Tag Archives: Miami Marlins

Weekly Hit Ground Ball: Boos, Cheers and Chocolate Bars

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The first full week of the MLB season is now in the books and it’s starting to feel like we’re getting into the swing of it.

Every team has at least one win, albeit still only one win for the Tampa Bay Rays heading into Sunday’s games, whilst every team has at least one loss, albeit still only one loss in the case of the Boston Red Sox (linked to the Rays’ situation) and the New York Mets.

Among the expected favourites, the LA Dodgers have had the slowest start in losing six of their first eight games, with the Cleveland Indians going 3-5 through their first eight games.

But it is still only eight games.

We have to wait for what seems like an eternity for the baseball season to start again and that means it’s difficult to avoid the temptation to draw conclusions from what we’ve seen. Whether good or bad, it’s going to take a couple of months to really get a feel on how teams and players are shaping up this season.

Boos Turn To Cheers

That’s being rational about it, though. It’s easy for fans to lose perspective in the early days of the season, forgetting that a 162 game regular season brings with it plenty of ups and downs.

Giancarlo Stanton got his first taste of the difference between playing in Miami and playing in New York when he was booed in the Bronx on Tuesday for striking out five times. He gave the perfect response the following day by hitting a home run.

Similarly new Phillies manager Gabe Kapler had a rough first few days on the job with his unconventional bullpen management coming under all sorts of scrutiny. Some fans booed him at their Citizens Bank Park home opener on Thursday, partly in jest (I think), but wins like the one they had on Saturday (20-1 over Miami) will soon change that.

The simple rule is that some fan bases are quicker to boo than others and the best way to respond is to give them something to cheer about.

#BonusBreakfastBaseball

In last week’s column I referenced the 17-inning slog between the Cubs and Marlins and that the push for extra inning rules in the Majors may gain momentum over the next ten years.

What I neglected to mention is that for us across the pond there is a perk attached to these long games, especially those on the west coast.

It was about six o’clock on Tuesday morning when I looked at the scores and saw that the game at Chase Field between the Dodgers and Diamondbacks was still in progress. Two hours later and it was still going on. The game lasted 15 innings and took a total of 5 hours 46 minutes to complete, finally being won by Arizona at around 8.25 BST.

That was good fun for neutrals, great fun for D-Backs and quite significantly less fun for Dodgers fans, particularly any that had started watching from first pitch (2.40 am here) and lived through a second Kenley Jansen blow-up early this season.  Again, ‘it’s early’ …

Facebook Freebie that may feel like a blackout

As for watching baseball, a new venture for MLB began on Wednesday when Facebook provided an exclusive broadcast of the day-game between the Phillies and Mets.

Games have been shown live on various platforms before, yet the difference in this case is the worldwide online exclusive part. MLB.TV simply directed you on to the Facebook page where you had to log in to see the game.

It should be said that the Facebook deal isn’t putting anything behind another paywall and MLB will focus on the fact that it makes another weekly MLB live game free to watch.  The issue of course is that you have to sign up to Facebook to watch it and whilst for many people that will be a non-issue, it was coincidental that the Phillies-Mets game was going on precisely when Facebook announced that the number of people affected by the Cambridge Analytica saga totalled a staggering 83 million.

In the UK, we’ve been used to enjoying MLB.TV since its inception without having to worry about any local blackouts that affect subscribers in North America. The Facebook deal is only for one game per week, so it’s not a significant number of games affected over the season, but it is going to be one day-game per week, which has an increased impact on us due to those being the most convenient games to watch live in the British evening.

MLB.TV subscribers are left in the situation of either having to sign up to Facebook – which for many reasons increasing numbers want to avoid – to watch games that they considered they had paid for or miss out. Again, it’s only one game per week, but the concern would be that it sets a precedent that will gradually see more deals being signed that reduce the live action available on MLB.TV.

Twitter are also streaming one game per week live for free again this year; however these are only available in North America so not something we can use to help promote the game in this country.

The Chocolate bars are on Charlie

It’s been a good week for Charlie Blackmon. He signed a new six-year contract with the Colorado Rockies that guarantees him at least $108m.

It’s an interesting deal as it has to be seen in the context of this past off-season’s Free Agent market, with Blackmon’s original contract set to expire at the end of this season. He has decided to work out the best deal he could get with the Rockies rather than test the market and you have to say that seems a wise decision.

Blackmon has been a relatively late bloomer. Whilst his performances over the past few seasons have been excellent, he turns 32 years old in July and so, based on what we’ve just seen, you could imagine teams being wary about offering a contract for more than three years to him, even though his performances would suggest he deserved a bigger investment.

The Rockies don’t have a great track record when it comes to making big signings, from last year’s Ian Desmond deal (that doesn’t make any more sense one year) to the infamous Mike Hampton disaster of December 2000.

In the case of Blackmon, they have been prepared to push the boat out to tempt him away from free agency due to their close knowledge of the player. Come back in six years’ time to see whether it proved to be a wise decision or not.

