Tag Archives: Baltimore Orioles

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.

If the awards matter, why announce them like they don’t?

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MlbHlSqDerek Jeter’s retirement had many scribes pondering who will become the new ‘face of MLB’ and how the sport could do a better job at promoting its stars.

Consequently it was wonderful to see Mike Trout, unquestionably one of the most dazzling young players the sport has got, receiving his first Most Valuable Player Award a couple of weeks ago.

The news stories, online videos and TV coverage garnered by him receiving a trophy from a legend of the game in front of a packed crowd at a gala event would have been a good way to keep MLB fresh in the mind.

That’s not how the awards are dished out in baseball, though.

Instead, there was a bland press release and various TV networks interviewing him on a video link from his parents’ house. From the point of view of demonstrating Trout is really just ‘a regular guy’ then that approach may have some merit.

From the point of view of celebrating a great baseball talent, and convincing people he’s someone special they should be excited about watching, it’s as much use as a chocolate teapot.

A televised gala award evening to celebrate the recent MLB season is a blindingly obvious way to present all the major trophies, reliving the pennant races, the postseason and also all the other smaller stories that made up the year, as well as acknowledging again the people elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame that year.

Getting everyone together in a single place in the offseason might not be the simplest task, but it is certainly achievable and would be a great way to send-off the season in style, whilst getting people excited about next season in the process.

MLB does many things very well. Promoting its players is not one of them.

It was only recently that MLB decided it might be worth making a show of the early rounds from the amateur draft. They are starting to build that up as a televised event now and an end-of-season review extravaganza would be a positive next step to further promote the game’s emerging young stars and established names.

Quite simply, if MLB can’t be bothered to make a big thing of the awards, why would a casual sports fan care about them either?

Evaluating achievements

Irrespective of the ropy way they were announced, this year’s selections for the four main awards all gave reason to consider some of the subtleties around how achievements should be weighted when selecting a winner.

With the MVP awards, the main talking point was the decision to crown LA Dodgers pitcher Clayton Kershaw as the NL’s MVP alongside his now traditional Cy Young award. The fact that pitchers have their own prestigious award, and that they play in significantly less games over the season than a position player, does call into question whether a pitcher should win the MVP award.

The voting criteria makes clear that pitchers are eligible for the award; the case from there is how you measure a position player’s contribution against that of a starting pitcher. Starting pitchers may only take the ball one day out of five, but on that day they have a far greater impact on the game (delivering 100+ pitches) than a position player taking four or five at-bats and making a couple of fielding plays.

Giancarlo Stanton and Andrew McCutchen both had great seasons, yet neither were exceptionally above Kershaw’s outstanding performance for the Dodgers and consequently that made him a fitting choice.

There were fewer arguments around Kershaw’s NL Cy Young award success. In the AL version it was Corey Kluber who came out on top over Felix Hernandez. Both had excellent years so whichever way you went with those two there was a good case to say you had the right answer.

King Felix clearly has the more impressive track record over a number of seasons, which could be argued as being a crucial factor rather than just focusing on one exceptional campaign. Ultimately there’s a good case that Kluber had the slightly better season – for example, using Baseball-References’ WAR as a guide Kluber added 7.4 wins to his team over a replacement player, compared to Hernandez’s 6.8 – and if the award is there to honour the best pitcher that season then previous seasons should only come into it if there is really nothing else to separate them.

In the Rookie of the Year stakes, Jacob deGrom gave the New York Mets a rare reason to be cheerful and Jose Abreu was a similarly uplifting presence for the Chicago White Sox.

Abreu doesn’t quite fit the traditional image of a young, fresh-faced rookie. He made his Major League debut this year as a 27-year-old having defected from Cuba and came into the Big Leagues with considerable experience of playing in his homeland and on the international stage.

His unanimous selection as Rookie of the Year showed that his strict definition as a Major League rookie regardless of his previous experience was good enough for the voters. Considering the challenge he faced in competing against MLB pitchers and in adjusting to life in the States, it was a decision few could find much fault with.

Finally, the Baltimore Orioles’ Buck Showalter and Washington Nationals’ Matt Williams took home the Manager of the Year honours for the AL and NL respectively.

Showalter’s work with the Orioles has cemented his reputation as an excellent, experienced manager. In some respects this contrasts considerably with Williams for whom 2014 wasn’t simply his first year as a Major League manager, but a manager at any level.

His team led the National League with 96 wins and that’s a good starting point for any discussions on how successful a year a manager has had. Still, the impact that a manager can have in the standings is always largely determined by the roster of players he has at his disposal.

