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MLB 2017 Final Day: Everyone gets to play in October

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It’s always a shame when we get to the final day of the MLB regular season and there is nothing significant still to play for.

Looking through the standings, the only potential thing to ‘win’ would be the first draft pick in next year’s amateur draft, which goes to the team with the worst win-loss record.

The San Francisco Giants (63-98) are one loss ‘better off’ than the Detroit Tigers (64-97) in the race to the bottom. If the Giants foolishly go and win today against the San Diego Padres and the Tigers lose then they’ll be matched on 64-98.

Normally with tie-breaker situations you look at the results of the games the two teams played against each other, but I’m not sure quite how that works here.

The Tigers won their inter-league series 2-1, which should mean they finish higher, although in the circumstances they might feel that the victory should result in them finishing last so they get the number one pick. Such is the weirdness that creating an incentive to finish last leads to.

Anyway, despite the Tigers’ protestations, I suspect that the Giants do have the worst record sewn-up already on that tie-breaker (I was going to look it up, but thought better of it), so we are where we are and can enjoy the final day as simply a day of baseball with not much riding on it.

Division winners

Looking at the almost-final standings, you can’t escape the conclusion that the teams most people thought would win the six divisions heading into the year have done so.

Neither the LA Dodgers and Washington Nationals had a strong challenger on paper and so it proved, whilst the Chicago Cubs also came through with a handy gap in the end despite the NL Central being harder work for them than we might have thought.

The Cleveland Indians blitzed the AL Central, in no small part thanks to their incredible 22-game winning streak, Boston kept the New York Yankees at bay in the East and the Houston Astros took all the fun out of the AL West (for the other four teams at least) by going 38-16 across April and May and never looking back. An 11-17 August counted for little, particularly when they responded with a 20-8 September.

Wild Cards

The above is partly the whole point of having the Wild Card round. We had predictable division winners this year because they were all blatantly going to be really good teams and were only going to be beaten if they had a disaster or two to give someone else a chance.

That’s not a bad thing in my book. Whilst surprises are always fun, ultimately you should want there to be impressive teams that rack up wins in the regular season and make their eventual clashes in the post-season all the more enthralling.

The Wild Card, especially the second Wild Card, adds something else to the play-off pot.

It creates the potential for other strong teams to get in, such as the Yankees this time around. Despite the negatives you can throw at the Wild Card play-in game from a fairness point of view, the AL East was a great example of one of the main positives.

There is a huge potential difference between winning the division and going straight through to the best-of-five Division Series, compared with flipping a coin in the lose-and-you’re-out Wild Card game. Potential is the key word there, as if you manage to win the Wild Card game your odds of winning it all aren’t all that much lower than the other Division Series competitors. However, the risk of your play-offs only lasting one game means that the division is always worth fighting for now, which wasn’t the case when there was only one Wild Card per league.

NL W(ild Card)

The second Wild Card means that if there are three strong teams in one division in a given year, they could all have a chance of making it to the post-season.

That’s happened this year in the NL West. The Colorado Rockies were a somewhat surprising third-placed finisher last year behind the Dodgers and Giants, yet their 75-87 record to get there – after losing 96 and 94 games in the previous two seasons – gave reason to be cautious about being too optimistic for their hopes in 2017.

In fact, it proved to be indicative of the potential that was there at Coors Field and they’ve fully earned their first play-off appearance since 2009.

The Rockies’ progress in 2017 is nothing compared to that of the team that will be hosting them for the NL Wild Card on Wednesday. 2016 was a disaster for the Arizona Diamondbacks after they made big moves in the off-season – spending $206m on Zack Greinke and a king’s ransom in a trade for Shelby Miller – only to lose 93 games. Various people lost their jobs as a result, but there was still some talent at the club and the potential for a quick return to respectability.

They far exceeded that and enter the final day of the regular season with the joint-sixth highest win total across the Majors with 92. No one can say the D-Backs haven’t earned their play-off appearance.

Twins and the AL Wild Card game

As for the Minnesota Twins, well, some people aren’t being quite so generous in their praise of the second AL Wild Card winners.

They’ve earned their spot because they’ve got the fifth-best record in the American League and five teams qualify for the play-offs from each league. However, they enter the final day with a win-loss record of 84-77.

In football people often say the league table doesn’t lie at the end of a season; in other words, where you end up is generally a good reflection on how good your team was.

