Monthly Archives: April 2018

British Baseball Beat: Ready for the 2018 season

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MLB had their Opening Day last Thursday.  For the top-tier of British baseball, that day will come this Sunday at Farnham Park (as always in Britain, weather permitting).

The London Mets and Southampton Mustangs have been the class acts of the National Baseball League over the past few years, maintaining a stranglehold on the National Baseball Championship final for the past three seasons.

The Mets won the final in 2017 to take their team tally to four and to equal the highest number of national championships won by a team in British baseball history.

In 2018 they will attempt to become the all-time leaders with five national championships and you would have to rank them as the favourites to win the title again this year and to complete that historic achievement.

The Mustangs will be intent on scuppering that story and will have their first chance to put a marker down on Opening Day when they face the Mets in a double-header at Farnham Park near Slough.  First pitch for the opener is set for 11.30.

Azcuy to the Flamingos

Mister-Baseball broke the news back in January that Maikel Azcuy, the modern era home run career record holder in British Baseball, will be leaving the National Baseball League in 2018 and joining the Berlin Flamingos in the German Baseball-Bundesliga.

Azcuy has played in 12 seasons in the NBL, starting with the Croydon Pirates before enjoying success with the Southern/Harlow Nationals, Essex Arrows, Herts Falcons and latterly with the Southampton Mustangs.  Stats from his NBL career can be found on the Project COBB website.

The Flamingo’s website includes a news story about the signing too, including a photo of Maikel in his new uniform. His comments on the move, according to Google translate at least …

“With the change to the Berlin Flamingos I say the 1st League in the UK after 12 years, Good bye ‘. I am very excited and would like to support the flamingos in their great success story. They are the only club in eastern Germany playing in the first Bundesliga, and are currently building something great in the German capital. I have been training with the team for a few weeks and have been able to get a very good impression of the players and the club management. The boys are all highly motivated and full of energy. I would like to support the flamingos with all my know-how in order to master the league season goal preservation in the 1. Bundesliga. Baseball always happens to me at the highest level – preferably every day. It’s an honor to give the flamingos 100 percent for our common goal, “said Maikel Azcuy.

The Flamingos came through the play-offs in 2017 to earn promotion to the Bundesliga 1 and clearly the hope is that Maikel and other new recruits can work with the existing players to retain their place in the top-tier of German league baseball.

It looks like a wonderful opportunity for Azcuy and whilst it’s always a shame to see good players leave the NBL, at the same time it’s great to see British players furthering their baseball careers in other European leagues.  The Flamingos will have a few more British fans following their progress in 2018.

Birmingham Bandits join the NBL

Since the turn of the millenium the top-tier of British baseball has had a strong southern England flavour. Following Menwith Hill capturing three titles in four years between 1995 and 1998, all of the national champions have come from greater London, Essex and the south coast.

A Midlands threat to that dominance has now arrived in the form of the Birmingham Bandits. They last competed in the top-tier back in 1998 and having dominated at Double-A last year (a 22-0 regular season) their application to join the NBL was accepted by the BBF over the off-season.

The BBF news article about the move highlighted the importance of getting top-tier baseball into the UK’s second largest city and the hopes of widening the reach and appeal of the NBL. It will be something of a leap for Birmingham this year, but their successes of recent seasons show that there is a lot of potential at the club and hopefully they will be able to grow even more over the next few years in attracting more players and onlookers.

The club will also be fielding the Birmingham Outlaws in Single-A this year to give newcomers and less-experienced players that chance to develop their baseball skills.

Six-team top-tier

London Mets, Southampton Mustangs and Birmingham will be joined by hold-overs the Essex Arrows, Herts Falcons and London Capitals for a six-team top-tier this year.  The Arrows have started the year off in a positive way by winning the NBL division of the Herts Spring League.

Last year’s wooden spoon winners the Brighton Jets will take that team name to Single-A for 2018, with the club also fielding the Brighton Brewers in Double-A.

