I’ve put together some thoughts in a video on our Oakland A’s UK YouTube channel about the fall-out so far from the sign-stealing scandal from the past week.
Some of those thoughts come in the form of a song, re-appropriating the Elvis classic “You Were Always On My Mind” to instead become “You Were Always Stealing Signs”.
Take a listen here:
A week ago I wrote the following:
“The MLB Winter Meetings have begun in San Diego and plenty of people are speculating about what big free agent news will be announced over the next few days (likely very little, based on recent years)”.
You could say I was a long way off the mark with that comment, although maybe I can latch onto the final caveat to save a bit of face.
Over the past two off-seasons there has been considerable discontent among players as to how the free agent market has failed to develop in the way they expected. Both times the fall-out descended into an argument with teams on one side and players and agents on the other. It takes two sides to make a deal. Whether it was the players being greedy or the teams being cheap depended on which side of the fence you were shouting from.
The first month and a half of the 2019/20 off-season can’t help but make you lean towards the players and agents on this one.
Take Mike Moustakas as a prime example. He had to accept one year deals in each of the previous two off-seasons due to finding no multi-contact offers to his liking. This time around he’s signed a four-year contract with the Cincinnati Reds. Whilst we do have to take the qualifying offer, and resulting loss of a draft pick, into account, that doesn’t go far enough as an explanation as to why he suddenly is now worthy of a multi-year commitment. The difference this time is in a greater number of teams looking to add a quality infielder.
It comes back to a topic I discussed just over a month ago, that of the essential element of competition that drives a free agent market. The impasse in the past two off-seasons has come from teams not upping their offers because they knew that they didn’t have to as part of winning the bidding, whilst players and agents were waiting for better offers that they thought should come, but never did.
This year, things have changed.
The Philadelphia Phillies were one of the few teams to make a big push a year ago, not least in the Bryce Harper contract, and the end result was making it eight consecutive seasons without a play-off appearance. The Phillies were never going to stand still after that disappointment and they’ve acted by bringing in Joe Girardi as manager to replace Gabe Kapler and then signing Zack Wheeler to a five-year, $118m contract and Didi Gregorius to a one-year, $14m contract.
Their NL East rivals, the Washington Nationals, were not going to take their foot off the gas after winning the World Series either. Having lost Harper last year, and rightly expecting to lose Anthony Rendon this year, there was no way they were going to let Stephen Strasburg be tempted by another team’s offer. That was why they blew everyone else out of the water with their seven-year, $245m contract offer that Strasburg accepted on Monday. It’s a huge commitment in a pitcher who has had injury problems in the past and, by all accounts, was not looking to leave Washington anyway, but the Nationals were not prepared to take any chances. They could afford to offer that contract, so they did.
This immediately ignited the market for Gerrit Cole. Strasburg’s deal took the other outstanding starter off the board and also helped to set the parameters for the contract Cole clearly was going to command.
A year ago, everyone was waiting for the New York Yankees to jump in and ramp up the bidding stakes for Manny Machado and Bryce Harper. There was no waiting around this year. The Yankees’ record of making the World Series at least once in every decade from the 1920s on came to an end in their ALCS defeat to the Houston Astros. With no Bronx Fall Classics in the 2010s, and a team with a great offence and bullpen but questionable starting pitching, there was no way that the Yankees would allow Cole to go anywhere else. No messing about: they put the largest ever contract for a pitcher on the table, nine-years, $324m, to make sure he became a Yankee.
And that then put the LA Angels on the clock. It was already a source of embarrassment for owner Arte Moreno that his team had squandered the first eight full seasons of Mike Trout, genuinely in the running to be considered the greatest player of all-time by the end of his career, by turning it into just one Division Series defeat. Having given Trout the most lucrative contract ever (12 years, $426.5M) to stay with the team for years to come prior to the 2019 season, there was no way that the Angels could get through this off-season without signing a big-ticket free agent.
With Strasburg and Cole off the market, the Angels immediately offered Anthony Rendon a seven-year, $245m contract. Just as the Nationals couldn’t let Strasburg leave and the Yankees couldn’t let Cole sign elsewhere, the Angels were prepared to offer whatever it took to make sure they didn’t miss out on Rendon.
This is what happens when teams with big pockets are motivated to out-spend each other to win now. Whatever Rob Manfred may try to claim, that has not been the context in which the free agent market has played out over the past two off-seasons.
It’s made for an exciting Winter Meetings and sets up the rest of the off-season perfectly.
The Houston Astros’ path to their first World Series title appeared to be set out following their 5-3 victory over the Los Angeles Dodgers in Game Three on Friday night.
