Tag Archives: Philadelphia Phillies

Christmas shopping spree

Leave a reply

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

3 Replies

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

Leave a reply

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: Back for 2018

Leave a reply

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

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

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

The Not Hot Stove

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

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

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

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

Rockies in relief

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Phillies adding too

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

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

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

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

More Marlins misery

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

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

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

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

More writers joining The Athletic

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

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

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

Books on the way

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

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

MLB 2016 – National League Preview

Leave a reply

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

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

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

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

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

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

NL East

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

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

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

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

NL Central

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

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

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

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

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

NL West

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

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

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

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

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

My predictions

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

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

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

2016 MLB Spring Training starts today

Leave a reply

MlbHlSqThe day has finally arrived when winter is officially over and the baseball season starts coming into view.

Spring Training games are just like football friendlies in that the first teamers get taken out partway through, the results don’t matter and they are played in a casual atmosphere. So, as with their football equivalent, they’re not normally a thrilling spectacle, but it’s great for a while at least to watch some baseball after four months without it.

They give you an early chance to see new recruits in their new uniforms, catch a glimpse of some highly-rated prospects, and occasionally to see a mammoth home run or spectacular piece of fielding that you can enjoy regardless of the games not counting for anything.

They are a good way to keep up with the latest roster news as the commentators have time to fill and normally do so by discussing news around the leagues, such as who may be in pole position to win a roster spot and progress on a player’s rehab from an injury.

More than anything, just as the players use Spring Training to get back into the daily baseball groove, so can we as fans start getting back into the swing of it. First pitch for the vast majority of games during March comes at around midday local time, so they are convenient for us to follow live during the British evening.

Not all Spring Training games are covered on TV in the States and so there’s a reduced MLB.TV schedule to watch via an online subscription. You will also find that some of the ‘connected device’ options aren’t available during March. Additionally there are normally only a few games – if any – that will be on BT Sport this month.

However, there’s pretty much always radio commentary to listen to via MLB At Bat and that makes for a relaxing evening soundtrack to whisk you away to a contented ballpark in Arizona or Florida for an hour or so.

It all gets going at 18.05 on Tuesday evening with a perfect Spring Training game example. Toronto face Philadelphia and there will not be too many regulars on show for much beyond the fourth inning, indeed several of the Blue Jays’ big names won’t be involved at all, but it’s a chance to watch Marcus Stroman pitching an inning and after four months without baseball, who wouldn’t want to watch that?

NL East: Off-season so far

Leave a reply

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Weekly Hit Ground Ball: The race is on

Leave a reply

WHGB11After close to thirty years spent languishing between false hope and no hope, fans of the Kansas City Royals have entered this September in an unfamiliar competitive position.

The unfamiliar encourages a sense of excitement but also trepidation.

However much Royals are trying to outwardly enjoy this season, inwardly there is bound to be a sense of foreboding. Good things don’t happen to their team. This isn’t really happening. It’s all about to come crushing down.

Watching Danny Duffy leave the mound at Yankee Stadium on Saturday after throwing a solitary pitch was the moment when those fears were realised.

Look beyond the largely irrelevant 8-11 win-loss record and you’ll see that Duffy has been excellent for Kansas City this season. It’s not just been the way Duffy has pitched but also that he’s finally broken through after years of promise since he was drafted back in the 2007 amateur draft.

He was one of a crop of young players that were hailed as the answer to the Royals’ many years in the doldrums and, up until now, like most of the rest he had failed to live up to the billing. This season, in deed and in the sense of hope, Duffy has personified the way that things have finally turned around for Kansas City.

Seeing him grimace in discomfort and exit early with a sore shoulder was the last thing the Royals needed, again both in terms of actual impact (losing him for the game and potentially the foreseeable future) and the demoralising effect this blow could have on the team.