The Sunday Smasher

The selection here should probably be Shohei Ohtani’s second MLB start on the mound, given how well his debut went and his headline-grabbing, home run hitting we’ve seen this week.

However, I picked his start last week and, as with that one, he’s going to be facing my Oakland A’s so I’ll leave that one alone in the hope that his performance is less eye-catching today.

Instead, I’m going to pick the Marlins-Phillies game that begins at 18.35 BST and is available to watch or listen to via MLB.TV. They may not be teams that neutrals would immediately pick, but I like to make sure I catch a bit of every team early in the season and the reason to choose this one is that it will be Jake Arrieta’s debut for the Phillies.

It looks a very favourable match-up for Arrieta – other than the fear for Phillies fans that they used up all their hits and runs yesterday – and he could do something special.

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.

Weekly Hit Ground Ball: Back for 2018

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With November and December in the rear-view mirror, it’s time to get my weekly MLB column back up-and-running as we start looking ahead to pitchers and catchers reporting to their 2018 Spring Training camps and beyond.

The planned format for ‘Weekly Hit Ground Ball’ in 2018 is to be a round-up column of the key news stories and moments from the week just gone, with a few personal reflections along the way.

It will be published every Sunday morning and, once we get to the regular season, will also pick out a few of the most enticing games to watch on a Sunday evening in Britain – typically the best time of the week for us to catch live baseball.

The Not Hot Stove

The main news, of course, is the lack of news.  The so-called baseball off-season Hot Stove is barely simmering as the free agent market is taking time to develop, which has a knock-on effect on the trade market (and vice versa).

Now that the Christmas break is over, we’re starting to see an increase in rumoured offers to free agents – the interest of the San Diego Padres and Kansas City Royals in Eric Hosmer being a good example – and the feeling is we’ll start to see the dominoes falling over the next couple of weeks.

Much is being made of next year’s free agent class and the impact it is having on the market this off-season; however, it remains to be seen what effect that will actually have. Whilst there is undoubtedly some outstanding talent waiting in the wings – Bryce Harper, Manny Machado and potentially Clayton Kershaw topping the list – only a small number of teams are going to come out of the 2018/19 off-season with a big prize.

Even though teams will make decisions this year with next year’s market in mind, there is plenty of good talent out there this off-season. We’ll soon start to see teams identifying the right player for them at the right price. Not getting jam today in the hope of better jam tomorrow is smart if it works out, but teams looking to improve will be all too aware of the potential for the Yankees, Dodgers are their ilk to buy up all the best jam next off-season and leave them empty-handed.

Rockies in relief

The Colorado Rockies certainly aren’t waiting around as they have put plenty of money into their bullpen in recent weeks.

They re-signed free agent Jake McGee to a 3-year, $27m contract (approximately £127k per week), gave the same contract to Bryan Shaw (formerly of the Cleveland Indians) essentially to replace the departed Pat Neshek and then signed Wade Davis to a 3-year, $52m contract (approximately £245k per week) to replace Greg Holland (a free agent yet to find another team).

We all know that the performance of relief pitchers can be quite volatile year-to-year so committing this amount of money to three relievers is a risk.  However, the Rockies’ relievers played an important part in the club earning a Wild Card in 2017, so it’s not surprising that they’ve decided to spend money in that area in an attempt to keep that part of the team strong.

Here’s how the Rockies’ bullpen ranked in Fangraphs WAR over the past five seasons, alongside Colorado’s win-loss record:

2017 – 87-74 (2nd NL Wild Card) – Rockies relievers ranked 6th in MLB with a 6.4 WAR
2016 – 75-87, ranked 23rd (3.9)
2015 – 68-94, ranked 22nd (2.0)
2014 – 66-96, ranked 29th (-0.2)
2013 – 74-88,  ranked 10th (4.2).

The 2013 bullpen was pretty good, although not much else on the team was. The relief corps were led by Matt Belisle, Adam Ottavino and Rex Brothers, and looking through their stats reminded me that Roy Oswalt made 3 relief appearances for them that year.

The Rockies had a very positive 2017 despite their major free agent signing from the off-season not working out. Signing Ian Desmond to a 5-year, $70m contract with the intention of him playing first base looked a questionable decision to put it mildly. His progress wasn’t helped by several injuries and that was unfortunate, yet he didn’t play well when he was on the field either.

Desmond’s downturn didn’t scupper the Rockies in 2017, but the same probably won’t be the case in 2018 if their bullpen spending doesn’t produce the goods.  It’s a risk and a package of spending that plenty of writers have questioned, but there’s a bit of me that likes the fact that they’re at least having a go.

Phillies adding too

The Philadelphia Phillies are another team who have made a few dips into the free agent market, signing relievers Pat Neshek and Tommy Hunter and then adding former Cleveland Indian Carlos Santana on a three-year, $60m contract (approximately £283k per week).