Up to Double-A

There will be 48 teams competing across four levels of play in the BBF leagues this year. Among them, three teams will be making the step up from Single-A to Double-A.

Norwich Iceni had the perfect debut BBF season last year in going unbeaten and capturing the Single-A title at their first attempt. They’ll be looking for back-to-back titles as they move up to Double-A South, being joined there by Bracknell Inferno.

Cambridge will also take a team up to Double-A, with the Monarchs going to AA-Central and the Royals staying in Single-A.  The Monarchs will be joined in the AA-Central by Bristol Badgers who are returning to the BBF fold having won the South West Baseball League title last year. Bristol will maintain a presence in the SWBL with their Bristol Bats team.

South West Baseball League

On the independent scene, the SWBL will welcome the Weston Jets to their league for the first time this year.

The SWBL will be competed by seven teams this year:

  • Bristol Bats
  • Taunton Muskets
  • Exeter Spitfires
  • Newton Brewers
  • Plymouth Mariners
  • St Austell Claycutters
  • Weston Jets

Their league will get going on 22 April.

Northern Baseball League

The independent Northern League will consist of 13 teams this year, including the newly-merged Robots of Doom outfit that brings together the former Bolton team and Halton Jaguars.

  • Cartmel Valley Lions
  • County Durham Spartans
  • Harrogate Tigers
  • Hull Scorpions
  • (Hull) Scorpions 2
  • Liverpool Trojans
  • Liverpool Twojans
  • Manchester A’s
  • Manchester Torrent
  • Nottingham Rebels
  • Robots of Doom
  • Sheffield Bladerunners
  • Sheffield Bruins

Their season gets underway this Sunday with five double-headers. The Liverpool Trojans were the odd team out on the original fixture list and the games between Torrent and Bruins have had to be postponed due to the condition of the former’s field following recent weather.

Scotland League already started

They’re not hanging around in Scotland though as their league began last Sunday with an Edinburgh clash between the Giants and Diamond Devils.

It will be a six-team league this year:

  • Edinburgh Cannons
  • Edinburgh Diamond Devils
  • Edinburgh Giants
  • Glasgow Comets
  • Glasgow Galaxy
  • Granite City Oilers.

The Oilers in Aberdeen lodged an early contender for photo of the season with this view of their field.

Thank You For The A’s: A Frustrating Opening Series

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Having won on Opening Day in walk-off fashion, for the Oakland A’s to lose the four-game series 3-1 to the LA Angels was a big disappointment.

It’s only four games, nothing is decided and we shouldn’t be quick to draw too many conclusions; however even a ‘Desmond’ 2-2 series split would have felt a lot better.

It was a good series from a UK point of view in that three of the four games were 21:05 BST starts so we could get the season off to a flyer by catching the team live at a relatively convenient time.

The only night-game came on Friday and that meant I missed Sean Manaea’s excellent performance. He quickly became one of my favourites soon after his A’s debut in 2016 and whilst his overall numbers in 2017 were good rather than great, that was predominantly due to a rough spell in and around August.  Although I don’t see him becoming an ace, he’s got more potential than your average MLB fan would realise and his first start of 2018 bodes well for him having a breakthrough year.

What didn’t bode well was the general sloppiness in the field and also occasionally on the basepads.

Use what fielding metrics you like, none of them made for pleasant reading for A’s fans last year. Matt Chapman proved again in this series that he can make a big difference with that all on his own, yet overall there were too many moments when extra bases, or even extra outs, were handed to the Angels. You can’t afford to do that against good teams and expect to get away with it.

Halos hype

I’m not sure we learnt all that much new about the Angels; they don’t look like world-beaters yet should be a solid enough outfit and in play for the second Wild Card.

