Tag Archives: Chicago White Sox

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: Twins = Wins

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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!

The Minnesota Twins started last season by losing their first nine games.

An 0-9 start isn’t much fun for anyone, but when you have the word ‘wins’ in your nickname, you’re going to hear about it even more than most.

They briefly responded to the jeers by reeling off four consecutive wins, but that’s where the comeback ended. 2016 was a miserable year for Minnesota as the team ended up with a 59-103 record, the worst in all of MLB.

Unsurprisingly, expectations were not exactly high for the Twins to mount a play-off challenge in 2017, yet they continue to confound the naysayers as we head into the last two weeks of August.

The Twins have won 11 of their last 13 games, including a sweep over the Arizona Diamondbacks this past weekend (Sunday’s win driven by a nine-run first inning), to draw themselves level with the LA Angels for the second Wild Card spot. Baseball Prospectus currently gives them a 33.4% chance of making it to the post-season, which would be a fantastic story if they can pull it off.

Minnesota have a chance to earn some wins this week at the expense of the AL’s worst team. They have a five-game series away to the Chicago White Sox, beginning with a double-header on Monday, and if they can build on their 7-4 season record so far this season against the Sox they could start to win over even more of the non-believers.

More AL Wild Card shuffling

The Angels beat Wild Card rivals the Baltimore Orioles 2-1 in this weekend’s series, with the Orioles’ sole win being powered by the outstanding individual player performance of the weekend. Manny Machado launched three home-runs, the final one being the small matter of a walk-off grand slam, in a thrilling 9-7 victory.

The Angels move on to a four-game series against rivals the Texas Rangers, whilst the Orioles look to gain back some ground in a home series against the Oakland A’s.

Elsewhere in the AL, the Boston Red Sox – fresh off a series victory against the New York Yankees – have a potential play-off preview four-game series against the Cleveland Indians, whilst those Yankees have a three-game set against Detroit.

Seattle and Kansas City will both look to gain ground in the AL Wild Card race by picking up some wins against National League opposition. The Mariners continue their road trip with a visit to Atlanta, whilst the Royals are hosting the Rockies for three games starting on Tuesday.

NL Central race may also become part of the NL Wild Card race

In the National League, the Pittsburgh Pirates have the tough task of facing the LA Dodgers four times across Monday to Thursday. The Buccos are now six games back in the NL Central having recovered from a six-game losing streak to win the final two games of their series against the St Louis Cardinals. They need to keep on picking up some wins and that’s not something any team has found easy against the Dodgers this season.

The Cubs and Reds split a four-game series last week and meet up again, this time in Cincinnati, for another three games from Tuesday to Thursday. Meanwhile the Cardinals are hosting the Padres for three games at Busch Stadium and the Milwaukee Brewers are in San Francisco taking on the Giants.

The Brew Crew won two of three at Coors Field against the Colorado Rockies this past weekend and, coupled with the Twins’ sweep of the D-Backs, the play-off picture in the National League is potentially changing. Whereas even just a week ago it looked like the NL Central teams were battling for one play-off spot, Arizona now only has a 2.5 game gap over Milwaukee for the second Wild Card, with the Rockies one game further ahead.

This means that although the Cubs earned back a small gap at the top of the NL Central thanks to their weekend sweep of the Toronto Blue Jays, the Brewers, Cardinals and possibly even the Pirates might have a second chance at making the post-season aside from clawing back the gap at the top of their own division.

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: Colon, Miller and a Windy City World Series

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

Bartolo Colon hit a home run

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

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

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

Shelby Miller won a game

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

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

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

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

A Windy City World Series?

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

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

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

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: Living in a fantasy world

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WHGB11It’s two weeks from today that the 2016 MLB season will get underway and we’re starting to see managers using Spring Training games to get their opening series lineups set.

The same goes for many of us that play fantasy baseball.

Our BaseballGB league had its draft on Friday night, as recapped by Mark George. You always like to set a draft as close to Opening Day as possible so that there’s a bit more certainty on which players will be making teams. Having Easter fall on the weekend before the season starter makes that slightly trickier this year so, like many others, we’ll be keeping an eye on the MLB news over the next two weeks in the hope that key selections don’t have any last-minute accidents before the games get underway.

