Tag Archives: New York Yankees

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:

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.

A $26m question

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New York Yankees fans have been front and centre in hunting down video evidence for the ongoing investigation into the Houston Astros’ sign-stealing. This public service, surely not motivated by any bitterness towards their ALCS opponents, has helped to put the Bronx Bombers on the side of the good in the ongoing saga.

So it was gracious of the Yankees’ Front Office to restore normal order this week by engaging in some classic Evil Empire behaviour.

When the Yankees signed outfielder Jacoby Ellsbury to a 7-year, $153m free agent contract in the 2013/14 off-season it had the feeling of being a potential Part 4 in Boston’s Reverse the Curse of the Bambino story. Parts 1-3 were the ultimate acts, winning World Series championships in 2004, 2007 and 2013. Ellsbury was a key contributor to the 2013 triumph, having got a ring in his 2007 rookie season too, and it was all-too obvious for the Yankees to take him away from their AL East rivals when he hit the free agent market that off-season.

Ellsbury had certainly earned his standing as a leading free agent during some very successful years in Boston and the Red Sox likely would have been happy to keep him on a less-substantial contract. The Yankees were determined to make him a fixture of their outfield for years to come whilst taking him away from their rival, much as they had done with Johnny Damon during the 2005/06 off-season, and so splashed-out on a lengthy and lucrative deal to get their man.

And so Part 4 was brought into effect. Not that anyone thought the Yankees had bought a lemon, just that Ellsbury was the type of speedy player that tended to be more affected by the passing of time than most. It’s probably a stretch to pin the last two seasons lost to injury on that, injuries can happen to any player, but the way his contract has played out (okay for the first 4 years, not so for the rest) has not come as a complete surprise.

The majority feeling was that the Yankees had over-committed as part of exerting their power in taking away a key Boston player. It was a deal that always looked likely to come back to bite them, and so it has.

However, the Yankees are doing their best to fight the forces of fate. ESPN’s Buster Olney reports that they have ripped up the final year of his contract, plus the buy-out clause on an option year for 2021, due to Ellsbury “receiving unauthorized medical treatment”. In other words, the Yankees think they’ve found a way to wriggle out of paying the $26m they still owe him.

The claim is set to be challenged rigorously by the Players’ Union, not just for Ellsbury’s own case but as part of the precedent it may set in allowing a team to renege on a contract.

The full details haven’t been disclosed, so, joking aside, it’s fair to reserve judgement at this point. For all it looks like the Yankees are trying to pull a fast one, if they have clear evidence that the treatment Ellsbury underwent has made his condition worse then there may be grounds to justify their actions.

It’s an interesting case more widely within the ongoing debates around Minor League pay and plans to reduce the number of affiliated Minor League teams.

In a British sporting context, there’s a clear starting point that you are contracted to a football team, for example, and therefore your grounds to seek independent treatment, or even independent coaching, are not great. That doesn’t mean you don’t get a say, especially when it comes to getting second opinions on medical treatment and potential surgical procedures, but it rightly has to come with full disclosure and involvement with the team that is paying your wages.

Whilst it’s not exactly the same in the States, that same principle would apply to Jacoby Ellsbury’s case. The Yankees can’t force him to do whatever they like, yet as the organisation paying him a (supposed) guaranteed $21m a year to play baseball they undoubtedly have the right to a strong say in anything affecting that, and equally in Ellsbury being obligated to involve them in any such decisions.

However, what obligation should players have lower down the pecking order, such as in the Minor Leagues? A team can trade you with no notice or say at all, and even decide to terminate your contract at little financial cost, so why would you not follow your own path if you thought it best for your career?

The answer, of course, is that the 30 MLB ownership groups don’t give you a huge amount of choice. Where else are you going to go, other than taking your chances in the Independent League or hope for one of the small number of opportunities in Japan or Korea coming your way? This is the way the system works and if you want to play ball then, to a large extent, you have to play ball with whatever your current organisation wants you to do.

Ellsbury has earned millions already so he is not going to garner a lot of sympathy from the masses, even though being denied an expected $26m is a substantial issue irrespective of how much money you’ve already got in the bank.