There is a school of thought that Williams made his share of mistakes this year. Had Williams been given his managerial break by the Arizona Diamondbacks – for whom he was a coach for several years before joining the Nationals – or perhaps a team like the Colorado Rockies, then I’m betting he would not have been any part of the Manage of the Year conversation.

The problem with that stance is that you end up penalizing a manager for having the benefit of a talented group of players to call on, as trying to put some subjective value on what a manager brings to a team is devilishly difficult.

Bruce Bochy would have been an obvious alternative for his postseason exploits, yet let’s give Williams some credit for leading the Nationals to 96 wins and wait and see if he can do it again in 2015.

Division Series done, Championship to come

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MlbPostseason2014The Division Series round of the 2014 postseason was brought to a close on Tuesday.

The San Francisco Giants’ closer Sergio Romo got the Washington Nationals’ Wilson Ramos to ground into an out to finish off a 3-1 series victory for the NL Wild Card winners.

It came a few hours after the St. Louis Cardinals completed their own 3-1 series victory over the Los Angeles Dodgers.

The National League Championship Series lineup was therefore set two days after the American League version with both the Baltimore Orioles and Kansas City Royals completing swift sweeps over the Detroit Tigers and Los Angeles Angels respectively.

As there were a potential 20 games to enjoy from the four best-of-five series, seeing it all wrapped up within just 14 was a tad disappointing. It’s the quickest that the division series round has been completed since the 13 games of 2009 and is the first time since then that there wasn’t at least one series that went the distance.

We were definitely spoiled by the four 3-2 thrillers in 2012.

Looking through the Division Series match-ups of recent years was a reminder that this year’s NLCS has a very familiar feel to it.

The Cardinals and Giants faced each other at the same stage in 2012 as San Francisco prevailed 4-3 on their way to a second World Series in three years. St. Louis had won the Fall Classic the previous year and have now made it to four consecutive NLCS appearances. Both teams know what it’s like to play in these pressure games and that could make it all the more difficult to split them.

Meanwhile it couldn’t be more different in the ALCS. Never mind a Championship Series, the Royals hadn’t been anywhere near a playoff game since 1985 before making their Wild Card bow a week ago. The Orioles were dumped out of the Division Series by the Yankees two years ago, but had last made the playoffs before that in1997.

In short, there’s is a series full of players on the big stage either for the first time or only the second. Based on the quick work the two teams made of their Division Series opponents, they are revelling in their new-found status.

So far the only Championship Series start times confirmed are from Friday and Saturday, as follows in BST:

Friday 10 October
01.07. KC at BAL (early hours of Saturday for us) *ESPN

Saturday 11 October
21.07. KC at BAL *BT Sport 2
01.07. SFG at STL *ESPN

At this stage of the postseason, there really is little to choose between the teams so predicting the winners is a guessing game. I had Baltimore and Washington as my World Series picks heading into Division Series, so I’ll stick with Baltimore and then San Francisco as the team who knocked out the Nationals.

Let’s hope the Championship Series makes up for the brief Division stage with two contests going either six or the full seven games.

A Friday filled with Division Series drama

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MlbPostseason2014We are only a few days into the 2014 postseason, but it’s safe to say that when we look back over the offseason Friday’s bonanza of baseball will turn out to be one of the most memorable days from it.

It was the only day on the Division Series schedule in which we were guaranteed games from all four series – Monday could provide that too if the two American League series both go to a fourth game – and all four served up the sort of drama and excitement that playoff baseball is all about.

The MLB.com Game Recap videos combined provide a great way to spend 15 minutes re-living the action from the four Friday contests.

Detroit and Baltimore got the day underway with Game 2 of their series starting at 17.07 BST. The Orioles staged an incredible comeback to turn around a 5-1 deficit and to put themselves in the best possible position of a 2-0 series lead heading to Detroit.

The loss for Detroit highlighted the flaws of a team containing several outstanding players, yet having weak links in other parts of their roster despite it being put together at considerable expense. Although a home win for the Tigers in Game Three will put a completely different spin on the series, you would expect the Orioles to complete the job based on their regular season performance and the first two games of the series.

San Francisco and Washington went next and the Giants showed the World Series-winning magic of 2010 and 2012 may still be with them by grabbing the advantage by winning Game One.

One big change from those two title triumphs and this year is the introduction of the Video review challenge system. We saw the huge benefits of that in the third inning when the Giants’ Travis Ishikawa was called out on a close force-out play at second base only for the review process to prove that he was safe.

