Tag Archives: Houston Astros

MLB 2016 – American League Preview

5 Replies

MlbHlSqA new baseball season always creates plenty of excitement, yet 2016 promises to be something a bit special.

There are so many great potential story lines – a part of so many teams that potentially could make it to the play-offs – that it’s difficult to know where to begin in rounding them up.

That’s especially the case in the American League.

Whilst there are teams that likely will be out of the play-off conversation when September comes around (to my reckoning: Baltimore, Chicago White Sox, Minnesota, Oakland and Tampa Bay), none of them are punting on the season and it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that one of them could still be in with a sniff if things go their way.

You can put together realistic scenarios for most of the teams to at least have a shot at the Wild Card. Here are a couple of the main stories in the three AL divisions alongside my predictions (i.e. somewhat educated guesses) as to who will finish where.

AL East

The Toronto Blue Jays clearly had a good team last year and the logic of them winning the AL East division in 2015 made many overlook that this was a club that hadn’t made it to the play-offs since their back-to-back World Series triumphs in 1992 and 1993.

It was a tremendous achievement for John Gibbons and his men and they will hope that having taken that leap they are set for a period of success; however, there’s a shadow hanging over the club that may call that into question. Sluggers Jose Bautista and Edwin Encarnacion are both out of contract at the end of the season and neither have signed an extension as yet, with their own self-imposed ‘start of season’ deadlines about to expire. If that doesn’t change in the next few days, the possibility that two of their core players could both be leaving at the end of the season will add an extra dimension to their campaign.

The Boston Red Sox know that this will be David Ortiz‘s last season as he is set to retire and they will want him to go out on a high note. They’re an interesting team this year. The starting rotation includes plenty of question marks after the newly-recruited ace David Price, but from there this is a roster that should be competing at the sharp end. The thing is, you could have said the same before the 2014 and 2015 seasons and in both cases they didn’t just miss out on the play-offs, they finished dead last in the division. David Ortiz’s send-off is far from the only reason that 2016 has to be different.

AL Central

The projection systems have written off the Kansas City Royals yet again despite back-to-back World Series appearances and capturing the ultimate prize last year.

The Royals are not an extravagantly talented team loaded with stars and instead very admirably have found ways to work around their limitations to be more than the sum of their parts. Their Opening Day starting rotation of Edinson Volquez, Ian Kennedy, Yordano Ventura, Chris Young and Kris Medlen looks underwhelming, for example, but they’re an excellent fielding side and if they can hand over the game to their bullpen with a lead then that’s normally good enough to win the game. Doubting their ability to make it three Fall Classic appearances in a row isn’t unjust; however you shouldn’t be surprised if they do.

Conversely, the Detroit Tigers are still being looked at favourably despite falling to pieces in 2015 and falling to the bottom of the division. They’ve just become the first MLB team to hand out two $100m+ contracts in the same off-season – signing outfielder Justin Upton and pitcher Jordan Zimmermann – so their worst-to-first intentions are clear. If they get some luck with good health to their key players – and that’s a big if – then they just might do it.

AL West

Look through all the predictions and this is the division that has the most people scratching their head when trying to pick a winner. If in doubt, the best starting place is to look back to how things turned out last season, and that would mean the West being a Texas two-step battle once again.

The Houston Astros’ excellent 2015 was a surprise even to the team itself and they will be an exciting club again this year with Carlos Correa and Dallas Keuchel leading the way. It’s worth remembering, though, that they got off to a dazzling start by winning 15 of their 22 games in April and then played just a shade over .500 the rest of the way (71-69) to an 86-76. They will enter this season with expectations on their shoulders, so we’ll have to say how they carry that load.

The Texas Rangers went in the other direction. They struggled through April and on 3rd of May were bottom of the division on an 8-16 record, 9.5 games behind the leading Astros. The Rangers then swept a three-game series in Houston on their way to a 19-11 May and ultimately swept past their Lone Star State rivals on 15 September to go on and win the division.

All of which means that we shouldn’t overact to how the standings look at the end of the first month. The full 162-game regular season showed that both the Astros and Rangers were good teams in 2015 and, irrespective of their April records this year, that’s likely to be the case again in 2016.

My predictions

AL East – Toronto, Boston (WC), NY Yankees, Tampa Bay, Baltimore.

AL Central – Kansas City, Cleveland (WC), Detroit, Chicago WS, Minnesota.

AL West – Texas, Houston, Seattle, LA Angels, Oakland.