The devil will be in the detail as to exactly what treatment he had, the effect of it, what he told the Yankees and why he went down the route of seeking alternative provisions outside of the Yankees’ control. Going against the wishes of the Yankees’ medical professionals behind their backs, if true, would be something that the team, or any other team in that situation, would be within their rights to take action against.

The case does prompt wider questions though at a time when the entire eco-system of Major League and affiliated Minor League Baseball is an ever-increasing battleground.

Like anyone else, players have obligations to their employers that they have to abide by, knowing that not doing so can put them in breach of contract. The reasonableness, and ultimate lawfulness, of those obligations in a business that is effectively a monopoly of 30 employers is an altogether more complicated matter. The antitrust exemption that MLB teams have operated under since 1922 gives them a huge amount of power in controlling the employment opportunities and rights of people wanting to play baseball professionally in North America.

How responsibly they are wielding that power is up for debate; a debate that those who fall under that power are becoming increasingly motivated to challenge.

Weekly Hit Ground Ball: London, Yankees and Red Sox

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Although we’re a few days on from Tuesday’s MLB London Series press conference, the excitement created by it is still palpable.

Many of us have known for several years that MLB was serious about bringing games to London and, more recently, that a 2019 series between the Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees was almost certainly going to happen.

That didn’t make the announcement any the less thrilling, though. There have been false dawns in the past and so the potential for it to be postponed to another year, and then maybe cancelled altogether, couldn’t be completely shaken off.

The sight of MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred and co making it official, and confirming a 2020 series is on track too, not only gives all in the UK baseball community something to look forward to, but something to rally behind to raise the profile of the sport more widely. This blog post from BaseballSoftballUK puts it into context perfectly.

And don’t forget to contribute to the latest Batflips and Nerds survey if you haven’t done so yet.

Configuration of the playing field

Yankee fan (and Norwich City fan, so I’ll forgive him) Dave Clarke put together some potential field dimension plans for the London Stadium on Twitter.

Since Dave’s efforts, the preliminary dimensions of the field have been reported in various sites Stateside, such as this report at TheStar.com:

“The centre-field fence will be an inviting target, just 385 feet from home plate under the preliminary configuration of the stadium, which will accommodate 55,000 spectators.

The closest centre-field wall in baseball is at the Red Sox’s Fenway Park, where the 17-foot high wall is 390 feet from home plate. It quickly juts out to 420 feet in right-centre field and is adjoined by the Green Monster to the left. The wall at London Stadium will be between 12 and 14 feet high between the power alleys.

The power alleys will be 375 feet and the foul lines 333 feet with an eight-foot fence running between the alleys and the foul poles. Dimensions will be finalized in September”.

During the A’s-Yankees games on Saturday, the A’s broadcasters Glenn Kuiper and Ray Fosse made reference to it when Aaron Judge flied out to centre field at Yankee Stadium with a shot that almost certainly would have been over the wall in London. The dimensions of a make-shift stadium will always be a compromise, but let’s hope it produces a good contest and isn’t too homer friendly (much as seeing homers hit in the stadium would be fun).

Yankees and Red Sox show what to expect

It was likely no mere coincidence that the Yankees and Red Sox were playing a series against each other in New York when the London Series was announced.

They showed how good those games could be by producing a dramatic series, with the Yankees taking the first two – the second involving a four-run rally in the eighth off Craig Kimbrel to make it 17 wins out of 18 for New York and to lift them to the top of the AL East – only for the Red Sox to salvage a 5-4 win from the series on Thursday thanks to a J.D. Martinez home run in the eighth inning after the Yankees had scored four in the seventh to level the game.

We know we’ll get two competitive games in London next year, but the one hesitation I had with the news of it being the Red Sox and Yankees coming across the pond was in respect of the length of the games.

One of the comments I hear from Brits who don’t follow baseball is the preconception that games take a long time and if ever there were two teams that could make a nine-game inning last four hours or more it’s the Red Sox and Yankees. Even if it’s an exciting game for the rest of us, the casual observers would likely see that as a negative.