MLB takes that further by playing a 162-game regular season. Randomness can still come into, but by and large that’s more than enough time for the cream to rise to the top, the chaff to be separated from the wheat, and the middling middlers to settle in the middle.

It is fair to say that Minnesota are more middly than creamy.

That doesn’t matter in the least for the Minnesota Twins, who can smile away any jibes by knowing there are 20 other teams that would love to be in their position. They’ve made it to the play-offs a year after losing 103 games. They’ve won 25 more games than they did last year and can make it 26 if they win on Sunday. That’s a real achievement for Paul Molitor and his team.

And as for the AL Wild Card game

The problem some have with the Wild Card game in a situation like this is that a team that has earned a significantly better record over 162 games than their opponent can be knocked out by losing one game.

There’s no escaping that this isn’t completely fair, but there’s one important thing to note about it this year.

The New York Yankees have won more World Series than any other team and broken more hearts than anyone else along the way too. The ‘Evil Empire’ moniker isn’t being thrown around quite so much now as it had been the previous 10-15 years, but there’s a reason why it became a thing in the first place. Yankees fans, like fans of any all-conquering team, understand that people love to hate them.

So if it does happen and the Twins do dump the Yankees out on Tuesday night – and it certainly could – then whilst the strict analysts may bemoan it, the rest of us can have a good chuckle about it.

#ThumbsUp

April highlights from MLB

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One month into the MLB regular season and there have already been enough stories to last a year.

Here are some of the key things that have happened.

Early struggles

Any team or player can go through a tricky month, so we should be wary of taking a bad April to always be a sign of things to come. It’s not easy to be pragmatic like that when it’s your team in the stir, though.

The Toronto Blue Jays have been a constant source of worry for their fans during the first month. They’ve picked up a bit of late so they no longer hold the worst record in the Majors, but having the second-worst record (8-17) isn’t much of a consolation.

They’ve been bedevilled by injuries – a common theme as we’ll see – and the return of Jose Bautista, who looked likely to leave as a free agent over the off-season, has not started well.  Bautista has always been the sort of player loved by his own fans but hated by opponents, and it’s fair to say his struggles have not evoked much sympathy. He has the sort of attitude that would use that negativity to spur him on; however at 36 years old it’s possible this may not just be a one-month blip and instead a sign of his decline as a force at the plate.

The team that does hold the worst record is the Kansas City Royals. The tragic death of pitcher Yordano Ventura continues to cast a shadow over the club, as does the looming free agent status of a number of core players (Eric Hosmer, Mike Moustakas, Lorenzo Cain being the main ones).  It looks like this is the end of the line for this World Series-winning group and they may be set for a rebuild, which is a shame for their fans but the memories of their 2015 triumph will sustain them for years to come.

In the National League, it’s the Royals’ World Series opponents from 2014 and 2015 that are getting most of the flak.

The San Francisco Giants have started slowly and whilst there’s enough talent on their roster to get back into the Wild Card race, losing Madison ‘I’m just a crashing dirt bike numpty’ Bumgarner for a couple of months at least is a significant blow. Much as it would be just like the Giants, and especially just like MadBum, to defy the odds and stage a glorious comeback, they’re making things very difficult for themselves.

The same could be said for the New York Mets. Injuries, injuries, injuries is the story here and what’s most concerning is the sense that this isn’t just down to bad luck. Yoenis Cespedes and Noah Syndergaard are the latest two stars to reportedly pull rank and play through fitness concerns, only to make matters worse. You don’t like to criticise players who are desperate to be on the field, but it does raise questions as to who is in charge and looking at the bigger picture of a long season.

10-day DL

The Mets’ management of injury concerns comes at a time when we’re seeing a significant change in the approach of teams towards injuries.

One of the many changes brought about by the new Collective Bargaining Agreement signed over the off-season was the introduction of a 10-day Disabled List, down from the 15-days that it had been for many years.

The disabled list is something that can confuse Brits new to MLB. The starting point is simply that the players on the DL are injured; however formally placing them on the DL is part of managing the strict limit of 25 players that a team has at their disposal on a given day.

An MLB team’s 25-man roster is part of their overall 40-man roster of players, and this is then part of an organisation-wide group of players throughout their 5 or 6 Minor League teams (‘feeder’ teams, in a sense).