Kansas City went on to lose that game against the Yankees 6-2 to compound their misery and yet there was a chink of light from Detroit where the Tigers failed to capitalise. Despite having their recently-acquired ace David Price on the mound – an addition thought at the time to hammer another nail into the Royals’ coffin – Detroit lost 5-4 to the surging San Francisco Giants, keeping Kansas City two games ahead at the top of the AL Central.

Duffy’s condition will be assessed further over the next few days to determine whether it was a mere blip or something that could see him miss extended time, potentially the rest of the season. If he is out for the year then he’ll be a big loss, yet maybe it won’t be a sign of things inevitably going wrong for the Royals and instead will show that this is destined to be the year playoff baseball returns to Kansas City, regardless of the obstacles that come their way.

The Royals’ emergence in the AL Central, where many – including myself – predicted another season of Detroit domination, is one of many great stories building to a crescendo this month.

Baltimore look set to win the AL East division for the first time since 1997, whilst in the AL Wild Card race the Seattle Mariners may just turn their offseason splurge on Robinson Cano into a first playoff appearance since 2001.

The Mariners are even catching up the Oakland A’s who looked certainties for a third consecutive AL West title before a startling collapse over the last month that has seen a rampant LA Angels team fly past to gain not only a lead in the division but the best win-loss record in the Majors.

The A’s were able to snatch a walk-off win on Saturday against the Houston Astros, turning around a 3-1 deficit in the bottom of the ninth inning, and that’s the sort of win that could spark an all-important change in fortune as we head into the last few weeks of the season. That’s what this A’s is clinging to, at least.

In the National League it’s been the Milwaukee Brewers playing the role of the A’s, plummeting from an unexpected stay at the top of the Central and seeing the St. Louis Cardinals resuming normal service at the summit. The Brew Crew have won only three of their past 16 games and now need to forget about what has gone. They are still firmly in the Wild Card race, a position they would have been delighted with if offered it before the season began, and need to somehow find a way to make that their mindset.

And as the regular season begins to wind down, the Philadelphia Phillies reminded us all on Monday that there’s something to play for every time you take the field. Their combined no-hitter was a rare enjoyable moment in what has been yet another poor season for a team that enjoyed so much success between 2007 and 2011.

The Texas Rangers are another team to quickly hit hard times after a recent run of excellent seasons. They were the first time to be eliminated from playoff contention this season and questions were already being asked about manager Ron Washington’s future before he stepped down for personal reasons on Friday. Wash had his game-management called into question at times, but there’s no doubt he was a manager that his players fought for and it’s one of the harsh realities of sport at the highest level that his time in charge will be remembered for the two World Series championships his time narrowly missed out on, rather than all of the other regular season success they had.

Weekly Hit Ground Ball: Jeter to retire

1 Reply

One of the joys of this time of year is that none of us really knows what the season will bring; the possibilities are endless in Spring.

However, we do already know one thing that 2014 will be remembered for.

One more year for Jeter

The announcement on Wednesday that this will be Derek Jeter’s final season was a major news story and, particularly considering it was telling us something that’s not actually going to happen until later in the year (my instant reaction to the mass coverage was to mis-read it and I thought he was retiring there and then), that goes to show just how big an impact he has had on the game.

ESPN’s Jayson Stark summed it up by drawing on research last August that overwhelming placed Jeter as the recognised ‘face of MLB’. As Stark put it:

“How does any sport replicate what Derek Jeter has meant to baseball over the last decade and a half — and still does? Is that even possible?

Oh, the Yankees will find another shortstop. There’s a 100 percent probability of that. And Jeter will find stuff to do that probably doesn’t involve spending 14 hours a day curled up in a chair playing Sudoku.

But where does baseball find the next Derek Jeter? Good luck on that”.

It’s difficult to judge from the U.K., where generally you are either a dedicated baseball fan or don’t pay it any attention whatsoever, but clearly Jeter has meant a lot to baseball in terms of its image to the casual fan in the States and, with so many entertainment options out there competing for people’s eyes, ears and money, that’s an important factor that MLB needs to grapple with.

