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MLB Sleepyhead Summary: Twins = Wins

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More AL Wild Card shuffling

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

MLB Sleepyhead Summary: Yankees sweep whilst the Rangers keep winning

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

Yankees sweeping up New York

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

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

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

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

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

Rangers making a run for it

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

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

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

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

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

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

NL Central remains close

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

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

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

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

Cards-Cubs showed that picking up the pace is a worthy goal

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The knocks baseball takes from those inside the sport about games being too long can get tiresome.

Manny Machado was the latest player to throw such comments around following his non-playing attendance at the All-Star Game. As reported by the Washington Post:

“It was a little boring to watch it,” Machado said. “I don’t know how people go out there and watch games. Now I know why sometimes people don’t come to games”.

Most athletes don’t like watching their sport in events or games that they could have been playing in, and the All-Star Game is an exhibition after all, so I’m not going to criticise Machado too much for his off-the-cuff comment. However, the idea that games can be boring and go on too long gets thrown around a lot.

The comments are at odds with the amount of people that turn out to stadiums every year and watch on TV and whilst ensuring the next generation enjoy the sport is important, the ‘baseball is doomed’ hyperbole does a disservice to the great talent on show and the excitement MLB generates every season.

There are 2,430 regular season MLB games every year and it’s to be expected that not all of them will live long in the memory. Even the Premier League, the so-called most exciting football league in the world, serves up its share of stinkers.

I do have some sympathy with the overall pace of play agenda though.

A four-hour game can be an enthralling watch, but it’s when pitchers take ages between deliveries and batters mess about after every pitch that the ‘dead time’ increases and the game can feel like it’s dragging along.

The same happens in most sports, from tennis players that have to get their towel then bounce a ball 10 times before every serve, to cricket teams that can’t bowl their overs at a decent rate (essentially every international team nowadays). Maybe I’m being harsh, but it often comes across as if those players think they’re the most important thing and everyone else has to wait for them.

It’s fine to take a few seconds to compose yourself at a crucial point in the match; doing it all the time is annoying and absolutely can make people change the channel to something else.

David Price is a classic case in point. He’s a great pitcher and if he’s producing results for your team then you won’t care how deliberate he is. For everyone else, it can be very frustrating to watch. On the flip side you have a pitcher such as Dallas Keuchel. I can’t say I enjoy watching him mow down my team in double-quick time, but I do appreciate the way his approach creates a great tempo to a game. Commentators always pick up on the impact this has on the infielders and keeping them alert. I don’t know how true that really is, yet I could imagine how it could be a help.

Last night’s game between the St Louis Cardinals and Chicago Cubs was one of the most enjoyable I’ve watched so far this season. Jon Lester and Adam Wainwright were on the mound, two guys who generally are on the speedier end of time between pitches, and they were on top of the hitters, with Lester taking a perfect game into the sixth before Wainwright himself broke it up.

There were no runs scored until the eighth inning when the Cardinals hit back-to-back jacks (the first by Paul DeJong who made a spectacular fielding play at shortstop earlier in the game) to take a 2-0 lead, only for the Cubs to hit back with three runs in the bottom of the frame, with Kris Bryant racing around from first base on a Rizzo double for what proved to be the winning run.

The game finished 3-2 to the Cubs and took just over two and a half hours to play. It was a classic pitchers’ duel and you can’t expect them every game, even with two quality starters on the mound. There will always be games that take longer, sometimes exciting and sometimes not.

However, it does make a difference when a game moves along at a decent clip. The game isn’t boring, and certainly isn’t ‘dying’, but encouraging everyone to play their part in just quickening up a bit – including the potential of shortening advert breaks, which MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred recently said is being looked at – is a good idea.

MLB returns for 2017

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Here we are at last: baseball is back.

Whilst Andy Williams may sing that Christmas is ‘the most wonderful time of the year,’ the start of the MLB regular season is every bit as exciting for those of us that follow the sport.

It feels a long time coming, even with all of the off-season trades, signings and rumours, and the fact that the 2016 season ended up with a thrilling World Series makes the anticipation all the stronger for it all to get going again.

Who’s going to win?

No sport is predictable, least of all one with a regular season containing 2430 games, yet it’s fair to say the 2017 MLB predictions currently going up online are following a similar pattern.

There’s no hiding that the five National League play-off teams from last season are most likely to be playing post-season baseball again this year.

The reigning World Series champions Chicago Cubs are the team to beat in the Central, with the Washington Nationals and New York Mets, and the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Francisco Giants, looking good to battle it out for the East, West and two Wild Card spots.