Zack Cozart looks a good signing for them especially as he gives them flexibilty to cover for other players if needed, as has happened with Ian Kinsler lasting all of one start before knackering himself. It’s not exactly the same situation, but you can draw some parallels with the A’s putting Khris Davis in left field to cover for Matt Joyce’s ankle soreness as an example of how things can go wrong when shifting players around to cover for injuries.

Shohei Ohtani’s debut got a huge amount of fanfare yesterday and, Chapman’s three-run jack aside, his performance showed why as his pitching arsenal looks formidable. It’s worth remembering that the A’s hitters hadn’t seen him before and that, whilst it was his MLB debut, this isn’t your typical rookie as he is an experienced professional pitcher.

The A’s should face Ohtani again in their three-game series with the Angels over the coming weekend, probably on Saturday, so it will be interesting to see how they get on having faced him once and with the opportunity to review footage of him from his first start.

Coming up

The A’s welcome the Texas Rangers into Oakland for four games before the next Angels series. The final game on Thursday is a 20:35 BST start, with the others all being in the early hours. Their Game One starter tonight is Bartolo Colon, so that’s got to be a good opportunity to get back to winning ways.

And Another Thing

It was great to watch A’s baseball again with Glen Kuiper and Ray Fosse and first impressions of Dallas Braden being added to the NBC Sports California announcing crew were very positive.

His hiring started off on a bad note with Mark Mulder, who was excellent in his work replacing Fosse for some games last season, being messed around and not brought back (that’s how it looked from the outside at least), but you can understand it more in some ways now as the role Braden is playing is different to that of your usual announcer.  He’s down at field level chipping in with thoughts and that worked really well in this opening series.

Braden is a character and adds some humour to procedings, but he knows when to reign it in and adds real insight into the game with his comments. Hopefully the recently-acquired sun shade will save him from getting burned to a crisp and he will continue to add something extra to the coverage over the course of the season.

MLB This Week: The first full week of the 2018 MLB season

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The first full week of the 2018 MLB season offers up a whole host of day-games that are perfect for us to watch during the British evening.

There are 27 games scheduled to start before midnight UK time this working week, including today’s ‘glorious’ Bank Holiday Monday.

Heading into the week there are four teams still searching for the first victory. The Cincinnati Reds, Detroit Tigers, Kansas City Royals and San Diego Padres know that their first W is just around the corner, but they would like to get it sooner rather than later.  The Royals and Tigers know that one of them will definitely get that monkey off their back today as they meet at Comerica Park.

There are some good teams on show in the early games on BT Sport this week, although unfortunately neither of the two 9 o’clock games on Friday are being broadcast. Tuesday’s game should see Chris Sale taking the mound at Marlins Ballpark for the Red Sox in an early interleague series for Boston (also available to watch for free on MLB.com), whilst Thursday should be an excellent game from Nationals Ballpark as Stephen Strasburg is in line to face Jacob deGrom and the Mets.

There is also a good group MLB.com Free Games in the early slots, not least on Wednesday when Dylan Bundy and Dallas Keuchel are the probable pitchers for the Orioles-Astros game.

All times are in BST.

Monday 2 April

18:05 Twins at Pirates (Lynn (0-0), Taillon (0-0))
18:05 Rays at Yankees (Pruitt (1-0), Montgomery (0-0)) *BT Sport/ESPN
18:10 Royals at Tigers (Hammel (0-0), Liriano (0-0))
19:10 Cardinals at Brewers (Mikolas (0-0), Davies (0-0))
21:10 Cubs at Reds (Chatwood (0-0), Mahle (0-0)) *MLB.com Free Game

Tuesday 3 April

18:10 Royals at Tigers (Junis (0-0), Boyd (0-0))
21:35 Mariners at Giants (Gonzales (0-0), Blach (1-0))
23:10 Red Sox at Marlins (Sale (0-0), Urena (0-1)) *MLB.com Free Game, BT Sport/ESPN
23:40 Cubs at Reds (Lester (0-0), Reed (0-0))