The win gave them a 2-1 series lead and made it seven wins out of seven at home in this year’s post-season. With two more victories needed to claim the title, and two more games coming up at Minute Maid Park, the script was written for a Sunday night celebration in Houston.
The Dodgers’ five-run outburst in the top of the ninth inning of Game Four on Saturday night ripped that script up, spoiling the Astros’ plans but adding an intriguing plot twist for the rest of us to enjoy. A 1-1 level game heading into the final regulation inning turned into a 6-1 Dodger lead that the Astros could only reduce by one run (on Alex Bregman’s homer).
This World Series is officially in a state of Desmond (2-2).
MLB acted quickly by issuing the Astros’ Yuli Gurriel with a 5-game suspension after his offensive behaviour during Game Three. The length of the suspension appears appropriate, the question is whether rolling it over to the start of the 2018 regular season was correct.
On balance, I think the right decision has been made.
The gesture was offensive towards Dodgers pitcher Yu Darvish, but it wasn’t something that affected a play or the player during the game. Consequently, there wasn’t a clear need from a fairness standpoint to issue a penalty that affected the rest of the series (i.e. it wasn’t a transgression that cost the Dodgers and therefore fairly needed to be balanced out staight away).
The justified high-profile scrutiny and criticism, and proportionate punishment being issued in terms of length of suspension, also means that I don’t think it would be fair to say Gurriel was allowed to ‘get away with it’ by playing the rest of the World Series.
The Astros’ closer Ken Giles and fellow reliever Joe Musgrove were the fall-guys in Game Four. Combined with watching the previously unbreakable Dodgers closer Kenley Jansen being jumped on in Game Two, it’s made me think of relief pitchers – especially in the high stakes of the play-offs – as being a lot like penalty-takers in football.
The expectation is that a good penalty-taker should score and they can do so even if they don’t strike the ball cleanly or it doesn’t go quite where they were placing it. You get no extra points for style; so long as it goes in you’ve done your job under pressure.
It’s the same with a top relief pitcher. They earn that rank and role by coming out on top time and again, so they are used to handling the pressure and you expect them to do it pretty much every time. They too can succeed even if they miss their spot. If the hitter swings and misses, or makes weak contact and makes an out, all’s well that ends well.
However, as with a penalty shoot-out, one team has to lose and that means someone has to come out on the wrong end of it. Regardless of how good the relief pitcher is and how well they cope with the pressure, the person they are facing in the batter’s box is an elite ballplayer (just getting to the Majors proves that) and are just as desperate to succeed.
As has been written many times before, if it could happen to the Yankees’ Mariano Rivera in 2001, it could happen to anyone. That’s no great immediate solace to the relief pitcher as they trudge off the field, but something for the rest of us to remember as we watch the drama unfold.
The Astros and Dodgers are two excellent teams with some outstanding players. One of them has to lose. The rest of us can just sit back, enjoy the contest and hope it goes the full seven games.
Game One of the 2017 World Series turned into a Battle of the K’s, won by Clayton Kershaw, as the LA Dodgers earned a 3-1 victory.
Kershaw racked up 11K’s in seven innings against a Houston Astros team that led the Majors by hitting for power whilst rarely striking out. His opposing starting pitcher, Dallas Keuchel, pitched well but gave up two home runs that proved to be the difference.
They always say that you need to get to the best pitchers early and the only way Chris Taylor could have got to Keuchel earlier would have been by doing a hatchet job on him during his warm-up. One pitch, one home run made for the perfect start for LA.
The Astros’ lead-off hitter George Springer has made a specialty of homering his team into an early lead. His 0-4 performance, a 4 strike-out Golden Sombrero, summed up the difference between the two teams on the night.
Kershaw was masterful aside from a pitch to Alex Bregman in the fourth inning that the Astros’ third baseman hit into the seats to level the score at 1-1. It barely knocked Kershaw out of his stride though and Justin Turner’s 2-run home run in the sixth inning gave the Dodgers a lead that Kershaw, Brandon Morrow and Kenley Jansen were not going to give up.
The Astros will not be disheartened and, in theory, should have an advantage on the mound for Game Two as Justin Verlander attempts to continue his great post-season. Rich Hill will start for the Dodgers and he has the capacity to confuse even the best batters with his curveball, yet he hasn’t pitched as deeply into a game of late as he would like.
In recent times that hasn’t mattered much in the play-offs as managers have been quick to turn games over to their bullpen. The conventional role played by the two starting pitchers in Game One, alongside the unseasonably hot temperature and short game time (2hrs 30), was one of the things that made it unusual for recent play-off contests.
Unusual, but very entertaining. This Astros-Dodgers match-up has the potential to be a classic and Game One started things off perfectly. Let’s see what Game Two brings in the early hours of Thursday morning.