That doesn’t mean it’s going to be uneventful, even if those teams do come out on top.

As for the outsiders, the St Louis Cardinals and Pittsburgh Pirates are the obvious teams that could get in the Wild Card mix. The Arizona Diamondbacks could get into the running too if their bad luck from 2016 turns to good luck in 2017. It will also be worth keeping an eye on the rebuilding Atlanta Braves who have now built their new ballpark and are getting closer to building a team that can get them back to their glory days.

The American League looks more open, other than the strong likelihood of the Cleveland Indians winning the Central division (with the Detroit Tigers probably set to trade a few players away before the August deadline).

There are genuinely three teams that could win the AL East, never mind compete for a Wild Card, in the Boston Red Sox, Baltimore Orioles and Toronto Blue Jays. It’s possible the New York Yankees could also make a play-off push if their young players continue to impress enough to make the team make some further additions in the summer.

There could also be three teams in the mix in the West. The Texas Rangers are the team to beat, but arguably they over-performed with their 95 wins last season and both the Houston Astros and Seattle Mariners have been active over the off-season.

For what it’s worth, I’m going for:

NL East: Mets, NL Central: Cubs, NL West: Dodgers, WC: Nationals and Giants.

AL East: Red Sox, AL Central: Indians, AL West: Astros, WC: Blue Jays, Orioles.

Getting ready for Opening Week

1. Make sure MLB.TV is up and running

BT Sport offers plenty of games across the season so that there is a good TV option for UK-based fans; however ‘plenty of games’ isn’t the same as ‘all the games’ and that’s what makes MLB.TV such an essential purchase for me.

Monday will show that straight away as MLB.TV subscribers can flick between a whole host of early starts during the British evening. I’ll then be able to get up in the early hours and watch the Oakland A’s season-opener too.

Rule #1: there’s no such thing as too much baseball.

2. Book some days off work

Okay, not much use as a ‘to-do list’ for you reading this now, but hopefully you’ve already planned ahead. I book up the first few working days of the MLB season as annual leave as soon as I can to make sure I can enjoy the first few evenings (and early mornings) without having to get up to go to work straight after.

3. Check out the schedule for the first week

This will be my twelfth season running BaseballGB and regular visitors will know that one of the features here is a guide published every Monday setting out the ‘early’ games (day-games in the States and that are in the evening UK time) for the week ahead.

There are 25 early starts from Monday to Friday this coming working week. I refer you back to rule #1!

4. Sort out my Oakland A’s schedule

Much as I try to catch all of the teams on a regular basis, my primary focus is on the Oakland A’s.

The first two series in my Oakland A’s schedule

I’ve printed out an A’s game schedule for April that lists the games with start times in BST, blocks them into each individual series against different teams and highlights the day-games.

The A’s have eight series in April and all but one – a mid-week three-game set in Anaheim near the end of the month – have at least one day-game scheduled.

I find it’s useful to have those set out so that you can plan around them and work out when best to add in some early-hour contests too (if, like me, your work gets in the way of watching every one).

5. Set your fantasy team(s) for the first week

It’s not just the regular season you need to focus on, the fantasy season is important too.

I’m not the most obsessive fantasy baseball player and my in-season strategy predominantly involves simply making sure I don’t make too many mistakes in leaving players on my active team that aren’t playing. So, setting up my pitching staff for the week ahead, mindful that plans may still change mid-week, is a key preparation job for me to remember.

Sunday’s triple-header

Although Monday will feel like the true Opening Day, the recent switch to a triple-header on a Sunday to start the season was a great move. Here are the games we can enjoy:

18.10. Yankees at Rays (Tanaka – Archer) *BT Sport/ESPN
21.10. Giants at Diamondbacks (Bumgarner – Greinke) *BT Sport/ESPN
01.35. Cubs at Cardinals (Lester – Martinez) *BT Sport/ESPN

Tropicana Field isn’t the most aesthetically pleasing place to get the season started, but the play on the field should soon make us forget the surroundings. Tanaka faced the Rays five times last season and was dominant against them, whilst Archer’s 0-3 record against the Yankees in 2016 conceals how well he pitched against them.

Zack Greinke and the D-Backs will be intent on putting a hugely disappointing 2016 behind them and they would get an immediate confidence boost if they can get the better of MadBum and the Giants to start the season at Chase Field.

