Tag Archives: Baltimore Orioles

Villar faces the Baltimore Chop

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As the Thanksgiving weekend continues in the States, spare a thought for Jonathan Villar.

On the one hand it looks like he’s about to lose several million dollars; on the other it looks like this is because he’ll be cut by the Baltimore Orioles.

To give thanks or not to give thanks, that is the question.

Villar was one of the very few positives to come out of the Orioles’ dismal 2019 season. After being acquired in a trade with the Milwaukee Brewers at the 31 July 2018 deadline, he seemed to find some new life in Baltimore and put together a season this year that called to mind his 2016 campaign with the Brew Crew.

He kept producing whilst everything was going wrong around him, most notably in trading groundballs for flyballs. Looking at his batted ball percentages on Fangraphs, Villar went from 55.9% grounders and 24.4% flyballs in 2018 to 48.9% and 31.3% respectively whilst his line drive rate stayed almost exactly the same (19.7% then 19.8%).

With it came a career high in home runs (24) and also in strike-outs (176) and when you consider his base-running exploits (40, 3rd most in the Majors, but being caught 9 times) you get the sense that he thought, if the team’s going to lose anyway, he might as well get plenty of healthy hacks and take some chances on the basepads in for his own sake.

Villar’s problem is that he played well enough to earn a sizeable raise from his $4.8m salary of 2019 in his final year of salary arbitration. MLB Trade Rumors estimates that Villar would get in the region of $10.4m and the Orioles have no interest in paying him that much money.

In a familiar refrain from recent articles here, you can understand the logic from the cold financial perspective. Despite Villar’s contributions, the Orioles still lost 108 games in 2019. To put it flippantly, they will still be perfectly capable of losing 100+ games in 2020 without Villar so why not save the money?

It would be more palatable if Baltimore had been able to find a trade partner for Villar’s services, as they attempted in recent weeks, as that way the player would still get his arbitration-driven salary and the Orioles could at least justify it as a baseball decision. However, the route they are now taking really has nothing to do with baseball.

As Baltimore couldn’t find a trade partner, their options were to keep hold of a good MLB player and look to trade him in the months ahead as new opportunities emerged (e.g. as a result of injuries on other teams) or to simply decide they’re not interested in having to pay a good MLB player a good MLB player-type salary and to get rid of him.

Villar is not an ex-Oriole just yet, he’s currently been put on waivers so that other teams can make a claim for him, although the most likely way it will play out is that he’ll become a free agent. In fairness to Baltimore, their reluctance to pay Villar $10m+ obviously is shared by other teams and reflects his season-on-season inconsistency, but looking at the situation from some other perspectives does once again turn the attention back to the non-competitive landscape in MLB right now.

The Orioles will have significant revenue coming into their coffers, in particular from local and national TV deals, regardless of how bad their team is in 2020. There is no threat of relegation or incentive to finish higher up in the standings (e.g. prize money based on your win-loss record), you can be as terrible as you like and still reap the rewards.

Where their bottom line is affected is in game-day revenue. Funnily enough, getting anyone beyond the die-hard loyal fans into the ballpark when you’re not fielding a competitive team is somewhat tricky.

In 2019, only the two Florida teams got fewer fans through the turnstiles. Baltimore drew 1,307,807 over 80 home games (16,347 average). That has been part of a downward slide in attendance as the team has racked up losses in recent years. In 2016 the Orioles earned a Wild Card with an 89-73 record and placed 20th in MLB in attendance at 2,172,344, an average of 26,819 in the 81 home games played. In 2017, Baltimore slipped to 23rd (2,028,424 total, 25,042 average), then to 26th in 2018 (1,564,192, 20,053 – technically only playing 78 home games with 3 single-ticket double-headers).

Put it together and across the four seasons the Orioles have seen their average attendance drop by 10,500, with approximately 800,000 fewer ticket sales.

Again, their low attendances in 2019 came despite the likes of Villar playing well and one or two players of that ilk are not going to make a huge difference to whether a family decides to spend some of their hard-earned money going to Camden Yards. Yet, there is a difference between making a few individual player decisions like this and taking an overall decision essentially not to bother even trying to put a watchable team out on the field for seasons on end.

You can also look at it from Villar’s point of view. He was traded to Baltimore without any say in the matter. We can’t replay the season and see what might have happened had he gone to a team that was competitive in 2019, maybe he wouldn’t have got to play so regularly, but if he had performed like this on a team more in the play-off mix then they likely would accept paying him the money to keep him around for 2020.