This year’s MLB post-season has once again brought the term ‘bullpenning’ into frequent use as teams get what they can from their starting pitcher before turning the game over to the relievers.
However, the next two play-off games will have a clear focus on two starting pitchers.
Thursday night’s game is Game Five of the NLCS from Wrigley Field. The Chicago Cubs took Game Four on Wednesday to avoid a 4-0 series sweep, but they’re still in trouble against the Los Angeles Dodgers and all the more so because tonight they face Clayton Kershaw.
Among some outstanding hurlers, Clayton Kershaw’s record over the past five or six seasons has earned him the right to be called the best starting pitcher of his generation. The play-offs haven’t been quite so kind to him so far, yet talk of ‘struggles’ is overblown.
Whatever the past, tonight is a perfect opportunity for him to put together a signature Kershaw start and to help the Dodgers book a place in the World Series for the first time since 1988.
On Friday night Justin Verlander will be taking to the mound at Minute Maid Park as he tries to prevent the New York Yankees from joining the Dodgers in the Fall Classic.
The Houston Astros left their home a few days ago with a 2-0 series lead and full of optimism; however the home-team-wins pattern continued in a raucous Yankee Stadium where the Bronx Bombers have reeled off three victories.
This scenario is precisely why it seemed so strange that the Astros didn’t augment their starting pitcher corps prior to the non-waiver trade deadline. That has to be caveated by not knowing fully how high the asking price was for them from various teams, yet given their great regular season and strong farm system of young talent it was hard to imagine a team in a better position to add one more arm to give them a great shot at their first ever World Series title.
They finally managed to get Verlander minutes before the waiver deadline at the end of August and they couldn’t have wished for anything better from their new addition since he has arrived.
Now they need him to give them one more vintage Verlander start, ideally of six innings or more given that the Astros’ bullpen hasn’t been quite as impregnable as others, to keep the series alive.
Verlander putting up zeroes has become more important due to the white-hot Houston bats mysteriously turning snow-white cold during the ALCS. Although Masahiro Tanaka had to pitch out of some jams in Game Five, he was still able to put together seven strong innings against what had hitherto been a formidable line-up.
The added bonus for Yankees manager Joe Girardi, and added jeopardy for the Astros, was his ability to send Tommy Kahnle out for two innings to complete the game. With Thursday as an off-day, that leaves him with a full arsenal of lethal bullpen weapons to throw at the Astros when Game Six comes around on Friday. Luis Severino was yanked from his Game Two start early due to a potential injury – something the pitcher felt was unnecessary – so there’s an element of doubt there for the Astros to latch on to.
However, if he gets through even four innings then Houston could have a problem.
Predictions are always a coin-toss at this stage, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we have a baseball-free weekend with both the Dodgers and Yankees earning the all-important fourth win at their next – and in New York’s case first - attempt.
It’s always a shame when we get to the final day of the MLB regular season and there is nothing significant still to play for.
Looking through the standings, the only potential thing to ‘win’ would be the first draft pick in next year’s amateur draft, which goes to the team with the worst win-loss record.
The San Francisco Giants (63-98) are one loss ‘better off’ than the Detroit Tigers (64-97) in the race to the bottom. If the Giants foolishly go and win today against the San Diego Padres and the Tigers lose then they’ll be matched on 64-98.
Normally with tie-breaker situations you look at the results of the games the two teams played against each other, but I’m not sure quite how that works here.
The Tigers won their inter-league series 2-1, which should mean they finish higher, although in the circumstances they might feel that the victory should result in them finishing last so they get the number one pick. Such is the weirdness that creating an incentive to finish last leads to.
Anyway, despite the Tigers’ protestations, I suspect that the Giants do have the worst record sewn-up already on that tie-breaker (I was going to look it up, but thought better of it), so we are where we are and can enjoy the final day as simply a day of baseball with not much riding on it.
Looking at the almost-final standings, you can’t escape the conclusion that the teams most people thought would win the six divisions heading into the year have done so.
Neither the LA Dodgers and Washington Nationals had a strong challenger on paper and so it proved, whilst the Chicago Cubs also came through with a handy gap in the end despite the NL Central being harder work for them than we might have thought.
The Cleveland Indians blitzed the AL Central, in no small part thanks to their incredible 22-game winning streak, Boston kept the New York Yankees at bay in the East and the Houston Astros took all the fun out of the AL West (for the other four teams at least) by going 38-16 across April and May and never looking back. An 11-17 August counted for little, particularly when they responded with a 20-8 September.
The above is partly the whole point of having the Wild Card round. We had predictable division winners this year because they were all blatantly going to be really good teams and were only going to be beaten if they had a disaster or two to give someone else a chance.