The Disabled List is there so that teams can’t simply game the system by having a large squad of players to mix-and-match from every single day. If a player on your active 25-man roster picks up an injury, you either have to play short-handed while he recovers or place him on the DL so that you can put someone in his place.

With a 15-day DL, teams were more inclined to keep hold of a player for minor niggles rather than have to be without them for a couple of weeks. The Players Association (union) were keen to change this as it tended to mean players were back out on the field earlier than they probably should have been.

The idea of the 10-day DL is that the shorter time period will make teams err on the side of caution and give the player time to recuperate fully. The first month of the new rule has shown this to be the case. More players are going on the DL and this has a knock-effect in ‘real’ baseball (opportunities for other players to get some Major League service time) and in ‘fantasy’ baseball.

Doing well despite the injuries

The Washington Nationals were many people’s favourites for the NL East division this season and they’ve shown why during April by amassing an MLB-leading 17-8 record. That positivity comes with the recent blow of losing off-season recruit Adam Eaton to a knee injury that looks set to see him miss the rest of the season.

The actual impact of his absence on the Nationals’ play-off hopes is lessened by how strong their roster is, although losing a good player like Eaton is always going to be a blow.

You could say the same about the Boston Red Sox and David Price. They’re not pulling up any trees so far, but a 13-11 April keeps them nicely in the running and Chris Sale has been outstanding.

Price is continuing his rehabilitation from an arm injury that many feared could see him miss the entire season and whilst there’s still no firm timetable for his return, currently it looks like he may be back on a Major League mound at the end of May or beginning of June. There’s no need to rush him, despite the competitive nature of the AL East, and if he can be up to speed for the second-half of the season then they’ll have an intimidating front three to their rotation with reigning Cy Young Award winner Rick Porcello an impressive ‘number three’ to call on.

The ‘nice’ start for Boston comes with the ominous signs of a young New York Yankees team that doesn’t see 2017 as a rebuilding year. They’ve looked really impressive in April, Aaron Judge in particularly showing off his incredible power at the plate, all whilst being without Didi Gregorious for most of the month and their best young player, Gary Sanchez, heading to the DL. He could be back in the lineup by the end of this week so this could be much more than just a good start.

If they can keep it up, the Yankees will be in a very different position at this year’s trade deadline than they were in 2016. Whilst last year they were shopping veteran players for prospects, this year they may use some of their prospect depth to add a starting pitcher (Jose Quintana would be the obvious one) to make a play-off push.

The Colorado Rockies and Arizona Diamondbacks also shouldn’t be overlooked as they’re the NL West front-runners in the early going.

The Rockies have started well despite their main off-season recruit, Ian Desmond, only just making his debut yesterday due to recovering from a fractured left hand. As for the D-Backs, they’ve suffered the blow of losing pitcher Shelby Miller to an elbow injury that will almost certainly require Tommy John surgery and over a year on the sidelines. It’s a cruel blow considering he’d shown positive signs in his first couple of starts after a miserable 2016 and will add to the case of Arizona signing him being one of the worst trade decisions by a team in recent history.

Other players standing out

Marcus Thames has been the big story of April, swatting 11 home runs for the Milwaukee Brewers in his first month back in the Big Leagues after a three-year stint in the Korean league. Sadly his power surge has prompted the inevitable sniping from some that drugs may be involved, but Thames came back with a great response (“If people keep thinking I’m on stuff, I’ll be here every day. I have a lot of blood and urine”).

The Houston Astros’ Dallas Keuchel beat the Oakland A’s on Sunday to make it a perfect 5-0 record from his first five starts. Painful as it was to watch for this A’s fan in some ways, you have to appreciate a pitcher like Keuchel who doesn’t rely on 95+ mph fastballs to mow down opposing line-ups.

Ervin Santana will look to equal Keuchel’s record 5-0 record on Tuesday night starting against, of course, the A’s (Sonny Gray will make his much-anticipated first start of the season for Oakland in that game too). Santana’s strong start for the Minnesota Twins has been a great surprise for his team and, as is the way, puts him in the shop window for a potential trade later in the season.

Finally, Chris Coghlan deserves a mention for what he did against Yadi Molina and the St Louis Cardinals. Dives in football are rightly condemned; in baseball, they can be a thing of wonder.

MLB returns for 2017

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Here we are at last: baseball is back.