The Phillies are a great example of how teams can go in cycles in MLB. They’ve been in rebuilding mode in the last five/six seasons after a dominant five-year run at the top of the NL East between 2007 and 2011 during which they made it to the World Series twice (winning in 2008).  They were in the top three or four of all MLB payrolls between 2010 and 2014 before slashing costs and heading into the bottom third of MLB spending over the past couple of years.

Now that their young talent is starting to emerge at the Major League level – Rhys Hoskins especially catching the eye last season – the Phillies are being linked with making a big move among the elite free agent talent in the next off-season.

However, there’s value in the Phillies adding some talent around their youngsters this year too and getting back into play-off contention in stages, rather than trying to make a big jump.  Money talks loudest, but a good jump forward in 2018 (maybe to 78/80 wins or so) may also help to convince a big free agent that the Phillies are heading in the right direction and that the new signing will not have to turn them around on his own.

More Marlins misery

The latest instalment in the Miami Marlins saga was revealed by the Miami Herald this week after they got hold of documents that Derek Jeter and his fellow Marlins’ owners sent around to potential investors.

Among other dispiriting revelations was the detail of Project Wolverine as it was called that set out the ownership’s hopes for boosting revenue whilst significantly cutting the MLB payroll and therefore promising investors a healthy return on their investment.

It just adds even more salt to the wounds for Marlins fans that the pain of seeing Stanton, Ozuna and Gordon traded away (with more likely also heading out of the door) and knowing that they will be sitting through more years of poor baseball from their team will all go to help line the pockets of rich investors.

It’s hard to imagine a fanbase being treated more poorly than what those that follow the Marlins have had to endure in recent years.

More writers joining The Athletic

The subscription-based sports-writing site The Athletic is continuing to add impressive names to their baseball coverage.  Most notable for me has been the full-time appointment this week of Melissa Lockard who for years has provided outstanding coverage of Oakland A’s prospects at Oakland Clubhouse.  She’s the new staff writer/editor of the San Francisco section of The Athletic.

If you’re a fan of multiple North American sports then a subscription for The Athletic is quickly becoming close to a must-have.  I only really follow baseball so, as with the ESPN Inside subscription over the years, in that situation it’s a bit more of a decision as to how much value you get when a considerable amount of coverage relates to sports you may not be greatly interested in.  However, the increasing amount and high quality of baseball coverage they offer has tempted me in, so I’ll update in a month or so as to value for money when it comes to pure baseball fans.

First impression is that the website easily allows you to select what sports/teams you’re interested in seeing stories about, so if baseball is your focus you can just choose to display those (and then amend/update it as you like from then on).

Books on the way

We’re also at the time of year when pre-season book purchases are being considered.  The two main titles I buy are the Baseball Prospectus Annual and the Ron Shandler Baseball Forecaster.  The usual UK book outlets have 15 January as the release date for the Forecaster and 9 February for BP.  I’m counting down the days, but you can find that the dates are pushed back a bit when it comes to UK online shops having them in stock.

It’s also worth noting that the price of Kindle versions of baseball books (probably US books more generally) can change quite significantly.  For example, when the Bill James Handbook 2018 was released the Kindle version initially was almost the same price as the paperback version (approximately £18), but a few weeks on the price was revised down to approximately £12. If you’re going the Kindle route – I’ve found over the years I tend to prefer getting paperback versions of stat-based books – you can often end up saving £5 or so just by waiting a bit before Amazon.co.uk adjusts the price.

MLB 2016 – National League Preview

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MlbHlSqAfter looking at the American League yesterday, our attention now turns to the Senior Circuit.

The most significant difference between the two leagues coming into the 2016 season is that whilst every team in the AL at least has some chance – however small – of competing for a Wild Card place, 5 of the 15 teams in the National League are deliberately looking towards future seasons.

‘Tanking’ is the word people like to use, essentially where a team deliberately trades away its best players, slashes the payroll and prioritizes the acquisition and development of prospects over challenging for a play-off spot. It’s controversial given the amount of TV money these teams are banking – under the assumption that they would be fielding a team worth watching – yet the truth is the current MLB landscape doesn’t just allow teams to do this, it rewards them for it.

Nothing illustrates that better than the 2015 seasons had by the Chicago Cubs and the Houston Astros.

The Atlanta Braves, Cincinnati Reds, Colorado Rockies, Milwaukee Brewers and Philadelphia Phillies are all prepared to take some pain today for jam tomorrow.

The good news is that there are plenty of strong teams left in the NL to create a captivating regular season.

NL East

This time last year many onlookers had penciled-in the Washington Nationals as not only the team to beat in the NL East, but the team to beat across the whole league. They had won 96 games in 2014 and responded to an early play-off exit by signing ace pitcher Max Scherzer, so the hype was not unwarranted; however it was something the team singularly failed to live up to and ultimately cost manager Matt Williams his job.

