Tag Archives: New York Mets

Weekly Hit Ground Ball: 0-10 Avoided

WHGB11Friday was a night of relief for the Atlanta Braves and Minnesota Twins.

They were both staring at the indignity of beginning the MLB season with ten consecutive loses and managed to avoid that fate with timely victories. Both teams also followed up their first wins with a second on Saturday to start bringing some semblance of hope for their fans.

The terrible 0-9 start was no surprise for the Atlanta Braves who have specifically designed this team to be close-to-hopeless.

For all of the good that MLB has done in recent years to bring parity and hope to many teams, the rewards (never mind lack of penalties) that incentivize teams to completely blow up their Major League roster to build for the future is one that needs addressing.

There is a clear logic to what they’re doing, as there was to the way the Chicago Cubs and Houston Astros broke everything down to start again a few years ago, but with so much money flowing into the sport it’s difficult to justify teams charging fans Major League ticket prices, and earning Major League revenue from national and local TV networks, whilst fielding Triple-A teams.

A balance needs to be struck between helping teams to rebuild and not encouraging teams to deliberately field poor teams. One way would be to strip teams of early first round draft picks if they are not within a certain percentage of the wins amassed by best team in their league, or at least in their division. That would be a good way to avoid the unappealing race to the bottom where teams want to have the worst record so that they get the number one pick in the following year’s draft.

Maybe ‘tanking’ as it’s known will be addressed in the new Collective Bargaining Agreement? For now though, the Atlanta Braves will spend their final season at Turner Field putting out a team that only diehard fans will have the least bit of interest in watching.

The Minnesota Twins have been on a similar rebuilding project, yet their surprising second-placed finish in the AL Central last year raised hopes that a return to the good times may be closer than was predicted.

We’ve not seen much evidence to support that just yet, even though there is a group of young players there that can help to turn things around to a certain extent and give Twins fans a reason to watch – and enjoy – their team this season.

Gaining wins when the going’s good

We should also be mindful of the quality of opposition different teams face in the early going, particularly when it comes to the pacesetters.

In the American League, both the Baltimore Orioles and Chicago White Sox have started well and both have done so in part by winning games against the Twins and Tampa Bay Rays. Five of the Orioles’ 8 wins so far have come against those two teams, whilst the White Sox swept the Twins in a three-game series and are 1-1 against the Rays heading into Sunday’s series decider.

Baltimore will live and die by the longball this season and we saw how effective a plan that can be on Friday when they clubbed five against the Texas Rangers in an 11-5 victory. Whether they can mount a challenge in the AL East for the whole season will come down to how many of their homers are of the one-run variety.

The Orioles placed a large bet on ‘hack and hope’ by adding Mark Trumbo and Pedro Alvarez this off-season to a lineup not blessed with much patience as it was and their 8-4 loss to the Rangers on Saturday – when they out-homered their opponents 3-0 – showed the other side of their approach.

Equally in the National League, the Washington Nationals’ 9-1 start, with a seven-game winning streak on the go, has been fueled by going 5-0 against the Braves and taking the first two games of this weekend’s series against the similarly-rebuilding Philadelphia Phillies.

Every win counts the same in the standings and the Nationals can only beat the teams put in front of them, but it was always likely they would get off to a good April based on the strength of the schedule they would be facing.

After today’s game against the Phillies they travel to Miami for four-games and then have three against the Twins and three more against the Phillies. By the 29th it’s quite likely that Washington will have a win-loss record of something around 15-6. They’ll then start a 10-game road trip against the St Louis Cardinals (3 games), Kansas City Royals (3) and Chicago Cubs (4) and we’ll have a better handle on their early season promise once they’ve faced some sterner opposition.

Equally the 4-6 New York Mets will have an opportunity to gain ground on their rivals during the same period. After finishing their series against Cleveland today, they have three games in Philadelphia, three in Atlanta and three at home against Cincinnati. The reigning NL Champions need to follow Washington’s lead in taking advantage of three of the weakest teams in the league this season.

MLB 2016 – National League Preview

MlbHlSqAfter looking at the American League yesterday, our attention now turns to the Senior Circuit.