Whilst Andy Williams may sing that Christmas is ‘the most wonderful time of the year,’ the start of the MLB regular season is every bit as exciting for those of us that follow the sport.

It feels a long time coming, even with all of the off-season trades, signings and rumours, and the fact that the 2016 season ended up with a thrilling World Series makes the anticipation all the stronger for it all to get going again.

Who’s going to win?

No sport is predictable, least of all one with a regular season containing 2430 games, yet it’s fair to say the 2017 MLB predictions currently going up online are following a similar pattern.

There’s no hiding that the five National League play-off teams from last season are most likely to be playing post-season baseball again this year.

The reigning World Series champions Chicago Cubs are the team to beat in the Central, with the Washington Nationals and New York Mets, and the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Francisco Giants, looking good to battle it out for the East, West and two Wild Card spots.

That doesn’t mean it’s going to be uneventful, even if those teams do come out on top.

As for the outsiders, the St Louis Cardinals and Pittsburgh Pirates are the obvious teams that could get in the Wild Card mix. The Arizona Diamondbacks could get into the running too if their bad luck from 2016 turns to good luck in 2017. It will also be worth keeping an eye on the rebuilding Atlanta Braves who have now built their new ballpark and are getting closer to building a team that can get them back to their glory days.

The American League looks more open, other than the strong likelihood of the Cleveland Indians winning the Central division (with the Detroit Tigers probably set to trade a few players away before the August deadline).

There are genuinely three teams that could win the AL East, never mind compete for a Wild Card, in the Boston Red Sox, Baltimore Orioles and Toronto Blue Jays. It’s possible the New York Yankees could also make a play-off push if their young players continue to impress enough to make the team make some further additions in the summer.

There could also be three teams in the mix in the West. The Texas Rangers are the team to beat, but arguably they over-performed with their 95 wins last season and both the Houston Astros and Seattle Mariners have been active over the off-season.

For what it’s worth, I’m going for:

NL East: Mets, NL Central: Cubs, NL West: Dodgers, WC: Nationals and Giants.

AL East: Red Sox, AL Central: Indians, AL West: Astros, WC: Blue Jays, Orioles.

Getting ready for Opening Week

1. Make sure MLB.TV is up and running

BT Sport offers plenty of games across the season so that there is a good TV option for UK-based fans; however ‘plenty of games’ isn’t the same as ‘all the games’ and that’s what makes MLB.TV such an essential purchase for me.

Monday will show that straight away as MLB.TV subscribers can flick between a whole host of early starts during the British evening. I’ll then be able to get up in the early hours and watch the Oakland A’s season-opener too.

Rule #1: there’s no such thing as too much baseball.

2. Book some days off work

Okay, not much use as a ‘to-do list’ for you reading this now, but hopefully you’ve already planned ahead. I book up the first few working days of the MLB season as annual leave as soon as I can to make sure I can enjoy the first few evenings (and early mornings) without having to get up to go to work straight after.

3. Check out the schedule for the first week

This will be my twelfth season running BaseballGB and regular visitors will know that one of the features here is a guide published every Monday setting out the ‘early’ games (day-games in the States and that are in the evening UK time) for the week ahead.

There are 25 early starts from Monday to Friday this coming working week. I refer you back to rule #1!

4. Sort out my Oakland A’s schedule

Much as I try to catch all of the teams on a regular basis, my primary focus is on the Oakland A’s.

The first two series in my Oakland A’s schedule

I’ve printed out an A’s game schedule for April that lists the games with start times in BST, blocks them into each individual series against different teams and highlights the day-games.

The A’s have eight series in April and all but one – a mid-week three-game set in Anaheim near the end of the month – have at least one day-game scheduled.

I find it’s useful to have those set out so that you can plan around them and work out when best to add in some early-hour contests too (if, like me, your work gets in the way of watching every one).

5. Set your fantasy team(s) for the first week

It’s not just the regular season you need to focus on, the fantasy season is important too.

I’m not the most obsessive fantasy baseball player and my in-season strategy predominantly involves simply making sure I don’t make too many mistakes in leaving players on my active team that aren’t playing. So, setting up my pitching staff for the week ahead, mindful that plans may still change mid-week, is a key preparation job for me to remember.

