Tag Archives: Philadelphia Phillies

Rounding the Bases: Deals being made

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One week ago I stated that we may be waiting a few weeks before the MLB Hot Stove started to heat up and teams began making significant roster additions.

It turned out that this past week was in fact quite a busy one, with several free agent signings being completed and one major trade.

Fielder and Kinsler swap teams

At breakfast time on Thursday morning I was tucking into a bowl of porridge and enjoying watching the highlights of Day One of the first Ashes Test on Sky Sports News (enjoy the good times while they last, comes to mind) when I noticed that an MLB news item was about to scroll across the bottom of the screen. I expected it to be news of a minor free agent signing, but instead was taken aback to read that the Texas Rangers had swung a trade to acquire first baseman Prince Fielder from the Detroit Tigers for second baseman Ian Kinsler.

Just two years ago, the Tigers caused a major shock by coming out of nowhere and signing Fielder to a nine-year, $214m contract. Despite having a disappointing 2013 season, Fielder appeared to be set to stay in Detroit for years to come and yet all of a sudden the long-term commitment between player and team had been broken.

At first glance it looks to be a trade that should benefit both teams handsomely, not just in the player each team has required but the knock-on effects for their respective rosters.

The Tigers can now move Miguel Cabrera over to first base, where his limited fielding skills are better suited, and create an opening for their best prospect, third baseman Nick Castellanos. Kinsler will add a combination of some power and speed to the lineup and moving the majority of Fielder’s hefty contract (the Tigers have given the Rangers $30m as part of the deal to cover some of the remaining $168m) gives them some financial flexibility potentially to add another player or two or to add to the pot for a contract extension for Max Scherzer and, down the line, Miguel Cabrera.

As for the Rangers, they were desperate to make a big move after suffering late season heartbreak in the last two seasons. Acquiring a premium slugger is a statement of intent and moving to the homer-friendly confines of Rangers Ballpark should suit Fielder down to the ground. Moving Kinsler also frees up some space for the Rangers to let top prospect Jurickson Profar settle in at second base.

Angels and Cardinals

The Rangers’ AL West rivals the Los Angeles Angels also completed a trade this week, acquiring third baseman David Freese from the St. Louis Cardinals for centre fielder Peter Bourjos, with a couple of young prospects thrown into the deal too.

Freese will forever be a hometown hero in St. Louis for his 2011 World Series heroics, yet it looks like a good time for him to move on to a new challenge with the Angels. The Cardinals will probably move their infield players around so that Matt Carpenter shifts over to third base and Kolten Wong moves into second base full-time, potentially with former Detroit Tiger Jhonny Peralta joining the team as their new shortstop if the rumours from Saturday night are accurate. Bourjos, if he can stay fit and on the field, will be a better option in centrefield than the disappointing John Jay for the Cards, whilst Mike Trout will no longer be moved aside to the Angels’ left field and will instead be the number one centre fielder.

Pitchers getting paid

David Freese should be a good addition for the Angels, but their most pressing need over the offseason is to bolster their pitching corps. Another opening in the rotation has been created by Jason Vargas departing as a free agent as he agreed a four-year, $32m contract with the Kansas City Royals.

The signing was met by a fairly lukewarm response. In part this was because of the Royals rumours swirling in the hour before it was announced:

A “major-baseball announcement” immediately created visions for some of Carlos Beltran donning the ‘KC’ cap once again, so when the reality was a player you can neatly file under the words ‘solid’ and ‘dependable’ there was bound to be some disappointment.

Giving a four-year contract to a less-than-spectacular player also raised a few eyebrows, yet $8m per year for a good starting pitcher looks like being a good deal for the Royals on the current pitching market.

The San Francisco Giants spent $23m this week to sign 38-year old Tim Hudson on a two-year contract (£137k per week). Hudson’s 2013 season was ended by a horrible freak accident when the Mets’ Eric Young accidentally landed on the pitcher’s right ankle as he was covering first base. The Giants are confident that Hudson will come back from his fractured ankle as good as new and if he does then he should help the team in their attempt to get back to the postseason and to win a third World Series in five years.

Elsewhere in the NL West, the San Diego Padres have also signed a pitcher whose 2013 was impacted by injury. Josh Johnson has spent most of his career so far battling the tag of being an ace when not injured. Recently he’s spent more time injured than being an ace but the Padres have little to lose in signing him to a one-year contract worth $8m and, with Petco Park being a great place for a pitcher to ply his trade, it’s also a good setting for Johnson to have a good year and then earn a more lucrative contract in a year’s time.