Off-season so far: American League

1 Reply

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.

Trades completed and qualifying offers accepted as the 2015/16 MLB offseason begins

1 Reply

It’s been an active start to the MLB offseason, with a couple of notable trades and three potential free agents becoming the first group to accept a ‘qualifying offer’ from their existing teams under the current system.

The idea of the qualifying offer is that it allows a team the chance to keep hold of a player that they’ve had for at least one full season rather than see them leave as a free agent with their contract having come to an end. In practice, that’s not really the way teams see it. They expect the player to leave and get a multi-year contract elsewhere; however by putting a qualifying offer on the table the team will then get an extra draft pick for the following year’s amateur draft as compensation.

The offer is set by MLB based on the average salary of the highest earning 125 players in the league that year. This year the qualifying offer was set at $15.8m, essentially £200k per week at current conversion rates, so it’s a sizeable salary on its own and teams will normally only offer it when they don’t expect a player to take it (i.e. it being judged they will be able to get a contract worth much more than $15.8m on the free agent market).

The Baltimore Orioles will be fine with catcher Matt Wieters accepting their qualifying offer. Had he not missed significant time due to elbow surgery over the past two seasons, Wieters likely would have been off and away, so getting at least one more season from him is a bonus for Baltimore. The Los Angeles Dodgers have more than enough money to make pitcher Brett Anderson’s $15.8m worth paying too.

The one team that perhaps isn’t quite so content is the Houston Astros. Outfielder Colby Rasmus is a decent player, as highlighted by his home-run hitting exploits in the playoffs a month ago, so he is hardly a booby prize, but it certainly looks like they were hoping to get a draft pick out of the offer rather than expecting to give a fair chunk of money to him, bearing in mind they look likely to have a relatively modest payroll again in 2016. That’s the risk you take with making the offer though.

Money is plentiful in MLB so for many teams those sort of risks are ones that can be absorbed easily enough. It’s a different proposition with trades though. The risk there is that the players you give away come back to make you look foolish for years to come.  Still, if you want to sign a good player, you have to accept that you’ll need to part with good players (or more commonly good prospects) to get them.

The two biggest trades of the week resulted in the Los Angeles Angels acquiring shortstop wizard Andrelton Simmons from the Atlanta Braves and the Boston Red Sox getting elite closer Craig Kimbrel from the San Diego Padres. The initial reactions suggest the Padres got a good haul of young talent for Kimbrel – less than one year after they gave up several prospects to acquire him from Atlanta – whilst the Braves’ return for Simmons was slightly underwhelming. As always with trades, only time will tell quite how they will be judged in the end.

There are two main subplots from the trades.

The first is that Dave Dombrowski has been brought into the Red Sox’s organisation as President of Baseball Operations with the intention of the team being aggressive in turning around their fortunes in short order. For a club with such significant resources, both financial and in terms of talented staff, it is incredible that they’ve produced a team that’s finished bottom of the AL East in three out of the last four seasons, even if the glory of their 2013 World Series triumph in the other year has dulled the pain of those losing seasons quite considerably. It should be expected that Boston will be one of the most active teams this offseason as they look to get back to the play-offs.

The second is that the Atlanta Braves’ decision to move to a new ballpark for the 2017 season onwards has had a far-reaching impact on the player market. First baseman Freddie Freeman is the only notable player left from their successful 2013 squad now that Simmons has been traded away. Kimbrel will be playing for the Red Sox under the four-year contract that he signed with the Braves back in February 2014 when it looked like he would be with the team for years to come, whilst this year’s free agent class is led by outfielder Jason Heyward who will be testing the market after being traded to the St Louis Cardinals a year ago by Atlanta.

The success of the Chicago Cubs and Houston Astros this year has shown the value of stripping everything down and starting again, just as the Braves are now doing. However, teams normally take this route in response to being left with an ageing and expensive roster well past its best. The difference in Atlanta’s case is that their 2013 team had a core of players who looked like being at the heart of a consistent contender for a good few years.

Some dreadful bad luck with injuries to their pitching staff played into the thinking that they should regroup and look to the future, but maybe that will prove to be a mistake. With the two Wild Card format and the apparent absence of any real dominant force in the game at present time, it’s becoming more the case that if there is a realistic chance of making it to the playoffs in a given year, teams will go for it rather than waiting for a perfect year that may never come.