The most significant difference between the two leagues coming into the 2016 season is that whilst every team in the AL at least has some chance – however small – of competing for a Wild Card place, 5 of the 15 teams in the National League are deliberately looking towards future seasons.

‘Tanking’ is the word people like to use, essentially where a team deliberately trades away its best players, slashes the payroll and prioritizes the acquisition and development of prospects over challenging for a play-off spot. It’s controversial given the amount of TV money these teams are banking – under the assumption that they would be fielding a team worth watching – yet the truth is the current MLB landscape doesn’t just allow teams to do this, it rewards them for it.

Nothing illustrates that better than the 2015 seasons had by the Chicago Cubs and the Houston Astros.

The Atlanta Braves, Cincinnati Reds, Colorado Rockies, Milwaukee Brewers and Philadelphia Phillies are all prepared to take some pain today for jam tomorrow.

The good news is that there are plenty of strong teams left in the NL to create a captivating regular season.

NL East

This time last year many onlookers had penciled-in the Washington Nationals as not only the team to beat in the NL East, but the team to beat across the whole league. They had won 96 games in 2014 and responded to an early play-off exit by signing ace pitcher Max Scherzer, so the hype was not unwarranted; however it was something the team singularly failed to live up to and ultimately cost manager Matt Williams his job.

In 2016 it’s the New York Mets who are receiving the same platitudes, yet it seems highly unlikely that they will buckle under the weight of expectations. Their young pitching staff is genuinely outstanding and, having unexpectedly made the World Series last season, figure to only get better in 2016. That’s a scary thought for everyone else.

Where does that leave the Nationals? The one true success of 2015 for them was the MVP season put together by Bryce Harper and just as you can count on the likes of Jacob deGrom and Noah Syndergaard to pitch like aces for the Mets, so you can expect Harper to do the near-impossible and challenge Mike Trout for the honour of the best player in MLB.

The experienced Dusty Baker has been brought in to pull the team together and create a happy ship out of what was a combustible crew. Whether they will challenge the Mets, or at least win a Wild Card spot, will come down to good health and how effectively they take advantage of the 38 games that they will play combined against the rebuilding Braves and Phillies.

NL Central

It’s been an off-season diet of the Cubs, Cubs and more Cubs in the NL Central. Joe Maddon and his team are the new media darlings and you can understand why. They’ve amassed an enviable group of young talent and supplemented it with free agent signings in the form of Jon Lester in the 2014/15 off-season and now again with Jason Heyward, Ben Zobrist and John Lackey.

They were really good in 2015 and will be again in 2016.

What we shouldn’t lose sight of, though, is that the Pittsburgh Pirates were just as good last season and the St Louis Cardinals were even better. Neither team has added the experienced talent that the Cubs have acquired, and Chicago’s gain has very directly been St Louis’s loss with Heyward and Lackey moving to the other side of that rivalry, but they still have strong rosters and the way things are shaping up could really suit them.

The Cubs are the team with all the expectations. It’s been very noticeable in Spring Training that the Cardinals are almost enjoying the way everyone is jumping on the Chicago bandwagon, ready to prove exactly why they’ve won the division for the past three seasons and have no intention of letting the upstarts crash their party.

As for the Pirates, you’ll struggle to find a team more determined to win a division having experienced the pain of a one-game-and-gone play-off exit in each of the past two seasons.  This is going to be a true three-way battle.

NL West

Will there be a three-way battle in the West?

The Arizona Diamondbacks are intent on making that so. Their audacious signing of Zack Greinke mirrored the Cubs’ Cardinal clear-out job by taking him away from the LA Dodgers, with the added benefit that the San Francisco Giants lusted after the free agent too. They followed that up by trading for Shelby Miller and whilst the package they gave up for him may prove to be a high price to pay, it’s given them a front three with Patrick Corbin that stacks up well against their division rivals.

The D-Backs are confident, although it’s often been the case that the team that ‘won the off-season’ in recent years has gone on to win precious little else. What Arizona needed was for their existing players to either repeat or improve on their previous performances to make the additions count. That hope took a hammer blow last night with outfielder A.J. Pollock breaking his elbow. Pollock quietly developed into one of the best players in the National League last year. He will be out for an extended period – a similar injury cost him the entire 2010 season – and whilst it’s not fatal for the D-Backs’ chances, it certainly reduces them.