That’s not a bad thing in my book. Whilst surprises are always fun, ultimately you should want there to be impressive teams that rack up wins in the regular season and make their eventual clashes in the post-season all the more enthralling.
The Wild Card, especially the second Wild Card, adds something else to the play-off pot.
It creates the potential for other strong teams to get in, such as the Yankees this time around. Despite the negatives you can throw at the Wild Card play-in game from a fairness point of view, the AL East was a great example of one of the main positives.
There is a huge potential difference between winning the division and going straight through to the best-of-five Division Series, compared with flipping a coin in the lose-and-you’re-out Wild Card game. Potential is the key word there, as if you manage to win the Wild Card game your odds of winning it all aren’t all that much lower than the other Division Series competitors. However, the risk of your play-offs only lasting one game means that the division is always worth fighting for now, which wasn’t the case when there was only one Wild Card per league.
The second Wild Card means that if there are three strong teams in one division in a given year, they could all have a chance of making it to the post-season.
That’s happened this year in the NL West. The Colorado Rockies were a somewhat surprising third-placed finisher last year behind the Dodgers and Giants, yet their 75-87 record to get there – after losing 96 and 94 games in the previous two seasons – gave reason to be cautious about being too optimistic for their hopes in 2017.
In fact, it proved to be indicative of the potential that was there at Coors Field and they’ve fully earned their first play-off appearance since 2009.
The Rockies’ progress in 2017 is nothing compared to that of the team that will be hosting them for the NL Wild Card on Wednesday. 2016 was a disaster for the Arizona Diamondbacks after they made big moves in the off-season – spending $206m on Zack Greinke and a king’s ransom in a trade for Shelby Miller – only to lose 93 games. Various people lost their jobs as a result, but there was still some talent at the club and the potential for a quick return to respectability.
They far exceeded that and enter the final day of the regular season with the joint-sixth highest win total across the Majors with 92. No one can say the D-Backs haven’t earned their play-off appearance.
As for the Minnesota Twins, well, some people aren’t being quite so generous in their praise of the second AL Wild Card winners.
They’ve earned their spot because they’ve got the fifth-best record in the American League and five teams qualify for the play-offs from each league. However, they enter the final day with a win-loss record of 84-77.
In football people often say the league table doesn’t lie at the end of a season; in other words, where you end up is generally a good reflection on how good your team was.
MLB takes that further by playing a 162-game regular season. Randomness can still come into, but by and large that’s more than enough time for the cream to rise to the top, the chaff to be separated from the wheat, and the middling middlers to settle in the middle.
It is fair to say that Minnesota are more middly than creamy.
That doesn’t matter in the least for the Minnesota Twins, who can smile away any jibes by knowing there are 20 other teams that would love to be in their position. They’ve made it to the play-offs a year after losing 103 games. They’ve won 25 more games than they did last year and can make it 26 if they win on Sunday. That’s a real achievement for Paul Molitor and his team.
The problem some have with the Wild Card game in a situation like this is that a team that has earned a significantly better record over 162 games than their opponent can be knocked out by losing one game.
There’s no escaping that this isn’t completely fair, but there’s one important thing to note about it this year.
The New York Yankees have won more World Series than any other team and broken more hearts than anyone else along the way too. The ‘Evil Empire’ moniker isn’t being thrown around quite so much now as it had been the previous 10-15 years, but there’s a reason why it became a thing in the first place. Yankees fans, like fans of any all-conquering team, understand that people love to hate them.
So if it does happen and the Twins do dump the Yankees out on Tuesday night – and it certainly could – then whilst the strict analysts may bemoan it, the rest of us can have a good chuckle about it.
#ThumbsUp
Just three days of games into June showed us that we are in for another exciting month in MLB.
On Saturday alone, we got to witness a moment that has only happened eight times previously in the history of MLB.
Albert Pujols hit career home run 600, doing so in the grandest style of all with a grand slam. Whilst a no-doubter might have been more fitting for ‘The Machine’, it was all the more exciting due to the couple of seconds of suspense waiting to see if it would stay fair or go foul.
On the same day, the Miami Marlins’ Edinson Volquez pitched the first no-hitter of the 2017 season. It was a magical yet poignant moment when the final out was made, coming on the day that would have been ex-team mate Yordano Ventura’s birthday (Ventura was tragically killed in a car accident over the off-season) and with the memory of the late Jose Fernandez still burning brightly for all in the Marlins family.
However, we shouldn’t let the last couple of days distract us from looking back at all that happened in May. If you’ve not been able to keep up with it all, here are the division-leading teams.
We have to start with the rocket-propelled Houston Astros. They have the best record in MLB, lead the AL West by a massive 12.5 games and head into their game against the Texas Rangers on Sunday having won nine games in a row.