The games from this recent series lasted 3.30, 3.42 and 3.21 (with a 55 minute rain delay).  The average game time for a nine-inning contest so far this season has been dead-on 3 hours and it’s probably safe to assume an extra half an hour on top of that when these two teams come together.

It’s part of the ‘every pitch matters’ intensity of the games that shows MLB at its best – several players commented on the atmosphere at the recent series being akin to a play-off game – and so long as it doesn’t stray too far into the four-hour territory, few people will have reason to grumble.

Playing the game so you can’t lose

Years ago (not sure now in these app-betting days) I knew a few football fans who would put a couple of quid on the opposition winning when going to an away game, on the basis that if their team didn’t get a point or three they could at least soften the blow by having a ‘free’ takeaway that night from their winnings.

The fantasy baseball equivalent is getting the benefit of a player performing well against your chosen real-life team, or the other way around.

We have four potential starting pitcher slots in the BGB Fantasy League on any given day and I had five of my pitchers scheduled to take the mound on Friday. I decided to put former A’s pitcher, current Yankees pitcher, Sonny Gray in my line-up (benching Lance Lynn, which was not a difficult decision considering how he’s pitched for the Twins so far this season) so that if he pitched well against my A’s – which seemed a given – then at least it would be a boost to my fantasy team.

Just as those football fans didn’t care about their stake going to the bookies when celebrating an away win, I brushed aside the fantasy match-up impact of Gray’s night ending with 5 earned runs conceded and another L to his name.

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 first Sunday of MLB 2018

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A new MLB season brings with it a plethora of firsts, but there’s none better than the first full Sunday of the regular season.

Every team is playing and all but the ESPN Sunday Night game (Giants – Dodgers tonight) are day-games for us to enjoy at a convenient time in the UK.  The exception to that today is a Pirates-Tigers game being made up from yesterday’s postponement, yet that just means there’s an extra game to enjoy.

Throughout the season I write a regular Sunday morning column about the past week in MLB. I started it off in April 2007 and wouldn’t have imagined back then that I’d still be doing it eleven years later.  I’ve changed the format around a bit over the years, but I’ve always liked the process of corralling my thoughts and picking out the key topics, or just the ones that caught my eye from the games I watched that week.

I’ll be continuing with that approach for the 2018 season, whilst adding in some regular blogs about the Oakland A’s campaign (which, based on last night, could be a long one).

Happ Happy, Jeter not so much

Like many of you, I settled down in front of the TV at 17.40 on Thursday eagerly awaiting the first game of the regular season between the Chicago Cubs and Miami Marlins. The Cubs’ lead-off hitter Ian Happ wasted no time in getting his season underway by launching the first pitch he saw into the stands for a home run.

I don’t know about the ESPN coverage, but the Cubs’ WGN-TV commentator Jim Deshaies called Happ’s shot and it seemed like the only person who didn’t think Happ would be wailing on the first pitch if it was close was the Marlins’ pitcher José Ureña.

Unsurprisingly the cameras immediately picked out new Marlins head honcho Derek Jeter (not AKA Mr Popular) watching from the stands. The good news for Jeter was that there was a decent crowd on hand – in Marlins terms – and they were in good spirits. The bad news was that most of those in attendance were Cubs fans on vacation.

The only positive for Jeter is that the Cubs fans presumably were less bothered about him than the fans of the next visitor to Marlins ballpark will be: the Boston Red Sox.

Extra thoughts on extra innings

Fears of a 0-162 season in Miami were instantly dispelled on Friday when the Marlins won the second game 2-1. The 17 inning marathon lasted 5 hours 18 minutes and after Miami levelled the scores at 1-1 in the bottom of the third inning, there were 13 and a half score-less frames until Miguel Rojas hit a walk-off single.

Coincidentally the day before this the Guardian had published an article about a brief period in the 1940s when some football competitions adopted a ‘play to a finish’ rule. “Nothing could be more absurd” was how the Guardian put it in 1946 in response to one game lasting nearly 400 minutes and the rule was shelved soon after.