Finally, the Cubs enter an MLB season as reigning champions for the first time since 1909 and where better to celebrate that than at the home of their bitter rivals. I’m sure St Louis will be gracious hosts.

MLB 2016 – National League Preview

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

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

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

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

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

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

NL East

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

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

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

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

NL Central

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

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

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

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

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

NL West

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

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

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

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

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

My predictions

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

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

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

Weekly Hit Ground Ball: Good Friday by name …

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WHGB11Good Friday loomed like a bad omen this week.

The schedule of MLB Spring Training games that day included starts for four pitchers on my recently-drafted fantasy baseball roster. Poor performances, or worse an injury or two, seemed a certainty.

Jon Lester was on the mound for the Cubs against the Brewers, Jose Quintana was pitching for the White Sox against the Mariners, and the Indians-Diamondbacks game featured Corey Kluber and Shelby Miller.

Consequently, the latter had to be my choice for the evening’s entertainment, forgoing an Oakland A’s appearance for pitching prospect Sean Manaea against the Angels in the process. Such was my enthusiasm that I grabbed a pencil and a blank scorecard and got stuck into some Spring Training score-keeping practice.

Shelby Miller was a bit sketchy to start with, including plunking Cleveland’s catcher Yan Gomes on the shoulder in the second inning, but his defence helped to keep runs off the board. Wellington Castillo negated a first-inning lead-off single by Tyler Naquin by foiling an attempted stolen base and Miller’s infielders turned a double-play in the second inning.

Miller settled down from there and produced the highlight of the game with a reflex catch on a come-backer between his legs to end the fourth inning. It’s not often that I would dish out a scorecard star for a Spring Training game, but this effort deserved one.

Cleveland’s Naquin did hit a homer off him to lead-off the sixth inning and to celebrate being told that he would make the Indians’ opening day roster earlier that day. He was their first-round draft pick in 2012 and should be a good stand-in whilst Michael Brantley continues his recovery from shoulder surgery.

As for Kluber, the 2014 AL Cy Young winner gave up 11 hits across his six innings of work, yet that was predominantly due to the way he was pounding the strike zone and that’s far from a negative in the pre-season period. He struck our four D-Backs around Jake Lamb‘s second-inning home run before things unravelled a bit in the sixth inning.

Yan Gomes showed off his excellent arm behind the plate by gunning down Socrates Brito twice and also pouncing on a swinging bunt by Castillo in the fourth inning to get the lead runner at second rather than taking the safe out at first. Gomes’s 2015 campaign was hampered by a knee injury, yet he appears healthy now and is one of many reasons why Cleveland shouldn’t be overlooked in the AL Central and Wild Card races this year.

Miller and Kluber’s outings left me breathing a sigh of relief, as did Lester’s strong start against the Brewers and Quintana’s seven K’s against the Mariners.

It wasn’t such a good day for the A’s, as Mike Trout smacked a first-inning homer and the Angels prevailed 11-3 whilst Oakland made four errors to go alongside the three they coughed up the day before.

Friday might not be the last time this season that I turn to my fantasy team players to offer some crumbs of comfort following a bad day at the office for my ‘real’ team.

The scorecard

Here’s a scan of my scorecard, completed up to the middle of the seventh inning when Shelby Miller came out of the game. The ‘fch’ reference at the start of Cleveland’s seventh inning stands for fielding changes. It’s standard practice in spring games for managers to make plenty of player changes in the later innings and – knowing that this was almost certainly going to be the last half-inning I was going to keep score of – I didn’t bother to make a note of them.

You can download and print off the scorecard I used here.

Other MLB notes

For all the grief that Arizona’s front office has received this off-season, their aggressive winter could pay-off especially if the Dodgers’ terrible luck with injuries continues. It was announced this week that Andre Ethier will be out for 10-14 weeks with a fractured tibia, whilst catcher Yasmani Grandal is unlikely to be ready for Opening Day due to an arm injury and Howie Kendrick battles with a leg injury.

The New York Yankees are another big spender who go into the final week of Spring Training with some significant question marks over their roster. Ivan Nova is in a battle with CC Sabathia for a spot in the rotation that appears to be coming down to which one doesn’t look quite as bad as the other. Nova didn’t do much to help his case on Friday by giving up three home runs against the Orioles. Sabathia is a far-from-ideal candidate to move to the bullpen so that may factor into the equation.

