Tag Archives: Milwaukee Brewers

Yelich gets $215m Beer Money from Brewers

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Christian Yelich and the Milwaukee Brewers brought hope to many a so-called small-market fanbase this week in coming to terms on a new nine-year, $215 million contract. It’s a 7-year extension on top of his current deal and could keep him with the Brew Crew until he is 37 years old.

It’s fair to say that, had Yelich continued his recent MVP-type form over his remaining seasons before hitting free agency, he could have made a lot more money. But by all accounts it was Yelich who sparked the talks. 

“It’s a large sum of money and people are always going to ask the ‘what-if’s’ — did you leave [money on the table] or not? — but I play the game to win, and to be a part of a place that I feel comfortable and I take pride in representing. For me, this is that place.

“That’s how I made this decision. It wasn’t one that I took lightly. I spent a lot of time talking about it with my family and my representatives. At the end day, we felt that this was right.”

Yelich, as reported on MLB.com.

There are two parts to the story, of course. One is in the Milwaukee Brewers stepping up to lock down a true franchise player, and you have to give some credit to their principal owner Mark Attanasio in being prepared to do this, as the team has ‘had a go’ in previous years such as in the CC Sabathia and Zack Greinke trades. 

But the main story comes back to Yelich and what he wanted to do in being prepared to accept less money to stay somewhere he and his family are happy, in the knowledge that the money he will earn should still be more than he’ll never need. 

It doesn’t mean other players are wrong to look at it differently and want to get top dollar at free agency. Because they have the fortune to play this great game for a living, it’s easy to overlook that for almost all players free agency is the first time they’ve had any say whatsoever in where they get to play their baseball. 

Had Francisco Lindor ended up with the Dodgers or the Yankees as a prospect years ago, with no say himself on it, he wouldn’t have had to worry about a home-town discount on a contract extension. He’s hardly being greedy to think ‘if I was with another team I could get $100m more, so why not go to free agency in two years’ time’. However, the Yelich deal does add another factor to the situation.

We can all look askance at billionaire ownership groups coining it in and we should constantly hold them in suspicion when they start pleading poverty. But is it really true to say ‘every team’, including the Brewers, Indians, A’s and Rays can afford your Bryce Harper style $330m deal, or Gerrit Cole $324m? Maybe it’s not just carrying water for the owners in saying no, however, a multi-year deal such as Yelich’s ($215m with some deferrals) absolutely is possible for every single team. 

If the player, such as Lindor, wants to get full market value then I’ve no issues with that whatsoever, but if you love where you are from a playing point of view and a personal point of view and they offer you $200m+ guaranteed, it’s a big decision to turn that down.

More on the White Sox, AL West, and NY Yankee injuries

I will be a complementing my Weekly Hit Ground Ball columns with a regular video series on our Oakland A’s UK YouTube channel looking at news from around the Majors, or as I like to refer to it, “The Other Lot”.

The videos will cover the main news story or comment piece written about here, the Yelich contract extension in this case, with some additional commentary on other topics that caught my eye from the past week.

Sometimes they will be pre-recorded productions, as with this debut episode, and sometimes they will be recorded as a live-stream on our YouTube channel on a Sunday morning. Subscribe to the Oakland A’s UK channel to be notified when new videos are published and when live-streams begin.

Here’s the first video, handily embedded below:

Weekly Hit Ground Ball: The Other Teams

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At this time of the year it’s traditional to publish predictions of how the MLB season is going to pan out.

If you asked most fans which ten teams are going to make the playoffs right now, you’re likely to find a lot of similarities.

In the American League, Houston, Boston, New York and Cleveland all look strong favourites, with the LA Angels the trendy pick for the second Wild Card.

In the National League, LA Dodgers, Chicago and Washington are the probable division winners and you can then take your pick from a group of teams to meet in the Wild Card game.

So, rather than focus on the potential division winners, we’ll look at another team of interest in each division.

AL West

Let’s start in the division of the reigning World Series champions with the team that many are awarding the ‘won the off-season’ prize to.

What exactly should we expect from the LA Angels this year? Any team with Mike Trout in it has a chance and they’ve made some good additions, but have they made a big leap ahead or a more modest improvement?