The decision to introduce an extra-innings rule to Minor League baseball this year, with a runner being placed on second base to start each inning, did not go down well among many in the States, albeit with most seemingly oblivious (or not caring) that variations of the rule have been used in international competitions since 2008 and are already used in other leagues around the world (including the leading European leagues).

Outside of MLB, the only argument against some sort of extra inning rule is one governed by tradition as the impact on small playing staffs and other people that are employees or volunteers at the respective game is considerable. There’s more of an argument that the impact can be managed in MLB; the Cubs’ manager Joe Maddon made the sensible suggestion that teams should be able to call-up an extra reliever the day after, for example.

I don’t have a strong view against playing normal rules until you get a winner in MLB; however, I wouldn’t be surprised if some sort of rule is brought in within the next ten years to bring games to a swifter conclusion. How many people actually sat through every pitch of the additional eight innings that were served up on Friday?  Very, very few is the likely answer.

Home runs and more home runs

MLB always does a good job with their Opening Day video package although this time around pitchers would have been given cause to moan even more than usual. Other than a couple of passing shots of hurlers, the video showed a succession of blasts by the likes of Aaron Judge, Giancarlo Stanton, Kris Bryant and more.

Coming after all the cricket kerfuffle around ball-tampering, it was almost as if MLB was trolling everyone whilst denying that the baseball has changed at all in recent seasons.

George Springer followed Ian Happ by launching his own lead-off home run on Opening Day, doing so for the second year running.  WGN-TV’s Jim Deshaies didn’t just say Happ would hit the first home run of the season, he also predicted he would hit the last one in the World Series too.  Keep a note of that if we end up with a Cubs-Astros World Series and have both Happ and Springer in with a chance of starting and ending the year on a home run.

Giancarlo Stanton waited for the second pitch he saw as a New York Yankee before depositing the ball over the fence. That was the first of two long-balls on his debut in pinstripes.

You’d expect such damage from Stanton, but not so much from the Chicago White Sox’s Matt Davidson. He immediately made anyone who drafted him in their fantasy team look clever by launching three home runs on Opening Day, with Chicago adding three more bombs to give the Kansas City Royals a pounding in Game One.

Nick Markakis launched a walk-off home run for Atlanta on Opening Day, as did former Orioles teammate Adam Jones.  The latter plundered his round-tripper off new Minnesota Twins reliever Fernando Rodney. Rodney has continued to pick up saves in closer roles in recent years despite the analytics crowd telling you not to go near him with a bargepole.

He does tend to walk a tightrope in his appearance and the Twins got their first “Rodney, you plonker” experience out of the way early.

Pillar pilfers three bases

It’s not all about the longball though and the Blue Jays’ Kevin Pillar showed that brilliantly on Saturday by stealing second, third and home to beat the Yankees.  That should have gone down well with the Blue Jays’ crowd at the MLB Meet Up in Leeds last night.

The next one takes place tonight in London, so get down to Belushis’ in SH1 if you’re in the area.

Sunday Game To Watch

The MLB event in London was originally scheduled to show three games in Yankees vs Jays, Rays vs Red Sox and Astros vs Rangers, but they’ve added in the Angels vs A’s game too due to it being the pitching debut of Shohei Ohtani.

First pitch is scheduled for 21:05 BST. Naturally, this A’s fan hopes it’s a complete disaster for the Japanese newcomer as the A’s look to split the series 2-2.

Red Sox and Yankees heading to London in 2019?

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As you likely would have already seen, Bloomberg and other US news outlets reported late on Monday that plans are close to being agreed for the Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees to play two games at the London Olympic Stadium next year.

The news isn’t really a surprise. Back in December 2016 it was being reported that the Red Sox and Yankees were two of teams that were most involved in plans to come across to London, with senior figures being quoted about this potentially leading to the two teams bringing their rivalry to the UK.

At the time it looked more likely that the two teams would come across separately – with London games on the provisional list for 2020 too – and that they would face a team such as the Tampa Bay Rays for whom losing a couple of home games would be less of a high profile issue.

Instead, it does now look like the Red Sox and Yankees will face each other after all if the logistics can be figured out and games are staged here next year.