Ishikawa came around to score the opening run of the game two batters later and that’s exactly why replay is so important; getting potentially crucial calls right rather than relying on the hoary old tosh of ‘luck evening itself out’. Just as importantly, the umpire was able to come out of the game knowing that even though his professional pride may have taken a very slight dent by getting a tricky call wrong, the mistake didn’t cost the Giants and he didn’t have to deal with a bunch of reporters and irate fans.

Two other things stood out from the game for me. Firstly, there was the monumentally important bases-loaded strikeout by Hunter Strickland to end a Nationals threat in the sixth inning. Save-compiling closers apart, relief pitchers tend to fly under the radar until the playoffs come along. Strickland’s 100MPH punch-out pitch will certainly have gained him some attention last night.  Secondly, the Bryce Harper hype is something I’ve written about before, but even the naysayers have to admit that he has enormous talent. Mark down his gargantuan moonshot in the seventh inning – off Strickland, such is the hero/zero highwire act that relievers walk – as his first real playoff highlight.

Then came the ding-dong drama of the series opener between the St. Louis Cardinals and Los Angeles Dodgers.

The Cards beat Clayton Kershaw in the playoffs yet again and whilst their fans will be desperate to take the next two games in as trouble-free a manner as possible, the rest of us can only look at all that happened in Game One and ask for four more of those, please.

It was a game that had everything, not least the sort of amped-up aggro that looks certain to turn the rest of the series into a passion-filled tussle that may well spill over from a figurative fight to a literal one.

In every best-of-five-game series, the home team that has lost Game One is desperate to win the next game rather than head to their opponent’s backyard in an 0-2 hole, yet it must carry even more weight here. The facts are simple: the Dodgers somehow lost after knocking out the Cardinals’ ace Adam Wainwright and handing a 6-1 lead to Kershaw to protect. If ever a team needed a win to wipe away the memories of yesterday with a win today, it’s these Dodgers.

A small crumb of comfort for the Dodgers is that they’re not yet in as big a hole as their cross-town rivals, the Los Angeles Angels.

After two games at home, they’ve now suffered two extra inning defeats to Kansas City as the completely spurious but always-attractive feeling of a ‘team of destiny’ really starts to take hold around the Royals.

Kauffman Stadium is going to be absolutely electric on Sunday night as Kansas City hosts their first postseason game since 1985. The Angels didn’t win 98 regular season games by chance and so a comeback cannot be counted out, yet they are going to need C.J. Wilson to find a quality start from somewhere after an inconsistent patch of form. Despite his nickname, ‘Big Game’ James Shields hasn’t been particularly impressive so far in his playoff appearances. Sunday night would be the perfect time for the Royals’ starting pitcher to live up to his billing.

Weekly Hit Ground Ball: Nationals nicely placed

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WHGB11The Washington Nationals have the best record in the National League going into Sunday with 84 wins against 63 losses and it’s possible that some onlookers may not have quite noticed.

It’s a product in part on the differing expectations placed on the team this year compared to the previous two.

The 2012 campaign saw the Nationals playing playoff baseball for the first time since the Expos were shamefully taken away from Monteral and rebranded in Washington in 2005.

Their 98 regular season wins were a giant leap ahead of previous paltry totals, although the back-to-back seasons of 100+ losses in 2008 and 2009 were precisely what allowed them to acquire Stephen Strasburg and Bryce Harper as number one selections in the subsequent amateur drafts. This not only added two exciting young talents but also changed the whole atmosphere around the club, with the Nationals being picked up by the national media as a team on the rise.

Unfortunately for Washington, the achievement of gaining 98 regular season victories was quickly blown away by a a crushing 3-2 Division Series loss to the St. Louis Cardinals. Going out of the postseason early is always a blow, yet the manner of their defeat made it seem disastrous. They led 6-0 after three innings in the decider and, despite St. Louis’s efforts to chip away at the deficit, everyone in Nationals Park was on their feet heading into the ninth inning with a 7-5 lead waiting to celebrate.

Instead of jumping for joy, Nationals fans ended up drowning in despair as closer Drew Storen – another first round draft pick – went into meltdown and conceded four runs as the Cardinals prevailed 9-7.

An overall terrific season suddenly seemed like a disaster.

The then-manager Davey Johnson’s bullish ‘World Series or bust’ cry heading into 2013 came true in a sense when his team missed out on the playoffs completely last year and created question marks over just how good these players were coming into 2014. The appointment of a rookie manager, Matt Williams, as a replacement for the retired Johnson gave further cause for doubt.