Part of that will be determined by their headline acquisition, Japanese two-way talent Shohei Ohtani. Every team wanted him and it was a coup for the Angels to win his signature. An adjustment period is to be expected and that leads us to Ohtani’s Spring Training, which politely can be described as disappointing. Despite the ever-present caveat this time of year that ‘it’s only Spring Training’, were he not a highly touted player from Japan it’s possible the Angels would have considered sending him to Triple-A given how he has performed.

That’s not a viable option and so he’s going to need to develop his craft in the Majors. Ordinarily it would be fine for Ohtani to take some lumps here and there as he puts together an encouraging debut season to build on, and in isolation that remains the case. The problem with that for the Angels is the rest of their starting rotation comes with plenty of question marks. If Ohtani isn’t really good, will the additions of Ian Kinsler, Zack Cosart and renewing with Justin Upton alone make them more than a potential second Wild Card?

AL Central

The Minnesota Twins proved last year that you can’t always count a team out based on previous form. Few if any picked the Twins to make the play-offs, yet some good performances and other teams not meeting expectations for various reasons meant that the Twins could look around, see no one else was really making a claim for the second Wild Card and take it for themselves.

They did that with no expectations on their shoulders, other than the expectation from others that at some point someone else would overtake them. Now the expectations have changed. That’s not to say they are favourites, but they’ve got something to live up to.

Although they’ve not exactly become big spenders, you can’t accuse the Twins of standing still and failing to add to their roster.

They started with their bullpen, adding Addison Russell and Fernando Rodney, and then took advantage of the slow-moving free agent market by picking up Logan Morrison for their batting lineup and two good starting pitchers in Jake Odorizzi and Lance Lynn. On the negative side, Ervin Satana will miss at least the first month of the season due to a finger injury and shortstop Jorge Polanco will serve an 80-game drug suspension.

The Twins are no juggernaut, yet they are a good team and it shouldn’t be overlooked that they’ll play 57 games combined against the rebuilding Chicago White Sox, Detroit Tigers and Kansas City Royals. Few seem to be picking them for a Wild Card, but I wouldn’t be so quick to count them out.

AL East

The 2018 AL East looks set to be a heavyweight fight between the Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees. We’ve been there before a few times.

The other three teams have all taken turns at upsetting the order in recent years. I wouldn’t say any had a great chance at doing that this time around, yet if I had to pick a team that would be worth watching it would be the Toronto Blue Jays.

The Edwin Encarnacion-Jose Bautista Blue Jays have gone, with neither player now with the club and fellow star Josh Donaldson heading for free agency at the end of the 2018 season. Nothing lasts forever. Toronto had a really good team there for a few years but many of the leading players are now either gone, past their best or potentially heading towards an exit.

That makes the Blue Jays’ season all the more intriguing. Are they going to slip back again or do they have one last hurrah in them?

They haven’t made any impressive additions to their roster: tinkering with the bullpen, adding a couple of former Cardinals in Randall Grichuk and Aledmys Garcia, and signing veteran Curtis Granderson. They do still have good players on the roster though and will look even better if Aaron Sanchez’s blister issues can be a thing of the past. If not, June and July could be dominated by rumours of where Donaldson will be traded to.

NL East

Picking ‘another team’ from the NL East is a difficult task. The Washington Nationals were a country mile ahead of the rest of their division last year and that doesn’t look like changing in 2018.  The Miami Marlins finished second last year – yes, that surprised me too when I checked – but we all know what’s happened there over the off-season (fire sale number 4 or 5, it’s hard to keep count).

So, you’ve got the young talent of the Atlanta Braves, the young talent and two good free agent additions in the Philadelphia Phillies and the New York Mets.  Let’s go with the latter.

The period from mid-2015 to mid-2016 was a lot of fun for the Mets. They went to a World Series in October 2015 and then saw the Yankees trading away players the following summer.  It looked like the city was the Mets’s.

Well that didn’t last very long, did it? The Yankees, in a way that only the Yankees could, rapidly turned a rebuild into a strong Major League roster and loaded farm system.  The Mets lost the 2016 NL Wild Card game and then fell apart in 2017.

Frustratingly for their fans, they haven’t responded aggressively to this turn of events.  Jay Bruce and Todd Frazier are solid, experienced players, but they’re not going to convince a fan base that a team that lost 92 games last year is going to explode back into life.

As ever with these Mets, it all comes down to the starting rotation. If Syndergaard, deGrom, Harvey and Matz can make 100+ starts, and more starts than not reflecting their talent, then they’ll be a Wild Card threat. Mets fans have seen enough to be excited whilst also not being willing to bet their own money on it happening.