Another veteran for the Phillies

The Philadelphia Phillies played at the Veterans Stadium for 33 seasons before moving to Citizens Bank Park in 2004. The team’s General Manager Ruben Amaro Jr has done a good job in recent years of honouring their old home by building rosters dominated by veterans and, just a week after signing 36-year-old Marlon Byrd to a two-year contract, he added another this week with the re-signing of catcher Carlos Ruiz.

Ruiz has spent his whole Major League career with the Phillies and even when his contract ran out at the end of the 2013 season, there always seemed a very good chance that he would carry on with the club.

Amaro’s decision to hand the 35-year-old a three-year contract worth a guaranteed $26m (annual salaries of $8.5m – approximately £101k per week – with a $500k 2017 buyout fee) made sure of that and immediately led to the GM’s thought processes (or more precisely lack of) being questioned.

Giving a three-year contract to a 35-year-old catcher isn’t ideal, but Ruiz is a good all-round player, not spectacular at anything but solid enough at the plate and behind it, at a position where merely being good carries plenty of value. Additionally the risk involved is mitigated slightly by the Phillies’ familiarity with him, from how he fits into the group as a personality to a detailed knowledge of his fitness.

And finally …

The Phillies kept hold of their catcher, but it looks like the Atlanta Braves have lost theirs. Brian McCann has been with the Braves for his entire professional career and his nine-season Major League run with the team always looked likely to come to an end this offseason when he became a free agent. Sure enough, late on Saturday night it was being reported that he has agreed a five-year, $85m contract (just over £200k per week) with the New York Yankees.

Rounding the Bases

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After a couple of weeks of rest after the World Series, I’m now back in off-season writing mode.

There will be a series of 2013 review articles leading up to Christmas touching on MLB, the British Baseball leagues (something that I wasn’t able to cover as much as I had hoped during the second half of the season) and International competition (from the high of the World Baseball Classic to the low of baseball’s latest Olympic rejection).

I’ll also be writing regular round-ups of the most important news from the Major Leagues, starting with this one today.

Atlanta Braves are on the move

Arguably the biggest news of the past week has been the surprise announcement that the Braves are planning to leave Turner Field for a new facility 10 miles away, with the projected opening being in 2017.

The reports make clear that there have been issues rumbling along about Turner Field’s ability to meet Atlanta’s needs in the coming years, but there had been little in the way of public comment about the Braves potentially moving until this recent announcement.

Turner Field is a relatively new ballpark itself, having been converted into its current state after the 1996 Olympic Games. It is proposed that the current stadium will be bulldozed which seems an awful waste.

It must be galling to the Oakland A’s and Tampa Bay Rays in particular as they are having little joy (to put it mildly) in finding a way out of their current ill-fitting venues. So desperate are they, the two teams would be forgiven for momentarily considering a far-fetched plan like trying to dismantle Turner Field and moving it somewhere else.

Mauer on the move

The Minnesota Twins announced that current catcher Joe Mauer will be ditching the so-called ‘tools of ignorance’ and wearing a first-base glove instead from the start of the 2014 season.

The fielding position of catcher is unique across sport. Even with some occasional rest days, playing the position over a long season takes a toll on the body and offers the constant risk of injury via foul-tips and home-plate collisions (the latter potentially being outlawed, or at least heavily regulated, in the near future).

Mauer’s future fielding position has been a topic of conversation for several years as he is so valuable to the Twins, both in terms of his contributions at the plate and in terms of his contract. It makes sense to move him out of harm’s way, but catchers generally are reluctant to give up the position.

In this case, Mauer has taken it upon himself to suggest the move after a concussion ended his 2013 season prematurely, a decision made easier due to the Twins not having an ideal first baseman on the roster already.

Hopefully the move works out well for Mauer. Twins fans are in a strange position in that in recent years their team has made decisions that delighted them (staying in Minnesota, building a wonderful new open-air ballpark, preventing hometown hero Mauer from being snaffled by the Yankees etc) but the performances on the field have been bitterly disappointing.

Player moves 

The Hot Stove is not bubbling yet, in fact it’s hardly even simmering. Exciting rumours are seeming hard to come by, let alone news of actual moves potentially being on the cards.  The Winter Meetings do not begin until 9 December and it’s quite possible there will just be a batch of minor deals, with maybe one or two leading free agents coming off the market, over the next three weeks.

The main free agent acquisition so far has seen the Philadelphia Phillies signing outfielder Marlon Byrd to a two-year, $16m contract (£95,470 per week).