It’s one of the curious aspects of how MLB works that players are locked into the system, through their initial 6 MLB seasons at least, and their fate is not just determined by their performances but on which team they end up on.

We’ll see where Villar ends up next and what he makes of the opportunity that comes his way, but what we don’t need to wait for is an assessment on what it means for Baltimore’s approach. Whilst MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred does not like it being put to him that teams aren’t trying to win, it’s hard to argue with the claim when teams so blatantly show that they have no interest in paying for Major League talent.

A $26m question

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New York Yankees fans have been front and centre in hunting down video evidence for the ongoing investigation into the Houston Astros’ sign-stealing. This public service, surely not motivated by any bitterness towards their ALCS opponents, has helped to put the Bronx Bombers on the side of the good in the ongoing saga.

So it was gracious of the Yankees’ Front Office to restore normal order this week by engaging in some classic Evil Empire behaviour.

When the Yankees signed outfielder Jacoby Ellsbury to a 7-year, $153m free agent contract in the 2013/14 off-season it had the feeling of being a potential Part 4 in Boston’s Reverse the Curse of the Bambino story. Parts 1-3 were the ultimate acts, winning World Series championships in 2004, 2007 and 2013. Ellsbury was a key contributor to the 2013 triumph, having got a ring in his 2007 rookie season too, and it was all-too obvious for the Yankees to take him away from their AL East rivals when he hit the free agent market that off-season.

Ellsbury had certainly earned his standing as a leading free agent during some very successful years in Boston and the Red Sox likely would have been happy to keep him on a less-substantial contract. The Yankees were determined to make him a fixture of their outfield for years to come whilst taking him away from their rival, much as they had done with Johnny Damon during the 2005/06 off-season, and so splashed-out on a lengthy and lucrative deal to get their man.

And so Part 4 was brought into effect. Not that anyone thought the Yankees had bought a lemon, just that Ellsbury was the type of speedy player that tended to be more affected by the passing of time than most. It’s probably a stretch to pin the last two seasons lost to injury on that, injuries can happen to any player, but the way his contract has played out (okay for the first 4 years, not so for the rest) has not come as a complete surprise.

The majority feeling was that the Yankees had over-committed as part of exerting their power in taking away a key Boston player. It was a deal that always looked likely to come back to bite them, and so it has.

However, the Yankees are doing their best to fight the forces of fate. ESPN’s Buster Olney reports that they have ripped up the final year of his contract, plus the buy-out clause on an option year for 2021, due to Ellsbury “receiving unauthorized medical treatment”. In other words, the Yankees think they’ve found a way to wriggle out of paying the $26m they still owe him.

The claim is set to be challenged rigorously by the Players’ Union, not just for Ellsbury’s own case but as part of the precedent it may set in allowing a team to renege on a contract.

The full details haven’t been disclosed, so, joking aside, it’s fair to reserve judgement at this point. For all it looks like the Yankees are trying to pull a fast one, if they have clear evidence that the treatment Ellsbury underwent has made his condition worse then there may be grounds to justify their actions.

It’s an interesting case more widely within the ongoing debates around Minor League pay and plans to reduce the number of affiliated Minor League teams.

In a British sporting context, there’s a clear starting point that you are contracted to a football team, for example, and therefore your grounds to seek independent treatment, or even independent coaching, are not great. That doesn’t mean you don’t get a say, especially when it comes to getting second opinions on medical treatment and potential surgical procedures, but it rightly has to come with full disclosure and involvement with the team that is paying your wages.

Whilst it’s not exactly the same in the States, that same principle would apply to Jacoby Ellsbury’s case. The Yankees can’t force him to do whatever they like, yet as the organisation paying him a (supposed) guaranteed $21m a year to play baseball they undoubtedly have the right to a strong say in anything affecting that, and equally in Ellsbury being obligated to involve them in any such decisions.

However, what obligation should players have lower down the pecking order, such as in the Minor Leagues? A team can trade you with no notice or say at all, and even decide to terminate your contract at little financial cost, so why would you not follow your own path if you thought it best for your career?

The answer, of course, is that the 30 MLB ownership groups don’t give you a huge amount of choice. Where else are you going to go, other than taking your chances in the Independent League or hope for one of the small number of opportunities in Japan or Korea coming your way? This is the way the system works and if you want to play ball then, to a large extent, you have to play ball with whatever your current organisation wants you to do.