Fans of the Atlanta Braves certainly felt confident about their chances of retaining their NL East crown. The division has produced some entertaining rivalries over the past decade and the latest battle for supremacy between the Braves and Nationals is as good as any before. Part of the needle between the two stems from the national attention on the likes of Strasburg and Harper and a feeling among many Braves fans that their team is unfairly overlooked, or more specifically that Washington get generous coverage that their actual performances don’t deserve.

So far this season only the most-biased Braves fan would deny that their team has been second best. The Nationals have a 9.5 game lead over the Atlanta Braves in the NL East and have earned this cushion without the fanfare that has previously surrounded the team. None of their players have especially gaudy conventional statistics, but what they’ve got this year is a whole assortment of players making good contributions, not least on a pitching staff that is right up there as one of the best in the Majors.

The Nationals were a much-hyped team in 2012 and 2013 and didn’t quite live up to expectations. Maybe this year, with less attention on them, might be the one where they make it all the way to the Fall Classic.

‘Crush’ Davis crashes

Thankfully MLB hasn’t been the subject of many negative news stories of late, the NFL has cornered that particular market among U.S. sports recently, but a drug suspension for a key player on a playoff-bound team is always likely to create a few waves.

In the case of the Baltimore Orioles’ Chris Davis, he has fallen foul of the drug-testers for a relatively minor contravention after testing positive for amphetamines. He even had a medical exemption for using the product, Adderall, prior to this season, so probably will avoid landing firmly in the ‘drug cheat’ class set by public opinion, even though his MLB-leading 53 home runs last season raised an eyebrow or two among the conspiracy theorists.

It’s the timing of the suspension that raises its prominence. A 25-game ban normally makes for a month out of action in MLB terms, but the Orioles only had 17 regular season games left when his ban came into effect on Friday. Baltimore have a comfortable lead in the AL East so his absence will not be felt too badly there; it’s the gap he’ll leave in the first eight playoff games, if they get through the best-of-five Division Series, that will be key.

How big a blow it will be remains to be seen. Davis has had a very disappointing season compared to 2013; however his ability to change a game with one swing of the bat is still there, as shown by his 26 home runs this season, and the Orioles only need him to get hot for a few days to turn a short playoff series around. The question will be whether Davis can contribute much in the second-part of a potential Championship Series after not facing competitive MLB pitching for a considerable length of time.

The Orioles’ all-but-certain AL East title will be a remarkable achievement considering the obstacles they have faced, particularly losing Manny Machado and Matt Wieters to injuries. If they reach the Championship Series, Davis may well find a place on the roster as Baltimore try to find what potential game-changers they’ve got left.

Playoff schedule

As we’re on the playoff theme, the postseason schedule was announced on Thursday.

The two Wild Cards will take place on Tuesday 30 September and Wednesday 1 October and although start times haven’t been announced for any of the games as yet, those two undoubtedly will be played at night in the States and therefore be early morning contests on Wednesday and Thursday for us in the U.K.

As for the World Series, that will start on a Tuesday night this year (so early hours of Wednesday for us), a day earlier than the Wednesday start we’ve become familiar with in recent years. Arguably the main impact from a British perspective is that it means Games Three to Five will be played in the early hours of Saturday, Sunday and Monday for us, which may make it easy to arrange to watch them live than the previous Sunday-to-Tuesday morning sequence.

Weekly Hit Ground Ball: The race is on

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WHGB11After close to thirty years spent languishing between false hope and no hope, fans of the Kansas City Royals have entered this September in an unfamiliar competitive position.

The unfamiliar encourages a sense of excitement but also trepidation.

However much Royals are trying to outwardly enjoy this season, inwardly there is bound to be a sense of foreboding. Good things don’t happen to their team. This isn’t really happening. It’s all about to come crushing down.

Watching Danny Duffy leave the mound at Yankee Stadium on Saturday after throwing a solitary pitch was the moment when those fears were realised.

Look beyond the largely irrelevant 8-11 win-loss record and you’ll see that Duffy has been excellent for Kansas City this season. It’s not just been the way Duffy has pitched but also that he’s finally broken through after years of promise since he was drafted back in the 2007 amateur draft.

He was one of a crop of young players that were hailed as the answer to the Royals’ many years in the doldrums and, up until now, like most of the rest he had failed to live up to the billing. This season, in deed and in the sense of hope, Duffy has personified the way that things have finally turned around for Kansas City.

Seeing him grimace in discomfort and exit early with a sore shoulder was the last thing the Royals needed, again both in terms of actual impact (losing him for the game and potentially the foreseeable future) and the demoralising effect this blow could have on the team.