The Astros went 22-7 during May. Their impressive batting lineup managed to score 180 runs in the process – Carlos Correa in particular having a great month at the plate – and when you’re averaging six runs per game, that gives your pitching staff plenty of breathing space.
In any case, Houston’s hurlers have been contributing handsomely and their rate of 10.34 strike-outs per nine innings was the best of any team in the Majors. With the AL West looking relatively weak, the Astros are a good bet to keep motoring along and to earn the best regular season record in the league and the home-field play-off advantage that comes with it.
Whilst the Astros’ pitching staff has been dominant, the same can’t be said for those toeing the rubber for the Twins. They were actually the second least-valuable contributors across MLB in May among pitching staffs when grading performance based on FanGraphs’ Wins Above Replacement (only Cincinnati were behind them).
Their 14-12 record in May (following a 12-11 record in April) came despite them allowing more runs (152) than they scored (125). That would suggest the Twins are getting some breaks so far that may go the other way soon enough.
Still, let’s not be too harsh on them. Few would have predicted that they would be leading the division at this point heading into the season so we should enjoy the fact that they are rather than getting too bogged down on their chances of staying there.
Even though it was big news when the Yankees traded away Andrew Miller, Aroldis Chapman (since re-signed) and Carlos Beltran last summer, believing that it would start a rebuilding phase in the Bronx was always likely to be just wishful thinking for those who see them as the Evil Empire.
The Yankees aren’t for rebuilding, re-tooling or whatever term you wish to use. Their goal every year is to win and the changing of the guard last year was more about getting better for 2017, rather than 2019-2020, than some realised at the time.
Aaron Judge has been the undoubted star of the show. He leads the Majors with 18 home runs (although his 7 in May was second on the team behind Brett Gardner’s 9) and seems completely comfortable with all the attention he is getting. Fairly or not, it’s a simple fact that Judge doing what he’s doing in a Yankee uniform hits the headlines more than if he was wearing an A’s or Rays uniform.
Every sport needs new stars and what Judge is doing so far is great for the game.
It’s no surprise that the first two months of the season have shown that the Nationals are a really strong team.
Their ten-game lead over the New York Mets is partly down to the latter’s issues – those crowing last summer about the Mets now being the star team in New York were perhaps a bit quick with their judgement – but that doesn’t take away from the Nationals’ performance as the team to beat in the Senior Circuit.
The perennial bullpen question in Washington still lurks in the background. So far this season, their relievers have the second-lowest FanGraphs WAR in MLB with only the aforementioned Twins beneath them and even with Koda Glover showing promise as their closer, they will once again be shopping for a reliever or two as we head towards the trade deadline to try to prevent another play-off disappointment.
It would be a major shock if they don’t reach the post-season though. Stephen Strasburg and Max Scherzer were predictably brilliant in May, Anthony Rendon started to heat-up at the plate, and Bryce Harper continued displaying his prowess with the bat, although not so much when it comes to throwing a batting helmet.
The Arizona Diamondbacks and Colorado Rockies held them off for a good while, but the Dodgers have now climbed to the top of the division thanks to a blistering 19-9 May.
Cody Bellinger’s home runs (9 in the month) have stood out and he looks set to be a force in their line-up for years to come. However, don’t overlook the contribution made by the less-heralded Chris Taylor. He was acquired in a low-key trade with the Seattle Mariners last June and, despite hitting the headlines by hitting a grand slam as his first Big League home run against Arizona a month later, Taylor didn’t make the Major League team out of Spring Training.
Injuries have given him an opportunity and so far he has taken it. He led the team with 1.3 fWAR in May whilst showing flexibility in playing different positions in the field (mainly second base and centre field, with a few starts at third base and shortstop). Alex Wood also had a noteworthy May on the mound, putting up a 1.37 ERA in five starts.
The Chicago Cubs are in second place and looking ominous, but for now the Brewers are leading the way and that’s a great story for a team that few people gave much of a chance to heading into the season.
Eric Thames added only three home runs during May to the 11 he swatted in April and you would suspect part of that drop-off to be a reflection of teams studying his approach from the first month – having spent the previous three seasons playing in South Korea – and adjusting how they pitch to him. That’s what makes it so difficult to have continued success in the Big Leagues, but don’t write Thames off as a one-month wonder just yet.
Jimmy Nelson and Chase Anderson have formed a good one-two punch in their rotation, whilst Nerd Power has arrived in Milwaukee with Eric Sogard building on his cult fandom from his time in Oakland with heroics in May. A’s fans like myself will know that Sogard doesn’t offer much with the bat normally, so enjoy this little hot spell while it lasts, but also that he offers decent defense at second base and is an easy player to get behind and want to do well.
One month into the MLB regular season and there have already been enough stories to last a year.