Byrd put up a good showing in 2013, firstly with the New York Mets and then with the NL Wild-Card-winning Pittsburgh Pirates, but it came after a miserable 2012 when he performed poorly for the Chicago Cubs and Boston Red Sox and served a 50-game suspension for failing a drugs test. He turned 36 at the end of August and having earned $22m from twelve seasons on Major League rosters, being able to add a $16m contract to that is an incredible turn around for someone whose career looked to be finished one year ago.

So it’s great news for Byrd, but the Cinderella story for him will have Phillies fans fearing they’ve spent $16m on a pumpkin. After winning the NL East division five times in a row between 2007 and 2011 inclusive, Philadelphia have dropped off the pace in the last two years (their 73-89 2013 record was their first sub-.500 season since 2002) with ‘win now’ spending to sign or keep hold of veteran players creating an old and increasingly injury-plagued roster.

Signing Byrd doesn’t look to be a way to turn the tide in that respect.

Japanese player posting system

There may be one less free agent on the market this offseason. Japanese pitcher Masahiro Tanaka reportedly was likely to be made available to MLB teams, but this is now in doubt after MLB’s proposed new player positing agreement with Japan was withdrawn.

Players in Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball League become free agents after playing for nine seasons and they can only seek offers from MLB teams before then if they go through the player posting system. The respective Japanese club will make their player available in a blind bidding process. If the largest bid is acceptable to the team, the player can then begin negotiations on an MLB contract. From the Nippon Professional Baseball League’s perspective this allows them to get the best fee, but that’s exactly why MLB doesn’t like it.

Paying transfer fees – as that’s effectively what they are – is alien to MLB teams and there’s a view among some fans in the States that the whole process should be scrapped. However, Japanese teams clearly cannot trade players in the way that MLB teams do between themselves, and receiving an amateur draft pick as compensation is not an option either, so a fee is the only viable way for a Japanese team to be compensated if an MLB team wants to acquire a Japanese player who is still under contract.

MLB understands this and their proposal was simply to revise the process so that the fee would be a defined point between the 1st and 2nd-best bids.  Nippon Professional Baseball League has failed to respond to that offer and MLB has now withdrawn it, working from the position of strength that it only effects a small number of players and that unless Japan’s league agrees to a system more to their liking, they will walk away and wait until players reach their nine-year free agent mark.

That will deny the very best Japanese players the opportunity to move to MLB during their prime, whilst taking away the chance for a Japanese team to receive a substantial transfer fee and potentially affecting the standing of Japanese baseball as their best players will not get the chance to showcase their abilities in what’s considered worldwide to be the best competition (in fairness, the Nippon Professional Baseball League is very popular in Japan, so they may feel keeping hold of their stars is better than any second-hand publicity boost through one of their players performing well in the States).

In short, there are a host of reasons why players and teams in Japan would want to retain the option of having a system to transfer players and MLB has now put the ball back in their court to achieve this.

Managerial set complete 

After the Detroit Tigers did indeed appoint Brad Ausmus as their new manager, that left the Chicago Cubs and Seattle Mariners as the two teams still seeking a skipper.

Those positions have now been filled with the Cubs appointing the San Diego Padres’ bench coach Rick Renteria to be their 53rd manager in franchise history and the Mariners opting for Lloyd McClendon who had been on the coaching staff of the Detroit Tigers for the last eight years following a five-season spell as manager of the Pittsburgh Pirates.

Both have substantial experience in coaching and managerial positions, showing that whilst teams are not afraid to give managerial newcomers like Ausmus a chance, there’s no reason for established coaches and former managers to give up hope that another opportunity may come their way.

 

Weekly Hit Ground Ball: Wrong turn on replay

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We’ve known for a while that MLB was considering an expansion of its currently limited use of instant replay and MLB Commissioner Bud Selig revealed their plans at a press conference last week.

It wasn’t feasible for MLB to continue to use video evidence only for fair/foul home run calls, as they have done since September 2008, as it only served to increase the frustration and fury of teams at every other crucial incorrect decision made.

Expanding it to other calls is therefore an improvement; however the proposal, which still has to be agreed but seems likely to be in effect for the start of next season, has little else going for it.

MLB didn’t want every potentially debatable call to be reviewed so it was inevitable that the sport would go down the route of allowing challenges. We’ve seen in the Ashes this summer what a mockery they can make of the game.

One of the compelling reasons for using technology is to reduce the occasions when the post-game chatter is not about a skilful pitching display, a timely piece of hitting or a dazzling fielding play, but focused on an incorrect umpiring decision.

