.

If Cards fans didn’t like the Cubbies getting all the attention then, the off-season has been even more painful.

The Cubs have added three quality players to their roster in Ben Zobrist, Jason Heyward and John Lackey, with the latter two leaving the Cardinals as free agents and deciding to go to the other side of the rivalry. Heyward’s defection was particularly painful as he reportedly took less money from the Cubs than offered to him by the Cardinals and explained his decision by saying he felt the Cubs had the brighter future.

The Cubs’ first trip to St Louis in 2016 comes in mid-April, so we won’t have to wait long into the regular season to see what Cardinals fans think of that.

The Pirates have been relatively quiet this off-season and even though they still have the bulk of their roster that won 98 games in 2015, repeating that feat will not be easy without making much in the way of improvements. St Louis has added free agent pitcher Mike Leake, but they’ve also lost Lance Lynn for the season due to Tommy John elbow surgery and rumours of them adding a bat in the form of Alex Gordon or Chris Davis have yet to result in an actual deal being made.

Without another decent batting addition for the Cardinals, it would be fair to say the Cubs have pushed ahead of both of their main division rivals on paper.

NL West – major upgrades in Arizona, but to what extent?

The biggest division shake-up has come in the NL West courtesy of the Arizona Diamondbacks’ capture of Zack Greinke.

For the D-Backs to come out of nowhere and sign an elite free agent pitcher was a big statement in itself, to do so by signing a player that their two main division rivals were desperate to obtain (or retain in the LA Dodgers’ case) made it all the more significant.

It made sense for the D-Backs to follow up that signing with another bold move and that’s exactly what they did by completing a trade with the Atlanta Braves for pitcher Shelby Miller. Whilst Arizona have been criticised for what they gave up in the deal – including shortstop prospect Dansby Swanson who they signed with the first overall pick in the amateur draft earlier this year – in the short-term they’ve improved their team in a major way.

The important thing from there in the division was how the Giants and Dodgers responded.

San Francisco have added two quality free agent pitchers in Johnny Cueto and Jeff Samardzija, whilst LA have recently signed a good pitcher in Scott Kazmir and reportedly are close to agreeing a deal with Japanese pitcher Kenta Maeda.

The difference has been that whilst the Giants’ moves have appeared decisive, the Dodgers have seemingly ended up with players down their pecking order after yet more deals fell to pieces (Hisashi Iwakuma’s three-year deal was taken off the table due to injury concerns and a trade for Aroldis Chapman went down the pan when news broke of a potential suspension coming his way due to an alleged domestic violence incident).

It looks like being a very tight division between these three teams. Adding in the inexperience of new manager Dave Roberts and I’d have the Dodgers slipping behind the Giants, with the D-Backs pretty even with LA for second place. The Dodgers are still a threat to add further players this off-season though, so that could change quickly.

NL East – Waiting for a big move

There are three genuine contenders in both the Central and West, but in the East we can bring that down to two with the Atlanta Braves and Philadelphia Phillies in rebuilding mode and the Miami Marlins being neither fish nor fowl (or perhaps more accurately they are fish and foul, depressing as that is considering some of the superb young players they have).

The Washington Nationals were an almighty disappointment in 2015 and that suggested there would be some major changes over the off-season. Not so, at least not so far. Dusty Baker has been brought in as their new manager and Daniel Murphy, the Mets’ play-off hero last year, has signed on as a free agent, but that’s about it.

They reportedly made a big play to sign Jason Heyward, so potentially there’s some money there to be spent and it wouldn’t be a big surprise if one of the available outfielders, Yoenis Cespedes and Justin Upton in particular, ended up in the U.S. capital over the coming weeks.

The Nationals’ hopes of regaining ground on the Mets has been helped by the latter keeping out of the main free agent mix. New York has revamped their middle infield by trading for Pittsburgh’s second baseman Neil Walker and signing free agent shortstop Asdrubal Cabrera, which are solid enough moves but not ones to get many pulses racing in Queens.