Yet the very nature of sport means that legends come and go. Even if there isn’t necessarily a ready-made, obvious replacement – as Stark suggests is the case here – other players will emerge in time to take on the mantle. MLB will produce new icons, but it won’t be so easy for the Yankees to find another Jeter and what he represented.

He was part of a group of players that created a new era in the rich history of the New York Yankees. There are some similarities here to Manchester United’s ‘Class of ‘92’, documented in the film released last December.  In both cases, you had a group of very talented young players who came through together and, for a period, personified the team. Beckham, Scholes, Giggs and co became Man Utd, just as Jeter, Rivera, Pettitte, Posada and co became what you thought of when you thought of the Yankees.

Not only was that felt by the fans, particularly of the respective teams, but you got a sense that it was felt by players that joined the teams too. Star players coming into the dressing room or clubhouse generally had to fit in with the culture and example that was set by those core players.

Jeter is the last of the fabled ‘core four’ and whilst the Yankees may well use their spending power to put together championship-contending teams in the years to come, it will be a while before they, or potentially any other team, brings through such an incredible group of players that define an era quite like this group has.

A.J. to the Phillies

A.J. Burnett won a World Series with Jeter and the Yankees in 2009 and in 2014 he’ll be pitching for the team that they beat. The Philadelphia Phillies have continued their offseason trend of adding veteran players by bringing in the 37-year-old pitcher on a one-year deal.

If he pitches as well as he did in the past two years with the Pirates then the Phillies will be more than happy with their $16m investment, yet it’s difficult to shake the feeling that the deal would make more sense for a team with a genuinely good shot at making the playoffs this year.

And it’s difficult to shake the feeling that the Phillies’ General Manager Ruben Amaro Jr. is misjudging his roster if he’s putting his team in that category.

Hamels hobbled

The Phillies certainly have some reason to hope that they could get in the Wild Card race, but they need their ageing roster to stay healthy and they suffered a blow this week when Cole Hamels, one of the younger veterans at 30 years old, revealed he has a shoulder injury that could see him miss most of the first month of the season.

Iwakuma injured too

Injuries to pitchers is a depressingly familiar theme each Spring and the Seattle Mariners are also cursing their bad luck early in Spring Training. Hisashi Iwakuma, who had such an impressive season in 2013, has injured his right middle finger and will miss 4 to 6 weeks, meaning he won’t be ready for the start of the season.

The Mariners do have some talented young pitchers to call on and my favourite scouting work of the week came from their ace Felix Hernandez, who described James Paxton as “a funky lefty dealing over the top, throwing 97 [mph]” and Taijuan Walker as “a big dude throwing cheese”.

The Mariners also lost outfielder Franklin Gutierrez for the coming season due to a recurrence of a “gastrointestinal problem”, or as new manager Lloyd McClendon put it: “his health was not cooperating with him”.

Late start for Latos

The Cincinnati Reds’ Mat Latos is another pitcher who started Spring in exactly the way he hoped he wouldn’t. Latos felt a twinge in his left knee during some workouts on Tuesday and underwent minor arthroscopic surgery on Friday. The Reds hope it will only sideline him for 10 days or so, but any setback is a worry for a team that had a relatively quiet offseason and is mainly relying on the players they had last year combining to have a better year in 2014.

Contract extensions

Ending on a more positive note, two young players had a very good opening week to Spring Training by agreeing contract extensions with their respective teams.

Outfielder Michael Brantley signed a four-year contract extension with the Cleveland Indians worth $25m, whilst pitcher Julio Teheran agreed a six-year, $32.4m extension with the Atlanta Braves. The deal with Teheran follows the eight-year contract extension signed by first baseman Freddie Freeman recently as the Braves try to keep hold of their core young talent for years to come.

Offseason so far: NL East

Leave a reply

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

Atlanta Braves

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

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

Washington Nationals

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

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

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

New York Mets

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

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

Philadelphia Phillies

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

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

Miami Marlins

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

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