Wednesday 4 April

17:10 Nationals at Braves (Scherzer (1-0), TBD)
18:05 Rays at Yankees (Archer (0-0), Severino (1-0))
18:10 Royals at Tigers (Duffy (0-1), Norris (0-0))
18:10 Phillies at Mets (Pivetta (0-0), Syndergaard (1-0))
19:10 Orioles at Astros (Bundy (0-0), Keuchel (0-1)) *MLB.com Free Game
20:40 Dodgers at D-backs (Wood (0-0), Corbin (1-0)) *BT Sport1
21:07 Indians at Angels (Kluber (0-1), Skaggs (1-0))
23:05 Twins at Pirates (Odorizzi (0-0), Nova (0-0))

Thursday 5 April

18:05 Mets at Nationals (deGrom (1-0), Strasburg (1-0)) *BT Sport/ESPN
19:05 Rays at Red Sox (TBD, Price (1-0))
20:05 Marlins at Phillies (Smith (0-0), TBD)
20:35 Rangers at Athletics (Perez (0-0), Mengden (0-1))
20:40 Rockies at Padres (Anderson (0-0), Lucchesi (0-0))
21:10 Tigers at White Sox (Zimmermann (0-0), Shields (1-0)) *MLB.com Free Game
21:10 Mariners at Twins (Paxton (0-1), Gibson (1-0))
23:35 Orioles at Yankees (TBD, TBD)

Friday 6 April

21:10 Braves at Rockies (TBD, Marquez (0-0))
21:10 Royals at Indians (TBD, TBD)

All of these games are available to watch or listen to live via an MLB.TV subscription. TV coverage of MLB in the UK comes courtesy of the BT Sport channels and these are highlighted above, as are any games that are available to view online for free via MLB.com. The above list of games just shows those starting before midnight UK time. The full schedule of MLB games can be found on MLB.com

Weekly Hit Ground Ball: The first Sunday of MLB 2018

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A new MLB season brings with it a plethora of firsts, but there’s none better than the first full Sunday of the regular season.

Every team is playing and all but the ESPN Sunday Night game (Giants – Dodgers tonight) are day-games for us to enjoy at a convenient time in the UK.  The exception to that today is a Pirates-Tigers game being made up from yesterday’s postponement, yet that just means there’s an extra game to enjoy.

Throughout the season I write a regular Sunday morning column about the past week in MLB. I started it off in April 2007 and wouldn’t have imagined back then that I’d still be doing it eleven years later.  I’ve changed the format around a bit over the years, but I’ve always liked the process of corralling my thoughts and picking out the key topics, or just the ones that caught my eye from the games I watched that week.

I’ll be continuing with that approach for the 2018 season, whilst adding in some regular blogs about the Oakland A’s campaign (which, based on last night, could be a long one).

Happ Happy, Jeter not so much

Like many of you, I settled down in front of the TV at 17.40 on Thursday eagerly awaiting the first game of the regular season between the Chicago Cubs and Miami Marlins. The Cubs’ lead-off hitter Ian Happ wasted no time in getting his season underway by launching the first pitch he saw into the stands for a home run.

I don’t know about the ESPN coverage, but the Cubs’ WGN-TV commentator Jim Deshaies called Happ’s shot and it seemed like the only person who didn’t think Happ would be wailing on the first pitch if it was close was the Marlins’ pitcher José Ureña.

Unsurprisingly the cameras immediately picked out new Marlins head honcho Derek Jeter (not AKA Mr Popular) watching from the stands. The good news for Jeter was that there was a decent crowd on hand – in Marlins terms – and they were in good spirits. The bad news was that most of those in attendance were Cubs fans on vacation.

The only positive for Jeter is that the Cubs fans presumably were less bothered about him than the fans of the next visitor to Marlins ballpark will be: the Boston Red Sox.