Sadly now we’ll have nights when everything gets overshadowed by discussions over a manager’s use – or non-use – of a replay challenge. Maybe some will see that as an addition to the tactical side of the game, but it’s more akin to a game show than sport in my eyes.  MLB might as well introduce a ‘double runs in a half-inning’ joker card to go alongside it.

The ridiculous nature of challenges will be increased in baseball through the arbitrary allocation of three challenges per team: one challenge in the first six innings, two in the final three innings.

It won’t necessarily be the case that the game-defining decision takes place in the seventh, eighth or ninth inning. A team may make a reasonable, but ultimately incorrect, challenge in the second inning and then suffer an absolute howler of a decision with bases loaded in the sixth that they cannot do anything about.

It doesn’t matter that the team could have had a chance to challenge the call. It is the umpiring crew’s responsibility to make the decisions and it shouldn’t be incumbent on the managers to know when and when not to use a challenge. The whole point of introducing instant replay is to get the key decisions right, not to create a silly gimmick.

Personally, I would have left it up to the umpires to decide when they were not completely sure on a tight call (as in rugby, admittedly a very different game, or cricket umpires checking if the ball went for a 4 or 6 etc). There may be cases when an umpire faces criticism for not reviewing a decision, and perhaps a ‘safety-first’ approach may creep in to cover this, but it keeps the process among the umpires and ensures that they are still completely accountable for their decision-making, good or bad.

The new system should lead to some cases of teams getting wrong decisions overturned and that’s a good thing; however I have a bad feeling that the overall effect on the game is going to be a negative one.

Manuel moved aside

Charlie Manuel will be hoping he gets a chance to use the new challenge system next season, although that seems doubtful after he was sacked by the Philadelphia Phillies.

The 69-year-old was out of contract at the end of this season and the club clearly were not planning to extend his nine-year tenure at the helm.  A run of 19 losses from 23 games had left the Phillies a long way off the playoff pace and General Manager Ruben Amaro Jr. decided to install Ryne Sandberg as manager rather than leave Manuel in charge the rest of the way.

Sandberg has taken on the role on an interim basis and Amaro no doubt is hoping his desire to win the job on a permanent basis will help to light a fire under the team.

As for Manuel, his country drawl and portly appearance – a classic example of how jarring, and slightly humorous, it can be for Brits to see veteran managers suited up in full uniform, however unflattering the look – were part of what made him a likeable character. For Phillies fans, he was the man who guided them to only their second World Series triumph in the team’s 131 history and presided over a five-year domination of the NL East division after years of seeing the Atlanta Braves riding high.

Manuel wants to manage again next season, although the market for 70-year-old managers is not particularly strong.

Amaro’s tears as he announced Manuel’s departure called to mind ex-Newcastle owner Freddy Shepherd’s comments in 2004 that sacking Sir Bobby Robson made him feel like ‘the man who shot Bambi’. In Amaro’s case, he may find the root of some of the sadness in roster decisions made in recent years that have left the team with an ageing and increasingly injured core.

 

Weekly Hit Ground Ball: Hope in Spring

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‘Hope springs eternal’, but in baseball spring is an eternal source of hope.

The sun beats down onto the backs of returning ballplayers in Arizona and Florida, some of the recipients driven by a winter of frustration, some emboldened by the confidence of success from the previous year.

It is the sense of renewal that makes spring such a glorious part of the baseball calendar. Everything starts again and that means anything is possible; however the past is always present in the mind and every player will have something to prove on the back of the 2012 performance.

Here are six players whose 2012 seasons, for differing reasons, will make following their fortunes in 2013 all the more intriguing.

Mike Trout (Los Angeles Angels)

When we witness a player excelling at a young age it is too tantalizing not to look ahead and wonder just how good he will become. Sportsmen often hit their peak in their late-twenties, so it is natural to see Mike Trout’s incredible performance as a 20 year-old in 2012 as a starting point for our expectations.

Yet how realistic would that be? Whilst experience and physical maturity could hone Trout’s remarkable talent even further, the level of competition in MLB must put a limit on how far he can improve.

It’s possible that Trout could have a long and successful career and never quite top 2012. If we use Baseball-Reference’s Wins Above Replacement (WAR) as our measure then Trout’s season (10.7 WAR) is the joint-17th highest in a single season since the end of World War Two. Of all the many thousands of individual player seasons from 1946 onwards, only 16 have been better judged by WAR.

Upon considering that staggering fact, no baseball fan can help but be fascinated by what Trout will serve up as an encore in 2013.