The Braves have now amassed a deep group of prospects from which they hope to form the nucleus of a winning team in a few years’ time, yet they may find they gave up on a group that had a better chance of adding another World Series to the sole 1995 triumph since the franchise moved to Atlanta in 1966.

The unpredictable nature of baseball is summed up by pitcher Kris Medlen. He pitched brilliantly for the Braves as they won the NL East in 2013 and was one of the core players at the heart of the team, before he suffered an elbow injury in Spring Training 2014 requiring Tommy John surgery and a long spell on the sidelines. The Braves are now in a rebuilding spell, whilst Medlen has just earned a World Series ring as a reliever with the Kansas City Royals.

Division Series: Some teams have a leg-up, some have a leg broken

1 Reply

We’re two games in to each of the four Division Series and there have been plenty of talking points to set up the rest of each series.

The Toronto Blue Jays are the team in the biggest hole, trailing the Texas Rangers 2-0 having lost the first two games in their home ballpark. The second game on Friday night was a real killer as their 14-inning effort went for nought.

Both teams had their issues with the strike zone being called and there was certainly some variance there during the course of the game. However, the MLB Network coverage was no help at all. On numerous occasions their commentators, Bob Costas and Jim Kaat, confidently complained about the strike/ball call only to then see a replay including their ‘Strike Zone’ box that showed either the umpire had got it spot on or that the pitch was very close (so hardly a grave error by the umpire).

Time and again, they chose to make excuses when the evidence before them didn’t match their original comments, only making themselves look ridiculous in the process. Kaat was particularly bad at this and it was symptomatic of a disappointingly poor presentation by MLB Network that can be summed up as being ‘by the over-50s, for the over-50s’ (right down to the pre-advert music that included such current acts as Phil Collins).

MLB knows its audience in America tends to be on the older side, but they rightly have the ambition to market the game for a younger audience too. It’s a shame that despite bringing in features such as Statcast, the strikezone box and their defensive shift graphics, the overall tone of their own TV coverage is old fashioned.

In the other American League series, the Kansas City Royals won a crucial Game Two at their Kauffman Stadium to level the series at a game apiece. Every team is desperate to avoid losing the first two games at home, but in the Royals’ case it was more imperative than ever to ensure Game Three couldn’t seal their fate.

Dallas Keuchel will start for the Houston Astros on Sunday night (a 21.05. BST start, although unfortunately on MLB Network coverage) and he has been unbeatable at home this season. His home record – 15-0 with a 1.46 ERA – shows just how tough it will be for the Royals, yet, as you always find in these extreme situations, there is a positive spin that they can put on it. If they can somehow find a way to beat him, or perhaps more likely to knock him out of the game and then get the better of the Astros’ bullpen, that will be a huge blow for Houston and you’d fancy the Royals to go on and take the series from there.

It will be a similar scenario in Chicago for the St Louis Cardinals. They have to face the Cubs’ Jake Arrieta in Game Three, whose masterful display in the Wild Card win against the Pittsburgh Pirates only enhanced the seemingly invincible force that surrounds him right now. The Cardinals at least now Arrieta can’t knock them out on Monday, although a 2-0 series lead rather than a 1-1 series split would have made a potential Game Three loss easier to recover from.

The added ingredient here is this being the first ever play-off game between the two teams at Wrigley Field. Cubs-Cardinals is one of the game’s most publicised rivalries and I’m sure that I am far from the only baseball fan who didn’t realise until a few days ago that the two had never actually met in the postseason during their 100+ year existences.

The LA Dodgers and New York Mets have their own rivalry due to both claiming a link back to the Brooklyn Dodgers. As two teams from mass-media markets, they didn’t need anything extra to hype this series up but their Game Two on Saturday produced it anyway thanks to Chase Utley’s slide into second that left the Mets’ Ruben Tejada with a fractured fibula.

We’ve been here before recently with the Pirates’ Jung Ho Kang suffering a similar fate to Tejada in mid-September. In this case, it was a decisive moment in the contest as it fed into a game-winning inning for the Dodgers that allowed them to draw level in the series 1-1. The Mets are rightfully aggrieved by the incident, although had the shoe been on the other foot, or more accurately the protective splint on the other leg, they would be making the same supportive comments as the Dodgers in the aftermath.

The added issue here came in replay being used to call Utley safe and the ruling that it wasn’t a ‘neighbourhood play’. It has long been accepted that an infielder turning a double-play just needs to be close to second base to record the out, rather than actually touching it, precisely because of the risk of injury that is inherent in forcing the player on the pivot to leave their legs in harm’s way. Consequently those plays cannot be challenged on replay and the explanations as to why it was allowed here have not been convincing. It’s definitely an area that needs to be clarified or else you will just see more players in hospital.