That would be great news for us to have two of the marquee teams coming across and is a statement of intent from MLB that they are serious in getting as much publicity out of the games as possible. So from our perspective – other than a bit of disappointment if you support one of the other 28 teams – that’s exciting.

General reaction among U.S. Red Sox and Yankee fans has not been as kind to the news though and that’s a good reminder that for this to really work, it has to be something that works on both sides of the Atlantic.

Ten years ago the Premier League floated the idea of taking games to foreign shores by introducing a 39th game, knowing that the prospect of taking away one of a team’s existing 19 home games would have been strongly opposed. Even that concession was not enough to prevent a torrent of criticism that resulted in the plans being shelved.

Fans in the States have no great reason to care about expanding MLB into Europe, much as it makes such a difference to us. If it effects their enjoyment of watching their team then they’re not going to like the idea regardless of the wider benefits to baseball.

MLB teams play 162 games in a season so you could argue staging a couple in another country shouldn’t make much difference, but taking away two of the 19 contests between the Red Sox and Yankees is bound to create negativity among some of their fans. You’d imagine it would involve both teams giving up a home game (some reports are now claiming that actually they will both be Boston home games) and so fans at Fenway Park and Yankee Stadium would have to accept they’ll get eight home games against their bitter rival rather than nine.

The bigger issue is how it could affect the teams when it comes to fitting the games into their schedule and any fall-out from this (or assumed fall-out) on their regular season campaigns.  A follow-up from NY Post’s Joel Sherman made the point that there are still plenty of logistical matters to be worked out.

The problem is that playing games at the end of Spring Training, as MLB has done with series in Japan and Australia, isn’t a great option thanks to the likelihood that British weather won’t be baseball weather at the end of March.

The obvious solution is to play a series at one side of the All-Star break in July as that would make it easier to build in the travel to the schedule; however that doesn’t appear to be an option that would fit in with other plans for the Olympic Stadium.  June is the provisional month on the cards and it’s going to be interesting to see how they make that work.

Thinking it through, the least amount of off-days needed probably would be two: a day-game in the States on Thursday, arrive into the UK on Friday morning for a day off, play games on Saturday and Sunday then a travel day on Monday to head back to play their next game on Tuesday night. Even that would be a tight turnaround with the time difference factored in, so you’d maybe need a doubleheader in there too (the Wednesday before so they arrive into the UK on Thursday, or the Wednesday after so they don’t have to play on the Tuesday night when they return).

For players who like to stick to their routines, and fans used to watching their team playing pretty much every day, that’s going to be a major talking point and one that MLB will need to be mindful of, communicating the plan on how to make it work and the benefits of the trip.

The New York Mets are the other team who have been most closely linked with playing in the UK, not least when London Mayor Sadiq Khan threw at the ceremonial first pitch at Citi Field last year. If the 2019 games do go ahead and work well, the smart money would be on Mets vs Nationals or Phillies for 2020 (I’d guess giving up homes games at newish publicly-funded ballparks would be an issue for the Braves and Marlins, although you can never count anything out with Miami).

We’re getting ahead of ourselves there though. It hasn’t officially been confirmed that games will be played in London in 2019, let alone 2020, but all signs are pointing to the Red Sox and Yankees taking to a diamond in London next June.

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year (for those who get good presents)

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It’s the time of year when usual greetings are followed by variations on the same question: ‘have you got all your Christmas shopping done yet?.

Presents are on the mind right now, whether ones you are buying for others or ones you hope to receive.

Fans of the LA Angels and New York Yankees must feel like Christmas has come early this week after they both received the best type of present, a surprise one.

Oh, Shohei Ohtani

(Which is what Angels fans should be singing, to the tune of Seven Nation Army, if they have any sense whatsoever)

Ohtani choosing the Angels was a surprise, but not so much based on his destination and more that, as became apparent as the process played out, this was a completely unique situation.  There were plenty of rumours and second-guessing, yet the decision was a personal choice for Ohtani and no one outside his close confidants really knew what would sway him.

The tough part of Christmas is not receiving a present you hoped for and several teams are feeling that more than most with Ohtani.  The San Diego Padres briefly became the rumoured frontrunner and Padres fans haven’t had much going their way of late.  The Seattle Mariners and Texas Rangers also looked favourites at one time or another and have the added pain of seeing up-close what they have missed out on in the AL West over the seasons ahead.