Injuries are also the story in LA where the Dodgers have been devastated by a succession of setbacks. At time of writing, MLB.com’s injury report lists no fewer than 13 Dodgers suffering notable ailments with as many as 10 of them being a doubt for Opening Day, if not out of action for much longer. They’re Major League-leading payroll ensures that sympathy will be in short supply and the Dodgers still have a solid group to compete with. As players return to health during the season, alongside the always-present potential for them to acquire new players and to up the payroll even further, you would be wrong to write them off even if they are in third place by the end of May.

As for the Giants, they’ve added starting pitchers Johnny Cueto and Jeff Samardzija to their rotation and it’s an even year, so the omens are good for them.

My predictions

NL East – NY Mets, Washington, Miami, Philadelphia, Atlanta

NL Central – St Louis, Chicago Cubs (WC), Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Milwaukee

NL West – LA Dodgers, San Francisco (WC), Arizona, San Diego, Colorado

Weekly Hit Ground Ball: Good Friday by name …

WHGB11Good Friday loomed like a bad omen this week.

The schedule of MLB Spring Training games that day included starts for four pitchers on my recently-drafted fantasy baseball roster. Poor performances, or worse an injury or two, seemed a certainty.

Jon Lester was on the mound for the Cubs against the Brewers, Jose Quintana was pitching for the White Sox against the Mariners, and the Indians-Diamondbacks game featured Corey Kluber and Shelby Miller.

Consequently, the latter had to be my choice for the evening’s entertainment, forgoing an Oakland A’s appearance for pitching prospect Sean Manaea against the Angels in the process. Such was my enthusiasm that I grabbed a pencil and a blank scorecard and got stuck into some Spring Training score-keeping practice.

Shelby Miller was a bit sketchy to start with, including plunking Cleveland’s catcher Yan Gomes on the shoulder in the second inning, but his defence helped to keep runs off the board. Wellington Castillo negated a first-inning lead-off single by Tyler Naquin by foiling an attempted stolen base and Miller’s infielders turned a double-play in the second inning.

Miller settled down from there and produced the highlight of the game with a reflex catch on a come-backer between his legs to end the fourth inning. It’s not often that I would dish out a scorecard star for a Spring Training game, but this effort deserved one.

Cleveland’s Naquin did hit a homer off him to lead-off the sixth inning and to celebrate being told that he would make the Indians’ opening day roster earlier that day. He was their first-round draft pick in 2012 and should be a good stand-in whilst Michael Brantley continues his recovery from shoulder surgery.

As for Kluber, the 2014 AL Cy Young winner gave up 11 hits across his six innings of work, yet that was predominantly due to the way he was pounding the strike zone and that’s far from a negative in the pre-season period. He struck our four D-Backs around Jake Lamb‘s second-inning home run before things unravelled a bit in the sixth inning.

Yan Gomes showed off his excellent arm behind the plate by gunning down Socrates Brito twice and also pouncing on a swinging bunt by Castillo in the fourth inning to get the lead runner at second rather than taking the safe out at first. Gomes’s 2015 campaign was hampered by a knee injury, yet he appears healthy now and is one of many reasons why Cleveland shouldn’t be overlooked in the AL Central and Wild Card races this year.

Miller and Kluber’s outings left me breathing a sigh of relief, as did Lester’s strong start against the Brewers and Quintana’s seven K’s against the Mariners.

It wasn’t such a good day for the A’s, as Mike Trout smacked a first-inning homer and the Angels prevailed 11-3 whilst Oakland made four errors to go alongside the three they coughed up the day before.

Friday might not be the last time this season that I turn to my fantasy team players to offer some crumbs of comfort following a bad day at the office for my ‘real’ team.

The scorecard

Here’s a scan of my scorecard, completed up to the middle of the seventh inning when Shelby Miller came out of the game. The ‘fch’ reference at the start of Cleveland’s seventh inning stands for fielding changes. It’s standard practice in spring games for managers to make plenty of player changes in the later innings and – knowing that this was almost certainly going to be the last half-inning I was going to keep score of – I didn’t bother to make a note of them.