NL Central

Just as the Twins sprang a surprise in the AL Central, the Milwaukee Brewers were more competitive than most predicted in the NL Central last season.

Just as the Twins, the Brewers now have some expectations to live up to and, just as the Twins, they’ve not sat back and let the pack pass them.  However, they haven’t made the depth of signings as others and that may be their undoing, especially with Jimmy Nelson working his way back from shoulder surgery.

Lorenzo Cain and Christian Yelich are an excellent pair of signings to add to the outfield and the top of their batting order. It’s still not completely clear how the roster will shake out from there, with the original plan for Ryan Braun to play some first base already looking like an experiment too far.

It’s far from the worst problem to have as the outfield recruits offer plenty of reason to be excited for the Brew Crew, yet you get the sense that having started to push chips into the middle of the table, Milwaukee might have been better off – if not quite going all in – at least reaching for another starting pitcher to add to the group.

Within their division, you could argue they haven’t given up much to the St Louis Cardinals as they’ve also added an outfielder from the Marlins (Marcell Ozuna) but little else. Whether that’s going to be enough to beat others to a Wild Card remains to be seen.

NL West

I started planning this column in the middle of the week and had already decided to pick the San Francisco Giants for this spot.

Little did I know that the last few days would add more uncertainty to the Giants’ season.

Looking at 2017 in isolation you could say that everything fell apart for San Francisco and that wouldn’t be far from the truth.  What that disguises somewhat is that things started going awry in the second half of 2016. There was no ‘even year’ World Series that time around, they lost 11 of 13 after the All-Star break, and went 30-42 in total, to go from a 6.5 game lead at the top of the West to finishing four games behind the Dodgers.

Over the current off-season there was a clear decision to give it one last go with the Posey-Bumgarner-Crawford team and so trades were made to bring in experienced campaigners Evan Longoria and Andrew McCutchen.  Reliever Tony Watson was also signed as a free agent to add a quality lefty to the mix, hopefully behind last year’s big recruit Mark Melcancon if he’s fully recovered from forearm surgery.

But then it was announced that Jeff Samrdzija will miss several weeks with a strained pectoral injury and Madison Bumgarner took a line drive back on his left hand that fractured his little finger and could keep him out for the best part of two months.  Their Opening Day four-man rotation will consist of Johnny Cueto followed by Ty Blach, Chris Stratton and Derek Holland, which is a clear drop-off from what might have been.

The two starters shouldn’t have any lingering issues from their ailments so if the team can hold steady then they could build into the season and make a Wild Card run in the second half.  However, there’s an increased injury risk with a veteran team and their chances will depend on keeping their best players on the field, something that hasn’t started well.

Weekly Hit Ground Ball: Brewers, Hoffman and more

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January is almost over and whilst wishing away months isn’t the best approach to life, it’s understandable with the first of the year.

It normally throws up bad weather and travel problems as well as keeping you in the gloom of days beginning with going to work in the dark and then coming home in the dark too.

But most of all it doesn’t offer much baseball, other than some glimmers of light from places like Australia.

Once we cross over into February we’ll be in the month that MLB.TV prices are announced, teams start reporting back to their Spring Training camps and this year even will be the first month when teams start playing their Grapefruit/Cactus League schedules.

So long January, there’s baseball to be getting on with.

Milwaukee making moves

If you had the Milwaukee Brewers down as the team to get the Hot Stove bubbling again you were looking pretty smart on Thursday.

The Brewers not only revamped their outfield by signing Christian Yelich and Lorenzo Cain, they made the NL Central and Wild Card race a considerably more exciting prospect.

Milwaukee surprisingly spent 60 days at the top of the NL Central last season before the Cubs predictably nudged past at the end of July.  Their second-placed finish ahead of the St Louis Cardinals paled against the similarly surprising Minnesota Twins winning an AL Wild Card at first glance, yet the Brewers finished a win ahead of the Twins (86 to 85) and fell victim to a higher level of competition for the second NL Wild Card than was needed in the AL last year.

The lengthy loss of starting pitcher Jimmy Nelson to a shoulder injury put a dampener on the end of the Brewers’ 2017 and initially affected their hopes for 2018, but the team haven’t let that hold them back.

