Tag Archives: New York Mets

Christmas shopping spree

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A week ago I wrote the following:

“The MLB Winter Meetings have begun in San Diego and plenty of people are speculating about what big free agent news will be announced over the next few days (likely very little, based on recent years)”.

You could say I was a long way off the mark with that comment, although maybe I can latch onto the final caveat to save a bit of face.

Over the past two off-seasons there has been considerable discontent among players as to how the free agent market has failed to develop in the way they expected. Both times the fall-out descended into an argument with teams on one side and players and agents on the other. It takes two sides to make a deal. Whether it was the players being greedy or the teams being cheap depended on which side of the fence you were shouting from.

The first month and a half of the 2019/20 off-season can’t help but make you lean towards the players and agents on this one.

Take Mike Moustakas as a prime example. He had to accept one year deals in each of the previous two off-seasons due to finding no multi-contact offers to his liking. This time around he’s signed a four-year contract with the Cincinnati Reds. Whilst we do have to take the qualifying offer, and resulting loss of a draft pick, into account, that doesn’t go far enough as an explanation as to why he suddenly is now worthy of a multi-year commitment. The difference this time is in a greater number of teams looking to add a quality infielder.

It comes back to a topic I discussed just over a month ago, that of the essential element of competition that drives a free agent market. The impasse in the past two off-seasons has come from teams not upping their offers because they knew that they didn’t have to as part of winning the bidding, whilst players and agents were waiting for better offers that they thought should come, but never did.

This year, things have changed.

The Philadelphia Phillies were one of the few teams to make a big push a year ago, not least in the Bryce Harper contract, and the end result was making it eight consecutive seasons without a play-off appearance. The Phillies were never going to stand still after that disappointment and they’ve acted by bringing in Joe Girardi as manager to replace Gabe Kapler and then signing Zack Wheeler to a five-year, $118m contract and Didi Gregorius to a one-year, $14m contract.

Their NL East rivals, the Washington Nationals, were not going to take their foot off the gas after winning the World Series either. Having lost Harper last year, and rightly expecting to lose Anthony Rendon this year, there was no way they were going to let Stephen Strasburg be tempted by another team’s offer. That was why they blew everyone else out of the water with their seven-year, $245m contract offer that Strasburg accepted on Monday. It’s a huge commitment in a pitcher who has had injury problems in the past and, by all accounts, was not looking to leave Washington anyway, but the Nationals were not prepared to take any chances. They could afford to offer that contract, so they did.

This immediately ignited the market for Gerrit Cole. Strasburg’s deal took the other outstanding starter off the board and also helped to set the parameters for the contract Cole clearly was going to command.

A year ago, everyone was waiting for the New York Yankees to jump in and ramp up the bidding stakes for Manny Machado and Bryce Harper. There was no waiting around this year. The Yankees’ record of making the World Series at least once in every decade from the 1920s on came to an end in their ALCS defeat to the Houston Astros. With no Bronx Fall Classics in the 2010s, and a team with a great offence and bullpen but questionable starting pitching, there was no way that the Yankees would allow Cole to go anywhere else. No messing about: they put the largest ever contract for a pitcher on the table, nine-years, $324m, to make sure he became a Yankee.

And that then put the LA Angels on the clock. It was already a source of embarrassment for owner Arte Moreno that his team had squandered the first eight full seasons of Mike Trout, genuinely in the running to be considered the greatest player of all-time by the end of his career, by turning it into just one Division Series defeat. Having given Trout the most lucrative contract ever (12 years, $426.5M) to stay with the team for years to come prior to the 2019 season, there was no way that the Angels could get through this off-season without signing a big-ticket free agent.

With Strasburg and Cole off the market, the Angels immediately offered Anthony Rendon a seven-year, $245m contract. Just as the Nationals couldn’t let Strasburg leave and the Yankees couldn’t let Cole sign elsewhere, the Angels were prepared to offer whatever it took to make sure they didn’t miss out on Rendon.

This is what happens when teams with big pockets are motivated to out-spend each other to win now. Whatever Rob Manfred may try to claim, that has not been the context in which the free agent market has played out over the past two off-seasons.

It’s made for an exciting Winter Meetings and sets up the rest of the off-season perfectly.