Kansas City went on to lose that game against the Yankees 6-2 to compound their misery and yet there was a chink of light from Detroit where the Tigers failed to capitalise. Despite having their recently-acquired ace David Price on the mound – an addition thought at the time to hammer another nail into the Royals’ coffin – Detroit lost 5-4 to the surging San Francisco Giants, keeping Kansas City two games ahead at the top of the AL Central.

Duffy’s condition will be assessed further over the next few days to determine whether it was a mere blip or something that could see him miss extended time, potentially the rest of the season. If he is out for the year then he’ll be a big loss, yet maybe it won’t be a sign of things inevitably going wrong for the Royals and instead will show that this is destined to be the year playoff baseball returns to Kansas City, regardless of the obstacles that come their way.

The Royals’ emergence in the AL Central, where many – including myself – predicted another season of Detroit domination, is one of many great stories building to a crescendo this month.

Baltimore look set to win the AL East division for the first time since 1997, whilst in the AL Wild Card race the Seattle Mariners may just turn their offseason splurge on Robinson Cano into a first playoff appearance since 2001.

The Mariners are even catching up the Oakland A’s who looked certainties for a third consecutive AL West title before a startling collapse over the last month that has seen a rampant LA Angels team fly past to gain not only a lead in the division but the best win-loss record in the Majors.

The A’s were able to snatch a walk-off win on Saturday against the Houston Astros, turning around a 3-1 deficit in the bottom of the ninth inning, and that’s the sort of win that could spark an all-important change in fortune as we head into the last few weeks of the season. That’s what this A’s is clinging to, at least.

In the National League it’s been the Milwaukee Brewers playing the role of the A’s, plummeting from an unexpected stay at the top of the Central and seeing the St. Louis Cardinals resuming normal service at the summit. The Brew Crew have won only three of their past 16 games and now need to forget about what has gone. They are still firmly in the Wild Card race, a position they would have been delighted with if offered it before the season began, and need to somehow find a way to make that their mindset.

And as the regular season begins to wind down, the Philadelphia Phillies reminded us all on Monday that there’s something to play for every time you take the field. Their combined no-hitter was a rare enjoyable moment in what has been yet another poor season for a team that enjoyed so much success between 2007 and 2011.

The Texas Rangers are another team to quickly hit hard times after a recent run of excellent seasons. They were the first time to be eliminated from playoff contention this season and questions were already being asked about manager Ron Washington’s future before he stepped down for personal reasons on Friday. Wash had his game-management called into question at times, but there’s no doubt he was a manager that his players fought for and it’s one of the harsh realities of sport at the highest level that his time in charge will be remembered for the two World Series championships his time narrowly missed out on, rather than all of the other regular season success they had.

Weekly Hit Ground Ball: O’s add 2

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Much as I enjoy all the news and rumours that the offseason ‘Hot Stove’ brings, there’s a certain joy in knowing this is the last column I’ll be writing for just over eight months that is not influenced by actual games being played.

The Spring Training leagues begin on Wednesday. These are the main stories of the week or so leading up to umpires shouting ‘play ball’ once again.

O’s2

Baltimore Orioles fans had sat through the majority of the offseason waiting for their team to do something to give them hope for the season ahead.

That hope may have been about to run out before the O’s revealed their London Bus approach to the free agent market: waiting around for ages and then signing two at once.

Baltimore, like every team, was keen to add a starting pitcher and they did so in the form of Ubaldo Jimenez on a four-year, $50m contract.

Jimenez is an enigmatic player, switching between ‘Ubaldo the Magnificent’ and ‘Ubaldo the Mess’ like a change in the weather. Scouts explain that his complicated pitching mechanics make him more susceptible to ‘losing’ his delivery, as you sometimes see with cricket bowlers (England’s Stephen Finn would be a good recent example). When a pitcher struggles to repeat his delivery, he struggles to put the ball where he wants to and the result is walks and ‘hit me’ pitches.

Jimenez is a quality pitcher when everything is in synch, such as during his 19-8 season with the Colorado Rockies in 2010 and last year with the Cleveland Indians. It’s unlikely, although far from impossible, that the Orioles will receive four consecutive seasons of Jimenez at his best, but one such season along with three decent ones would still make for a good return on their relatively modest $50m investment.