Roy Halladay (Philadelphia Phillies)

Whilst Trout was dazzling as a young star in the AL West, Halladay was struggling as a veteran star in the NL East.  2012 arguably was his worst full season since 2000.

A tough year as a 24 year old can be recovered from, as Halladay’s exceptional career since shows. Fighting back from a disappointing season when you are 36 is a much more difficult task. Halladay was clearly hampered by an injury to his right-shoulder and he has entered Spring Training with a revised training regime, adjusted pitching mechanics and a positive frame of mind.

Every player is in ‘the best shape of their life’ coming into Spring Training and it could be overly optimistic to consider 2012 as a mere bump in the road, but Halladay’s previous excellence means he deserves the benefit of the doubt. If the Phillies are to challenge the Washington Nationals and Atlanta Braves in the NL East, they need ‘Doc’ to return to somewhere close to his previous form.

Jemile Weeks (Oakland A’s)

What a difference a year makes. Twelve months ago, Weeks came into the A’s Spring Training camp all set to become the leading face of the club. His impressive rookie campaign in 2011 had earned him an extremely rare compliment: the A’s General Manager Billy Beane described him as the one ‘untouchable’ asset on the roster that he wouldn’t consider trading.

In Oakland’s home season-opener against the Seattle Mariners, Weeks led off the bottom of the first inning with a single and the A’s TV commentators were quick to state that they expected big things of the second baseman in the season ahead.

Instead, Weeks played so poorly that he was demoted to Triple-A on 21 August and he was relegated to cheer-leading duty as Oakland secured a surprising AL West division title.

Weeks was defiant at the time of his demotion, stating: “at the end of the day, I’m going to be a star in this game, man. You’ve got to have your ups and downs. It just makes the story so much sweeter when you come back. I don’t want to expand too much on it, but you’re looking at a star, period”.

If Weeks is to live up to his own billing, he needs to have a big bounceback season in 2013. That includes simply winning a starting job during Spring Training.

Tim Lincecum (San Francisco Giants)

In 2012, Lincecum played his part in helping the Giants to their second World Series title in three years. However, the two-time Cy Young Award winner’s role was to chip in with 4.2 innings of relief pitching during the Fall Classic having lost his place in the starting rotation after putting up a 5.37 ERA over 33 regular season starts.

Lincecum will be a free agent at the end of the coming season and if he is to earn a lucrative new contract he will need to show that his disappointing 2012, and the declining speed of his fastball, was just a blip.

He turned up to the Giants’ Spring Training camp with his trademark long hair cut short, either as a sign that he is smartening up his act or that he is trying a reverse-Samson approach to regain his powers.

Aroldis Chapman (Cincinnati Reds)

Lincecum was temporarily moved from starting to relief pitching for the 2012 playoffs and one of the biggest National League stories in Spring Training will be the Reds’ plan to take the opposite approach with their ‘Cuban missile’.

When Cincinnati won the race to Chapman’s signature in January 2010, their offer of a 6 year, $30.25m contract reflected the scouting reports that he could become a dominating starting pitcher. So far they have harnessed his blazing fastball/slider combination out of the bullpen to great effect and he took to the role of closer superbly last season, striking out a scarcely believable 122 batters in just 71.2 innings (15.3 K’s per 9 innings).

However, a quality starting pitcher that can give you 200 innings in a season, plus a potential dominant postseason start or two, is more valuable to a team than 70 innings as a closer and the Reds have decided now is the time to find out if Chapman has what it takes.

With Cincinnati all set to be in a tight NL Central battle with the St. Louis Cardinals, it will be interesting to see how much patience they have before deciding to move him back to the closer role.

Carl Crawford (Los Angeles Dodgers)

Here’s a question for you: will Crawford come into Spring Training this year happier than he did two years ago?

Back in 2011, he met his new Boston Red Sox teammates for the first time flush with a 7 year, $142m contract and full of excitement about what he hoped would be a successful new chapter in his career.  From the outside, everything was perfect, but there was a lingering doubt as to how Crawford would adapt to playing in the media hothouse of Boston compared to his days with the underdog Tampa Bay Rays.

The dream turned into a nightmare as a poor 2011 season was followed by an injury hit 2012. Crawford recently admitted to his feelings of desperation, stating: “I knew with the struggles I was having, it would never get better for me. I just didn’t see a light at the end of the tunnel. It puts you in kind of a depression stage. You just don’t see a way out”.