You can download and print off the scorecard I used here.

Other MLB notes

For all the grief that Arizona’s front office has received this off-season, their aggressive winter could pay-off especially if the Dodgers’ terrible luck with injuries continues. It was announced this week that Andre Ethier will be out for 10-14 weeks with a fractured tibia, whilst catcher Yasmani Grandal is unlikely to be ready for Opening Day due to an arm injury and Howie Kendrick battles with a leg injury.

The New York Yankees are another big spender who go into the final week of Spring Training with some significant question marks over their roster. Ivan Nova is in a battle with CC Sabathia for a spot in the rotation that appears to be coming down to which one doesn’t look quite as bad as the other. Nova didn’t do much to help his case on Friday by giving up three home runs against the Orioles. Sabathia is a far-from-ideal candidate to move to the bullpen so that may factor into the equation.

Things are very different for the other New York team. Earlier on Friday, Noah Syndergaard was in dominating form against the Cardinals, striking out nine over six innings.  Yankee fans will be sick of hearing about the stunning starting pitcher lineup of the Mets, yet in Syndergaard’s case that may be preferable to him competing against them with the Blue Jays. Toronto wanted to win in 2013 and so gave him up in the package to acquire the 2012 NL Cy Young winner R.A. Dickey in 2012/13 off-season, but it’s hard not to think about the 1-2 punch they could have had with Syndergaard and Marcus Stroman.

Finally, ESPN covered the Mets-Cardinals game on Friday and there was plenty of talk about the Redbirds’ rivalry with the Chicago Cubs. You get the sense that St. Louis are charged up by everyone hailing the Cubs as the best team in MLB heading into this season. Every one of the 19 games they will play against each other during the regular season will be an event.

Outfielders come off the market

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.

Off-season so far: National League

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.

What’s Missing from the World Series

We’re four games into the 2015 MLB World Series and baseball fans can have few complaints about the action that the Kansas City Royals and New York Mets have given us so far.

The Royals took advantage of being at home by jumping out to a 2-0 series lead, only for the Mets to hit straight back when the series shifted to New York with a win in Game Three. Noah Syndergaard’s opening salvo provided an immediate spark to Friday night’s game, taking ownership of the first pitch away from Alcides Escobar and the Royals and showing that the Mets were intent on putting their stamp on the series.

However, the Royals’ eighth-inning exploits in Game Four on Saturday night swung the contest firmly back in their favour. A 3-2 deficit became a 5-3 lead and reliever Wade Davis took over from there with two scoreless innings to put Kansas City ahead 3-1 in the series, one win away from claiming the championship.

Whilst the action on the field has been great to watch, it’s only served to emphasize what a shame it is that we no longer have British baseball coverage of the Fall Classic (let alone the rest of the regular season). The games are shown live on BT Sport, with MLB.TV subscribers able to view online too, and that’s infinitely better than having no access to the games at all on these shores.

Still, former Baseball on 5 (and MLB on Five Live Sports Extra) presenter Josh Chetwynd summed up the feelings of many during the 14-inning opening game

Where we now have repetitive mid/between inning adverts, we used to enjoy Jonny, Josh and/or Dave wearing tuxedos dissecting the game and leading the club of baseball nuts watching the game we love in the early hours of the morning. Michael Brown has a petition going to get Jonny Gould back on the airwaves precisely because of the sheer enjoyment he and the rest of the crew provided for many of us over the years.

With the NFL hosting yet another game at Wembley this weekend, it goes to show how far back baseball has slipped that we don’t have our own coverage even just for the marquee event of the year.

Here’s hoping that may change one day and we can once again enjoy presenters awarding marks out of ten to the national anthem rendition, seventh inning stretches, sneaky bites of chocolate not quite concealed quickly enough when cutting back to the studio, and the great community spirit that only dedicated coverage can foster.

2015 World Series: Mets vs Royals

The 2015 MLB World Series begins on Tuesday night in Kansas City, with the home town Royals looking to go one better than last year against the New York Mets.