“Stanton …

(… deliver, your fastball or your life”. Not sure if the Adam and the Ants 80’s classic is quite so well known in New York to be the basis of a chant, though)

The first team to be publicly shunned by Ohtani was the New York Yankees, a slight that prompted two typical responses.  Firstly, the New York press buried him for ‘not having the guts’ to play in New York.  Then the Yankees went and traded for Giancarlo Stanton instead.

Much as with Ohtani, Stanton’s choice – a product of his wisely negotiated no-trade clause – came at the cost of other teams who thought he would be wearing their uniform instead.  For all the progress they made with the Marlins, it never quite felt like the St Louis Cardinals would end up with Stanton, yet the Giants appeared to have a decent chance.  Both will need to turn their attention elsewhere now that Stanton is heading to the Bronx to team up with Aaron Judge in a two-man wrecking crew to strike fear in every opposing pitcher’s heart.

Meanwhile, new Yankee manager Aaron Boone must be expecting to get a stocking full of coal this Christmas to even things out.

Enjoying the presents

The Yankees now have some work to do in terms of roster decisions and potentially trading another regular to accommodate Stanton’s pay whilst meeting their target of staying below the $197m luxury tax threshold.  The whole point for the Yankees though is that they can happily find solutions to those ‘problems’ when it allows them to acquire such an outstanding proven talent as Stanton.

The deal has created plenty of funny tales of ‘Agent Jeter’ helping out the Yankees.  Many are coming from annoyed Boston Red Sox fans who are stoking the ‘Evil Empire’ fires once again.

In any case, what Jeter and his colleagues have done here makes complete sense given the situation they are in.  It was madness – well, more accurately short-term egotistical idiocy by former owner Jeffrey Loria – for the Marlins to give one player, however great, such a vast contract and they had little choice but to trade Stanton despite having a relatively weak negotiating position.

It creates yet more significant sympathy for long-suffering Marlins, but none whatsoever for Jeter and his ownership colleagues.  As the NY Post story linked to above notes, the Marlins are $400m in debt and losing money fielding an uncompetitive team, so major work is needed.  That’s a difficult position to be in, however, those were the same facts on the table when they agreed to pay $1.2bn for the team. It doesn’t exactly inspire much confidence in the new regime being shrewd negotiators, does it?

Mike Trout’s new best friend

(Other than his wife, that is)

As for the Angels, Ohtani’s decision to join them is a huge coup and one that will help them to respond to the justified accusation that they are failing to capitalise on having one of the best players the game has seen in many years.

Mike Trout has played in six-and-a-bit seasons so far and in only one of those, 2014, has the team reached the play-offs, which simply resulted in an ignominious 3-0 ALDS sweep at the hands of the Kansas City Royals. There is a good core of players there alongside Trout in Andrelton Simmons, Justin Upton, Kole Calhoun, Garrett Richards and others.  Adding Ohtani to it doesn’t obviously put them ahead of the Houston Astros in the AL West, but it definitely increases their Wild Card prospects.

The most exciting part of Ohtani’s arrival is how he and the Angels plan to help him become a two-way player and to get regular at-bats.  Losing the DH on his pitching days is the obvious starting point, but it seems like they will also be giving him DH opportunities on non-pitching days too (playing him in the field isn’t likely in his debut year, based on initial reports).

The reports suggest Ohtani is a legitimate hitting talent, not just a pitcher who can run into one every now and then, but he’s no different to any other hitting talent in needing regular at-bats and time to develop his craft in the Major Leagues.  Whether he will have the opportunity to do that over the next couple of years – for example, a few dodgy pitching performances in a row will quickly start comments on him being better off focusing on his pitching – will probably determine how well it goes.

Regardless, it’s going to be fascinating to watch how he gets on and if he does just end up as a home-run threat on days he pitches then that’s still going to be fun.