Weekly Hit Ground Ball: Rookie Managers Making It Look Easy

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Alex Cora and Mickey Callaway must have their feet up in their respective manager’s office thinking that this managing malarkey is easy.

Cora’s Red Sox sit astride the Major Leagues with a 12-2 record heading into Sunday’s games, with Callaway’s Mets close behind on 11-2 having had their nine-game winning streak brought to an end by Milwaukee yesterday.

Meanwhile, it turns out the Phillies’ manager Gabe Kapler might not be completely clueless – as some declared after his first three games – as his team have won five games in a row to second behind the Mets on an 8-5 record.

The Nationals’ Dave Martinez (7-8) and Yankees’ Aaron Boone (7-7) are holding steady in the early going too, which just leaves veteran Ron Gardenhire among the new managers for 2018 for whom the start of the season is proving to be a struggle.

Gardenhire has been in the game long enough not to be too envious of those whippersnappers. There are only 30 MLB manager jobs at any one time and even being in charge of a rebuilding Detroit Tigers is a post to be proud of.

However, it is interesting that so many potentially plumb positions ended up in the hands of rookie managers.

Sport teams generally will change a manager when things have gone badly, with the manager holding responsibility for the team’s performance and being the easiest big part to change as opposed to making significant changes to the playing staff.

That often leads to an ‘opposite ends’ approach to the recruitment of managers, especially in football.  If a ‘back-to-basics’ experienced British manager gets the boot then a younger continental manager is just what’s needed.  If relegation looms with said younger continental manager’s brand of ‘tippy-tappy’ football not working in England, well of course you need a ‘back-to-basics’ experienced British manager to shake things up.

It’s not quite the same in baseball as the manager here has a different brief to work towards (accepting manager/head coach roles vary among football clubs too), yet you still see that approach being taken and, to varying degrees, that goes for the six new managers in MLB this year.

The situation in Washington was the most extreme. Ex-manager Dusty Baker has his critics from previous managerial stints, yet it’s difficult to see quite what he did in his two years at the helm with the Nationals to deserve to be pushed aside over the off-season rather than to continue with the team. They won 95 and 97 games in 2016 and 2017 and whilst consecutive 3-2 Division Series exits were bitterly disappointing when expectations of a World Series were so high, in the cold light of day there wasn’t much about those series defeats that you could pin on Baker.

His departure was a classic case of the team wanting to change something to get over the Division Series hump and Baker being the easiest option.  They changed from a 68 year-old with 22 MLB managerial seasons of experience to Dave Martinez, a 53 year-old who is taking on his first MLB managerial job after serving an apprenticeship under Joe Maddon at the Rays and Cubs.

The changes in Boston and New York were more understandable.

The Red Sox won 93 games and the AL East before being knocked out of the play-offs by a formidable Houston Astros team, so it was hardly a disaster on the field last year. However, it never seemed like a happy camp under John Farrell and so bringing his five-year reign to a close and moving on to the dynamic young Alex Cora looked like a shake-up move at somewhere that needed a shake-up.

The same could be said for the Mets, although in their case the 2017 season undoubtedly was a disaster.  Terry Collins had outstayed his welcome so bringing him back for 2018 was never going to work. Mickey Callaway’s glowing reputation from his five years as pitching coach under Terry Francona in Cleveland made him an obvious candidate to take over at a team whose fortunes are so heavily invested in the form and fitness of their starting pitching.

Aaron Boone was a left-field choice for the Yankees, yet fits into the ‘opposite ends’ idea by virtue of his excellent communication skills – shown to all in his work with ESPN – being cited as a crucial factor in his appointment. Joe Girardi had served a decade as the Yankees’ manager and many on the New York beat had started bemoaning his increased willingness to say very little in his managerial briefings long before it was announce he would not be returning for 2018.  It wasn’t simply the New York press wishing for someone more quote-worthy – although I’m sure that makes their lives much easier – but more that their experience was indicative of what they were picking up from players too: that Girardi was failing to inspire his team any more.

Those four situations are all about winning now, which is different to the roles that Gabe Kapler and Ron Gardenhire are taking on. In Philadelphia, they are firmly on the way up with a young team and so switched the 66 year-old Pete Mackanin for 42 year-old rookie manager Kapler.  In Detroit, they are at the start of a rebuild and decided that the experienced head of Gardenhire was what was needed at this point to move on from first-time manager Brad Ausmus, whose four-year tenure produced mixed results.