The BGB League is a 14-team, MLB-wide, Head-to-Head setup and Yahoo was quite kind to me in randomnly selecting me at #5 in the drafting sequence. Clayton Kershaw was there for me to select in the first round, but I’m always wary of going for a pitcher so early – even one of the class of Kershaw – and couldn’t look past the all-round package that Josh Donaldson provides at third base, so he was the first name on my team sheet.

My first dilemma came in the next round where the stolen base collector Dee Gordon was a tempting option, yet Buster Posey‘s consistency and ranking as the best catching option seemed too good to turn down.

There are always moments in a draft when you’re left watching 4 or 5 other people and hoping that they haven’t got designs on the player you want to take.

The first of these occasions came in the 9th round when I thought that Hanley Ramirez might fall into my lap. Now that the disastrous left-field experiment has been ended by Boston, I can see Ramirez having a bounceback year at the plate. He’s currently listed as an outfielder on Yahoo, yet I had designs on bagging him and then moving him to first base. Unfortuantely, no sooner had I double-checkd Yahoo’s rules on when a player obtains eligibilty at a different position than the Mighty Slugs proved none-too sluggish in nabbing in him three picks ahead of me. Brandon Belt wasn’t a bad second prize though.

The second occasion came in the 13th round and once again it was those dammned Slugs that foiled my plans. This one was especially painful because it concerned Addison Russell. As an A’s fan, it’s painful enough to see our former top prospect playing in a Cubs uniform, but at least I thought I could enjoy his first full season in the Majors with him picking up points as my fantasy second baseman. Alas, it seems destined that Russell will always be out of my reach.

I responded by taking a flyer on Dustin Pedroia regaining fitness and form. Apologies to Red Sox fans if I’ve jinxed him.

My one shaky selection came in the 12th round when I drafted Shelby Miller. It’s shaky because my hunch is that the D-Backs’ all-in gamble will backfire and, if it does, part of that is likely to be down to Miller failing to live up to his 2015 performance with the Braves. All things considered Miller looked like a good option at that point in the draft so I went against my hunch and added him. We’ll see how that one plays out.

The other starting pitcher conundrum came in the 17th round when I selected Andrew Cashner. I was very optimistic about Cashner’s prospects last year and drafted him in the 11th round, only for him and many other Padres to disappoint. One year on and I’ve decided to give him another chance. Whether it’s his impending fee agency at the end of this season that inspires him, or my show of faith, I’m hoping that he won’t let me down again.

All in all, I achieved my modest drafting objective of not completely stuffing myself up from the beginning. Looking at my roster, I’m aleady taken by the fact that there will be a whole host of teams that I’ll be keeping a keen eye on that I otherwise may not concentrate on so much. It doesn’t get in the way of my actual supporting interest in the A’s (Josh Reddick is my A’s fantasy pick this year, and I adhered to my ‘no Angels but Trout’ stance – top fantasy tip: don’t touch Jered Weaver with a smelly stick), but one of the great things about fantasy baseball is that it gives you a reason to care about games that have little meaning to your ‘real’ team.

Add it to the list of reasons to be excited about the coming season.

Other thoughts

There’s always a late injury before a fantasy draft to keep on top of and this year for the BGB league it was the Rays’ project closer Brad Boxberger, who faces at least eight weeks out following abdominal muscle surgery. Tampa Bay needs good health to compete against the Blue Jays, Red Sox and Yankees this year (I’m underwhelmed by the Orioles’ prospects) and this isn’t a great start for them.

The Adam LaRoche retirement fiasco over the past week has been completely bizarre and the way executive vice president Kenny Williams has handled it all has shown a surprisingly poor lack of judgement for such an experienced member of the Front Office. The general idea of limiting La Roche’s 14-year-old son’s time in the clubhouse seemed reasonable enough; however confronting the first baseman about it half-way through Spring Training has needlessly caused a significant amount of discontent and aggravation.

There were already some doubts about the White Sox’s competitiveness this season and manager Robin Ventura‘s job security as a result. Irrespective of what actual impact this issue has, if they start slowly over the first 6-8 weeks then Ventura, General Manager Rick Hahn and the players will all be pointing the finger in the same direction.

Finally, don’t forget that Nat Coombs’ new All American Sports Show begins on Tuesday at 18.00 on talkSport2, taking place at the same time that the Rays take on the Cuban national team in a historic game in Havana (broadcast live on BTSport/ESPN) . The show will also be available as a podcast if you can’t catch it live.