In 2016 it’s the New York Mets who are receiving the same platitudes, yet it seems highly unlikely that they will buckle under the weight of expectations. Their young pitching staff is genuinely outstanding and, having unexpectedly made the World Series last season, figure to only get better in 2016. That’s a scary thought for everyone else.

Where does that leave the Nationals? The one true success of 2015 for them was the MVP season put together by Bryce Harper and just as you can count on the likes of Jacob deGrom and Noah Syndergaard to pitch like aces for the Mets, so you can expect Harper to do the near-impossible and challenge Mike Trout for the honour of the best player in MLB.

The experienced Dusty Baker has been brought in to pull the team together and create a happy ship out of what was a combustible crew. Whether they will challenge the Mets, or at least win a Wild Card spot, will come down to good health and how effectively they take advantage of the 38 games that they will play combined against the rebuilding Braves and Phillies.

NL Central

It’s been an off-season diet of the Cubs, Cubs and more Cubs in the NL Central. Joe Maddon and his team are the new media darlings and you can understand why. They’ve amassed an enviable group of young talent and supplemented it with free agent signings in the form of Jon Lester in the 2014/15 off-season and now again with Jason Heyward, Ben Zobrist and John Lackey.

They were really good in 2015 and will be again in 2016.

What we shouldn’t lose sight of, though, is that the Pittsburgh Pirates were just as good last season and the St Louis Cardinals were even better. Neither team has added the experienced talent that the Cubs have acquired, and Chicago’s gain has very directly been St Louis’s loss with Heyward and Lackey moving to the other side of that rivalry, but they still have strong rosters and the way things are shaping up could really suit them.

The Cubs are the team with all the expectations. It’s been very noticeable in Spring Training that the Cardinals are almost enjoying the way everyone is jumping on the Chicago bandwagon, ready to prove exactly why they’ve won the division for the past three seasons and have no intention of letting the upstarts crash their party.

As for the Pirates, you’ll struggle to find a team more determined to win a division having experienced the pain of a one-game-and-gone play-off exit in each of the past two seasons.  This is going to be a true three-way battle.

NL West

Will there be a three-way battle in the West?

The Arizona Diamondbacks are intent on making that so. Their audacious signing of Zack Greinke mirrored the Cubs’ Cardinal clear-out job by taking him away from the LA Dodgers, with the added benefit that the San Francisco Giants lusted after the free agent too. They followed that up by trading for Shelby Miller and whilst the package they gave up for him may prove to be a high price to pay, it’s given them a front three with Patrick Corbin that stacks up well against their division rivals.

The D-Backs are confident, although it’s often been the case that the team that ‘won the off-season’ in recent years has gone on to win precious little else. What Arizona needed was for their existing players to either repeat or improve on their previous performances to make the additions count. That hope took a hammer blow last night with outfielder A.J. Pollock breaking his elbow. Pollock quietly developed into one of the best players in the National League last year. He will be out for an extended period – a similar injury cost him the entire 2010 season – and whilst it’s not fatal for the D-Backs’ chances, it certainly reduces them.

Injuries are also the story in LA where the Dodgers have been devastated by a succession of setbacks. At time of writing, MLB.com’s injury report lists no fewer than 13 Dodgers suffering notable ailments with as many as 10 of them being a doubt for Opening Day, if not out of action for much longer. They’re Major League-leading payroll ensures that sympathy will be in short supply and the Dodgers still have a solid group to compete with. As players return to health during the season, alongside the always-present potential for them to acquire new players and to up the payroll even further, you would be wrong to write them off even if they are in third place by the end of May.

As for the Giants, they’ve added starting pitchers Johnny Cueto and Jeff Samardzija to their rotation and it’s an even year, so the omens are good for them.

My predictions

NL East – NY Mets, Washington, Miami, Philadelphia, Atlanta

NL Central – St Louis, Chicago Cubs (WC), Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Milwaukee

NL West – LA Dodgers, San Francisco (WC), Arizona, San Diego, Colorado

MLB offseason begins with managerial merry-go-round

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While the Kansas City Royals and their fans will be basking in the glory of winning the World Series for weeks to come, the rest of baseball has already turned its attention to taking the title themselves in 2016 or in the years ahead.

The Washington Nationals are one of the teams in the sooner-rather-than-later camp and they made a major change this week to recover from their disappointing 2015 season by appointing Dusty Baker as their new manager.

The role of a manager in MLB was brought into question this year due to the Miami Marlins sacking Mike Redmond and temporarily replacing him with Dan Jennings, hitherto their General Manager and possessing scarcely any baseball coaching or managing experience. To an extent you do have to set the Marlins to one side when it comes to MLB trends as their owner Jeffrey Loria is unconventional, to put it politely, yet we’ve seen numerous other examples in recent years of teams appointing ex-players with little managerial experience.