Ellsbury has earned millions already so he is not going to garner a lot of sympathy from the masses, even though being denied an expected $26m is a substantial issue irrespective of how much money you’ve already got in the bank.

The devil will be in the detail as to exactly what treatment he had, the effect of it, what he told the Yankees and why he went down the route of seeking alternative provisions outside of the Yankees’ control. Going against the wishes of the Yankees’ medical professionals behind their backs, if true, would be something that the team, or any other team in that situation, would be within their rights to take action against.

The case does prompt wider questions though at a time when the entire eco-system of Major League and affiliated Minor League Baseball is an ever-increasing battleground.

Like anyone else, players have obligations to their employers that they have to abide by, knowing that not doing so can put them in breach of contract. The reasonableness, and ultimate lawfulness, of those obligations in a business that is effectively a monopoly of 30 employers is an altogether more complicated matter. The antitrust exemption that MLB teams have operated under since 1922 gives them a huge amount of power in controlling the employment opportunities and rights of people wanting to play baseball professionally in North America.

How responsibly they are wielding that power is up for debate; a debate that those who fall under that power are becoming increasingly motivated to challenge.

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.

MLB Sleepyhead Summary: Yankees sweep whilst the Rangers keep winning

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The MLB Sleepyhead Summary is a new regular column that helps British baseball fans keep up to speed with MLB despite the time difference!

Yankees sweeping up New York

The New York Yankees have had to sit back and take the jibes over the past few seasons as the New York Mets got to a World Series in 2015 and became the team everyone was talking about in the Big Apple.

That must have made this week’s Subway Series sweep all the more satisfying.

The Yankees won all four games against the Mets in one of the weird inter-league series that has two games at one venue, followed straight away by two games at the other. It makes more sense in a single-city match-up than it does when the Arizona Diamondbacks and Houston Astros are paired together, as happened this week, at least.

That sets up this weekend’s series against the Boston Red Sox at Yankee Stadium perfectly, with the Red Sox leading the AL West by four games after defeating the St Louis Cardinals twice (victories including a triple-play and a three-run rally in the ninth inning).

You would be forgiven for assuming that the third game will be the ESPN Sunday Night contest, but they will be showing the Cardinals-Pirates game from the Williamsport Little League site, so instead we can catch the game at 18.30 BST. Sonny Gray, who got his first win in pinstripes on Tuesday, and Doug Fister are the probable pitchers for Sunday.

Rangers making a run for it

The team that’s really on the march right now is the Texas Rangers.

They’ve won 11 of their last 13 games, including a three-game sweep over Detroit and defeating the Chicago White Sox on Thursday in the first game of a four-game series.  The White Sox have lost their last five games and have the worst win-loss record in the American League, 45-73, so it’s a prime opportunity for the Rangers to continue their climb towards an American League Wild Card.

Whilst the Yankees have a 3.5 game gap for the top Wild Card, the rest of the group is very closely bunched, with the LA Angels currently holding the second spot and then seven teams sitting within three games of the Halos.

WC – NY Yankees (65-55) 3.5
WC – LA Angels (62-59) –
Kansas City (61-59) 0.5 Games Back
Minnesota (60-59) 1
Seattle (61-61) 1.5
Texas (60-60) 1.5
Tampa Bay (60-63) 3
Baltimore (59-62) 3
Toronto (59-62) 3

To illustrate how close it is, the Baltimore Orioles currently have five teams ahead of them before they get to the Angels, but if they can sweep their three-game series against LA this weekend they’ll have the same record as the team currently holding the second Wild Card. The Mariners have a chance to climb as they take on the out-of-form Tampa Bay Rays this weekend, whilst Kansas City and taking on the AL Central-leading Cleveland Indians.

The Toronto Blue Jays are still in with a shout of an AL Wild Card despite their terrible start to the season and they go into their weekend inter-league series against the Chicago Cubs on the back of winning three of four against the Rays.

NL Central remains close

As for the Cubs, they split a four-game series with the Cincinnati Reds this week, losing the final game 13-10 despite slugging six home runs. Jon Lester had a day to forget, giving up nine runs in 1.2 innings before leaving the game with an injury. All three games against the Blue Jays at Wrigley Field are 19.20 BST starts. Friday’s game should see Jake Arrieta and J.A. Happ on the mound.

The Cardinals defeated the Pittsburgh Pirates last night in the first of an important four-game series. The Pirates have now lost five in a row, including both games of a short two-game series against Milwaukee on Tuesday and Wednesday.