Here are some of the key things that have happened.
Any team or player can go through a tricky month, so we should be wary of taking a bad April to always be a sign of things to come. It’s not easy to be pragmatic like that when it’s your team in the stir, though.
The Toronto Blue Jays have been a constant source of worry for their fans during the first month. They’ve picked up a bit of late so they no longer hold the worst record in the Majors, but having the second-worst record (8-17) isn’t much of a consolation.
They’ve been bedevilled by injuries – a common theme as we’ll see – and the return of Jose Bautista, who looked likely to leave as a free agent over the off-season, has not started well. Bautista has always been the sort of player loved by his own fans but hated by opponents, and it’s fair to say his struggles have not evoked much sympathy. He has the sort of attitude that would use that negativity to spur him on; however at 36 years old it’s possible this may not just be a one-month blip and instead a sign of his decline as a force at the plate.
The team that does hold the worst record is the Kansas City Royals. The tragic death of pitcher Yordano Ventura continues to cast a shadow over the club, as does the looming free agent status of a number of core players (Eric Hosmer, Mike Moustakas, Lorenzo Cain being the main ones). It looks like this is the end of the line for this World Series-winning group and they may be set for a rebuild, which is a shame for their fans but the memories of their 2015 triumph will sustain them for years to come.
In the National League, it’s the Royals’ World Series opponents from 2014 and 2015 that are getting most of the flak.
The San Francisco Giants have started slowly and whilst there’s enough talent on their roster to get back into the Wild Card race, losing Madison ‘I’m just a crashing dirt bike numpty’ Bumgarner for a couple of months at least is a significant blow. Much as it would be just like the Giants, and especially just like MadBum, to defy the odds and stage a glorious comeback, they’re making things very difficult for themselves.
The same could be said for the New York Mets. Injuries, injuries, injuries is the story here and what’s most concerning is the sense that this isn’t just down to bad luck. Yoenis Cespedes and Noah Syndergaard are the latest two stars to reportedly pull rank and play through fitness concerns, only to make matters worse. You don’t like to criticise players who are desperate to be on the field, but it does raise questions as to who is in charge and looking at the bigger picture of a long season.
The Mets’ management of injury concerns comes at a time when we’re seeing a significant change in the approach of teams towards injuries.
One of the many changes brought about by the new Collective Bargaining Agreement signed over the off-season was the introduction of a 10-day Disabled List, down from the 15-days that it had been for many years.
The disabled list is something that can confuse Brits new to MLB. The starting point is simply that the players on the DL are injured; however formally placing them on the DL is part of managing the strict limit of 25 players that a team has at their disposal on a given day.
An MLB team’s 25-man roster is part of their overall 40-man roster of players, and this is then part of an organisation-wide group of players throughout their 5 or 6 Minor League teams (‘feeder’ teams, in a sense).
The Disabled List is there so that teams can’t simply game the system by having a large squad of players to mix-and-match from every single day. If a player on your active 25-man roster picks up an injury, you either have to play short-handed while he recovers or place him on the DL so that you can put someone in his place.
With a 15-day DL, teams were more inclined to keep hold of a player for minor niggles rather than have to be without them for a couple of weeks. The Players Association (union) were keen to change this as it tended to mean players were back out on the field earlier than they probably should have been.
The idea of the 10-day DL is that the shorter time period will make teams err on the side of caution and give the player time to recuperate fully. The first month of the new rule has shown this to be the case. More players are going on the DL and this has a knock-effect in ‘real’ baseball (opportunities for other players to get some Major League service time) and in ‘fantasy’ baseball.
The Washington Nationals were many people’s favourites for the NL East division this season and they’ve shown why during April by amassing an MLB-leading 17-8 record. That positivity comes with the recent blow of losing off-season recruit Adam Eaton to a knee injury that looks set to see him miss the rest of the season.
The actual impact of his absence on the Nationals’ play-off hopes is lessened by how strong their roster is, although losing a good player like Eaton is always going to be a blow.
You could say the same about the Boston Red Sox and David Price. They’re not pulling up any trees so far, but a 13-11 April keeps them nicely in the running and Chris Sale has been outstanding.
Price is continuing his rehabilitation from an arm injury that many feared could see him miss the entire season and whilst there’s still no firm timetable for his return, currently it looks like he may be back on a Major League mound at the end of May or beginning of June. There’s no need to rush him, despite the competitive nature of the AL East, and if he can be up to speed for the second-half of the season then they’ll have an intimidating front three to their rotation with reigning Cy Young Award winner Rick Porcello an impressive ‘number three’ to call on.