The Royals hadn’t made it to the postseason at all since their triumph in 1985 prior to their heart-breaking 4-3 series loss to the San Francisco Giants a year ago. Few people expected them to get so far and the surprising nature of their postseason run meant there were plenty of doubters who saw them slipping back down the standings as we came into the 2015 season.

They’ve proved them all wrong, including myself, and now they look like a team that is primed to build on all of the lessons learned last time and to take the final step to glory.

The only problem the Royals have in being a team of destiny is that there’s another club who can lay claim to the same title.

The New York Mets have had a similarly long wait for another World Series victory having last taken the prize one year after the Royals (1986). They have at least made the postseason on a number of occasions since then, but not since 2006. Despite a devastating 4-3 NLCS loss to the St Louis Cardinals that year, things still seemed bright in Queens with a new ballpark opening and every reason to think that the team was going to keep competing for years to come.

Instead, the financial crash caught out the Mets’ owners and the big-market team started acting more like paupers, to the increasing anger of their fans.

2015 was thought to herald more of the same disappointment, yet they surprised many by starting out well and the addition of outfielder Yoenis Cespedes at the trade deadline suggested that they may be able to last the pace. Sure enough, a 20-8 record in August saw them take a commanding lead in the NL East and here they are.

Having swept past the Chicago Cubs in the NLCS, the New York Mets come into the World Series full of confidence and their exciting young starting pitchers give them a great chance of proving correct the old adage of pitching being the difference in the postseason.

The series really is too close to call, with the advantage the Mets have in starting pitching being levelled out by the Royals’ proven ability to stick to their plan and get the better of an ace in the end. Both teams have shown great skill on the bases in the play-offs so far and that should set up an exciting contest, alongside the incredible story of the Mets’ Daniel Murphy seeking to extend his scarcely believable home run exploits.

America doesn’t move out of day-light saving time until this Sunday, so the first four games of the World Series – Tuesday night, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday – will get going at just gone midnight UK time, with just a four-hour time difference to contend with. The potential three games afterwards would begin an hour later on Sunday and the following Tuesday and Wednesday. Coverage can be found in the UK on the BT Sport range of channels on online via the MLB.TV subscription.

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

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.

New York, New York

Frank Sinatra famously sang about “New York, New York”. There haven’t been too many times that both of the city’s baseball teams have been a dominant force since the high-water mark of the Yankees-Mets World Series in 2000.

Their rivalry is probably most similar to the Man Utd-Man City football rivalry in the pre-Abu Dhabi Sheikh days for the Blues. The Yankees were the Utd of the baseball equivalent, racking up titles, becoming the team everyone else loved to hate and being more interested in their rivalry with another city (Boston Red Sox in the Yankees’ case, Liverpool for Utd) than with their “noisy neighbour”.

The Mets were more like the old Man City, fleeting moments of brilliance heavily outnumbered by heartbreak and occasional farce.

Man City have turned things around thanks to Middle East investment of staggering proportions, to the extent that their global plans have seen them link up with the Yankees as part of the New York City Football team.

In contrast, the Mets are lumbered with the Wilpon family who have cut the team’s budget in the last three years after losing substantial sums in the Madoff investment scandal. Mets fans have not been happy seeing their team settling for a mid-ranking payroll despite being in one of the biggest sports markets in the world with a new ballpark and running a lucrative TV network, with frustrations summed up by a billboard protest at the start of this season.

However, there are signs that the baseball tide is turning in New York. The Yankees have missed out on the play-offs in each of the past two seasons and have a team dominated by high-earning older players. The Mets meanwhile have some of the most exciting young talent in the Major Leagues, particularly on their pitching staff.

One big difference between the New York and Manchester sporting rivalries is that the baseball teams play in different leagues so don’t directly compete against each other in the standings. Until regular season ‘inter-league’ play began in 1997, the two teams didn’t meet at all unless both made it to the World Series, which has only happened that one time in 2000. Now they do at least play each other every season for a few games and recently that has been a case of the underdog Mets coming along and hoping to win some bragging rights as a small bit of joy to cling to in an otherwise disappointing season.