Thankfully for Crawford – and for the Red Sox – the dollar-dispensing Dodgers provided an unlikely way out with their summertime mega-trade. The outfielder is still rehabbing from elbow surgery and may not be ready for Opening Day, but 2013 will offer Crawford a chance to get his career back on track.

Weekly Hit Ground Ball: From coast to coast

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The recent trade of Justin Upton from Arizona to Atlanta will impact the pennant races in the East and West divisions in the National League.

For Atlanta, the trade completes a wonderfully exciting outfield in which Justin Upton will join brother B.J. and Jason Heyward to form a dynamic trio that should delight the fans at Turner Field.

Centrefielder Michael Bourn led the Braves in 2012 with a brilliant season in his final year before free agency and his departure – destination still unknown – had the potential to leave a notable hole that Atlanta could ill afford considering the strength of division rivals, the Washington Nationals.

Losing Bourn could still have a negative effect on the team’s performance. He had a markedly better campaign than either of the Upton brothers in 2012, although Justin Upton was hampered by a thumb injury, while the retirement of Chipper Jones and the loss of Martin Prado – sent to Arizona as part of the Upton trade – could leave them light on leadership.

However the great potential of the Upton brothers is undoubted and the Braves will hope that pairing them together will bring out the very best in both. If so, there will be a fascinating sub-plot to the NL East division battle with the best of the Braves being compared to the nifty Nationals.

Washington will have new recruit Denard Span manning centrefield, with Bryce Harper following up on his excellent rookie season and Jayson Werth hoping to rebound from an injury riddled 2012.

Werth was signed to a seven-year contract in the 2010/11 offseason and whilst the deal always looked like an overpay, it was expected that the real cost would come near the end of the contract. Instead, Werth’s first two seasons in Washington have been a major disappointment. The 2013 season is the ideal time for him to provide the Nationals with the sort of performance that won him the multi-year deal.

Elsewhere in the NL East, the New York Mets are interested in signing Bourn but the prospect of losing their first-round draft pick currently appears to be a price too high when combined with the size of the contract Bourn is looking for and the fact that the Mets are very unlikely to be contenders in 2013 even with a new centrefielder.

As for the Phillies, their outfield looks distinctly underwhelming and General Manager Ruben Amaro – a man clearly not held in the highest of esteem by many on the web – has been ridiculed in some quarters for signing free agent Delmon Young to be the team’s right-fielder. The thought of the blundering Young regularly trotting out to right field will make you laugh or cry depending on whether you are a Phillies fan or not, although the meagre $750k investment in the former Detroit Tiger suggests that Amaro isn’t committed to Young being the answer all season either.

The Arizona Diamondbacks’ General Manager Kevin Towers will be all-too familiar with the dismissive comments flying Amaro’s way.

His decision to trade away a young star in Justin Upton has left many people scratching their heads. When combined with the decision to trade away pitcher Trevor Bauer, the explanation that Towers and manager Kirk Gibson are conducting a purge of players that don’t fit their favoured ‘gritty’ mould is too convenient to ignore, despite that protestations that this has been exaggerated (which may well be true to an extent).

Players that will scrap for every out are an important part of a winning clubhouse, but the best teams are those that can win games in different ways and that means possessing a roster containing players of different talents. Anyone can get their uniform dirty diving for lost causes and charging into the outfield fence. Few players, even among Major Leaguers, have the raw talent to make the game look effortlessly easy and to produce moments of magic.

What makes the Upton trade so baffling is that his ex-teammates are quick to point out that, whilst he may not outwardly show his passion, he is as hard-working and dedicated a professional as you could wish to meet.  For a team that wants to both win now and over the next few seasons, you’d be hard pushed to find a better player to have in your outfield.

It seems a strange move, but in fairness to Towers his busy offseason has still left the D-Backs with a competitive roster that has good pitching depth and some more-than-useful batting options. They don’t hold the honour of being the reigning World Series champions like the San Francisco Giants, nor do they have the media exposure of the free-spending Los Angeles Dodgers, but Arizona should not be overlooked as a genuine play-off contender this coming season.

Rounding the bases

Francisco Liriano went into the festive season with a two-year, $12.75m contract agreed with the Pittsburgh Pirates only to take a tumble and break his right arm. Thankfully for him, the Pirates did not walk away and instead agreed a restructured contract that takes into account him potentially missing part of the 2013 season. When healthy, Liriano figures to be in the rotation alongside A.J. Burnett, Wandy Rodriguez, James McDonald and Jeff Karstens, with star pitching prospects Gerrit Cole and Jameson Taillon waiting in the wings.