Jimenez was one of the group of players still on the free agent market in part because signing them involved giving up a valuable amateur draft pick. Nelson Cruz was also on that list until he agreed a one-year deal worth $8m with Baltimore and it’s no coincidence that the Orioles doubled-up on their free agent signings. Having already lost their 2014 draft first round pick due to signing Jimenez, Cruz will only cost Baltimore their less-valuable second round selection. He is slated to be the team’s Designated Hitter this season.

Bailey bonanza

The Cincinnati Reds signed pitcher Homer Bailey to a six-year, $105m contract extension this week (roughly an average of £202k per week).

Bailey was drafted out of High School by the Reds in 2004 and he has come through some growing pains since making his Major League debut as a 21 year old in 2007. The past two seasons, both of which included him pitching a no-hitter, have seen the big Texan develop into the quality starting pitcher that the Reds always believed he could become.

You could argue that he’s not quite an ace, even factoring in that his home ballpark is hitter-friendly (his career ERA is a full run less on the road than it is at the Great American Ballpark – 3.73 compared with 4.74), but if so then he’s at least very close to being one.

Last season he was 24th among pitchers in the Majors with his combined performances measured at 3.7 Wins Above Replacement (WAR), as per Fangraphs, a mark that put him 10th in the National League and second on his club behind Mat Latos (4.4 WAR).

Securing his services for the next six seasons at what is, based on the current market, a sensible annual cost is a good piece of work from the Reds, made all the more welcome due to it coming in an offseason where the team has been relatively quiet.

Add Bailey to the list that’s no longer on the list

As noted by ESPN.com’s David Schoenfield, Bailey is the latest player to be taken off the potential free agent list as part of a growing trend in which teams are signing their key players to contract extensions.

The most positive part of this development is that, as in the case of Cincinnati, it’s not just the clubs with the biggest pockets that are able to do this now.

The Reds’ 10-year, $225m contract with first baseman Joey Votto, signed in April 2012 and coming into effect from this season onwards, was the most significant deal  so far in that regard, alongside the eight-year, $184m contract that the Minnesota Twins agreed with Joe Mauer in 2011.

Thanks to rising national and local TV contracts, even teams outside of the leading media markets such as New York and Los Angeles have a chance of funding contracts that allow them to keep hold of at least some of their best players. That can make the free agent market a bit less exciting, but few fans will mind this if it means that there’s a better chance that their favourite players are not inevitably going to be snapped up by the big boys.

Braves keeping hold of their own

The Atlanta Braves are yet another example of this trend. They followed up their contract extensions with Freddie Freeman (six-years, $135m) and Julio Teheran (six-years, $32.4m) this week with a four-year, $42m contract with closer Craig Kimbrel and a seven-year, $58m contract with shortstop Andrelton Simmons,.

The performance value of a closer is always hotly debated when weighing up the amount of innings they pitch (including the postseason, Kimbrel has averaged 70 innings per season over the past three years) against their perceived importance and the fact that reliable outstanding closers are a very rare breed.

Kimbrel has been so dominant in the role that the Braves’ desire to keep hold of him is understandable, although the ever-present fear of a year lost to Tommy John surgery will make it more important than normal to wait and see if it was money well spent once the contract comes to an end.

As for Simmons, watching him play shortstop is one of the delights of the game and if he can at least hold his own at the plate, Braves fans will be delighted to have him on their team for years to come.

Greinke the Grouch

Finally, Spring Training will have a different feel to it this year for the Arizona Diamondbacks and Los Angeles Dodgers as they head over to Australia for two regular season games on 22-23 March.

The Dodgers’ Zack Greinke is not greatly enthused by the prospect, stating to ESPNLosAngeles.com “I would say there is absolutely zero excitement for it … there just isn’t any excitement to it. I can’t think of one reason to be excited for it”.

Hopefully he’ll enjoy it when he gets there.

Offseason so far: AL East

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Over the past few days I’ve done everything I could to avoid watching any sporting action from the Sydney Cricket Ground.

Another humiliating batting collapse condemned the England cricket team to a 5-0 Ashes series whitewash.  Based on the way the first four test matches had gone, it was a crushingly inevitable way to end a wretched series for the tourists and I had no desire to watch the carnage.

Yet in 74 days it will be a very different story. I’ll be glued to my TV – or PC depending on the coverage – as the SCG hosts the first of two regular season MLB games between the Arizona Diamondbacks and Los Angeles Dodgers.

Now the calendar has switched to 2014, it’s a good time to catch up on the comings and goings at the 30 MLB teams so far this offseason. We start today with the AL East division.

Boston Red Sox

The 2013 World Series champs haven’t made any major moves so far and that has been as expected. It didn’t even look too likely that they would make a strong push to retain centrefielder Jacoby Ellsbury when he hit the free agent market and, sure enough, he will not be wearing a Boston uniform in 2014 and beyond.