It’s also hard not be sceptical about the Mets’ ownership. They have such an exciting young (and therefore relatively cheap) group of pitchers that it would be criminal not to take advantage of the opportunity they have over the next few years. Maybe a reunion with free agent outfielder Yoenis Cespedes will come about soon, especially as they’ve had a stroke of luck with Michael Cuddyer deciding to retire with a year remaining on his contract, but it’s just as likely they will make another minor move or two and hope for the best, which really isn’t good enough for a New York team.

They would still be favourites for the division right now, but a big signing for the Nationals and a Spring Training injury or two for the Mets (if the owners are reluctant to invest to replace missing players) could close the gap and make it a tighter race than you would expect considering the Mets’ dominance in 2015.

Plenty to look forward to in 2016

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A new year always brings optimism, full of hope and good intentions.

Many of those good thoughts will turn out to be a load of hoopty, but one thing we can rely on to provide a genuine source of positivity in 2016 is baseball.

The past MLB season was a classic, with the Kansas City Royals, for so long a team with little going for it, coming out on top against a resurgent New York Mets club. The Toronto Blue Jays reached the playoffs for the first time since 1993, while the Chicago Cubs and Houston Astros qualified for the postseason ahead of all expectations after several years of heavy losses.

Nothing demonstrated the competitive nature of the current MLB system better than the Pittsburgh Pirates reaching the play-offs for the third year in a row. They had spent each of the previous 20 seasons failing to win as many games as they lost and now the idea that they are a genuine contender is simply accepted rather than a source of amusement at their expense.

It must be acknowledged that the competitive landscape has come about in part through the lowering of the bar for playoff entry, or merely competing for a playoff place, via the second Wild Card spot. However, this has made the season more enjoyable for a larger percentage of fans and therefore is a trade-off worth accepting.

The trade-off also hasn’t significantly affected the quality of play. In fact, it could be argued that the game has never had so much talent.

Baseball celebrates its history more than any sport, and rightfully so, but anyone watching the likes of Clayton Kershaw, Mike Trout and Bryce Harper whilst telling tales of the ‘good old days’ is doing nothing but denying themselves the opportunity to enjoy talents on a par with the best the game has seen. We may well look back at the 2015 rookie class of Carlos Correa, Francisco Lindor, Kris Bryant and the rest in years to come as one of the greatest there has ever been. History will be the judge, but who couldn’t be excited at being lucky enough to watch their respective careers unfold.

Here in Britain, we can also not fail to be thankful for the wonders of MLB.TV and the rest of the online MLB content that allows us to follow the Stateside season in a way scarcely imaginable only 25 years ago.  You have to be willing and able to pay for it, like everything else, but the opportunity is there to follow the season in as much detail as you could ever wish for.

Reports of the introduction of a team-based MLB.TV subscription (i.e. subscribing just to the Royals’ games etc) will give fans yet another option to choose from and the availability of free-to-view games and endless free highlights videos hopefully allows anyone with an interest to keep up with the action in some form.

The lack of any free-to-air TV coverage of MLB, or even a UK-based studio element to the odd game on BT Sport, is certainly a real shame and something always worth keeping on the agenda to gain support for, yet the recent cuts to the popular NFL coverage, let alone the sports rights the BBC is having to give up in the wake of significant cuts being imposed on them, go to show how difficult the marketplace is.

Much as we would all love to see free-to-air coverage that could help to create new baseball fans, we shouldn’t be surprised in the current climate that it’s not an ambition shared by any TV execs.

Still, there’s nothing stopping us baseball converts from shouting about the game from the virtual rooftops of social media. That includes celebrating baseball closer to home.

2016 could be a fantastic year for British baseball with the Great Britain team competing in the European Championships in the Netherlands, followed by a World Baseball Classic qualifying tournament in New York. Our national baseball and softball facility, Farnham Park, will also be the venue for the first European club tournament on British soil for 20 years, with reigning National Baseball League champions the London Mets hosting CEB Cup Qualifiers in June.

The only negative point today is that we’ve got a few months to wait before any of the on-field action gets going. The MLB rumour mill should keep us going until then as plenty of teams are still looking to add players in what’s already been a busy offseason.

Happy New Year to you all. For baseball at least, 2016 should be another good ‘un.