Unless it’s against your team, of course.  With my A’s hat on I naturally hope Ohtani doesn’t turn out as well as planned, just as I’d be more than happy if Judge-Stanton becomes a dud duo rather than a dynamic one when our pitching staff is facing them.

Such petty bias outstanding, the arrival of Ohtani to MLB and Stanton joining the Yankees are undoubtedly incredibly exciting developments that only add to the anticipation of the MLB season starting up again in the new year.

Whatever presents you do or don’t get this Christmas, the 2018 MLB season is sure to be a present well worth waiting for.

A Boone for the Yankees

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There’s a great article on ESPN by Tim Kurkjian all about his former colleague Aaron Boone becoming the New York Yankees’ manager (still to be confirmed, but that’s all that is left to do).

Kurkjian always strikes me as someone who would see the good in anyone, and clearly he has a lot of affection for Boone, but the traits he describes – excellent communicator, incredible eye for detail, huge baseball knowledge – all help to explain why the Yankees have decided to make him their new skipper.

Two years ago I wrote about Dave Roberts being appointed as the LA Dodgers’ manager despite him having no managerial experience. Many positive things were being written and said about Roberts, as with Boone, but I was unsure as to whether a team in the Dodgers’ position were taking an unneccesary risk in going for a managerial novice:

“Roberts may prove to be an inspired appointment, and I’ll wish him the best of luck, but there’s reason to question whether pairing a man who has never been a manager before with a team built to win a World Series is the wisest decision.”

The Dodgers have won the NL West in both seasons since (with a combined 195-130 win-loss record), making it to Game Six of the NLCS in 2016 and Game Seven of the World Series this year, so it’s fair to say the appointment has worked out well.

It does make me think about the role a manager plays in MLB. Whilst they may be asked for their opinion, rostering decisions are taken by the Front Office and the manager generally leaves the coaching to the rest of his staff.  The role is primarily about in-game strategy and leading a group of players through a long season, whilst being the public face of the organisation.

The last two parts are why communication skills and personality are such an important part of the job.

This has been an area that Girardi has faced some criticism in recently, yet it shouldn’t be forgotten that he moved into the manager’s job in 2008 after spending 2007 working for the YES Network.  Girardi started working for YES in 2004 after ending his playing career before serving as Joe Torre’s bench coach in the Bronx in 2005 and then managing the Marlins in 2006, winning the NL Manager of the Year award and being sacked for his troubles (as was the way under previous owner Jeffrey Loria).

It’s easy to look at the Yankees appointing someone out of an ESPN studio, rather than a Minor League dugout, and question it, but the skills required to do that broadcasting analyst job well (and I’ve always thought Boone was excellent on ESPN’s coverage) actually translate perfectly to being an MLB manager.

You can include in that the characteristic of being a ex-Big Leaguer, something that broadcasters love (sometimes overriding the person not being very good at the analyst role) and something that – fairly or not – always seems to give them credibilty over an otherwise strongly-qualified career Minor Leaguer.

Although we all love to second-guess managerial strategy, in all honesty a fair amount of the decisions made over the course of the season are quite standard.  Hopefully there is still a place for an outstanding managerial tactician to give his team an edge in MLB, yet managers have so much support (in staff and stats) to make decisions nowadays that it’s possible this doesn’t carry quite the advantage it may have done in the past. The outcome, regardless of the logic behind the decision, will always dominate the narrative anyway.  If you make the right call on removing a pitcher and you get beat, you still wear the loss as the manager.

Boone has been around baseball all his life and certainly comes across as the type of person who is always learning, rather than someone set in his ways.  So there’s good reason to think Boone will have the strategic side of the job covered regardless of his lack of managerial experience.

It’s a huge opportunity for Boone, taking on a very talented Yankees team that looks well set to get even better in the years ahead.  Kukjian’s article shows that he will go into the role with a lot of goodwill, but Boone will know all too well that this will not shield him for long if the results aren’t as expected. That will not bother Boone, in fact the high stakes are likely something he will relish as the rewards if it goes well will be great.

Appointing a manager out of an announcer’s booth is not a left-field choice in MLB.  With Boone’s skills and a highly-talented roster at his disposal, the Yankees may well have made a winning appointment.