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Weekly Hit Ground Ball: The first Sunday of MLB 2018

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

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

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

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

Happ Happy, Jeter not so much

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

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

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

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

Extra thoughts on extra innings

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

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

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

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

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

Home runs and more home runs

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pillar pilfers three bases

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

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

Sunday Game To Watch

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

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

Bend or Break?

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Monday morning can be a dispiriting time, wondering where the weekend went, but a new week can also be welcome if the previous week wasn’t one of your best.

That would definitely apply to the Atlanta Braves.

Last week for the Braves was one of the most chastening an MLB team has experienced in recent memory. A well-respected organisation, one year on from moving into a new publicly-funded ballpark and full of optimism with their new youth movement, was exposed as having been breaking rules left, right and centre around the signing of international free agents.

Staff departures have included ex-General Manager John Coppolella effectively being banned for life from working in MLB, they’ve lost 12 of the players that they signed against the rules, and will face penalties in signing amateur players and international free agents until 2021.

Add on the reputational damage to the organisation and Atlanta have been dealt a severe punishment. Few seem to be arguing with it much, but many comments on the saga have included the following sentiment:

Everyone else is doing it too.

Young talent

It’s a familiar argument thrown out by anyone that gets caught, intended to justify their own actions whilst trying to take down others with them.

There’s probably some truth in it too in this case.  The Boston Red Sox lost 5 signings and received a short-term international signing ban in July last year for similar transgressions, getting around the spending limits by various ‘creative’ means.

The difference in the Braves’ case was the scale on which they were operating and how big of an advantage they were therefore gaining in the number and quality of prospects they amassed.

In other words, they didn’t just bend the rules, they broke them.

Of course, where the rules are clearly set out – as they are with international signing budgets – a bend is as good as break, yet in any competitive landscape a certain amount of bending is often both expected and accepted.

Teams will always look for ways to get around rules if it gives them an advantage.  Recruitment of young talent is a particularly ripe area for pushing boundaries as it largely goes on with no publicity.

The same happens in football.  Both Liverpool and Manchester City received fines and academy signing bans this summer due to breaking rules on making illegal approaches for young players.  Stories are legion around teams finding ways to convince families to let their sons join their academies (creating jobs for parents, free accommodation, paying of school fees for other siblings etc), all of which are not allowed.

Teams do it because ‘everyone else does’, or at least they think they do, and if they don’t then they’ll miss out. However every now and then someone pushes the boundaries too far and leaves the authorities with no choice but to act.  That’s what happened to the Braves.

Shohei Ohtani

It’s bad timing for some teams as last week it was announced that a new framework for the transfer of Japanese players to MLB was agreed, with Shohei Otani the latest big talent on the verge of moving to the Majors. There will be a lot of focus on ensuring due process is followed.

His signing bonus will fall within the international pool money rules. The Texas Rangers have the most money in their overall signing pool at $3,535,000, with the Yankees now close behind at $3.5m after building up their pot with a recent trade with the Miami Marlins.

More importantly, 12 teams – including the Dodgers and Astros – are limited to only offering $300k to a player following spending in previous years. Theoretically they have little chance of signing him as they cannot come close to the offers other teams can put forward in financial terms.

However, it’s not unheard of for teams to agree a multi-year contract with a talented young player in the first year or two in the Majors. So what if Otani decided to accept $300k from the Dodgers, citing the well-trodden path of Hideo Nomo, Hiroki Kuroda, Kenta Maeda and others that have ‘made it his dream to play for the Dodgers’, only to then agree a multi-year contract in Spring Training?

It’s fair to say, especially after what’s just happened to the Braves, the MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred would not let such a public workaround slide.

But what if the Dodgers agree a contract in two years’ time, particularly if Ohtani gains ‘Super 2’ status and is eligible for arbitration in his third MLB season? If the two sides agreed to do that as part of signing him now then that’s clearly breaking the rules, yet if it’s a verbal, informal arrangement then how easy would it be to prove? A five-year deal at that point, covering all of his arbitration years and buying out one year of free agency, would be entirely in line with industry practice, provided the dollar values were not too out of kilter with previous cases.