These are early days in the 2018 season and none of us can be certain how the six managerial appointments will pan out over the next few years, but it is likely we can take a good guess at the type of manager they will be replaced by when that time comes.

That is, someone the opposite of who they are replacing.

The Sunday Smasher

The Bangles sang that “It’s just another manic Monday”.

In MLB the song goes: “It’s just another Shohei Sunday”.

The Angels’ Japanese star is back on the mound today and after he went six perfect innings against the A’s last time out, he now gets to face the Kansas City Royals who have the worst record in MLB so far this season.

In other words, this has ‘potential no-hitter’ written all over it.  Or it will produce a big shock of the Royals being the line-up to knock Ohtani out of his stride. Either way, it will be worth watching.

First pitch from Kauffman Stadium is at 19.15 BST and the game is available to watch on MLB.TV.

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 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: Is the Hot Stove about to heat up?

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Compared to the weeks before it, the last seven days have been relatively busy in MLB.

None of the biggest names on the free agent market have found a new club, but there have been some free agent signings plus the deadline for salary arbitration submissions on Friday has created more certainty over payroll commitments and may well help to push the free agent and trade market on next week.

We can but hope.

Bruce to the Mets, Reed to the Twins

Two free agents came off the market with outfielder Jay Bruce reuniting with the New York Mets (after a couple of months with Cleveland) and the news on Saturday that reliever Addison Reed has agreed a deal with the Minnesota Twins.

Bruce signed a three-year, $39m contract and is the type of player who isn’t going to have people doing cartwheels on finding that their team has signed, yet is a decent experienced Major Leaguer and it turns out was available at a relatively reasonable price.

Bruce in the past has been a player who could get you some home runs but didn’t offer a huge amount of value otherwise. However, he had a good season last year combined with the Mets and Cleveland in what was his best year since 2013 with Cincinnati.  Although you may try to chalk that up to it being his ‘walk year’, FanGraphs notes that Bruce did display a new approach at the plate in 2017 and so the hope is he has made an adjustment that will continue to produce results.

The Mets are an interesting team to ponder for 2018.  Last year was nothing short of a disaster and there are so many fitness question marks over their pitching staff that it’s easy to just write them off.  You look at their roster though and you can put forward an argument that a Wild Card run might not be completely out of the question, albeit requiring a fairly long list of ‘ifs’ to work out in the Mets’ favour.

The Minnesota Twins are also a team that many seem to be overlooking.  They took everyone by surprise last season by winning an AL Wild Card in what turned out to be a somewhat weak race and so it’s understandable that there is doubt over whether they can back that up in 2018.

That shouldn’t obscure the fact that they’ve got some real talent on their roster though and Reed will certainly add to that list.  Rumours continue to swirl that the Twins are determined to add a quality free agent starter too this off-season and whilst I’d guess they will fall short in their pursuit for Yu Darvish, Lance Lynn or Alex Cobb could well fall into their price range and slot in very nicely alongside Ervin Santana and Jose Berrios.

Gerrit Cole

The Gerrit Cole trade story so far essentially goes like this:

  • He was on the verge of being traded to the Houston Astros
  • Then he wasn’t
  • He still might be
  • But he hasn’t gone anywhere yet
  • Although Buccos fans are expecting they’ve seen the last of him in their uniform

The Astros are in the best possible situation with a World Series win behind them, a talented roster in place and a strong farm system of Minor League prospects to deal from if they wish.  Whilst you could justifiably argue they don’t need much in the way of additions, other than an upgrade in the bullpen perhaps, that’s a very strong position in which to trade from.

[LATE EDIT: Cole is now an Astro!]

Arbitration explained

Friday was the deadline for salary arbitration numbers to be submitted and this prompted one reader query around quite how the MLB contract process works.  That’s one of many topics I cover in my Baseball Basics for Brits series, which I’ll be updating over the next two months. Here’s a basic guide to the MLB contract situation and how arbitration fits in.

When a player begins his MLB career he is under contract for six years, at the end of which he becomes a free agent unless he has negotiated a contract extension prior to this.