So, we have a bit of controversy thrown into the mix here even before the Mets’ self-made controversy around Game Three starter Matt Harvey. Much was made about a potential innings limit on the ace pitcher following his return from elbow surgery, something stirred up in part by Harvey’s own apparent taste for the limelight. Actions always speak louder than words and we all know how dominant Harvey can be. How he performs on the mound at Citi Field on Monday night could go a long way to determining the outcome of this series.

The 2015 MLB Wild Card games

Leave a reply

Twenty MLB teams saw their 2015 season come to an end on Sunday, but for the other 10 the excitement has only just begun.

It’s rare that we get a postseason that disappoints in MLB and, based on this year’s entry list, we’re going to be in for another treat this time around.

It all gets going late on Tuesday night (technically 1 a.m. on Wednesday morning for us in the UK) with the American League Wild Card between the Houston Astros and the New York Yankees, followed the next night by the National League version between the Chicago Cubs and Pittsburgh Pirates.

Baseball is a game for the traditionalists and so the introduction of the Wild Card ‘play-in’ game was, like most changes, not universally welcomed in 2012. However, it has been a success from the off, producing exciting races down the stretch in the regular season and then the thrilling, excruciating all-or-nothing Wild Card games themselves.

I’ve felt the bitter disappointment that this cruel contest can bring having suffered through the Oakland A’s Wild Card loss to the Kansas City Royals last year. It’s a crushing blow, as if you’ve hardly made the play-offs at all.

From a personal point of view, the Royals’ run to the World Series made it all the harder to take, only enhancing the feeling that it could have been my team in the Fall Classic. Still, the Royals’ success, and that of their nemesis the San Francisco Giants – who also got there having come out alive from their Wild Card showdown – showed that whilst a team would always prefer to qualify without the Wild Card worry, so long as they win it they have as good a chance as any to go all the way.

That will be the mantra for all four Wild Card teams this year.

Although this is far from being a vintage New York Yankees team, the aura of the fabled Pinstripes may still come into play now they’re in the play-offs again after – for them – a long two-year absence.

The Houston Astros meanwhile have been one of the great surprise stories of the season. We all knew that their recent years of abject uselessness, handing them a bevy of high amateur draft picks with which to stock up on the best young talent, was designed to bring about better days such as these, but few of us realised that those better days would come so soon.

Dallas Keuchel, Houston’s starting pitcher for the Wild Card game, may have a lumberjack beard, but the only thing that’s merely “OK” about him is the abbreviation of his home state, Oklahoma. The Astros’ ace has been outstanding this season and the left-hander should match up well against the left-leaning (in the handedness rather than political sense) Yankee batting lineup. The question mark is simply whether pitching after only three days’ rest knocks him out of his usual stride.

There are more question marks against the Yankees’ expensively acquired Japanese pitcher Masahiro Tanaka. Injury fears have plagued him for the past year or so and he’s been effective rather than outstanding this year in his second MLB season. This would be a good time to show that he was worth the considerable investment.

In the National League Wild Card, it’s the Chicago Cubs that take the Houston Astros role. Like their old NL Central rival, the Cubs deliberately chucked several seasons away as they rebuilt a team that had got old and expensive, and have climbed back into competitiveness earlier than most expected.

It’s difficult to imagine anyone coming into a Wild Card game in more relentlessly brilliant form than the Cubs’ pitcher Jake Arrieta will do. In 12 starts from 4 August to 2 October, he has allowed a total of four earned runs. Honestly, four earned runs. Those 12 starts include a no-hitter against the NL West division-winning LA Dodgers, and two impressive appearances against the Pittsburgh Pirates.

He’s been so good that Pirates fans have been wondering out loud whether they have much of a shot of winning the game ever since it became clear he would be lined up by the Cubs to start it.

The Pirates have good reason to fear yet another dominating start by Arrieta, but they know they’ve got a great young pitcher on the mound too in Gerrit Cole. This might just be the start in which things don’t quite go Arrieta’s way. Certainly the Pirates would like to believe that he’s due an off-night and, as is the way in this Wild Card game showdown, that could be all it takes for Arrieta’s excellent season to – whilst far from going to waste considering all he and the Cubs have achieved to get here – come to a disappointing end.