Sunday’s triple-header

Although Monday will feel like the true Opening Day, the recent switch to a triple-header on a Sunday to start the season was a great move. Here are the games we can enjoy:

18.10. Yankees at Rays (Tanaka – Archer) *BT Sport/ESPN
21.10. Giants at Diamondbacks (Bumgarner – Greinke) *BT Sport/ESPN
01.35. Cubs at Cardinals (Lester – Martinez) *BT Sport/ESPN

Tropicana Field isn’t the most aesthetically pleasing place to get the season started, but the play on the field should soon make us forget the surroundings. Tanaka faced the Rays five times last season and was dominant against them, whilst Archer’s 0-3 record against the Yankees in 2016 conceals how well he pitched against them.

Zack Greinke and the D-Backs will be intent on putting a hugely disappointing 2016 behind them and they would get an immediate confidence boost if they can get the better of MadBum and the Giants to start the season at Chase Field.

Finally, the Cubs enter an MLB season as reigning champions for the first time since 1909 and where better to celebrate that than at the home of their bitter rivals. I’m sure St Louis will be gracious hosts.

Weekly Hit Ground Ball: Colon, Miller and a Windy City World Series

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WHGB11Many of us in the UK have been treated to a weekend of glorious weather, so this week’s column will be short and to the point on three stories that caught my eye from Saturday’s games.

Bartolo Colon hit a home run

The pro-DH/anti-DH arguments are well known and many are firmly set in their position. For some people, the many wasted plate appearances of pitchers without much of a clue or hope with a bat in their hands just add up to too much to make the occasional bright spot worthwhile.

Not for me. Let’s be honest, there are a significant minority of position players in the Majors right now who aren’t much to write about with the bat so creating an extra 15 batting positions (i.e. all 15 NL teams adding an extra hitter to replace the pitcher) every day won’t lead to 15 more stars being created.

I am quite happy to live with aimless at-bats when it leads to occasional moments like this …

Shelby Miller won a game

I’ve cursed this man’s name many times over the past month having ignored my gut feeling and drafted him on my BGB Fantasy League team. Miller hasn’t just been disappointing considering what the D-Backs gave up in the trade to acquire him, he has been terrible on any measure.

The Yahoo fantasy competition had regularly been publishing notes of ‘x’ number of managers having dropped Miller, but I felt like if I was going to drop him after a few bad games, I should never have drafted him. That’s not to claim this is disciplined fantasy management in action – quite the opposite, I’ve been blindly hoping he will come good out of a combination of stubbornness and desperation – yet I had chosen my path and I was going to keep going down the road until I really had no choice but to call it a dead end.

Miller’s scheduled start on Saturday against the Atlanta Braves, his former team, was the moment of truth. If he couldn’t look vaguely useful against this current Braves batting lineup then I’d be left with little choice. Maybe it was the pressure of potentially being dropped from my Cheddar Chasers that inspired him, maybe not; either way his 6 innings pitched with 4 hits and 2 runs allowed meant he finally contributed something positive.

The 2 walks to 1 strike-out don’t bode so well for this continuing, but he’s earned another week on my team at least.

A Windy City World Series?

That the Chicago Cubs beat the Washington Nationals again to move to 23-6 wasn’t much of a surprise as Joe Maddon’s men are playing exceptionally well.

It’s the way that the White Sox are continuing to confound predictions that is really standing out. Chris Sale moved to 7-0 by mowing down Minnesota in a 7-2 victory on Saturday, leading his team to a 21-10 record.

Few people saw the White Sox’s emergence coming and the doubts around them may prove to be valid; however for now it’s fun to imagine a World Series between the two Chicago teams.

MLB 2016 – National League Preview

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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 …

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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.

Off-season so far: National League

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

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

This part of the review focuses on the National League.

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

NL Central – Cubs on the prowl

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NL East – Waiting for a big move

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

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

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

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

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

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

Loads of money equals loads of drama

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MLB’s Winter Meetings event takes place next week and, up until a few days ago, it was shaping up to be the usual annual cattle market where the big names were finally going to find a new home.

Instead, the two leading free agents, David Price and Zack Greinke, have been taken off the market before any of the teams have booked into their hotel rooms.

The Boston Red Sox always looked like a frontrunner for Price’s services. A last-placed finish in the season just gone came after an offseason when they lost Jon Lester and spent their money on hitters, Hanley Ramirez and Pablo Sandoval, rather than acquiring an ace starting pitcher.