The Cubs now hold a one-game lead over the Cardinals, and a 1.5 game lead over Milwaukee in the NL Central. The Pirates have slipped to 5.5 games back and whilst there’s still plenty of games left to play, getting some wins back against the Cardinals this weekend will be crucial to avoid the gap increasing.

Milwaukee have bounced back from an indffierent spell coming out of the All-Star break. They’ve won four in a row heading into this weekend’s series in Colorado against the Rockies.

Weekly Hit Ground Ball: The 2017 MLB Opening Week

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It’s a Scorchio Sunday in Britain today and what better way to relax in the evening after a glorious day in the sun than catching a baseball game or two.

Or maybe catching some more baseball if you’ve spent the afternoon at a British baseball league game.

Games to watch

Every team is playing during the day-time in the States (therefore in the evening for us) other than the usual ESPN Sunday Night game (Marlins at Mets) on at 1am. None of the day-games are being shown on the BT Sport channels, unfortunately, although the MLB.com Free Game (available for everyone to watch via MLB.com) is Dodgers at Rockies from 20.05 BST.

The rest of the games can be watched or listened to on MLB.TV and MLB Gameday Audio.

The first week

The Baltimore Orioles are the one remaining team that are yet to be defeated. They put their 4-0 record on the line against CC Sabathia and the Yankees today looking for their second consecutive series sweep to start the season.

New York suffered a blow yesterday as Gary Sanchez came out of the game, likely on his way to the Disabled List, with a strained bicep injury. Sanchez, Greg Bird and Aaron Judge – their three top young position players – have all scuffled in the first week. Most players will have a week or two when the hits don’t come so we shouldn’t read too much into that, yet it is perhaps a reminder that most young players take a couple of seasons to really hit their stride in the Majors.

The Minnesota Twins took their first loss of the season yesterday having started out 4-0. Even Twins fans will not be putting too much stock in their early wins, but it’s been good to see Byron Buxton and Max Kepler showing their talent in the outfield and, considering they started 2016 with nine consecutive losses, some early victories gives them something to cheer about after a string of dismal campaigns.

In the National League, it’s two teams from the NL West that have shot out of the traps. You might have expected that to be the LA Dodgers and San Francisco Giants, but instead it’s the Arizona Diamondbacks and Colorado Rockies who have picked up the victories and both have 5-1 records.

The D-Backs needed a positive start after their horror show in 2016 and that’s what they’ve had, even getting a mildly encouraging pitching performance from last-year’s flop Shelby Miller in the process.

As for the Rockies, hopes that their third-placed finish (albeit with a 75-87 record) from 2016 could lead to better things in 2017 seemed to have been dashed by a string of injuries. That may still prove to be the case, but when you can get the better of Clayton Kershaw – as they did on Saturday, including Kershaw giving up back-to-back home runs for the first time in his career – then you just might be on to something.

On the other end of the scale, the Giants and Seattle Mariners haven’t given their fans much to cheer about over the first week as they’ve both lost five of their six games played.

The Giants were undone by their bullpen in 2016 and responded by signing closer Mark Melancon to a four-year, $62m contract over the off-season. His first act as a Giant last Sunday was to cough up a  5-4 lead in the bottom of the ninth inning against Arizona.

Matt Cain also looked shaky in his first start of the season on Friday against the San Diego Padres. For all he has done for the Giants, you have to wonder how much more he has left to give. Cain has pitched less than 100 innings in each of the past three seasons and has had an ERA over five in the last two campaigns.

As for the Mariners, it was expected that their batting lineup would be a strength but their bats have been absent in the first week. They lost three from four against the Houston Astros and now the first two games of their series against the LA Angels. More concerning is the sight of losing off-season recruit Drew Smyly to an elbow injury that will see him out of action until June at the earliest.

The M’s could get into the play-off running; however they look like a team that needs plenty of things to break right for that to happen. Maybe they’re just getting their bad luck out of the way early.

Finally, I have to include a mention for the Oakland A’s and Kendall Graveman in particular. He was the A’s Opening Night starting pitcher, with Sonny Gray’s start to the season delayed by an injury, and it would be fair to say he isn’t a classic ace-type hurler.

However, he’s been brilliant in his first two appearances, winning both and taking a no-hitter into the seventh inning of last night’s game against the Texas Rangers. If he can keep that sinker moving the way he wants to and getting ahead of hitters, this could be a break-out season for the right-hander.

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 – American League Preview

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

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

That’s especially the case in the American League.