This is the third consecutive year in which Pittsburgh has hosted the NL Wild Card game, so everyone – from manager Clint Hurdle, the players and the PNC Park fans - knows exactly what to expect. They beat the Cincinnati Reds in 2013 and lost to the Giants last year, so they’ve got direct experience – if it was really needed – of just what this game means.

After the A’s heart-breaking meltdown a year ago, there’s a part of me that’s glad to be able to look forward to the two Wild Card games this time around without the potential emotional distress of tiredly peering out from behind a cushion at 5.45 a.m. as your hopes of glory – we were 7-3 up heading into the bottom of the eighth inning, don’t forget, then took an 8-7 lead in the top of the twelfth – crumble to dust.

But then again, oh how I wish we were there with the chance to experience the other side of it.

For two teams the Wild Card play-in will seem like a cruel joke. For the other two it will seem like the sweetest thing imaginable, an exhilarating start to a potential World Series and a season that will never be forgotten.

Both games are live from 1 a.m. on BT Sport/ESPN and online for MLB.TV subscribers (don’t forget, whilst U.S. fans are ‘blacked out’ from watching the postseason live on MLB.TV, those restrictions don’t apply in the UK).

MLB’s youth movement

Leave a reply

Is this a golden era for young talent in MLB?

It’s easy to get carried away and to exaggerate things in the present; a new big thing today always seems bigger than what came yesterday because you’re living the excitement in the here and now. Comparing different eras is also difficult.

What is true is that there’s never been a time when baseball fans across North America and the rest of the world knew so much about the talent coming through the amateur draft and working their way through the Minors. There are lots of people writing and talking on the internet about prospects and that feeds the hype machine in building up anticipation for debuts.

To claim that we’ve never had so many good young players coming into the game as we have had over the past few years is probably an exaggeration, yet we definitely have a greater appreciation of it.

The fact that there was so much hype around Kris Bryant’s (delayed) MLB debut earlier this season is exactly what the sport needs to build up stars for the future and this week is proving to be a real headline-grabber too.

It was always marked down in the calendar that this would be ‘prospect week’ thanks to the amateur draft taking place on Monday.

Having Carlos Correra, the number one pick from the 2012 draft, make his Major League debut on the same day for the Houston Astros gave everyone else more reason to be excited about what their team’s top selections from the draft could well turn into a few years down the line.

The announcement that the Cleveland Indians and Minnesota Twins will be promoting their top prospects, shortstop Francisco Lindor and outfielder Byron Buxton respectively, for the MLB debuts on Sunday has now added to the excitement.

Whether this is a golden era or not is something that can only be established years from now when we know quite what all this young potential actually turned into, and to put it all into some historical context.

For now, let’s just revel in the excitement and enjoy seeing how all these young players make their way in the game.

AL West: Off-season so far

Leave a reply

The AL West is yet another division where the reigning champions have been quiet so far this off-season.

The LA Angels have only completed a few minor deals (bringing in Matt Joyce, acquiring young pitcher Andrew Heaney) and, with significant commitments to the likes of Albert Pujols and Josh Hamilton already on the books, their primary plan for 2015 is to rely on those who helped them to reach the postseason in 2014.

The Texas Rangers also haven’t done very much, yet they had a disastrous 2014 in which they lost 95 games and parted company with manager Ron Washington. Those losses were largely a consequence of terrible bad luck with injuries, highlighted by their new recruit Prince Fielder. He had played in 1283 of 1296 regular season games in his first eight full seasons as a Major Leaguer before missing 120 games in his first year with Texas due to a neck injury.

They’ve made a handy addition by trading for Ross Detwiler on the cheap and the Rangers will simply cross their fingers for better health in 2015 and see where that takes them. There’s a lengthy list of players that they need to come back fit and strong so it would be a stretch to predict them to be back in the postseason hunt just yet, whilst their state neighbours the Houston Astros also look to be too far out even though they are firmly on an upward curve back to contending in the next few years.

They have added Jed Lowrie as a placeholder for their elite shortstop prospect Carlos Correa and good bullpen arms in Luke Gregerson and Pat Neshek who can help to stop wins slipping away in the short term and then most likely be dealt to a contender down the line.

That leaves the Oakland A’s and Seattle Mariners as potential Angel catchers.

The Oakland A’s reached for the stars in 2014. After surveying the wreckage following the crash-landing, General Manager Billy Beane could have attempted some patch repairs or ditched the whole thing and started again. True to unpredictable form, the A’s have taken neither course.