Extra thoughts on extra innings

Fears of a 0-162 season in Miami were instantly dispelled on Friday when the Marlins won the second game 2-1. The 17 inning marathon lasted 5 hours 18 minutes and after Miami levelled the scores at 1-1 in the bottom of the third inning, there were 13 and a half score-less frames until Miguel Rojas hit a walk-off single.

Coincidentally the day before this the Guardian had published an article about a brief period in the 1940s when some football competitions adopted a ‘play to a finish’ rule. “Nothing could be more absurd” was how the Guardian put it in 1946 in response to one game lasting nearly 400 minutes and the rule was shelved soon after.

The decision to introduce an extra-innings rule to Minor League baseball this year, with a runner being placed on second base to start each inning, did not go down well among many in the States, albeit with most seemingly oblivious (or not caring) that variations of the rule have been used in international competitions since 2008 and are already used in other leagues around the world (including the leading European leagues).

Outside of MLB, the only argument against some sort of extra inning rule is one governed by tradition as the impact on small playing staffs and other people that are employees or volunteers at the respective game is considerable. There’s more of an argument that the impact can be managed in MLB; the Cubs’ manager Joe Maddon made the sensible suggestion that teams should be able to call-up an extra reliever the day after, for example.

I don’t have a strong view against playing normal rules until you get a winner in MLB; however, I wouldn’t be surprised if some sort of rule is brought in within the next ten years to bring games to a swifter conclusion. How many people actually sat through every pitch of the additional eight innings that were served up on Friday?  Very, very few is the likely answer.

Home runs and more home runs

MLB always does a good job with their Opening Day video package although this time around pitchers would have been given cause to moan even more than usual. Other than a couple of passing shots of hurlers, the video showed a succession of blasts by the likes of Aaron Judge, Giancarlo Stanton, Kris Bryant and more.

Coming after all the cricket kerfuffle around ball-tampering, it was almost as if MLB was trolling everyone whilst denying that the baseball has changed at all in recent seasons.

George Springer followed Ian Happ by launching his own lead-off home run on Opening Day, doing so for the second year running.  WGN-TV’s Jim Deshaies didn’t just say Happ would hit the first home run of the season, he also predicted he would hit the last one in the World Series too.  Keep a note of that if we end up with a Cubs-Astros World Series and have both Happ and Springer in with a chance of starting and ending the year on a home run.

Giancarlo Stanton waited for the second pitch he saw as a New York Yankee before depositing the ball over the fence. That was the first of two long-balls on his debut in pinstripes.

You’d expect such damage from Stanton, but not so much from the Chicago White Sox’s Matt Davidson. He immediately made anyone who drafted him in their fantasy team look clever by launching three home runs on Opening Day, with Chicago adding three more bombs to give the Kansas City Royals a pounding in Game One.

Nick Markakis launched a walk-off home run for Atlanta on Opening Day, as did former Orioles teammate Adam Jones.  The latter plundered his round-tripper off new Minnesota Twins reliever Fernando Rodney. Rodney has continued to pick up saves in closer roles in recent years despite the analytics crowd telling you not to go near him with a bargepole.

He does tend to walk a tightrope in his appearance and the Twins got their first “Rodney, you plonker” experience out of the way early.

Pillar pilfers three bases

It’s not all about the longball though and the Blue Jays’ Kevin Pillar showed that brilliantly on Saturday by stealing second, third and home to beat the Yankees.  That should have gone down well with the Blue Jays’ crowd at the MLB Meet Up in Leeds last night.

The next one takes place tonight in London, so get down to Belushis’ in SH1 if you’re in the area.

Sunday Game To Watch

The MLB event in London was originally scheduled to show three games in Yankees vs Jays, Rays vs Red Sox and Astros vs Rangers, but they’ve added in the Angels vs A’s game too due to it being the pitching debut of Shohei Ohtani.

First pitch is scheduled for 21:05 BST. Naturally, this A’s fan hopes it’s a complete disaster for the Japanese newcomer as the A’s look to split the series 2-2.