Staying in the NL Central, the Milwaukee Brewers will have to make do without Corey Hart until the end of May at the earliest after he underwent knee surgery this past week.  Mat Gamel will get another chance to grab hold of the first-base job after his presumed succession to Prince Fielder fell apart last year due to his own knee injury.

Former Brewer Shaun Marcum has agreed a one-year contract with the New York Mets. Milwaukee acquired Marcum in a trade over the 2010/11 offseason along with Zack Greinke in an effort to finally provide some pitching to go alongside their talented batting lineup. The deals took them to the 2011 NLCS, however they are now back in the same situation they found themselves in at the end of the 2010 season, with a rotation of Yovani Gallardo followed by question marks.

The headline gave a stark message: “Alex Rodriguez could miss the entire 2013 season”.  As soon as you got into the story, though, it was clear there was a very strong emphasis on the word “could”. Yankees GM Brian Cashman has noted that it’s a possibility they could be without their third baseman all season, but the expectation is still that Rodriguez will return sometime in July.  The real question for the Yankees is what level of performance they can expect from him once he does return? The one thing we do know is that it will not be worth anywhere remotely close to the $28m (£17.7m, or just under £341k per week) they will be paying him.

Look before you throw

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There was an interesting play in the game between the Marlins and Phillies on Monday.

The speedy Emilio Bonifacio was leading off the sixth inning for Miami and attempted to bunt his way on to first base.  The bunt went towards the pitcher’s mound towards the first-base side.  Cole Hamels jumped from the mound, scooped up the ball and fired it to first base.

Unfortunately for Hamels, he didn’t look before he let the ball go.

The Phillies had two relatively inexperienced fielders on the right-hand side of the infield. Rookie Freddy Galvis has a reputation as being a good fielder, but he’s spent most of his time in the Minors at shortstop and has moved to second base to cover for the injured Chase Utley. John Mayberry Jnr is also covering for an injured teammate, Ryan Howard, at first base. Mayberry has some experience at first base, particularly in college, but has generally been used in the outfield in the Majors.

Mayberry ran in to field Bonifacio’s bunt, which he was never going to reach, and his instincts told him to keep going rather than try to get back to first base. Meanwhile Galvis was slow to move towards first to cover the now unguarded bag.

The result was Hamels’ throw to a ghost fielder at first base, which is not what you need with anyone at the plate, never mind a burner like Bonifacio. He ended up at third base and was driven home by Gaby Sanchez.

It was a collective miscue by the trio. Hamels was the player lumbered with the error and while he didn’t look greatly impressed with his teammates, he was ultimately culpable of throwing the ball without checking there was anyone there to catch it. 

The crucial factor was that he probably would have taken a second before throwing, just as Mayberry may not have been so desperate to react to the bunt, had it not been a base-runner as quick as Bonifacio putting pressure on them.

Put it down to an inexperienced fielding collective, a bit of early season rust and the mind-scrambling impact that genuine speed out of the batter’s box can cause.  

Dramatic Division Series leaves four teams still standing

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MlbHlSqThe Division Series followed a breathless end to the regular season, but we had no reason to fear that it would be a let-down in comparison.

Fans of the teams involved would probably prefer a simple sequence of series sweeps; however the rest of us crave a postseason full of drama and excitement, series that go the distance, see-sawing and providing a rollercoaster of emotions, games being decided by the narrowest of margins.

It’s a lot to ask for and we hold onto these expectations knowing that they can’t always be met.  Yet sometimes we get lucky and if the Division Series round is anything to go by, we could be in for a classic postseason.

Consider the following:

  • Three of the four series went to a Game Five decider
  • All four deciding games were won by a single run
  • The two favourites were knocked out

Phillies and Yankees fans won’t appreciate the final item on the list, but it has made the rest of the postseason all the more unpredictable for the rest of us.

Philadelphia came into the year with an impressive track record and a starting rotation that had many debating whether it was one of the greatest of all time. The Yankees are the Yankees.  For once, they didn’t make a big splash over the offseason, but their sky-high payroll was testament to the star power and experience they possess.

Somewhere amid the annual burying of A-Rod, there was an air of disdain among some New York commentators about the Tigers’ cheek: how dare Detroit defeat the mighty Yankees.  Similarly, you could look at the Cardinals and question what right they have to deny the Phillies the World Series berth that their roster and regular season performance indicated they deserved.

Well, that’s playoff baseball for you.  It’s cruel when you’re on the losing side of it; glorious when you’re not.  Continue reading →

Teams on the brink on Tuesday

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MlbHlSqThe Texas Rangers, Detroit Tigers and Milwaukee Brewers will all have the chance to secure a spot in the Championship Series round of the 2011 MLB postseason today.