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

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

AL East

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

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

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

AL Central

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

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

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

AL West

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

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

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

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

My predictions

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

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

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

Weekly Hit Ground Ball: Mejia claims and injury pains

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WHGB11It’s been a cheery week, dominated by drugs and injuries.

The big non-baseball story of the week was tennis player Maria Sharapova’s announcement that she had failed a drug test.

The latest twist in baseball’s drug story has been caused by ex-Mets reliever Jenrry Mejia, whose lawyer made various accusations on Friday about MLB’s conduct that led to the pitcher being given a life-time ban for a third doping violation. They included claims that MLB hacked into online accounts and threatened Mejia after his second positive test that if he didn’t name names of others then a third positive would follow.

The last time somebody started throwing around such similar claims was Alex Rodriguez, who – after a ridiculous campaign of protesting his innocence – finally admitted that he had been guilty of using banned substances.

Sad as this is, there are too many examples of professional sports men and women who have consistently lied through their teeth and made false allegations about others to give anyone in this situation the benefit of the doubt. Mejia has the right to defend himself through the legal channels available, but recent history of other such cases do not cast him in a sympathetic light.

In the Rodriguez case – the Biogenesis ‘scandal’ – MLB did appear to act in a questionable way in respect of getting the ring leader, Anthony Bosch, to cooperate, as well as allegedly paying other employees for information. MLB isn’t a law enforcement agency so if they feel it’s necessary to play these people at their own game in bringing them down then it could be argued that the ends justify the means, but it does leave them open to questioning and, most pertinently, accusations from others who are trying to defend themselves in future.

In the case of Sharapova, she took the clever step of announcing the positive test herself and trying to control the story. Whether that was through a genuine attempt of accepting an innocent mistake or a cynical PR damage limitation ploy is in the eye of the beholder.

What we’ve found in baseball is that if a player actually comes clean – so to speak – then most people will accept it and let them get on with their careers. Nelson Cruz and Jhonny Peralta have both signed multi-million pound contracts after serving a ban for their Biogenesis links and Alex Rodriguez’s transformation last year from a pariah to a model repentant player was quite astonishing.

Of course, above all else it’s money and performance that counts. Rodriguez was owed so much money by the Yankees that there was little else they could do but bring him back for the start of the 2015 season. Once there, his good performances at the plate allowed him to be accepted back into the fold. Had he hit .200 through the middle of May, good will would have been in short supply.

In any case, it is a fact of life that there will always be a minority that will cheat to gain an advantage and, with the financial awards and prestige that come with it, sport will always have its fair share of them. Whilst the standard media line is to denounce a sport when someone – especially someone high profile like Rodriguez or Sharapova – is caught, in reality the sports that aren’t catching people (or are covering it up when they do) deserve just as much attention.

The idea that a strong drugs-testing programme and anti-drugs culture will stop everyone doing it is simply not true. The hallmark of a strong drug-testing programme is that it catches people. Baseball, and tennis, shouldn’t be scared of some knee-jerk bad PR in its fight against weeding out and punishing those who break the rules.

Jhonny B Broken

The St Louis Cardinals did receive some flak for signing Jhonny Peralta to a four-year contract in the 2013/14 off-season after serving his drug suspension; however he has repaid the faith they showed in him with two good seasons since.

The start to his 2016 season will be delayed though after he suffered a thumb injury that will keep him out of action for 10-12 weeks. Whilst the initial talk was of the Cardinals looking to bring in some cover, traditionally that has not been their way and instead they look for options in their minor league system. We saw this approach work to good effect in 2015 with Randal Grichuk and Stephen Piscotty and don’t be surprised if they go that way again until Peralta is ready to return.

Carter Capps

The Miami Marlins’ reliever Carter Capps won’t be quite so lucky as he has suffered an elbow injury that will require Tommy John surgery and over a year out.

Health is always a key factor for any team, but for the Marlins it will be particularly telling in 2016. They have two outstanding talents in Giancarlo Stanton and Jose Fernandez, yet both have missed a significant number of games over the past two seasons and they haven’t both been healthy and on the field at the same time since 9 May 2014.

If that can turn around and they get good seasons from other capable players then the Marlins could pull themselves into the NL Wild Card race. That scenario hasn’t started well as Stanton has sat out of Spring Training games for over a week now due to knee soreness.

Parker pain

Capps can take some solace from the fact that many pitchers now recover from Tommy John surgery and have a successful career. Elbow injuries are always an obvious concern and nobody knows that better than the Oakland A’s Jarrod Parker.