It’s always great to see a smaller market team such as the Brewers coming out of a building phase with some quality young players and then having a go for it. The excitement of their 2008 season when they traded for CC Sabathia mid-season and just fell short in the NLDS to eventual World Series champs the Philadelphia Phillies is still fresh in the memory – so much so that it was a bit of a shock to find it was a full ten years ago when looking up the details.

They pulled off another big trade in December 2010 when they acquired Zack Greinke from the Royals and then made it to the NLCS in 2011, losing 4-2 to the Cardinals.  Lorenzo Cain was one of the players the Brewers traded away in that deal, which makes his return as a free agent all the more special. Milwaukee didn’t do badly out of that trade by any stretch of the imagination, yet their fans still would have watched Cain – as well as Alcides Escobar – win a World Series with the Royals and think of what might have been.

The same may happen with Lewis Brinson, the talented young outfielder who highlighted the package they sent to the Miami Marlins for Yelich.  However, largely gone are the days when you could swing a lopsided trade for a quality Major Leaguer like Yelich.  If you want to get someone good, you have to give up a good package to do it.

The Brewers judge that they have a shot at the NL Wild Card over the next few years and are doing exactly the right thing by making a group of deals – another one or two may well be forthcoming giving their outfield logjam – rather than just making one addition and stopping there.  There’s no guarantee it will work, but it’s increasingly feeling like some Front Offices are using the lack of any guarantees – and therefore the potential for fingers to be pointed in their direction at a trade or free agent signing going wrong – as a reason to merely tinker around the edges.

You can’t get relegated in MLB so the worst that can happen is things don’t pan out, you trade some players a couple of years down the line and build again.  I love what the Brewers are doing and will continue to hold that view regardless of whether it works out for them over the next few seasons.

Hall of Fame results

Although Trevor Hoffman ended his MLB career with a two-year stop in Milwaukee, everything thinks of him as a San Diego Padre.  Few in North America would link him to Great Britain either, but we had a personal reason to cheer his election to America’s National Baseball Hall of Fame this week alongside Chipper Jones, Jim Thome and Vladimir Guerrero.

Hoffman was part of the 2016 Great Britain World Baseball Classic coaching staff and you won’t find anyone involved in the national programme saying anything other than great things about his contributions.

I started watching baseball in 1998, so I have a strong connection to the excellent Padres team of that year – Tony Gwynn, Greg Vaughn, Ken Caminiti, Kevin Brown, Andy Ashby etc – that was so ruthlessly swept aside in the World Series by a New York Yankees team that ranks as one of the greatest of all time.

Hoffman only pitched in one game during the Fall Classic, taking the loss in Game Three, and that gets to the heart of the hardcore stattos being unimpressed by his election to Cooperstown. Hoffman was a closer who racked up huge numbers of saves, a role and a statistic that many analysts put little store in nowadays when evaluating performance.

I understand the argument, yet it doesn’t take into account the important point that the Hall of Fame is not simply determined by who were statistically the greatest players, otherwise there would be no point in deciding election by a vote.  It is there to recognise historic and memorable contributions to the game.  During the era in which he played, I always saw Hoffman and Mariano Rivera – who few would argue against being a first-ballot election next year – as consistently being the two leading lights in their role as closer.

To say saves didn’t matter, and that Hoffman being the first ever player to reach 500 then 600 count for nothing, has an analytical validity but doesn’t reflect how the vast majority of baseball fans enjoyed his career at the time.  It’s a personal choice for someone to disregard that, yet it’s also a personal choice to decide to take that into account.

Hoffman always stood out to me in part because any appearance or reference to him always led to Baseball on 5 presenter Jonny Gould mentioning that the pitcher’s mother was British. We don’t have all that many links to Major Leaguers, so that always made him a player to watch out for even if he wasn’t on your own team.

Now we can say we have a direct GB link to Cooperstown. I wonder if there will be a Union Flag or two at the ceremony this summer?

The Gouldfish Hall of Fame show?

Given the ever-present Chipper Jones figure that Braves-fan Gould ensured was always on the Baseball on 5 desk, the Hall of Fame announcement sparked the first time this year, and far from the last, that I thought of their MLB coverage with a smile.

Maybe Josh Chetwynd and Dave Lengel can convince their old pal to do a special one-off podcast for the Cooperstown weekend?!