The Nationals did this with Matt Williams and despite winning the 2014 NL Manager of the Year award, the award voters giving him the credit for their 96 wins with clearly the best roster in the league that year, which backfired as he failed to mould a group of talented individuals into a team producing consistent performances.

As is so often the case with managerial changes, the Nationals have gone for an opposite approach this time in the experienced Baker. However, the process of his appointment looks confusing to say the least, with former San Diego Padres manager Bud Black having been pencilled in to the position only for the team to turn back to Baker when they failed to reach an agreement with Black.

According to CBS’s Jon Heyman, it all started to unravel when the Nationals decided on appointing Black and then acted upon this by offering him a one-year contract.

Teams are entitled to negotiate contracts how they wish, but that either showed disrespect to Black or was an indictment on how unimportant they feel a manager is (or perhaps it was even a bit of both).

The Nationals went into the 2015 season with a 25-man roster payroll of $162m, a mix of veterans and young players who – based on how things played out last season – needed a skilled leader to keep them together whilst also running the strategic side of the game to maximise their chances of winning games and getting back to the postseason. There are only 30 MLB manager positions at any one time, so there are many candidates out there and any team actually in a period of competing for titles should want to get the very best they can.

You don’t attract such quality with a one-year contract offer. What the Nationals were effectively saying was “we’re not sure if this is going to work so we’re just going to give you a one-year deal and then if it goes wrong we can ditch you for someone else”. That’s hardly confidence-inspiring, nor does it help a manager in dealing with a clubhouse that therefore knows he could soon be out of the door.

They’ve ended up with a good manager in Baker, not without his faults but with plenty going for him too, so it may turn out well in the end for them, but potentially more through luck than judgement.

The Marlins meanwhile splashed out on a four-year deal with ex-Dodgers skipper Don Mattingly. He was on a bit of a hiding to nothing with LA, getting it in the neck when his expensively created team didn’t go all the way and yet likely to not receive a great deal of credit if they had done so anyway.  The Marlins have some good young talent so he has an interesting roster to work with, even if he may need to work around his owner’s unpredictable nature.

Mattingly’s replacement at the Dodgers is still to be decided. Plenty of names have been linked to the post and it’s a very attractive job even with the World Series or fail expectations to contend with. That seat on the MLB managerial merry-go-round should be filled soon.

Anyone can manage an MLB team

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The Miami Marlins under the ownership of Jeffrey Loria are expected to do things that leave you bewildered, sometimes in a good way for their fans (giving Giancarlo Stanton a $325m/13 year contract extension this off-season) but more often not (take your pick: acquiring a high profile manager and several free agents in a blaze of publicity when opening a brand new ballpark, only to get rid of most of them one year later would be a good place to start).

They have added another entry to their list of wonderment today, but as a prelude to discussing this I’m led to a story that dominated the British sports news over the past week.

In all of the coverage about Steven Gerrard’s departure from Liverpool FC, it was noted that he is currently in the process of getting his ‘coaching badges’ to move into management when his playing career is over.

It doesn’t matter that he has had a 17-year professional playing career that’s seen him win major trophies and play for England over 100 times, he still had to obtain his ‘Level 2, Certificate in Coaching Football’ the same as someone wanting to do a ‘Football in the Community’ coaching role to set him on his way.

Gerrard is currently completing his ‘Level 3, UEFA B Licence’ that takes between 12 to 18 months of work (he has been coaching Liverpool’s Under-16 team once a week as part of this) before progressing on to the ‘Level 4, UEFA A Licence’ that can take a further two years and is a requirement to manage or coach professionally (either having the qualification or being in the process of working towards it).

From there, if he wants to manage in the Premier League or a major UEFA competition he has to have completed or be working towards the ‘Level 5, UEFA Pro Licence’, which can take another year.

Ryan Giggs, Gerrard’s contemporary, became the first person to obtain the Level 5 qualification whilst still playing and a feature by the Independent in 2013 explained what this stage in the qualification process involved:

“Giggs … will undertake 240 hours of study to gain the qualification – including spending three days at a European club and making a detailed case study of a business. He is expected to secure the qualification within the next 12 months after a period at Warwick University’s Business School.”

It’s all part of the UEFA coaching qualification pyramid that is designed to ensure men and women coaching or managing 14 year-olds in a football academy or experienced internationals in the Champions League have undergone a thorough period of study that goes a long, long way above simply being good at playing the sport when you were younger.

It certainly doesn’t preclude pockets of the ‘old boys’ network’ having a strong say in who gets employed at certain clubs, but it does at least ensure that coaching is something that merits the designation of being a profession in it’s own right, rather than just being there for the manager’s mate to earn some money to pay off his gambling debts.

In Major League Baseball, things aren’t quite so structured.

There is a growing trend in appointing former players to MLB managerial roles despite the individuals having precious little managerial or coaching experience. Craig Counsel (Milwaukee Brewers) Mike Matheny (St. Louis Cardinals) and Brad Ausmus (Detroit Tigers) are but three examples and every appointment has raised the same question: if teams don’t value experience in these roles then what do the roles actually consist of and how important are they?