The Rangers and Tigers both won yesterday to lead their respective series 2-1, while the Brewers take a 2-0 lead to Arizona.  The Phillies and Cardinals are tied at 1-1 as they play Game Three of their series today.

Rangers-Rays (Rangers lead the series 2-1)

The Rangers get the first crack at making it through with an early start against the Tampa Bay Rays on Tuesday.  Game Four of their series begins at 19.07 BST and will be broadcast live on ESPN America. 

Texas used a four-run seventh inning to win Game Three 4-3, leaving rookie Desmond Jennings’ two homers for the Rays counting for nothing.  The Rays will look to another rookie to help them stave off elimination in Game Four. 

Jeremy Hellickson is the frontrunner for Rookie of the Year honours following his impressive season in the Rays’ starting rotation and he will aim to continue that positive form in his first postseason start. The Rangers will counter with Matt Harrison, who made a brief appearance out of the bullpen in Game One.

If the Rangers are able to win tonight, they will be celebrating in a stadium that makes for an odd setting on TV. It always seems strange when the TV broadcast shows pictures of glorious sunny Florida weather, only to then cut to the dour in-door surroundings of the domed arena that is Tropicana Field. 

Normally I would be glad to miss the scenes of October sunshine that seem to poke fun at us Brits gathering in the impending gloom of nights drawing in and tumbling temperatures.  However, our recent glorious weather has meant jealousy could have been avoided this year. 

I’m sure the Rays’ players, fans and owners would love to be playing outdoors, but an open-air ballpark for the Rays doesn’t appear to be on the cards in the near future. Sadly it looks like they will be the ones suffering from the green-eyed monster as the Miami Marlins move into their new home next year.  Continue reading →

Wild Card races going down to the wire

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MlbHlSq160 games played, 2 more to go. Fans of the Braves, Cardinals, Rays and Red Sox are being put through the wringer by their teams and the tension could be at its height on Tuesday night in the States.

The results from Monday’s games have left the Red Sox and Rays locked together in the American League Wild Card race, while the Braves hold a one-game lead in the National League over the Cardinals.

Atlanta could clinch the NL Wild Card tonight with a victory accompanied by a St. Louis loss, distilling the excitement down to one league on Wednesday. 

However, it’s just as likely that the NL Wild Card will still be up for grabs, so we might yet have another full day of nervous excitement.

The MLB schedulers have inadvertently produced a fascinating climax to the season.  In both Wild Card races, we have a team ending the regular season with a series against the best team in their league, accompanied by a team playing one of the weaker sides.

In the case of the National League, the race-leading Braves are the team with potentially the toughest task. 

Atlanta are hosting the Phillies, holders of the best win-loss record in baseball this season and fuelled by a desire to enter the postseason on the back of some good performances following a recent eight-game losing streak. Their rivals in the Wild Card race, the Cardinals, are matched-up with the team with the worst record in baseball: the Washington Nationals.

Put the two cases together and logically you would expect the Cardinals to take full advantage; however we all know that sport and logic often sit at odds with one another.  Continue reading →

Weekly Hit Ground Ball: Typical Jeter

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WHGB11Many words were used to described Derek Jeter’s performance on Saturday.  Most of them were attempting to get across a feeling of amazement. 

It was “unbelievable” and “astonishing”.  A“fairytale” and then “more than a fairytale”, a “Hollywood script” and then “something even Hollywood wouldn’t dare script”.

Jeter started the day with a single to record his 2,999th career hit in the Majors, then made it to 3,000 on a home run before finishing the day 5-for-5, with his final hit driving in what became the game-winning run.  It was an incredible day.

But it wasn’t “unbelievable” to me, or any of the other similar descriptions attached to it.  It was exactly the sort of thing you could believe Jeter would do; the sort of thing he’s done time and again throughout his career.

While watching the game live on ESPN America, part-way through his historic at-bat I was thinking to myself: “I bet he hits a home run here”.  I wasn’t alone.  The YES Network announcers stated later in their broadcast that a member of their team had done the same thing.  During the Braves-Phillies game a little later in the afternoon, FOX announcer Kenny Albert said that his colleague Eric Karros had called it too.

A precedent had already been set for doing it.  Wade Boggs got his 3,000th hit with a home run, coincidentally in the uniform of the team that Jeter got his 3,000th hit against (the Tampa Bay Rays).  Continue reading →