For the majority of players, during the first three years of their initial MLB contract they receive the MLB defined minimum salary.  This typically increases slightly every year. In 2018 the MLB minimum salary will be $545k (just under £400k). A team is able to pay more if they wish. If they do it tends to be by a small amount – no one wants to pay more than they have to – although slightly larger raises can be paid occasionally if the player is exceptional.  The team may still only pay them a little bit more in that situation – $100k, say – but it’s more a matter of principle than the money itself.

For years 4 to 6 the player becomes ‘arbitration eligible’.  The player is under contract with the team regardless (unless they release him) but how much they will be paid is negotiated year-to-year (again, unless the team and player agree a multi-year deal instead).

The arbitration element kicks in where the two parties can’t come to an agreement.  There is a hard deadline at which both parties must submit the figure they want – this past Friday in this year’s case – and then an independent arbitration hearing will be scheduled.  Negotiations can continue right up until the hearing and in the majority of cases the two parties will come to an agreement.

However, if they still can’t agree then the hearing takes place with both sides arguing in detail why their submitted figure is appropriate.  The main reason why parties like to avoid this situation is that ultimately it results in the team having to explain why the player isn’t as valuable as he thinks he is, which is not a particularly comfortable situation. The arbitration panel will listen to the submissions and then make a decision on which of the two figures is fair.  They can’t just split the difference or suggest something else, either the player ‘wins’ or the team does.

An important part of this process is that there is an underlying principle that a player deserves to be paid more as he gains more service time in the Majors. In other words, if a player had a downturn in performance in his fourth year, he would still get a salary raise for his fifth year, albeit not so much as he would have done had he performed better.

What this means is that salary arbitration negotiations aren’t just about the coming season, but also about future arbitration seasons as – if it ultimately goes to the arbitration panel – the main consideration will be how big a raise from his previous salary that the player deserves.

For example: Team A wants to pay Player X £5m in his fourth year, Player X wants $7m. If Team A ‘wins’ and the player still performs well then the fifth year salary might be $7.5m and the sixth year salary $9.5m.  If the player won then his salaries might go $7m, $9m and $11.5m.  So the initial case wasn’t simply about a difference of $2m but actually a difference of $5.5m.

There are some additional variations on this process, the main one of which to be aware of is that the very best players (as defined by specific criteria set out in the Collective Bargaining Agreement) become arbitration eligible a year early.  These players are known as ‘Super 2’ players.

An elephant never forgets, and neither does agent Scott Boras

One such Super 2 is the Chicago Cubs’ Kris Bryant. Jon Heyman tweeted a message about Kris Bryant and the Cubs coming to an agreement on a one-year deal on Friday to avoid an arbitration hearing and stated that the team would like to do a multi-year deal with the player.

I’m sure they would, just as they would like to do a deal with him down the line to keep him as a Cub for years to come rather than lose him to free agency when that time potentially comes.

However, the latter point is firmly at the front of Bryant’s, and particularly his agent Scott Boras’s, mind.

Let’s not forget, the Cubs royally screwed Bryant over at the start of the 2015 season.  They deliberately delayed his debut for a couple of weeks solely so that he would be unable to accrue a full year of Major League service time in 2015 and his post-six year free agency would therefore be delayed by a whole season.

It would be fair to say that it’s the rules that are really at fault there – given that those are the rules, it was a logical business decision for the Cubs to make – but the Cubs still knew what the longer term impact on the player would be when they made that choice.

Bryant’s deal of $10.85m is a record for a first-time arbitration eligible player and you have to think that there is an acceptance on the part of the Cubs that they have to give a bit of ground in the circumstances.

Game times released

Fans could start doing a bit more planning for the regular season from Wednesday as MLB updated their regular season schedule by adding in game times.

They take on added importance to us based on the convenience of watching live games with earlier start times.  The details are subject to change, so you shouldn’t get too tied to first pitch times too far ahead, but we should be able to rely on the current start times for the opening series being accurate.

As already known, Opening Day on Thursday 29 March is going to be a baseball feast with the first game – Chicago Cubs at Miami – from 12.40 Eastern Time (17.40 our time) and the final two games – Cleveland at Seattle and Colorado at Arizona – getting going at 10.10pm ET (03.10 am for us).

Fans of 24 teams will be able to catch their opener at a convenient British evening time.  The San Francisco and LA Dodgers are the other two starting at night US time (7.08 ET, 00.08 am for us) making it six teams for whom their UK fans will need to be up in the early hours to see their season opener live. That shouldn’t be too much of a hardship though, especially as it’s Good Friday the following day.