Parker has undergone two Tommy John surgeries and had his 2015 comeback derailed by a gruesome injury in May when he fractured a part of the same elbow. After months of rehab, Parker entered Spring Training camp with hopes of finally getting his career back on track, potentially taking a spot in the bullpen or being the first cab off the rank from Triple-A if a new starting pitcher was needed.

Instead, he suffered yet another fracture to his elbow this week. Parker is now considering his options and it’s possible he may have thrown his last pitch. It’s a sobering reminder that a playing career can be a fragile thing.

Baltimore Blues

Saturday was a good news, bad news day for the Orioles. The good news was that they finally won a Spring Training game, breaking an 0-10 start (much as Spring Training games don’t count, you’d prefer to win a few than not). The bad news was that catcher Matt Wieters left the game early due to experiencing soreness in his right elbow; the elbow that he had Tommy John surgery on – yes, that again – in 2014.

Hopefully for the Orioles it proves to be a minor issue rather than something that leaves them without a key everyday player for a significant period of time.

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.

AL East: Off-season so far

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The Baltimore Orioles won 96 regular season games in 2014 and won the AL East division by 12 games ahead of the New York Yankees.

At first glance you might think that they didn’t need to do much to keep ahead of the pack, yet that’s not how things work in a division containing two giants (Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees), another big market team (Toronto Blue Jays) and a team that has proved more than capable of punching above its weight (Tampa Bay Rays).

The Orioles were unable to hold on to free agents Nelson Cruz and Nick Markakis and, so far, are yet to replace them. The only Major League addition they’ve made is bringing back Delmon Young (who can contribute, yet only in a limited way), which puts great importance on Manny Machado and Matt Wieters making quick and successful returns from the injuries that curtailed their 2014 campaigns.

The core of Baltimore’s 96-win team is still in place, but it would be surprising if they didn’t add an outfield bat before the season begins as the rest of the division isn’t sitting back.

The Boston Red Sox have responded to their disastrous 91-loss season by adding established Major League regulars in Hanley Ramirez, Pablo Sandoval, Rick Porcello, Wade Miley and Justin Masterson. Although failing to re-sign Jon Lester was a blow, the Red Sox won a World Series in 2013 after adding some solid experienced players and they’ve made similar steps to bolster a roster with some exciting young talent (led by Xander Bogaerts and Mookie Betts) so that another worst to first turnaround is possible.

The Toronto Blue Jays have also been active, adding Canadian Russell Martin as a free agent and trading for Josh Donaldson from the A’s to make a formidable batting core alongside Jose Reyes, Jose Bautista and Edwin Encarnacion. They appear set to go with their current mix of youth (Marcus Stroman, Drew Hutchison) and experience (Mark Buehrle, R.A. Dickey) on the pitching staff, but it wouldn’t be a surprise to see another hurler signed too.

The same may also be true of the New York Yankees. Max Scherzer would improve any team and, however much they may publicly distance themselves from the possibility, the Yankees are always a contender to spend on a star talent. CC Sabathia and Masahiro Tanaka both suffered injuries in 2014 and if either reports any lingering issues when throwing in January, that could open the door to the Yankees being the team to offer Scherzer and his agent Scott Boras the big contract they are holding out for.

The Yankees have spent money on the free agent market by signing Andrew Miller to replace the departed David Robertson in the bullpen. Didi Gregorius was acquired in a trade to be the man to replace Derek Jeter at shortstop, whilst the impending return of Alex Rodriguez will be the big news when Spring Training camps begin.

The three main storylines coming out of the Tampa Bay Rays over the past few months have been about key individuals leaving. David Price was traded to Detroit during the past-season, General Manager Andrew Friedman was lured away early in the off-season by the appeal of the huge revenues to exploit at the LA Dodgers, whilst Manager Joe Maddon was also tempted away by the money and opportunities afforded by the Chicago Cubs.

The changes have continued with young outfielder Wil Myers being traded away and the recent signing of free agent Asdrubal Cabrera has prompted numerous rumours about Ben Zobrist being the next key contributor to be moved on before he becomes a free agent at the end of the 2015 season.

Amidst it all, it says a lot about the Rays that they will still be fielding a competitive team in 2015, led by an exciting young starting rotation. If everything clicks, including a return to form by Evan Longoria, then the Rays should not be counted out despite once again having an offseason that will not immediately gain much attention.