Whilst free agents like Jon Lester left with no hint of a potential return, other established players like Josh Donaldson, Jeff Samardzija, Brandon Moss and Derek Norris have been traded away. In their place have come Brett Lawrie, Billy Butler, Ike Davis, Marcus Semien and a number of players who could contribute in some form during 2015 and beyond.

In short, it will be a quite different team in 2015, but not in the sense of a rebuilding job. There are plenty of ‘ifs’ in the equation, yet if enough of those ifs (Brett Lawrie being healthy, Billy Butler recovering from a down season, Drew Pomeranz grabbing a rotation spot and building on the good points of his 2014 campaign etc) come through then a Wild Card run is not out of the question.

As for the Mariners, after acquiring a true star in Robinson Cano over the previous off-season, they’ve gone for a less-substantial version this year in slugger Nelson Cruz. The M’s needed extra thump in their lineup and Cruz will give them that, although his four-year, $57m contract is going to be a painful pill to swallow in 2017 and 2018.

They weren’t far off a Wild Card in 2014 and so they can be in the mix again in 2015; however a glimpse at their roster does raise questions about their depth of talent. If James Paxton and Taijuan Walker come good, perhaps with someone like Mike Zunino or Dustin Ackley taking a step forward with the bat too, then they could be in business.

If they really want to capitalise on their strong core of Cano, Cruz, Kyle Seager, Felix Hernandez and Hiashi Iwakuma in 2015 though, signing another good Major Leaguer or two would be wise and they’ve taken one step towards that over the past week by trading for outfielder Seth Smith. We’ll see if the M’s Front Office can make further improvements over the next couple of months.

 

Weekly Hit Ground Ball: Streaking teams

Leave a reply

WHGB11Playoff places can be determined by slim margins in MLB and that’s always something to keep in mind when looking at each team’s marathon 162 regular season game schedule.

One thing British sports fans have to adjust to when coming to baseball is that in an MLB season individual wins and losses aren’t celebrated or bemoaned with much emotion until we get into the final couple of weeks of September.

A great come-from-behind win or a depressing late loss certainly creates strong feelings when the final out or walk-off-run occurs, yet the next game comes along so quickly – normally the very next day – that it can, in and for the players must, be quickly forgotten.

However, winning or losing streaks are a bit different. Every streak will come to an end but it’s length can be important as the season moves on.

Whether there is a significant impact on a team of professional players from a few wins or losses is up for debate. Every day is a new day on which the worst team can, and sometimes does, beat the best, so whilst we may make assumptions that five previous consecutive losses played a part in the sixth defeat, that may just be a narrative we’re applying to a series of coincidences.

Whatever the reason for them, long streaks do have an impact because they either put wins on the board that can put future losses into perspective, or they can put you in a hole in which the hard work of several wins is clouded by the fact that the victories are only helping you to make up ground you had already lost.

The Boston Red Sox’s last sixteen games are a great case in point.

A 9-4 victory over the Minnesota Twins on Wednesday 14 May took them one game above .500 (20-19) and moved them to within half a game of the AL East division-leading Baltimore Orioles. When the Red Sox came off the field last Sunday after an 8-5 loss to the Tampa Bay Rays things were very different. Ten consecutive losses had plunged them to the bottom of the division with a 20-29 record and an eight game deficit to the revitalised Toronto Blue Jays (more on them in a moment).

The impact in the standings wasn’t the main issue. Boston still had 113 regular season games to play after that tenth defeat so there was, and still is, a lot of time to make up lost ground. What hurt the Red Sox was that they had put themselves into a position where they needed to put a series of wins on the board just to get back to where they were (one game above .500).

The reigning World Series-champs are a good way along the process of achieving this. Last night’s 7-1 victory over the Rays made it six wins in a row so they’ll go into their Sunday game with a win-loss record of 26-29; however they know they cannot be complacent. A win for Tampa Bay today followed by a 2-1 series defeat in Cleveland during the first half of next week and the benefit of those six victories would still be set within a 27-32 record that is not what they would have been hoping for from their first 59 games before the season began.

It’s an obvious point perhaps, but the aim of every team is to accept you’ll lose your share of games (the Red Sox and St. Louis Cardinals shared the Major League lead for wins last season with 97, so even the best still tasted defeat 65 times) but to keep the losing sequences short so that your winning periods really count.

It also depends on your expectations for the season. The Red Sox’s streakiness is all-the-more frustrating due to their rightful status as a World Series contender heading into the campaign.