March: a month-long injury avoidance exercise

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The Chicago White Sox have been one of the busiest teams over the off-season and this has raised expectations that a 2015 play-off push is not out of the question after struggling through two poor seasons.

Spring Training is the time of year when every team looks for whatever positives they find can to dream of a good season ahead, yet it can also be a period when harsh reality kicks in.

Spring Training game results aren’t the issue, a good win-loss record in the Cactus or Grapefruit League doesn’t amount to much, it’s the ever-present fear of injury that can be so cruel.

News that ace pitcher Chris Sale had suffered an injury must have given White Sox fans a real scare. Thankfully, the right-foot fracture he has suffered should only put his pre-season routine out by three weeks. It might well mean that Sale will not be on the mound for Opening Day, but much better that he has a slightly delayed start to the season than missing an extended period.

Still, it’s an early reminder that for all we focus on off-season transactions and predictions of probable Opening Day line-ups, injuries are an unavoidable part of baseball and can have a significant bearing on a team’s fortunes.

No one knows that better than the Texas Rangers, who were absolutely devastated by injuries in 2014. This year has started in a similarly demoralising way as former top prospect Jurickson Profar has undergone shoulder surgery that will see him miss a second consecutive full season. Profar is still young enough to come back and have a successful career, but it’s the latest setback for the Rangers who have had some ridiculous bad luck.

Just a few years ago they made back-to-back World Series and seemed set to be play-off contenders for years to come thanks to an enviable crop of young talent, with Profar being one of the leading lights. It would be a shock if they didn’t greatly improve on their miserable 2014 record of 67-95 as that was a year when pretty much everything fell apart, culminating in manger Ron Washington moving on.

New manager Jeff Banister has a good roster of players to pick from and will be looking to lead his team back into play-off contention this year.

Like the rest of us, he’ll be mindful of the Spring Training league standings and how individual players are performing, but the main concern simply will be getting through March with as few injuries as possible.

AL Central: Off-season so far

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The Kansas City Royals were the surprise story of the 2014 season. Quite simply, every other team could look at them and think, ‘well if the Royals can finally turn things around, there’s a chance for us all’.

Repeating the feat will not be so easy though and if Royals fans thought that their World Series run would herald a new era of success, after so many years of hard times, they haven’t exactly been bowled over by the moves their Front Office has made to make that dream become a reality.

Kendrys Morales and Alex Rios have been added to the offence, signings that may have been more exciting four or five years ago, whilst Edinson Volquez has recently joined a pitching staff with a James Shields-shaped hole in it. Shields is still out there on the free agent market so a return isn’t completely out of the question; however it seems unlikely and Kansas will be looking to their younger players to replicate their late season form.

Shields is the number two starting pitcher on the market behind Max Scherzer. At some point over the next few weeks we will find out if the Detroit Tigers’ owner Mike Ilitch does delve into his sizeable coffers once again, this time to bring Scherzer back.

That seems unlikely considering the annual salaries they are already committed to with Justin Verlander, Miguel Cabrera and the re-signed Victor Martinez over the next four years (see the payroll commitment spreadsheet on the Tigers’ page at Cot’s Baseball Contracts), but if they don’t feel they can keep hold of David Price before he reaches free agency at the end of 2015, maybe they will stretch to a fourth big contract. The Tigers have added Alfredo Simon and Shane Greene to the rotation already, whilst trading away Rick Porcello to acquire outfielder Yoenis Cespedes from Boston.

The Cleveland Indians have been quiet so far this off-season, just adding Brandon Moss and Gavin Floyd, and are banking on their good core of young(ish) players to be backed by returns to form by 2012/13 offseason free agent signings Michael Bourn and Nick Swisher.

Meanwhile in Minnesota, there is a new manager at the helm in Paul Molitor after Ron Gardenhire’s 13-year spell with the team was brought to an end. The Twins were not expected to be too active this off-season, biding their time as young players like Byron Buxton and Miguel Sano (both hampered by lengthy injuries in 2014) make their way through the Minor Leagues. They have brought back veteran outfielder Torii Hunter, signed Ervin Santana as a free agent and agreed a contract extension with Phil Hughes, who was a terrific signing for the team last winter.

All of which leaves us with by far the busiest team in the division and one of the most active across the Majors. The Chicago White Sox have added players to the batting lineup, starting rotation and bullpen (as noted recently) and how well they mesh together in 2015 will be one of the factors in determining if the Royals’ World Series appearance was the start of a play-off run or just a one-and-done affair.