Yet the ‘Subway Series’ that began last night was different. The Mets came into the series with the best record in MLB and riding an 11-game winning streak. Much as they would try to deny it, the Yankee players would have been peeved to have seen so much attention being lavished on their opponents as they ‘welcomed’ them to Yankee Stadium for a three-game series.

It was almost to be expected that the Yankees would snap the Mets’ winning streak in the opener on Friday night and that’s exactly what they did with a 6-1 victory. Whilst it’s only early in the season, the Yankees would take great pleasure in knocking the Mets down a peg or two by going on and sweeping the series.

The game on Saturday should be an absolute cracker with the Mets’ young pitching star Matt Harvey taking to the mound at Yankee Stadium against CC Sabathia. It’s a day-game in the Bronx, making for a 21.05 BST start time, and it’s being shown live on the ESPN UK channel.

Unsurprisingly, the series finale has been chosen as the ESPN Sunday Night Baseball game so that will be live on ESPN UK too, in this case a 1 a.m. start on Sunday night/Monday morning.

The U.S. ESPN channel often gets accused of east coast bias, but in this case you can’t blame them for focusing on New York. There’s genuine reason for excitement with these two teams colliding this season thanks to the rise of the Mets and that’s something all baseball fans should enjoy.

NL East: Off-season so far

Where in the NL West and Central we saw teams grabbing headlines trying to get back into contention, in the East you can’t start anywhere else than looking at a team that has done precious little this off-season.

The Washington Nationals’ roster is very similar today to how they ended the 2014 season – minus Adam LaRoche who has joined the Chicago White Sox – and whilst that makes for a dull off-season, it doesn’t change the fact that the Nationals were the class of the division last year and remain so.

The Miami Marlins made plenty of noise in signing Giancarlo Stanton to a monumental contract extension, yet that didn’t improve the team in itself as he already figured to be a part of their 2015 team regardless.

The focus from there was on the moves that the Marlins were promising to make to show that they were committed to winning with their homegrown star. They have been active – bringing in Mat Latos, Dee Gordon, Michael Morse, Martin Prado and possibly Dan Haren, if the latter does agree to relocate from the west coast – although they are coming from a long way back so it remains to be seen if they have truly put themselves in the Wild Card hunt.

The New York Mets entered the off-season in a slightly similar position whereby they were starting from a non-contending 2014 season, yet they have a group of talented young players, including Matt Harvey returning after missing all of 2014 through injury, that looked like they might be an outside bet to leap forward with a few key additions. Unfortunately for Mets fans, the only real addition they have made is signing veteran outfielder Michael Cuddyer, who may not prove to be a positive addition at all.

They should be improved if their current players stay out on the field, yet that only makes their unwillingness to push the team forward with a bold position player signing or two all the more frustrating. Rumours about potential impact trade targets – Troy Tulowitzki being the most frequent name mentioned – continue to circulate, but recent history doesn’t offer much reason to believe the Mets are on the verge of making such a deal.

If ‘frustrating’ is a good word for the Mets, what one should we choose to sum up the Atlanta Braves? Pitching injuries have hit them hard over the past year or so and now, having traded away Jason Heyward and Justin Upton, they look like a team treading water in the mid-pack despite having a good core of players.

Their move to a new ballpark for the 2017 season seems to be the focus and despite adding Shelby Miller and Nick Markakis so far this off-season, their approach for the next two seasons appears to be one of hoping to sneak a Wild Card if they can without pushing the boat out, rather than really going for it or taking the alternative stance and trading away several more established players (Craig Kimbrel being the obvious next candidate) to focus purely on the 2017 team.

The Philadelphia Phillies do at last appear to be looking to the future rather than desperately clinging onto the successful 2007-2011 period, with Jimmy Rollins being traded to the LA Dodgers. The problem the Phillies have is that the rebuild should have started two years ago, meaning the only really valuable player they have left to trade (excluding Chase Utley, who is still playing well but can block any trade and, by all accounts, wants to see out his career in Philadelphia) is Cole Hamels. Getting that trade right will be crucial for the pace at which they can get back to contention. The 2015 season is undoubtedly a write-off already and 2016-2017 might not be great either.