The ‘nice’ start for Boston comes with the ominous signs of a young New York Yankees team that doesn’t see 2017 as a rebuilding year. They’ve looked really impressive in April, Aaron Judge in particularly showing off his incredible power at the plate, all whilst being without Didi Gregorious for most of the month and their best young player, Gary Sanchez, heading to the DL. He could be back in the lineup by the end of this week so this could be much more than just a good start.
If they can keep it up, the Yankees will be in a very different position at this year’s trade deadline than they were in 2016. Whilst last year they were shopping veteran players for prospects, this year they may use some of their prospect depth to add a starting pitcher (Jose Quintana would be the obvious one)Â to make a play-off push.
The Colorado Rockies and Arizona Diamondbacks also shouldn’t be overlooked as they’re the NL West front-runners in the early going.
The Rockies have started well despite their main off-season recruit, Ian Desmond, only just making his debut yesterday due to recovering from a fractured left hand. As for the D-Backs, they’ve suffered the blow of losing pitcher Shelby Miller to an elbow injury that will almost certainly require Tommy John surgery and over a year on the sidelines. It’s a cruel blow considering he’d shown positive signs in his first couple of starts after a miserable 2016 and will add to the case of Arizona signing him being one of the worst trade decisions by a team in recent history.
Marcus Thames has been the big story of April, swatting 11 home runs for the Milwaukee Brewers in his first month back in the Big Leagues after a three-year stint in the Korean league. Sadly his power surge has prompted the inevitable sniping from some that drugs may be involved, but Thames came back with a great response (“If people keep thinking I’m on stuff, I’ll be here every day. I have a lot of blood and urine”).
The Houston Astros’ Dallas Keuchel beat the Oakland A’s on Sunday to make it a perfect 5-0 record from his first five starts. Painful as it was to watch for this A’s fan in some ways, you have to appreciate a pitcher like Keuchel who doesn’t rely on 95+ mph fastballs to mow down opposing line-ups.
Ervin Santana will look to equal Keuchel’s record 5-0 record on Tuesday night starting against, of course, the A’s (Sonny Gray will make his much-anticipated first start of the season for Oakland in that game too). Santana’s strong start for the Minnesota Twins has been a great surprise for his team and, as is the way, puts him in the shop window for a potential trade later in the season.
Finally, Chris Coghlan deserves a mention for what he did against Yadi Molina and the St Louis Cardinals. Dives in football are rightly condemned; in baseball, they can be a thing of wonder.
The first weekend of February is a good time to take stock of the baseball off-season and to get your head around the question of ‘who’s gone where?’.
That led me to go through the essential MLB section on RosterResources.com and to chart out the main additions and losses for every team so far this off-season.
I started with two transactions in mind as the most important and the exercise confirmed that to be the case.
The Boston Red Sox and Cleveland Indians were two of the best teams in the Majors in 2017 and they’ve each made a notable signing this winter to reinforce their status as favourites to battle for the American League World Series spot.
Chris Sale’s trade to Boston from the Chicago White Sox adds an ace to a rotation that already boasted David Price and reigning Cy Young winner Rick Porcello. So long as Sale doesn’t get frustrated and go all Edward Scissorhands on us again, he should be a genuine difference-maker in the AL East.
As for Cleveland, they’ve responded to narrowly losing in the World Series by making an uncharacteristic splash in the free agent market. Few would have put much money on the Indians winning the bidding war for Edwin Encarnacion, but the former Blue Jay is indeed a new member of the Tribe and one of several reasons to be confident that their successful 2016 season will not prove to be a one-off.
What the winter hasn’t provided though is a clear case of a team making a big leap forward into the play-off reckoning.
That’s not a complete surprise as the 2016/17 free agent class was one of the weakest of recent years. Additionally, three of the most appealing free agents had come to the end of their contracts with the Los Angeles Dodgers: Kenley Jansen, Rich Hill and Justin Turner. The Dodgers used their financial clout to keep the trio out of the clutches of any potential rivals and made a small quality free agent pool even smaller.
We should also not forget that the team that made the biggest noise over the previous winter was the Arizona Diamondbacks. To say that their plan – if we can call it that – didn’t work out would be a huge understatement. Winning the off-season doesn’t offer guarantees that you’ll win in the regular season.
However, there have been some interesting transactions completed and here are three teams worth keeping an eye on.
The Houston Astros were a relative disappointment in 2016 after their play-off appearance the previous year. They completed most of their off-season work early, making it easy to forget that they have made some decent additions. Carlos Beltran, Josh Reddick and Brian McCann have joined a batting lineup that was already one of the better units in the Majors. Whether their pitching staff will take a step forward could be the key question for their 2017 prospects.