The Miami Marlins have raised the stakes by sacking Mike Redmond and replacing him with General Manager Dan Jennings. By all accounts he’s held in high regard by many that know him and have worked with him, but he has no professional playing career to speak of and his coaching resume consists of a stint with a High School in Alabama years ago.

It may prove to be an inspired decision; however if it does then that’s perhaps an indictment on what a manager or coach does in MLB.

Can it really be right that at the very highest level of baseball – the pinnacle of the professional game – the small select group of managerial and coaching positions available can be handed out to people with no actual qualifications or direct experience in doing the jobs they have been appointed to?

 

NL East: Off-season so far

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Where in the NL West and Central we saw teams grabbing headlines trying to get back into contention, in the East you can’t start anywhere else than looking at a team that has done precious little this off-season.

The Washington Nationals’ roster is very similar today to how they ended the 2014 season – minus Adam LaRoche who has joined the Chicago White Sox – and whilst that makes for a dull off-season, it doesn’t change the fact that the Nationals were the class of the division last year and remain so.

The Miami Marlins made plenty of noise in signing Giancarlo Stanton to a monumental contract extension, yet that didn’t improve the team in itself as he already figured to be a part of their 2015 team regardless.

The focus from there was on the moves that the Marlins were promising to make to show that they were committed to winning with their homegrown star. They have been active – bringing in Mat Latos, Dee Gordon, Michael Morse, Martin Prado and possibly Dan Haren, if the latter does agree to relocate from the west coast – although they are coming from a long way back so it remains to be seen if they have truly put themselves in the Wild Card hunt.

The New York Mets entered the off-season in a slightly similar position whereby they were starting from a non-contending 2014 season, yet they have a group of talented young players, including Matt Harvey returning after missing all of 2014 through injury, that looked like they might be an outside bet to leap forward with a few key additions. Unfortunately for Mets fans, the only real addition they have made is signing veteran outfielder Michael Cuddyer, who may not prove to be a positive addition at all.

They should be improved if their current players stay out on the field, yet that only makes their unwillingness to push the team forward with a bold position player signing or two all the more frustrating. Rumours about potential impact trade targets – Troy Tulowitzki being the most frequent name mentioned – continue to circulate, but recent history doesn’t offer much reason to believe the Mets are on the verge of making such a deal.

If ‘frustrating’ is a good word for the Mets, what one should we choose to sum up the Atlanta Braves? Pitching injuries have hit them hard over the past year or so and now, having traded away Jason Heyward and Justin Upton, they look like a team treading water in the mid-pack despite having a good core of players.

Their move to a new ballpark for the 2017 season seems to be the focus and despite adding Shelby Miller and Nick Markakis so far this off-season, their approach for the next two seasons appears to be one of hoping to sneak a Wild Card if they can without pushing the boat out, rather than really going for it or taking the alternative stance and trading away several more established players (Craig Kimbrel being the obvious next candidate) to focus purely on the 2017 team.

The Philadelphia Phillies do at last appear to be looking to the future rather than desperately clinging onto the successful 2007-2011 period, with Jimmy Rollins being traded to the LA Dodgers. The problem the Phillies have is that the rebuild should have started two years ago, meaning the only really valuable player they have left to trade (excluding Chase Utley, who is still playing well but can block any trade and, by all accounts, wants to see out his career in Philadelphia) is Cole Hamels. Getting that trade right will be crucial for the pace at which they can get back to contention. The 2015 season is undoubtedly a write-off already and 2016-2017 might not be great either.

Tragedy leads to reflection

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The tragic death of Australian cricketer Philip Hughes cast a dark shadow over sporting events over the past few days.

The Minnesota Twins’ pitcher of the same name quickly had to tweet to clear up some initial confusion over the news in the States, but that was far from the only way in which the desperately sad incident had a bearing on the world of baseball.

The tactic of bowling a bouncer in cricket has a clear similarity to pitchers throwing a ‘purpose’ pitch up-and-in to a batter.

In both cases the person wielding the ball is trying to intimidate the person wielding the bat, making them feel uncomfortable and taking some of their concentration away from their batting on to worrying about avoiding a painful blow instead.

Pitchers generally are not trying to hit the batter in baseball as that gifts them first base. In cricket, shaking a batsman up is part of the longer running sequence of trying to get him out on the basis that he (or she) is standing in front of the very wicket that the bowler is normally aiming for. England’s pace bowlers reportedly practice hitting the helmet badge on a dummy as a way of sharpening their accuracy when bowling some short stuff, so there is more of a body-hunting intent to the cricketing practice compared to baseball.

However, in both cases, the end result is that a person propels a hard ball at a batsman or hitter with limited protective equipment at a speed that could cause significant injury if it lands in the wrong spot. And in the freak case of Hughes, can be fatal.