The fact that he’ll be wearing a Yankee uniform instead will sting a bit, but the Red Sox have every reason to be confident that making a few solid signings – bringing back Mike Napoli on a two-year contract and adding reliever Edward Mujica and catcher A.J. Pierzynski – whilst giving youngsters Xander Bogaerts, Will Middlebrooks and Jackie Bradley the chance to play regularly will see them continue to be one of the favourites to win it all again in 2014.

Tampa Bay Rays

The Rays’ offseason so far has been dominated by a major move that hasn’t happened. Ace starting pitcher David Price is under contract for two more years and the financially-limited Rays will trade him if they receive a suitably impressive package of players. Right now he’s still set to lead their rotation and Tampa Bay will be happy enough with that, with the option still open to trade him during the season or over next winter.

First baseman James Loney returns on a three-year deal and outfielder David DeJesus has also signed a two-year deal to remain with the team, whilst catcher Ryan Hanigan and closer Heath Bell have been acquired via trades. Last year’s closer, Fernando Rodney, is still on the free agent market looking for a team.

Baltimore Orioles

The Orioles made a surprise return to the playoffs in 2012 after more than a decade in the doldrums; however they were not able to build on that achievement in 2013 and look like they are going backwards in 2014. They’ve made no notable additions so far and pulled out of the one deal they looked like completing, signing former Oakland A’s closer Grant Balfour, on highly questionable medical grounds.

Balfour was supposed to replace Jim Johnson, who the Orioles traded to the A’s for second baseman Jemile Weeks, and the team has also lost Scott Feldman (to the Astros) and Nate McLouth (to the Nationals). It is a depressingly familiar tale in Baltimore under owner Peter Angelos.

New York Yankees

It’s been a typically busy offseason so far in the Bronx. Multi-millions have been invested in Jacoby Ellsbrury, ex-Braves catcher Brian McCann, ex-Cardinal outfielder Carlos Beltran and a return for pitcher Hiroki Kuroda, as well as several other free agents (Kelly Johnson, Brian Roberts, Matt Thornton etc).

However, the Yankees were sensationally out-bid by the Seattle Mariners for Robinson Cano and still look vulnerable following the retirements of Mariano Rivera and Andy Pettitte, the pending drug-suspension hanging over Alex Rodriguez and continuing fitness doubts over Derek Jeter. Don’t be surprised if they come out on top in the bidding for Japanese pitcher Mashiro Tankaka in the coming weeks.

Toronto Blue Jays

What a difference a year makes. The Blue Jays dominated the 2012/13 offseason with headline-grabbing trades and free agent signings. The result of all that hard work was a last-placed finish in the AL East, with a 74-88 record, and little room for manoeuvre in terms of payroll and trading chips this offseason. Catcher Dioner Navarro is the one offseason addition so far likely to become a regular on the 2014 team, whilst pitcher Josh Johnson will take his ace-type potential and long injury list to the San Diego Padres after he left Toronto as a free agent.

Weekly Hit Ground Ball: 50 still an impressive feat

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The Baltimore Orioles’ Chris Davis stood in the batter’s box against the Toronto Blue Jays on Friday in an important spot. His team was tied 3-3 in the top of the eighth and were desperate to add another win to their playoff push.

As he had done so many times before this season, Davis didn’t let the moment slip past. He took a 2-2 pitch into the left-centre seats at the Rogers Centre to help his team to a 5-3 victory.

The trip around the bases only added one home run to his total, but its impact was greater from a symbolic perspective.

Davis had made the leap from 49 home runs, joining a select group of players to have hit at least 50 home runs in a single season. Over all of the many thousands of individual hitting seasons in MLB history, it was only the 43rd time in which a player had rounded the bases having made it to 50 home runs.

It somehow doesn’t feel quite as rare as it should, though.

Firstly, there have been 36 occasions when a hitter has exceeded 50 home runs in a single season, most recently the 54 swatted by Jose Batista in 2010, so whilst it’s a landmark worthy of a curtain call it’s not a figure that necessarily will live long in the memory of the casual baseball fan.

Secondly – as you may well have already thought to yourselves – it’s something that we’ve seen with a certain amount of regularity over the past 20 years. Indeed, it’s the 25th time since 1995 that we have witnessed the same moment.

Babe Ruth was the first man to get past the big five-zero and it’s difficult to imagine just how mind-bendingly incredible it must have seemed when he ended up with 54 in 1920, his first season with the New York Yankees.