The Red Sox have plenty of money to spend and a change in their Front Office, bringing in ex-Detroit Tiger General Manager Dave Dombrowski, signalled that they were going to be aggressive in turning their fortunes around.

Price is exactly the type of elite talent that a well-heeled team like the Red Sox should be spending their money on. It’s required a huge commitment from them, a seven-year contract worth $217m (approximately £20.5m per year, or £394k per week), yet they can afford it even if a major injury comes along at some point and takes him off the field for an extended period.

That’s perfectly illustrated by looking at the dealings of the reigning AL East champions, and Price’s former team, the Toronto Blue Jays.

There’s a vast difference in committing $217m in a player to $36m. However, look past the headline figures and Price is much more likely to be worth $30m or so per year to the Red Sox than J.A. Happ will be worth the $12m per year that the Blue Jays will be paying him over the next three years. Limit it to the next two years and add Marco Estrada, who like Happ has been little better than average for most of his career, to the mix and you’ve got the Red Sox paying Price $30m per year, with the Blue Jays spending $25m combined on Estrada and Happ.

Which scenario would Toronto fans prefer?

It’s important to explain that the $25m figure is averaged out a bit by me there, as Estrada’s two-year $26m contract pays him $11m in 2016 and $14m in 2017, whilst Happ will earn $10m in 2016, then $13m in 2017 (and again in 2018).  So in reality it’s $30m against $21m in 2016, then $30m against $27m in 2017.

What we’re seeing in Toronto’s contracts is how they are structuring deals as part of their wider payroll and the other commitments they have, including the small matter of a potential extension for Jose Bautista and/or Edwin Encarnacion in the near future.

All the same, Toronto are not a small market team that need to scrimp and save around the edges, or at least they shouldn’t be operating in that way. Putting money into one pitcher rather than two brings additional risk, but it appears as though the Blue Jays made this choice and never really got into the final running to re-sign Price. They may live to regret that decision, particularly as Price has stayed in the AL East to potentially haunt them.

That’s even more the case when we consider that Price’s seven-year/$217m deal is actually more likely to be a three-year/$90m deal. The pitcher can opt out of the contract at that point and, as we’ve just seen with Greinke, if he’s healthy and performs as he can during that period then he will opt out of the remaining four years and $127m to get another – i.e. longer and more lucrative – contract.

The opt-out is becoming a standard part of major free agent contracts precisely because it serves the player so well. The risk is all taken on by the team; if Price gets injured or has a sudden drop-off in performance then the Red Sox are committed to the additional $127m regardless.

There is a potential benefit for the team in this scenario if they are taking a gamble that the player will be well worth the money initially and opt out, only to then see the ageing process reduce his effectiveness with another team being lumbered with paying him at that point.

You’ve got to think, though, that the only real benefit in the opt-out for Boston is that they got Price at all. The chances are that the opt-out was close to non-negotiable, other than Boston significantly increasing the average annual value of the contract, which would have raised the risk and really raised the bar for the next ace pitcher free agent’s demands.

If they believe in Price’s future, and there’s no reason not to other than the usual doubts about pitcher health, the Red Sox are left delighted to have him, but with the slight sense of foreboding that he might ‘do a Greinke’ in three years time.

Whilst Price’s signing with the Red Sox was no surprise, Zack Greinke signing for the Arizona Diamondbacks was a genuine shock.

The six-year, $206m contract (approximately £22.7m per year, or £436k per week) is completely out of kilter with the D-Backs’ recent dealings. ESPN summed it up best when they noted that the $206m they’ve committed in Greinke is more than all of their Major League Free Agent spending over the last eight off-seasons combined.

The splurge reportedly has not impressed some of the big market teams. You can understand the unhappiness of teams that commit sizeable sums to the shared revenue money pool, only to have a team like the D-Backs pocket it for several seasons and then use the financial flexibility to outbid them for an elite starting pitcher. That’s certainly not what teams like the L.A. Dodgers believe the ‘fairness’ of revenue sharing is about and it will be a significant point of contention among the 30 MLB ownership groups over the next year as a new Collective Bargaining Agreement with the Players’ Union is negotiated.

For the rest of us, the D-Backs jumping in to, and winning, what had appeared to be a personal battle between the titans of the NL West division, the Dodgers and the San Francisco Giants, for Greinke’s signature is a remarkable outcome that should spice up the division no end.