If one of those final two games goes 3.5 hours we’d be looking at 13 solid hours of baseball by which to welcome MLB back.

Sounds good to me!

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.

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.

Keeping Score: Braves vs Mets 2017 season-opener

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Opening Day on Monday was a real treat, with a batch of good games to watch live during the British evening.

The first two games of the day were both available to British fans without an MLB.TV subscription: the first – Marlins vs Nationals – being the MLB.com Free Game of the Day, the second – Braves vs Mets – was the first of three games on TV (BT Sport/ESPN).

I went for the latter and as it was a strong pitching match-up, Julio Teheran and Noah Syndergaard, I thought I’d get a bit of score-keeping practice in for the season ahead by jotting down the first three innings.

When I use colours on my scorecard I mark hits, walks and base advancement in blue, and outs in red. My expectation that my red pen would get most of the work proved to be correct.

Syndergaard’s first three innings. Click to enlarge

It’s not stating anything outrageous to say that Syndergaard is one of the best pitchers in the Majors, but what’s been really noticeable over the past year and a bit is how he has elevated himself into an elite group of pitchers whose starts are an event. Even accounting for the pomp and ceremony of Opening Day, that was abundantly clear at Citi Field on Monday.

Syndergaard was in dominant form right from the off, his blazing fastball (98 MPH was his run-of-the-mill average offering) and ridiculous slider were a nightmare for the Braves hitters.

The first five went down in order before Brandon Phillips, making his debut for Atlanta after his off-season trade from the Cincinnati Reds, was able to notch a single. The Mets’ starter was unfussed by this and Adonis Garcia subsequently grounded into a force-out at second to end the inning before Syndergaard set the Braves down in order in the third.

Three innings, one hit, three strike-outs.

Julio Teheran’s first three innings. Click to enlarge

Teheran was able to keep pace by blanking the Mets through the first three innings too.

It wasn’t quite so clean as Syndergaard’s innings as Teheran allowed a base-runner in each (two singles and a walk); however he was able to strand them on all three occasions.

The starting pitchers continued to match each other over the next three innings before the game was turned over to the bullpens for the final third of the game.

Things immediately went wrong for the Braves from there as the Mets put up a six-spot in the seventh inning for what proved to be the only runs of the game.

Had I continued to keep score of the entire game I would have received an Opening Day score-keeping lesson. Score-keepers soon learn that you must never assume a play or call will be made and should watch it to a conclusion before noting anything down, but in MLB now we also have to take into account that an umpire’s initial call is no longer final.

Wilmer Flores came into the game as a pinch-runner and was originally called out at a very close play at the plate. The Mets called for a replay and this showed that Flores had just beaten out the throw from centre-field. The course of the game may well have been very different had the replay challenge not been available and it was the type of key decision that replay review helps greatly with (there was no blame attached to the home plate umpire’s original call as it was very marginal and looked out on first viewing).

Had I marked down the original out call in my red pen it would have been a messy job to correct it. That’s the type of situation that makes keeping score in pencil a preference for many; however I’ve found that once you start using coloured pens it makes such a big visual difference that you really don’t want to go back to plain-old pencil (unless that’s all you have to hand).

The answer is simply practicing so that you reduce the amount of mistakes and/or corrections on a scorecard and here was a perfect example of holding back on committing pen to paper on a play that might be challenged.

Whilst I didn’t directly learn that lesson here – as I didn’t score that part of the game – I did find out that the new pens I had bought bleeded through into the other side of the paper.

The Atlanta Braves need to find a way to get the better of the Mets’ outstanding pitching (Jacob deGrom is next up when the series resumes on Wednesday); I need to buy some new pens.

I think I’ve got the slightly easier task of the two.

Is the Price right?

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Boston Red Sox fans were left reeling during the week when news broke that pitcher David Price was suffering from pain in his elbow and forearm and was being examined by surgeons. Invariably such news leads to a diagnosis of an elbow injury requiring Tommy John surgery and a year on the sidelines.

In this case, the news turned out to be more positive. Price will rest the elbow for at least 10 days and it seems that he may be able to avoid surgery, although you can expect the Red Sox to take a very cautious approach and that he is more likely than not to miss some time at the start of the regular season.