The Babe’s total was 25 more than had ever been hit before – his own record of 29 from the previous season – and 35 more than the next-best of the season, George Sisler’s 19. Not only that but, in one of the great pieces of Ruthian trivia, it was a number that only one team (the Philadelphia Phillies with 64) was able to surpass combined.

There’s being the best and then there’s being so outstanding that you completely shatter previously held ideas on what is possible.

Ruth’s 1920 season was truly extraordinary and yet perhaps 50 was already made to seem a bit ‘old-hat’ just twelve months later when the Babe came achingly close to breaking into the 60s, falling one home run short.

Even though Ruth did finally get out of the fifties with his 60 longballs in 1927, the efforts of the great sluggers over the many decades to follow showed that getting to 50 was still a remarkable achievement. When George Foster hit 52 in 1977, it was only the 17th time it had been done in over a half-century since (and including when) Ruth did it first.

There was then a 23 year gap before the 18th occasion, Cecil Fielder’s 51 in 1990, and another five years before the 19th, Albert Belle’s round 50 in 1995. Two 32 year-olds then did it the following year and both are associated with hailing a new and controversial era in MLB history.

Mark McGwire hit 52 before heading off on his rollercoaster of being hailed whilst breaking Roger Maris’s single-season record of 61 and then brought down by accusations, and eventual admission, of steroid use.

The other man to hit 50 was Brady Anderson who achieved the feat as a Baltimore Oriole and who, prior to Chris Davis’ blast on Friday night, held the record for most homers in a season by an Oriole. Anderson has come to personify the muddied waters of MLB’s recent history. His previous season best was 24 home runs and the huge jump to 50, at a time in his career when you would expect him to be declining past his peak, is such a big outlier that it’s difficult not to seek an explanation that goes beyond a mere late career year.

Anderson never failed a drugs test, but he never took one either. It may have been a combination of different factors – better conditioning through non-drug measures, a hitter bubbling over with confidence, pitchers pitching him differently as the season wore on etc – that produced a genuinely magical season. It’s not going to go down in history that way though, regardless of Anderson’s continued protestations of innocence.  That may be grossly unfair on the player, yet that’s the hand dealt to all sluggers of recent vintage.

Chris Davis himself jumped into the controversy earlier in the season by stating that he held Roger Maris’s mark of 61 to be the true single-season record, discounting the six occasions this has been surpassed combined by Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa.

Unless Davis goes on an almighty outburst over the next two weeks, we’re not going to have to worry about that contentious issue this season (my personal view is that we all saw Barry Bonds hit 73 home runs in 2001 and, whether you like it or not, pretending that he didn’t doesn’t really help anyone, least of all the next player to hit his 62nd home run of a season).

However, even getting to 50 is still a notable achievement in the history of the sport and one that shouldn’t be diminished by the recent frequency of it and all of the suspicions around the so-called steroid era.

Don’t let Chris Davis’ feat pass you by. It’s something well worth acknowledging.

Writing about home run seasons is made so much easier by the wonder that is Baseball-Reference.com. I guess the greatness of that website is almost taken as read by any writer or reader, but it’s a superb resource and one none of us should ever take for granted.

Wild Card races going down to the wire

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MlbHlSq160 games played, 2 more to go. Fans of the Braves, Cardinals, Rays and Red Sox are being put through the wringer by their teams and the tension could be at its height on Tuesday night in the States.

The results from Monday’s games have left the Red Sox and Rays locked together in the American League Wild Card race, while the Braves hold a one-game lead in the National League over the Cardinals.

Atlanta could clinch the NL Wild Card tonight with a victory accompanied by a St. Louis loss, distilling the excitement down to one league on Wednesday. 

However, it’s just as likely that the NL Wild Card will still be up for grabs, so we might yet have another full day of nervous excitement.

The MLB schedulers have inadvertently produced a fascinating climax to the season.  In both Wild Card races, we have a team ending the regular season with a series against the best team in their league, accompanied by a team playing one of the weaker sides.

In the case of the National League, the race-leading Braves are the team with potentially the toughest task. 

Atlanta are hosting the Phillies, holders of the best win-loss record in baseball this season and fuelled by a desire to enter the postseason on the back of some good performances following a recent eight-game losing streak. Their rivals in the Wild Card race, the Cardinals, are matched-up with the team with the worst record in baseball: the Washington Nationals.

Put the two cases together and logically you would expect the Cardinals to take full advantage; however we all know that sport and logic often sit at odds with one another.  Continue reading →