The lucrative contract signed by Giancarlo Stanton has been the biggest headline grabbing news of the offseason so far and we only have to consider how his 2014 season was brought to a premature close to see how fickle fate can be.

On 11 September, Stanton was hit squarely in the face by an 88 MPH fastball thrown by Milwaukee Brewers pitcher Mike Fiers. It was a scary incident- catching it once on a news package was more than enough times for me and I don’t wish to watch it again – and it was sheer luck that he only suffered multiple facial fractures rather than anything life-threatening.

Because Stanton was ‘alright’ after a short recovery period makes it easy to dismiss the incident as just one of those things, just as the equally scary sight of seeing a pitcher getting hit by a come-backer (such as happened to Brandon McCarthy in September 2012) can be forgotten about once the injured party returns to the mound at a later date.

Although there is risk in pretty much everything in life and playing baseball will never be completely safe, it is not giving into a nanny state culture to think that any near miss or worse should prompt a considered review as to whether steps could be taken to improve safety, even just by 1 per cent, without taking anything of importance away from the sports we love.

Stanton was adamant when asked that his incident didn’t have any bearing on his decision to sign a contract extension with the Marlins. There’s no reason to doubt that, but there’s also no reason to not pause for a moment and be thankful that he was still here to be able to make that decision.

 

Offseason so far: NL East

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Our review of the offseason so far moves from the American League onto the National League, starting in the NL East division.

Atlanta Braves

In November, the Braves announced plans to move from Turner Field to a new ballpark 10 miles away, with the hope being that they’ll be in their new home for the 2017 season.

Frustratingly for Braves fans, that’s where the exciting news came to an end as the reigning NL East champs  done little to improve their roster, whilst seeing veterans Brian McCann (Yankees) and Tim Hudson (Giants) depart. Ryan Doumit and Gavin Floyd, the latter currently on the rehab trail from Tommy John surgery, are the main additions to a roster that still contains plenty of talent, but perhaps looks vulnerable to injuries or repeats of the poor form showed from B.J Upton and Dan Uggla last season.

Washington Nationals

Never mind two players, the Nationals received disappointing seasons from a whole host of their team last year as the pre-season favourites for a World Series appearance ended up never seriously competing for a playoff spot.

They’ll be looking for a bounceback in 2014 and have helped their cause by swinging a trade for starting pitcher Doug Fister. The Detroit Tigers had other options for their rotation that made Fister available and the Nationals were able to add him as a replacement for Dan Haren – who has moved to the Dodgers – for a surprisingly modest outlay.

Jerry Blevins has also been added to the bullpen in a trade with the Oakland A’s as Washington has so far kept out of the free agent market.  The biggest change at the club so far has been in the retirement of manager Davey Johnson and the appointment of Matt Williams. The former D-Backs coach will make his managerial debut this season and hopes will be high that it will be a winning one.

New York Mets

This offseason was always going to be difficult for the Mets after star young pitcher Matt Harvey underwent Tommy John surgery in October and will likely be missing for the whole 2014 campaign.

Not much could make up for such a blow and in the circumstances the free agent signings of pitcher Bartolo Colon and outfielder Curtis Granderson would be easy to overlook, but they are two decent additions that should work out well for the team. Chris Young may also be a good bet to bounce back from a disappointing year with Oakland.

Philadelphia Phillies

Ryne Sandberg looks set to begin his first full season as manager of the Phillies fielding a familiar roster. The likes of Jimmy Rollins, Chase Utley, Ryan Howard and Carlos Ruiz (who re-signed this offseason on a three-year deal) are still on the team, but the back-to-back World Series appearances of 2008 and 2009 seem a long time ago and hoping for a sudden turnaround after an 89-loss season with an ageing roster may be asking for too much.

Alongside re-signing Ruiz, the main addition so far has been acquiring 36-year-old outfielder Marlon Byrd. Roy Halladay has retired after a painful final season, but the presence of Cliff Lee and Cole Hamels does at least offer some hope that a surprising return to form by a veteran or two may be turned into something close to a Wild Card push. Without further additions, that seems to be the extent of their expectations for 2014.

Miami Marlins

As for the Marlins, it’s been nowhere near as dramatic as their last two offseasons: a free-agent cash splash in 11/12 and then a trade-away-anything-that-moves 12/13.

They’ve building up again with some good young talent, not least the NL Rookie of the Year Jose Fernandez and the much-sought-after slugger Giancarlo Stanton. This offseason has been spent adding some established Major Leaguers to the mix, in the form of Jarrod Saltalamacchia (fresh from helping the Red Sox win a World Series), Garrett Jones, Casey McGhee and the returning Rafael Furcal who missed all of 2013 through injury.

Weekly Hit Ground Ball: Injuries and Bad Karma

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The New York Yankees had already experienced plenty of bad luck with injuries in recent months, so the outcome of Curtis Granderson’s first plate appearance in Spring Training was almost to be expected.