The Seattle Mariners’ General Manager Jerry Dipoto should simply referred to as ‘The Trader’. He is always keen on making a deal and has completed plenty of trades this off-season, with the most notable additoins being Drew Smyly, Yovani Gallardo, Jean Segura, Mitch Haniger and Jarrod Dyson whilst Taijuan Walker, Nathan Karns and Seth Smith head the list of players that have been moved on. They finished second in the AL West in 2016, albeit a fair way behind division-winners Texas, and we’ll see if the cumulative effect of the trades have made them better or not.
Finally, the Colorado Rockies managed a surprising third-placed finish in the NL West last year, although their 75-87 win-loss record showed that was more down to Arizona and San Diego’s poor play than their own positive performance. Undeterred, they decided to up the ante by signing Ian Desmond to a five-year, $70m contract and then announced that the intention is for him to play at first base. It ranks as one of the more baffling decisions made in recent years, worth keeping an eye on for the ‘so crazy it just might work’ potential it has.
Whether it was Rajai Davis battling the snow to make a catch in the outfield, Tom Wilhelmson getting smacked around by his former teammates – and then thrown out of the game for throwing at one of them – or Kyle Schwarber suffering a season-ending knee injury, the Opening Week of the 2016 MLB season has not been easy for some, but it’s certainly been eventful.
Where else could we start than Trevor Story’s first four games in the Major Leagues. Whilst his home-run hitting streak came to an end on Saturday, his six long-balls had already made him the big story of the week, all the more so thanks to him having a surname ripe for puns and headlines.
It will be said time and time again this month that we should not get caught up in April performances. Players and teams can get hot for days or a few weeks at any point during the season and it’s easy to exaggerate the real significance of this when that hot streak comes so early in the season.
We saw a similar event ten years ago. Then it was the Detroit Tigers’ Chris Shelton who hit five home runs from the first four games of the season. He hit only 11 more across the rest of the season and played just 50 further Big League games across 2008 and 2009 before his Major League career came to an end.
Later that same month, the Texas Rangers’ Kevin Mench hit a home run in seven consecutive games and left some wondering if the streak would ever come to an end. It did, of course, and he subsequently hit only five more bombs across the rest of the season with the Rangers and Milwaukee Brewers before playing out the final 179 games over the next four years during which he hit eight home runs in total.
Not much was expected of Shelton or Mench. In Story’s case, it was already thought that he could provide some legitimate power to the Rockies’ offence. His Baseball Prospectus 2016 capsule noted that he had amassed some high strikeout totals in the minors that could carry across the Majors, but “in between some awkward flails at wayward breaking balls he’ll inflict serious damage”.
Six homers in four games certainly falls under the definition of “serious damage”. Like all young players he will go through some growing pains as pitchers learn and exploit his weaknesses and he will then have to adjust his approach, but there’s reason to believe that Trevor’s story won’t end on these first four games and there will be plenty of chapters to enjoy in the years ahead for him at Coors Field.
After Chase Utley broke Ruben Tejada’s leg in the high-profile 2015 NLDS game between the Dodgers and Mets it was inevitable that a new rule would be introduced.
It was also inevitable that it would cause some problems early in the season; however, few could have predicted those problems would come in two game-ending plays during the first week.
The first occasion between the Rays and Blue Jays was more clear-cut once the emotion of the game was removed and John Gibbons’ embarrassing ‘wearing dresses’ comment was rightly condemned. Jose Bautista made his slide into second base and then clearly went to grab Logan Forsythe’s leg with his hand. That’s not breaking up a double-play, that’s intentionally interfering with a fielder.
The ruling that ended the Houston Astros’ ninth-inning rally against the Brewers on Friday night was not so clear-cut. It was clear in the sense that Colby Rasmus broke the new rule by sliding past second base, but not in the sense of complying with the reason for bringing the rule in. The infielder was at no risk and had no intention of trying to turn a double-play, yet the umpires correctly applied the rule as it’s now worded and awarded the Brewers a double-play to end the game.
It’s safe to say that some clarification on how the rule should be interpreted will be provided by MLB in the next couple of weeks to bring it more in line with expectations.
It’s equally safe to say that having games end on a replay review is one of the most jarring compromises to be accepted alongside the benefits of the replay system.
The debate around whether the Designated Hitter rule should be extended to the National League has some very entrenched views on either side.
Personally, I like to see professional athletes having to work on different facets of their chosen sport – skillful rugby players needing to get their tackling and positional sense up to a level where they’re not a liability etc – and I’m quite happy to live with pitchers getting over-matched if that means they have to develop their ability to get a good bunt down.
It also means that the pitchers that can hit get to enjoy themselves occasionally. Madison Bumgarner did just that against Clayton Kershaw yesterday with a home run to left-field, the second time he’s taken Kershaw deep.
MadBum won that battle, but Kershaw and the Dodgers won the war that day with a tenth-inning 3-2 victory.