As it’s the Rangers and Yankees at the top of the budget pool list, the odds are good that he’ll go to one of those two teams and that very blatant scenario will not come about, yet even then you wouldn’t be surprised if Ohtani signed a multi-year contract at some point in the next year or two with the Rangers or Yankees.  There’s no difference, it’s really how cynical a move it appears to be.

Whether you’re bending the rules or breaking them.

Hall of Fame

Which brings us to the thorniest of subject matters: Hall of Fame voting and consideration of alleged drug use.

For several years many voters have bemoaned the position they had been put in, not least due to the Hall of Fame’s deafening silence on the topic.

That silence was broken last week by Joe Morgan who emailed all voters, aided by the Hall of Fame, setting out his view that “players who failed drug tests, admitted using steroids, or were identified as users in Major League Baseball’s investigation into steroid abuse, known as the Mitchell Report, should not get in”.

Whether you agree with the view espoused or not, the fact that a high-profile figure like Morgan actually set out a position was welcome, yet in doing so he also highlighted how difficult this issue is.  Morgan stated, “we hope the day never comes when known steroid users are voted into the Hall of Fame. They cheated. Steroid users don’t belong here”.

It’s a worthy moral position to take, but the problem is it’s almost certain steroid users have already been voted in and plenty of other players that “cheated” in different ways are enshrined in Cooperstown too. The latter is where things get increasingly tricky.

Some say there is a big difference between using steroids and shovelling amphetamines (‘greenies’ as they were known in baseball during the 1970s and 1980s) down your throat like Smarties.  In terms of performance-enhancing impact, that’s debatable.  What it comes back to is thinking one is bending the rules, whilst the other is breaking them.

We’ve had a related issue in British sport recently where Shane Sutton, former senior coach at Team Sky and British cycling, discussed the use of therapeutic use exemptions (TUEs). As he explained to the BBC:

“If you’ve got an athlete that’s 95% ready, and that little 5% injury or niggle that’s troubling, if you can get that TUE to get them to 100%, yeah of course you would in those days,” he said.

“The business you’re in is to give you the edge on your opponent… and ultimately at the end of the day it’s about killing them off.

“But definitely don’t cross the line and that’s something we’ve never done.”

“Don’t cross the line” is the important phrase there; bend the rules, but don’t break them.  When he then went on to label this as “finding the gains” he didn’t just make many pick up their dobbers to mark off a square in their Bullshit Bingo card, he also put it all into context.

People will always look at the rules and try to ‘find the gains’ however they can.  Rightly or wrongly, that’s the nature of the beast, whether it’s competing for signing talent in sport or the super-rich using off-shore tax havens.

The most significant difference between breaking the rules rather than bending them is not really a moral one, it’s that – as Atlanta found out – the former makes it difficult to obey the one rule that matters the most.

Don’t get caught.

Keeping Score: Braves vs Mets 2017 season-opener

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Opening Day on Monday was a real treat, with a batch of good games to watch live during the British evening.

The first two games of the day were both available to British fans without an MLB.TV subscription: the first – Marlins vs Nationals – being the MLB.com Free Game of the Day, the second – Braves vs Mets – was the first of three games on TV (BT Sport/ESPN).

I went for the latter and as it was a strong pitching match-up, Julio Teheran and Noah Syndergaard, I thought I’d get a bit of score-keeping practice in for the season ahead by jotting down the first three innings.

When I use colours on my scorecard I mark hits, walks and base advancement in blue, and outs in red. My expectation that my red pen would get most of the work proved to be correct.

Syndergaard’s first three innings. Click to enlarge

It’s not stating anything outrageous to say that Syndergaard is one of the best pitchers in the Majors, but what’s been really noticeable over the past year and a bit is how he has elevated himself into an elite group of pitchers whose starts are an event. Even accounting for the pomp and ceremony of Opening Day, that was abundantly clear at Citi Field on Monday.

Syndergaard was in dominant form right from the off, his blazing fastball (98 MPH was his run-of-the-mill average offering) and ridiculous slider were a nightmare for the Braves hitters.

The first five went down in order before Brandon Phillips, making his debut for Atlanta after his off-season trade from the Cincinnati Reds, was able to notch a single. The Mets’ starter was unfussed by this and Adonis Garcia subsequently grounded into a force-out at second to end the inning before Syndergaard set the Braves down in order in the third.