For the Houston Astros, their seven-game winning streak this week (ended last night by the Baltimore Orioles) still left them bottom of the pile in the AL West, yet as a rebuilding team they can enjoy the fun of the winning run regardless of the losses that come around it. That’s particularly the case as it was driven by an incredible week from rookie George Springer who homered six times over those seven wins. Springer’s exploits will not lead Houston to a winning season in 2014, but they may well offer a glimpse to a very bright future a couple of seasons down the line.

Whilst the Astros’ recent run isn’t going to change their fortunes in 2014, the Toronto Blue Jays are a different story. They put together a five-game winning streak earlier in May and followed it up with a nine-game streak that came to an end on Thursday. With a few wins and losses in between they put together a Major-League best 21-9 win-loss record for May and launched themselves to the top of the AL East, with Edwin Encarnacion launching 16 home runs in the process.

It may be a bit much to expect the Blue Jays to put together a similar month in June, yet they look like a team that could be turning 2014 into the sort of competitive year that they were supposed to have in 2013. That’s the sort of impact that winning streaks can have.

Weekly Hit Ground Ball: Precious Porter

Leave a reply

WHGB11Those fabled old ‘unwritten rules’ of baseball frequently come along and cause confusion.

Houston Astros manager Bo Porter’s reaction this week to what he perceived to be a breach of the code by the Oakland A’s Jed Lowrie was one of the more bizarre of recent years.

The A’s had jumped on Astros starter Jarred Cosart for seven runs in the first inning on Friday night and Porter decided to try to stop the bleeding by putting a defensive shift on with Lowrie stepping into the batter’s box.

The A’s infielder saw the shift and attempted to beat it by laying down a bunt. Lowrie was put-out on the play but that wasn’t enough punishment in Porter’s eyes.

When his turn to bat came around again in the third inning, Lowrie had to dodge two pitches coming at him and Porter then came onto the field and started shouting at him at the end of the inning.

Clearly, Porter thought Lowrie was taking liberties by trying to bunt with his team leading 7-0.

There aren’t many greater crimes in baseball – perhaps any sport – than deliberately showing up the opposition, but how the Astros’ manager thought that was what Lowrie was doing here is anyone’s guess.

Firstly, it was still only the opening inning of the game. The Astros aren’t exactly an offensive juggernaut so their chances of coming back and scoring enough runs to win the game weren’t great, but it was hardly insurmountable. Two runs scored in one inning, then another two in the next and they are firmly back in the game, with the A’s starting to feel the pressure of blowing a great starting position.

Had it been 7-0 in the bottom of the eighth inning then Porter’s anger would have been more understandable. A bunt in that situation would be akin to standing near the corner flag doing step-overs when leading 5-0 in a football game, an act likely to provoke opposing fans to scream “take him out” or “put him into the stands” and for one or two players to do their best to act on the advice.

However, had it been the bottom of the eighth, it’s unlikely Porter would have shifted his infield and that was the only reason Lowrie attempted the bunt in the first place. He wasn’t taking the proverbial, he was reacting to the way the Astros had lined up their infield to try to keep the inning going.

It’s always the way with this type of situation; the team leading has every right to keep playing to the best of their ability. They are letting themselves down if they don’t.

To oppose this is to say either a) that the leading team should ease off to let the opposition back into the game, or b) that the team losing should give up and take the loss without putting up a fight. Whilst neither option is getting close to match-fixing, they are starting to stray down the route of one or both teams not doing all they can to win the game and that’s a bigger injustice to the sport than any perceived slight caused by contravening an ‘unwritten rule’.

Baseball’s unwritten rules are similar in essence to the spirit of the game in cricket. At heart, they are about creating a culture in which teams play to win but do so in a fair manner, what you would call the ‘sporting’ way. Maybe some would call such niceties a relic of an amateur age out of place in the billion dollar/pound industries that the sports have become; however, they are an intrinsic part of the charm and character of the games.

The ‘unwritten rules’ are no bad thing, yet sometimes those involved in baseball could do with injecting a bit of common sense into their thought-process before applying them.

Maybe Porter was just trying to gee-up his young team with a show of defiance? If so, you’d like to think there are better ways of doing it than acting like a 5-year-old who has been told to share their toys with their friends.

Offseason so far: AL West

Leave a reply

After looking at the AL East and AL Central, today we complete a round-up of the offseason so far in the American League by reviewing the comings and goings from the AL West division.