The Blue Jays’ J.A. Happ looked at the low-and-away target from his catcher and let loose a pitch that sailed high and in. It was too far in for the Yankees and Granderson’s liking. The ball made a deadening thud off his right forearm and Grandy immediately let go of the bat before grimacing his way to first base.

X-rays revealed a fracture putting him on a 10-week timeline before he will make it back into the Big League lineup sometime in early May, subject to any setbacks along the way.

The Yankees had been toying with moving Granderson from his customary centre-field position into left, allowing the better-fielding Brett Gardner to swap over. Gardner will now get the chance to play in centre when the regular season begins, but Granderson’s injury may make them revert back to type once he returns from injury. Spring Training would have been the ideal time for him to get used to playing left-field, a position he has very limited experience with, and for the pair to get used to playing together in that formation.

Asking Granderson to move to left-field with limited practice time would be less than ideal, although they may have little choice.

The plan was being discussed as it’s expected that the Yankees will need to save every run they can this season, fielding an offence far-less potent than it has been in the past.

The absence of Granderson’s bat in the early going will make that even more pronounced. He led the team in 2012 with 43 longballs and there was already talk of a power outage in the Bronx before his injury, with the team having lost Russell Martin (21 HR), Raul Ibanez (19), Nick Swisher (24), Eric Chavez (16) and Andruw Jones (14) over the off-season, and Alex Rodriguez (18) continuing to be plagued by the injury curse. A-Rod may be back in late June or early July, but there’s no telling how productive he will be as the veteran falls victim to the inevitable ravages of Father Time.

Whilst it’s normally just perception rather than a meaningful trend, it often seems that when one player goes down to an injury, their team is then hit by further setbacks.

The Milwaukee Brewers are a good – not ‘good’ from their perspective – recent example of this. First baseman Corey Hart suffered a knee injury before Spring Training began, but the blow was softened a little by Mat Gamel seemingly coming back healthy after missing most of the 2012 season with his own knee injury. Relief soon turned to dejection as Gamel’s dreadful bad luck continued as he reinjured the knee and is set to miss yet another season.

This past weekend brought more bad news for the Brewers as Ryan Braun, Aramis Ramirez and Yovani Gallardo reported minor ailments, in Gallardo’s case a groin strain that may result in him withdrawing from Mexico’s World Baseball Classic roster.  Even though none of the injuries are serious, they will remain a concern until the players prove those concerns to be unfounded.

Breakout performances and slumps always catch the eye, but keeping key players healthy and on the field is an even more important factor in a team having a good season.

The Cleveland Indians’ pre-season optimism was noted in this column last week. That optimism was quickly followed by Chris Perez’s right-shoulder strain that could make him a doubt for Opening Day. One minor injury in Spring Training shouldn’t deflate Cleveland fans at all, but shoulder problems are never a good sign for a pitcher and it’s easy for pessimism to take hold, particularly for a team that hasn’t been competitive in the last couple of seasons. The surprise of a team actually showing signs of promise can make the mental scars of long losing seasons all the more sensitive.

‘You know what our luck’s like, the bubble will burst’.

Yes, the fickle finger of fate looms large when it comes to injuries. The ‘Why me? Why now?’ unfairness of it all compels players and fans to find an explanation.

In the Miami Marlins’ first Spring Training game, newly-acquired catcher Jeff Mathis suffered a broken collarbone after getting hit by a foul-tip. If Mathis was a mere innocent victim as the baseball gods punished the Marlins for their miserly off-season, we can only be glad that this was the required sacrifice – a back-up catcher getting an injury that shouldn’t lead to any long-term damage – rather than the pitch that collided with Giancarlo Stanton’s helmet.

Even the Marlins’ bad karma didn’t warrant their star young slugger to suffer a concussion (or worse) and all of the dreadful consequences that it can bring to a career and quality of life.

Thankfully on that occasion, luck was on our side. For your chosen team to do well this season, they’ll need good fortune to find them too.

Rounding the bases

Matt Garza can be added to the injured list, as of Sunday evening. The Cubs expect the right-handed pitcher to miss the first month of the season due to a “strained left lat”, the “lat” being his Lattissimus dorsi muscle.

Chien-Ming Wang has had his own injury struggles over the years, but his impressive outing for Chinese Taipei in the World Baseball Classic on Saturday suggested that he’s still worth a look from Major League teams. Whilst the Australian line-up clearly isn’t of Big League quality, his sinker was working well and there will be more than one MLB team willing to take a chance on him.

The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim paid Mike Trout $482.5k for his incredible 2012 season. His financial reward? A $10k bonus for winning the AL Rookie of the Year Award and a raise of $27.5k, a mere $20k increase on the Major League minimum.

His agent was as unimpressed as you would expect him to be.

Trout will be earning the equivalent of approximately £6.5k per week this season. For comparison, the average Premier League wage is thought to be just over £22k per week, with the average Championship wage being just over £4k.