Three innings, one hit, three strike-outs.

Julio Teheran’s first three innings. Click to enlarge

Teheran was able to keep pace by blanking the Mets through the first three innings too.

It wasn’t quite so clean as Syndergaard’s innings as Teheran allowed a base-runner in each (two singles and a walk); however he was able to strand them on all three occasions.

The starting pitchers continued to match each other over the next three innings before the game was turned over to the bullpens for the final third of the game.

Things immediately went wrong for the Braves from there as the Mets put up a six-spot in the seventh inning for what proved to be the only runs of the game.

Had I continued to keep score of the entire game I would have received an Opening Day score-keeping lesson. Score-keepers soon learn that you must never assume a play or call will be made and should watch it to a conclusion before noting anything down, but in MLB now we also have to take into account that an umpire’s initial call is no longer final.

Wilmer Flores came into the game as a pinch-runner and was originally called out at a very close play at the plate. The Mets called for a replay and this showed that Flores had just beaten out the throw from centre-field. The course of the game may well have been very different had the replay challenge not been available and it was the type of key decision that replay review helps greatly with (there was no blame attached to the home plate umpire’s original call as it was very marginal and looked out on first viewing).

Had I marked down the original out call in my red pen it would have been a messy job to correct it. That’s the type of situation that makes keeping score in pencil a preference for many; however I’ve found that once you start using coloured pens it makes such a big visual difference that you really don’t want to go back to plain-old pencil (unless that’s all you have to hand).

The answer is simply practicing so that you reduce the amount of mistakes and/or corrections on a scorecard and here was a perfect example of holding back on committing pen to paper on a play that might be challenged.

Whilst I didn’t directly learn that lesson here – as I didn’t score that part of the game – I did find out that the new pens I had bought bleeded through into the other side of the paper.

The Atlanta Braves need to find a way to get the better of the Mets’ outstanding pitching (Jacob deGrom is next up when the series resumes on Wednesday); I need to buy some new pens.

I think I’ve got the slightly easier task of the two.

Weekly Hit Ground Ball: 0-10 Avoided

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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

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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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There are two main subplots from the trades.

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

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

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

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

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

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

WHGB: Notes from MLB Opening Week

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WHGB11There were 15 MLB games yesterday, 15 today and then another 14 tomorrow. After so many months without it, you very quickly get back into the swing of having baseball to enjoy every day.

I’m planning to publish articles a bit more regularly this season rather than bringing everything together into a weekly column, but there will still be weeks when I have a range of things to comment on that don’t fit into their own article.

I’ll badge them up under my usual ‘Weekly Hit Ground Ball’ theme, so just bear in mind that they might not be quite so weekly as the name suggests.

Good starts for some

It happens every season: several teams get off to good or bad starts and there’s an overreaction as to how representative that early record is compared to the true talent of the team concerned.

It’s not just baseball this happens in either. Aston Villa took 10 points from their first four games of the 2014/15 Premier League season and ridiculously gave manager Paul Lambert a contract extension on the back of it. “We can look to the future with real optimism”, Lambert said at the time. When reality set in (and considering their early good form included an unconvincing 2-1 home win against Hull and a 0-0 home bore draw against Newcastle, it shouldn’t have needed much thinking time) he ended up being hounded out in mid February with the team fighting a relegation battle.

So, nobody should be too quick to put money on the 4-1 Colorado Rockies winning the NL West, nor to laugh at the Washington Nationals’ pre-season favourites tag due to their 1-4 start.

Having written that, the Atlanta Braves should be celebrating their 5-0 start considering their lowly expectations for the year ahead, just as Cincinnati Reds can delight in their 4-1 start at home, and the Kansas City Royals can see their 5-0 start as a thumb in the eye for all who considered their 2014 World Series appearance to be a fluke.

Those starts to the season may not be the least bit indicative of the year ahead, but that doesn’t mean fans of those teams can’t enjoy them all the same.

Breakfast baseball

One part of following MLB in the UK that I neglected to mention in my recent article was the wonderful bonus of breakfast time baseball that we occasionally get to enjoy. This is typically when a west coast game runs on for a while – perhaps going into extra innings or due to a rain delay – so that the game is still ongoing around 7 a.m. BST.