The Giants have already responded (and perhaps that should be started to respond) by signing Jeff Samardzija to a five-year, $90m contract. Meanwhile the smarting Dodgers are not going to sit idly by with their huge financial reserves sitting in the bank.

Whilst we won’t have the futures of Price and Greinke to debate during the Winter Meetings this coming week, the way those signings have panned out – 2015’s last-placed Red Sox retooling in the AL East and the D-Backs taking Greinke away from the first-placed Dodgers in the NL West – are only going to make the free agent and trade market all the more exciting.

 

NL West: Off-season so far

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Now that the calendar has moved from 2014 to 2015, we’re past the mid off-season hump and it’s downhill all the way towards Spring Training games in March and the MLB regular season getting underway at the start of April.

That makes it a good time to review where all the teams are in terms of their off-season recruits and what they may be looking to do over the next six or seven weeks before teams report back to their Spring Training camps.

I’ll be looking at each division in turn over the next week, starting with the home of the reigning World Series champions.

The story of the NL West offseason so far begins with the surprising San Diego Padres.

Back in November most rumours surrounding the Padres concerned their leading three starting pitchers – Andrew Cashner, Tyson Ross and Ian Kennedy – and the potential that one or more might be traded away.

Instead, San Diego has decided to add rather than subtract by completely revamping their outfield through trading for Matt Kemp, Justin Upton and Wil Myers. Whether they have done enough to push their way into Wild Card contention remains to be seen, but it’s great to see another team going for it rather than dreaming of a better year that may take a long time to come.

The Padres’ pursuit of a playoff place would be helped by the LA Dodgers and San Francisco Giants taking a step back. The Boston Red Sox have done their best to help by taking away Hanley Ramirez and Pablo Sandoval as free agent signings and in the case of the Giants the loss of the Kung Fu Panda may hurt the most.

Sandoval’s overall contributions haven’t really matched his lofty star status forged by postseason exploits and his position as a fan favourite; however replacing him with the underwhelming Casey McGehee isn’t a good start and that comes as part of a disappointing offseason so far, highlighted by the failed pursuit of Jon Lester.

The Dodgers meanwhile have had a shake-up in the Front Office and on their Major League roster, with Jimmy Rollins and Howie Kendrick now manning the middle infield, Yasmani Grandal taking over catching duties and Brandon McCarthy joining the rotation. They haven’t made a glamour move or significantly improved what was already a talented roster, but they have freshened things up whilst giving themselves a bit of flexibility (such as trading Kemp to allow top prospect Joc Pederson to take over in centrefield) so that they remain the best team in the division.

The Giants still have plenty of talent and experience too, yet so far judging their offseason – and adding in their now traditional World Series swoon – you would give the Padres a fighting chance at grabbing second place and a potential Wild Card.

Colorado are still stuck in limbo with the too-often-injured Troy Tulowtizki and Carlos Gonzalez, whilst Arizona have made managerial changes (on the field and at General Manager level) and moves on the margins, so that both teams look set to battle for the fourth and fifth spots. Watching how the D-Backs’ new Cuban recruit Yasmany Thomas gets on will be the main sub-plot.

Above them, the main thing to look for over the next couple of months is what the Giants do, if we accept that the Padres have probably finished their main moves and the Dodgers will tinker to help cement first place. Adding another impact starter would really help the Giants and that remains a possibility with the likes of Max Scherzer and James Shields on the market.

Weekly Hit Ground Ball: Season Number Eight

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Baseball is on its way. The Superbowl has been and gone, MLB.TV subscription details have been announced and teams are starting to head to their Spring Training camps in Arizona or Florida.

The long winter months are tough to get through, but we’re over the worst of it and can now look ahead to what is certain to be another incredible MLB season.

I’ve been covering MLB in a weekly column, ‘Weekly Hit Ground Ball’, since 2007 and will do so again in 2014. It’s undergone various format changes over the years to hopefully keep it fresh, including changing from being published on a Sunday to a Monday.

This season as standard I’ll be going almost full circle and returning to something close to the initial format where I used the column to bring together all of the major stories, plus other things that caught my eye, in one bundle.

That approach is going to be flexible, so if one major story dominates the news agenda in a given week then I’ll devote the entire column to that, but by and large I’ll try to touch plenty of bases in the column and will chip in with a post or two during the rest of the week if a particular story deserves to be covered there and then rather than waiting for Monday (or Sunday, as I’ll occasionally be putting it online a day earlier, such as this weekend).