This comes just one year into Price’s seven-year, $217m contract with Boston. One of the factors behind the huge investment on the Red Sox’s part is that Price has been so durable in his Major League career. Between 2010 and 2016 he has averaged 32 starts and 218 innings per year.

However, like most other stats, you can interpret that in a positive or negative way. Does this consistency make him a strong bet to continue to pitch 200 innings per year, or has the workload taken a toll and increased the risk of him breaking down in future?

The truth is, nobody really knows in any individual case. The sensible approach is to bet on players that have demonstrated a proven ability to stay on the field and hope that continues, rather than expecting a player who has struggled with injuries in the past to suddenly shake-off their sick note status.

Although Red Sox don’t normally like looking towards the New York Yankees, they do provide a recent example that offers cause for optimism.

Masahiro Tanaka cost the Yankees $175m in 2014 (a seven-year contract and a $20m fee to his Japanese club Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles) and he landed on the Disabled List just four months into his Major League career with a partially torn UCL in his pitching elbow. This is the exact injury that normally requires surgery and a lengthy lay-off, but Tanaka went down the rest and rehab route (alongside an injection in the elbow) and has made 55 starts over the past two seasons whilst slightly altering his pitching arsenal to reduce strain on the elbow.

So although the news on Price may feel like it’s just delaying the inevitable surgery, it’s quite possible they’ll still get 170 innings from him (plus a play-off start or two) in 2017 after all. Few Red Sox fans thought that would be the case last Thursday.

Contracts under consideration

More widely, both players demonstrate the calculated gamble teams have to take if they want to commit to long-term deals to sign elite pitchers.

An interesting article was published on Vice Sports last June about insurance in MLB. It includes a quote from the Red Sox’s team chairman Tom Werner that they “have insurance on some players, not all players”. That was in reference to their decision not to insure Pablo Sandoval’s five-year, $95 million contract. I’ve not uncovered any definitive info on whether Price’s contract is covered, and that they would essentially get money back if Price missed significant time. It’s the type of large contract a team would want to get insurance on, but clearly the cost of doing so would be significant.

Jon Heyman’s recent article on FanRag looks at a potential future contract for Bryce Harper (he’s due to become a free agent at the end of the 2018 season, and due to get an absolute boatload of money) and includes the following comment on the potential 2018 free agent class:

“It’s no wonder some teams are lining up for 2018, with Harper and Orioles star Manny Machado at the top of a brilliant free-agent class that also includes Zach Britton, Matt Harvey and many other stars.”

I can’t be the only person who raised an eyebrow at the inclusion of Matt Harvey’s name in that group. There’s no question he has star-level talent, but there’s also no question that he has a troubling injury record, missing all of 2014 due to Tommy John elbow surgery and then the second half of 2016 after having surgery to correct his thoracic outlet syndrome (surgery that involves having a rib removed).

Harvey is making his first Spring Training start today (Sunday) and MLB.TV subscribers can watch that from 18.05 GMT. The buzz around every Harvey start should make every baseball fan (aside from those of the team he is facing on a given day) want him to return to form and fitness. If he can do that over the next two seasons then he will indeed be in line for a big pay-day; however, that’s a very big ‘if’ based on recent history.

Even if there isn’t a recent major injury scare to consider, taking the plunge on a large free agent contract for a pitcher is a risky business.

One of the few signs of trouble that Chicago Cubs reporters have been able to latch onto so far this spring is starting pitcher Jake Arrieta’s impending free agency at the end of this season. The above-referenced Heyman article notes that the Cubs don’t seem minded to extend an offer beyond a four-year contract and that Arrieta likely will be off.

The smart Cubs Front Office probably thinks there are better ways to spend the $200m Arrieta is seeking than on a pitcher who turns 31 tomorrow, although the first-year return on Jason Heyward’s eight-year, $184m contract shows that even multi-year contracts for position players are a risky bet.

The one thing that is certain is that any player can suffer a serious injury, so it’s hard to criticise a player for seeking the biggest guaranteed pay-day whilst they can.

Weekly Hit Ground Ball: Colon, Miller and a Windy City World Series

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

Bartolo Colon hit a home run

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

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

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

Shelby Miller won a game

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

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

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

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

A Windy City World Series?

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

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

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