We got our first dose of Bonus Breakfast Baseball on Wednesday morning and it was a memorable way to start as it featured Craig Kimbrel making his San Diego Padres debut. Kimbrel didn’t disappoint, striking out all three LA Dodgers batters he faced and leaving his new teammates like James Shields laughing in the dugout at the ease in which he can make Major Leaguer hitters look so helpless.

Rodriguez record approaching

Pitcher Masahiro Tanaka captured most of the attention from the New York Yankees’ opening game as concerns about the state of his elbow continue to keep the Yankee beat writers occupied. However, the other main story coming out of the game was the largely positive reaction Alex Rodriguez received from the home crowd following his year-long drug-related suspension.

Rodriguez undoubtedly will be booed at every other stadium he plays in – although that’s nothing new – but it was less certain quite how the Bronx faithful would respond to him wearing pinstripes once again.

The majority appear to have taken the stance that he has served his time and so long as he is trying to help their team win games from here, they will support him like they do the rest of their players. That may well change if he starts slumping at the plate as the season progresses.

The interesting story will come if Rodriguez does have a decent season and continues to add more home runs to the one he hit against Toronto on Thursday. The Yankees spent much of the off-season seemingly trying to find ways to get out of their contract with him and particularly in respect of the marketing bonuses he will receive as he reaches new home run landmarks.

Heading into Sunday, Rodriguez is fifth on the all-time MLB home run list with 655 and just five homers behind Willie Mays. The Yankees will have to pay him $6m if he gets to 660 and the next man on the list to catch is Yankee legend Babe Ruth with 714. Ruth’s tally will likely prove to be out of reach as Rodriguez turns 40 in July, but 660 should be only a matter of time and as pessimism over the team’s 2015 prospects already starts to grow, we may find the Yankees make more of the event than you might have thought just a few months ago.

Padres pad roster, Braves bail out even more

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The San Diego Padres were one of the most active teams over the off-season and they finished with a flourish on Sunday night by acquiring star closer Craig Kimbrel from the Atlanta Braves. Outfielder Melvin (formerly known as B.J.) Upton moved that way as well in the trade as a booby prize, whilst the Braves gained a mix of established Major Leaguers (Carlos Quentin and Cameron Maybin) and some minor league talent.

It creates even more excitement around the Padres heading into the season, but we’ve seen in the past that teams who ‘win’ the off-season don’t necessarily convert that into wins during the regular season.

Kimbrel is as consistent as closers come, yet even then he has only averaged 64 innings pitched over the past three regular seasons.  Although adding such a quality pitcher will improve the Padres’ roster, over the regular season there’s only so much benefit that can be gained by adding a closer based on the innings they contribute.

However, Kimbrel is a weapon and manager Bud Black would be forgiven for wearing a devilish grin every time he calls him into a game from the bullpen.

As for the Braves, their fans have been put through the wringer this off-season. Those of us who don’t follow the team can dispassionately assess the major rebuilding work as a job well done, but when that team is a big part of your life it’s never easy to look ahead at a 162-game season that will bring little in the way of things to celebrate. That’s especially the case when your team’s Front Office has basically chosen to make the team worse in the near term.

All fans in desperate times cling to the thought that however bad their situation is, a rival may be having an even worse time. In that sense the Braves are lucky to have the Philadelphia Phillies around.

I’m still not completely sold on the idea that the Braves had to do this rebuild right now, but it’s better to rebuild too early than too late and if you’re taking that route you have to commit to it and follow it through.

Braves fans have loved watching Kimbrel dominating their opponents and so seeing him in a Padres’ uniform will be a blow at first, yet it should be even more painful for Phillies fans to see Jonathan Papelbon still wearing their colours. Philadelphia wasted $13m last year paying Papelbon to collect 39 saves on a team that finished rock bottom in the NL East, 23 games behind the division-winning Washington Nationals, and they’re currently on the hook to pay him another $13m this year too.

The Phillies’ General Manager Ruben Amaro Jr doesn’t need any help to highlight his team’s glaring mistakes over the past two or three seasons, but the Braves’ decisiveness this off-season has really shown up how badly wrong Amaro and his colleagues have got things.