With that explained, let’s head on to the main stories of the last few days.

Arizona extensions

I mentioned last week that I had picked up the Baseball Prospectus 2014 book and the first two team essays – on Arizona and Atlanta – have proved quite prescient.

The Diamondbacks were the first team to open their Spring Training camp due to their participation in the early MLB season opener in Australia.

The BP essay focused on the futures of General Manager Kevin Towers and Manager Kirk Gibson. Both were due to enter this season with only one year remaining on their contracts and with some question marks over whether they would be with the team in 2015.

It was thought that they would need to use the 2014 season as an extended trial to prove they were the men to take the team forward in the coming years; however those thoughts were pushed aside this week as both received contract extensions.

The D-Backs are in an interesting position having finished dead on .500 in each of the last two seasons and with the Dodgers’ spending making them strong favourites for the NL West division again.

Arizona need to find a way to take the next step and to push for a Wild Card spot and if they don’t it would call into question whether the contract extensions, Gibson’s in particular, were a good decision. Acting early does at least mean there will be no distractions if the season doesn’t start brilliantly for them, so in that sense clearing up the issue could work in their favour.

Arizona have improved their chances of a mounting a decent challenge by agreeing to a two-year deal with Bronson Arroyo. Their starting rotation was in need of support and Arroyo’s brand of solid if unspectacular work should meet the need well.

Eight years for Freeman

The Atlanta Braves’ chapter in BP 2014 centred on their young core of players and impending dilemmas the team would face in trying to keep hold of as many as possible.

Stage one in that process was completed this week as the team agreed an eight-year, $135m contract extension with first baseman Freddie Freeman. It’s the most lucrative contract in the team’s history and shows how much faith they have in the 24-year-old.

His age is crucial to the deal for the Braves. Freeman finished fifth in the NL MVP voting process last season and yet you could have a long argument over whether he’s really an elite young player worthy of $135m or ‘just’ a very good one. The key point is that either way it represents good value because the Braves are going to be paying that money when he’s in his prime.

The Braves also agreed a two-year, $13.3m deal with outfielder Jason Heyward. He was already under contract with the team for those years, and it may prove difficult for Atlanta to keep hold of him beyond this point, but this at least puts to bed any arbitration wrangling.

Which camp?

There are still a number of free agents who don’t yet know which Spring Training camp they will be heading to.

It was presumed that A.J. Burnett would be staying at home and beginning retirement, but in the past couple of weeks it has emerged that he fancies giving it at least one more year. A return to the Pirates does not appear to be on the cards, leaving the Orioles, Phillies and Blue Jays as the likely main contenders for his signature.

Ubaldo Jimenez and Ervin Santana are also on the radar of teams seeking an additional starting pitcher. Jimenez has been heavily linked with a move to Toronto although no deal has been struck just yet.

Seattle bound

Fernando Rodney reportedly has found a new team in time for the beginning of Spring Training after agreeing a two-year contract with the Mariners.

Seattle are also seen as the team keenest to end outfielder Nelson Cruz’s stay on the free agent market.  Cruz has been characterised as the booby prize this offseason with the assumption being that one team desperate for a right-handed bat will hand the 33-year-old a multi-year contract they’ll soon come to regret.

After taking their $240m plunge with Robinson Cano there’s a sense that the Mariners need to add at least one more bat to the mix in 2014 and that they may be the team to pay Cruz.

Another victim

Sadly it’s always only a matter of time in Spring Training before a pitcher’s season is cut cruelly short before it has even begun as their elbow gives way and Tommy John surgery is required.

This spring’s first victim, the Padres’ Cory Luebke, is doubly unfortunate as he is undergoing the operation for a second time after his recovery from the first operation didn’t go to plan. Luebke has been out of action since May 2012 and it will be 2015 before he has any chance of getting back out onto the field.

Good news at last

Finally, that rarest of things: a news story about Alex Rodriguez that is good for baseball. Rodriguez has dropped his lawsuit and accepted a season-long ban for his alleged part in the Biogenesis drug case. The game didn’t need the sideshow of an ongoing bitter legal dispute this year and we can now all concentrate on positive news such as the teams heading back to Spring Training camps.