GB pitcher signs with the Cubs

Further on the Great Britain theme, Michael Roth – member of the Great Britain 2012 and 2016 World Baseball Classic teams and the 2014 European Championships – has signed a Minor League deal with the Chicago Cubs.

The former College World Series hero for South Carolina has never quite kept hold of a Major League job in short Big League spells with the Angels and Rangers.  He pitched in Triple-A last year for the Sacramento River Cats (Giants) and Durham Bulls (Rays) and likely will be stationed at that level with the Iowa Cubs this season.

Roth qualifies for the GB squad by virtue of his mother being British. His GB stats can be found in the Project Cobb archive.

Hardball Times Annual -free to download

I had been searching for news on the 2018 Hardball Times Annual for a while, not finding either the new edition available anywhere on the usual book websites or anything on Fangraphs/Hardball Times to say the annual has ceased to be.

It turns out that the Annual is still alive and well but is now being released digitally.  And for completely free!

I’ve reviewed the 2010 and 2011 editions in the past – I think I stopped reviewing them just because they are always great so wasn’t much more to say – and a quick check of my baseball book shelves shows that I’ve been buying it consistently since 2006.  You really can’t beat it for a strong collection of baseball writing, from reviewing the previous season to research articles, history and – new for this year – a baseball fiction section.

Honestly, I always prefer a physical book but if this is the best way to keep the annual going then that’s fine with me. It’s well worth downloading and diving into during February.

MLB Sleepyhead Summary: Twins = Wins

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More AL Wild Card shuffling

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

MLB Sleepyhead Summary: Yankees sweep whilst the Rangers keep winning

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

Yankees sweeping up New York

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

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

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

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

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

Rangers making a run for it

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

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

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

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

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

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

NL Central remains close

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

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

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

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

MLB in May

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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.

Houston Astros (AL West 40-16)

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.

Minnesota Twins (AL Central – 28-24)

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.

New York Yankees (AL East – 32-21)

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.

Washington Nationals (NL East 34-20)

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.

Los Angeles Dodgers (NL West – 35-22)

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.

Milwaukee Brewers (NL Central 29-27)

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.

April highlights from MLB

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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.

Early struggles

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.

10-day DL

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.

Doing well despite the injuries

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) 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.

Other players standing out

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.

Weekly Hit Ground Ball: Opening week stories

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WHGB11Whether 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.

Story of the week

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.

Slide rule

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.

DH in the NL? Not for MadBum

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.

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

NL Central: Off-season so far

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Just as the San Diego Padres have made a splash in the NL West, it’s a team that was nowhere near contending in the NL Central in 2014 that has made the most noise in the off-season so far.

The Chicago Cubs have added a high-profile manager in Joe Maddon, a top-shelf free agent pitcher in Jon Lester, and some other useful players (Jason Hammel, Miguel Montero) to their batch of young players and generated a mountain of expectation for 2015.

However, history has shown that ‘winning the off-season’ doesn’t guarantee you will win much when the games come around. Although all teams start on 0-0 in a new campaign, that doesn’t mean the previous season counts for nothing. The Cubs have made eye-catching moves, but they did lose 89 games in 2014.

In contrast the reigning champions the St. Louis Cardinals haven’t made much of a splash, the main roster move being the trade for Jason Heyward in part in response to the tragic death of Oscar Taveras. Yet this was a team that won 90 games in 2014 and whilst players do get older (to state the obvious), this isn’t a roster chock-full with players in their mid-thirties that could all be about to get injured or have poor seasons.

The Pittsburgh Pirates also haven’t done a whole lot after finishing two games behind the Cards. Francisco Liriano has been re-signed and A.J. Burnett is on his way back after a year in Philadelphia, but otherwise the roster is essentially as it was in 2014 minus the not inconsiderable loss of catcher Russell Martin, who has joined the Toronto Blue Jays.

Putting the Milwaukee Brewers to one side (Adam Lind being the only addition to a middling 2014 team) and the Cincinnati Reds in the ‘ who knows’ box (traded away Mat Latos, but still have some quality players), that does create space for the Cubs to make a charge, emboldened by a wave of optimism and perhaps a couple of the young prospects dazzling in their first full year.

As things stand right now, the Cardinals and Pirates still lead the way without having made signings that clearly improve them from 2014. Some strong individual performances (Michael Wacha returning to health and form, for instance) would keep the Cubs at bay, yet so far it’s still possible that either one or both could fall back just enough to give Chicago a sniff.