Oakland A’s

There’s rarely a quiet offseason in Oakland as General Manager Billy Beane knows that his team, more than most, cannot afford to stand still whilst those with more money (which is pretty much every other team in the Majors) can outspend them.

The A’s have won the division in each of the last two years and, although they haven’t made any major moves, they’ve shuffled the pack to try and make it three on the spin. Oakland normally can’t afford to keep hold of players that hit free agency and, sure enough, Bartolo Colon (Mets) and Grant Balfour (still to find a team) will not be with the club in 2014. However, these losses didn’t start an Oakland firesale; in fact they immediately replaced those two key players with Scott Kazmir and Jim Johnson, the latter acquired in a trade with the Baltimore Orioles.

The A’s have traded away several players – including Seth Smith to the Padres, Brett Anderson to the Rockies and Jerry Blevins to the Nationals – but they’ve done so mainly to improve their options for the current roster, rather than as part of a rebuilding project. Outfielder Craig Gentry (from the Rangers) and reliever Luke Gregerson (Padres) are the main two new recruits likely to be regulars on the team.

Texas Rangers

The last two seasons haven’t been completely disastrous in Texas, yet they’ve certainly been a disappointment with a Wild Card game loss in 2012 and missing the playoffs completely last year.

The Rangers hope that some better luck with injuries will lead to an improvement in their pitching, so their offseason so far has been geared towards improving the batting lineup.

They did this in one surprising swoop when they traded away second baseman Ian Kinsler to acquire first baseman Prince Fielder from the Detroit Tigers. Fielder was only two years into a nine-year contract in Detroit, but he became something of a target from Tiger fans when logging just one extra base hit (a double) in 11 postseason games after ending the season with the lowest home run total of his career (25). A change of scenery could work out extremely well for Fielder and the Rangers.

He’ll be joined in the lineup by outfielder Shin-Soo Choo, who signed a 7-year, $130m contract with the team in mid-December. Choo will take over from Nelson Cruz, a free agent still searching for a new team, whilst Neftali Feliz is likely to return to being a closer after Joe Nathan left for the Tigers as a free agent.

Los Angeles Angels

After the big-ticket offseason signings of 2011/12 (Albert Pujols) and 2012/13 (Josh Hamilton), the Angels have been relatively quiet this time around. Their big hope is that they’ll be able to add fit, healthy and productive versions of those two players to their lineup regularly in 2014.

David Freese has been acquired from the Cardinals to take over at third base, whilst slugger Mark Trumbo has been traded away to the Diamondbacks. Trumbo is really a home-run-hitter who provides little else and having traded away such a player they arguably acquired another one in 42-year-old veteran Raul Ibanez, who’s not much of a fielder and had just a .306 OBP last season, but did hit 29 homers in 124 games for the Mariners.

Jason Vargas has left the team as a free agent to join Kansas City. Hector Santiago and Tyler Skaggs, who was reacquired from the D-Backs having been traded to them in August 2010, will join the battle for a rotation spot, with Joe Smith signed as a free agent to be the set-up man for Ernesto Frieri.

Seattle Mariners

The Mariners haven’t been leading players in offseasons of recent years, but they’ve made the biggest move of all so far in 2013/04. Rumours that they were genuine contenders for the signature of Robinson Cano seemed fanciful right up to the point when the New York Yankees admitted defeat in their attempt to keep hold of their second baseman.

For all of the excitement generated by their $240m investment in Cano, everyone knew that Seattle needed more than one player, however talented, to be genuine playoff contenders after finishing 25 games behind the A’s last year.  They’ve acquired Logan Morrison in a trade with the Marlins and signed Corey Hart, who missed all of 2013 with a knee injury, but you still feel they are several players short and that may well mean their offseason work is far from over, especially in adding to the pitching staff.

The main free agent departures have been Ibanez’s above-mentioned move to the Angels and the anticipated departure of Kendrys Morales, who is yet another player still seeking a team.

Houston Astros

The rebuilding work continues in Houston where even the most optimistic Astros fan will see a winning season as being beyond them this year.

They have moved towards signing some established Major League players though. The main feature of their offseason work has been compiling what looks to be a good bullpen thanks to the acquisitions of Jesse Crain, Chad Qualls and Matt Albers.

Scott Feldman has been brought in on a three-year contract to lead a young rotation, whilst the Astros swung a trade with the Rockies to make Dexter Fowler their new centrefielder.