So whilst Braves fans may suffer through 2015, their crumb of comfort is that the Phillies will be just as bad this year and don’t seem to have any plan to improve any time in the next few years either.

NL East: Off-season so far

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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.

Winter Meetings create a rumour wonderland

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The MLB Winter Meetings, which begin on Monday 8 December, are a pre-Christmas treat for baseball fans.

It’s the annual event, being held in San Diego this year, where all MLB teams gather alongside agents and some players as they discuss potential trades and free agent signings alongside general housekeeping around rules and procedures.

There were no major deals announced during the event last year – the three-team trade between the Arizona Diamondbacks, Chicago White Sox and Los Angeles Angels involving Mark Trumbo, Adam Eaton, Tyler Skaggs and Hector Santiago was the main deal agreed – yet the week plays an important role in setting up deals to be completed in the week or two afterwards.

And, more than anything, hordes of reporters flock to the meetings and generate copious amount of rumours for us to devour.

Free agents

Quite a few of the free agent hitters have already found new homes this offseason.

Deals completed so far include Pablo Sandoval and Hanley Ramirez signing for the Boston Red Sox, Russell Martin moving to the Toronto Blue Jays, Nelson Cruz joining the Seattle Mariners and Victor Martinez opting to stay with the Detroit Tiger.

In the past few days, two more names came off the free agent list with Nick Markakis agreeing a deal with the Atlanta Braves and Torii Hunter reuniting with the Minnesota Twins.

Consequently teams looking for position players – which is all of the teams – will be looking for potential trade partners and the free agent activity is going to focus more on the pitchers.

Jon Lester appears to be the most likely pitcher domino to fall first based on the growing rumours around alleged contracts being offered to him. Once Lester makes his decision, those that miss out may well move quickly to capture James Shields as a very capable substitute.

Max Scherzer will continue to play a waiting game unless a team throws a monumental contract offer onto the table this week, although his agent Scott Boras is sure to be a high-profile figure during the Winter Meetings.

AL East bearing its teeth

The New York Yankees broke their unusual silence this on Friday.

First they acquired shortstop Didi Gregorius as part of a three-team trade and then they signed relief pitcher Andrew Miller on a four-year contract worth $36m (just over £111k per week).

The moves are no surprise considering how competitive the AL East is likely to be in 2015.

The Boston Red Sox were woeful in 2014 and have wasted no time in improving their roster with Sandoval and Ramirez joining their lineup and plenty of rumours abounding about potential deals to come.

Meanwhile the Toronto Blue Jays have already added Russell Martin and Josh Donaldson to their lineup and, again, reports suggest they are far from finished when it comes to adding new players this offseason.

The Tampa Bay Rays are taking a more considered approach to a probably modest offseason trading period, although they made an important decision this week in appointing 36-year-old ex-catcher Kevin Cash to replace Joe Maddon as their new manager.

Which leaves us looking at the reigning division champions waiting for them to react. The Baltimore Orioles have lost Nelson Cruz and Nick Markakis this week and, even with catcher Matt Wieters and third baseman Manny Machado returning from injuries, that means they have two notable holes to fill, at least, if they are to avoid being overtaken by their division rivals.

Reading list

With the baseball games all dried up – including the MLB Japan All-Star series this year – and Christmas lists being compiled, early December is the main time of year that I spend considering additions to my baseball book library.

The Hardball Times annual is always on my list and I’ve been eagerly dipping into my 2015 copy over the last couple of days since it came through the post.

Even just from the opening three chapters reviewing the American League side of the 2014 season, I’ve learned more about the success the Cleveland Indians have had in recent years through player trades, how the Toronto Blue Jays really missed a trick in failing to improve their roster mid-season, and been reminded of some of the young players that made a mark in the American League such as the Rays’ Kevin Kiermaier, the Angels’ Kole Calhoun and the Astros’ Collin McHugh.

Baseball historian John Thorn’s book ‘Baseball in the Garden of Eden’ has been waiting on my shelf to be read for a while so I’ll be looking to get to that one soon. ‘Baseball Explained’ by Phillip Mahony also looks like being a good contender as a key book for Brits new to the game based on my initial flick through.

I’ll put together some reviews once I’ve had a chance to enjoy reading them over the next few weeks. If you’ve got any other suggestions for books to catch up on, please pass them on.