Things are very different for the other New York team. Earlier on Friday, Noah Syndergaard was in dominating form against the Cardinals, striking out nine over six innings.  Yankee fans will be sick of hearing about the stunning starting pitcher lineup of the Mets, yet in Syndergaard’s case that may be preferable to him competing against them with the Blue Jays. Toronto wanted to win in 2013 and so gave him up in the package to acquire the 2012 NL Cy Young winner R.A. Dickey in 2012/13 off-season, but it’s hard not to think about the 1-2 punch they could have had with Syndergaard and Marcus Stroman.

Finally, ESPN covered the Mets-Cardinals game on Friday and there was plenty of talk about the Redbirds’ rivalry with the Chicago Cubs. You get the sense that St. Louis are charged up by everyone hailing the Cubs as the best team in MLB heading into this season. Every one of the 19 games they will play against each other during the regular season will be an event.

MLB heads to Havana as live games return to BT Sport

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Live baseball returns to British TV screens this week with two games to watch.

ESPN in the States starts to cover a few Spring Training games once we get to the latter stages of the Cactus and Grapefruit Leagues. On Monday, they are broadcasting a game between the Boston Red Sox and St Louis Cardinals and BT Sport/ESPN in the UK will be picking up the feed with coverage starting at 17.00.

The Red Sox are scheduled to send plenty of ‘name’ players to the game, including starting pitcher Clay Buchholz. He has been a frustrating figure for Red Sox fans in recent seasons by mixing occasional brilliance with more regular rubbish. Spring Training stats don’t count for much, so we shouldn’t put too much emphasis on him allowing 6 walks in 5.1 spring innings so far, but it would be encouraging to see him hitting his spots and generally starting to gain some sharpness as the regular season approaches.

Fine tuning is what spring training is all about and so you could consider the games as a whole to be relatively meaningless.

That will not be true for the live game on Tuesday. The Tampa Bay Rays’ trip to Havana to play the Cuban national team is absolutely packed full with meaning, much greater than a mere game of baseball.

President Obama’s visit to Cuba is gaining headlines across the world and it is fitting that a baseball game is part of the overall occasion. Whilst baseball may be referred to as ‘America’s National Pastime’, it has long been an engrained part of Cuban culture.

The political situation between the two countries has meant that Cuban players have had to defect from their homeland, often taking great risks in doing so such as in Orlando ‘El Duque’ Hernandez’s fabled boat trip, to play in the Major Leagues. Current Yankees pitcher Aroldis Chapman famously scarpered from a Rotterdam hotel in 2009 whilst his team was competing in the World Port Tournament, unfortunately for me just a couple of days before I got there to take in some games.

Most recently, at the start of February Yulieski Gourriel – long seen as the best position player in Cuba – and his younger brother Lourdes snuck away from a hotel in the Dominican Republic and are now pursuing opportunities to potentially sign with Major League teams.

There is hope that the thawing of relations between the two countries will result in a regulated and legal path for baseball players in the not-too-distant future, although quite how much freedom of movement (and freedom on the player market) that will result in is yet to be determined. Hopefully it will be a step in the right direction at least.

The Rays’ visit should be a momentous occasion and the game is live on BT Sport/ESPN from 17.30 on Tuesday.

With Baseball Tonight episodes returning to BT Sport channels on a regular basis this week, and Nat Coombs’ new All American Sports Show on talkSPORT2 beginning on Tuesday at 18.00, excitement for the season ahead is really starting to build.

Weekly Hit Ground Ball: Mejia claims and injury pains

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WHGB11It’s been a cheery week, dominated by drugs and injuries.

The big non-baseball story of the week was tennis player Maria Sharapova’s announcement that she had failed a drug test.

The latest twist in baseball’s drug story has been caused by ex-Mets reliever Jenrry Mejia, whose lawyer made various accusations on Friday about MLB’s conduct that led to the pitcher being given a life-time ban for a third doping violation. They included claims that MLB hacked into online accounts and threatened Mejia after his second positive test that if he didn’t name names of others then a third positive would follow.

The last time somebody started throwing around such similar claims was Alex Rodriguez, who – after a ridiculous campaign of protesting his innocence – finally admitted that he had been guilty of using banned substances.

Sad as this is, there are too many examples of professional sports men and women who have consistently lied through their teeth and made false allegations about others to give anyone in this situation the benefit of the doubt. Mejia has the right to defend himself through the legal channels available, but recent history of other such cases do not cast him in a sympathetic light.

In the Rodriguez case – the Biogenesis ‘scandal’ – MLB did appear to act in a questionable way in respect of getting the ring leader, Anthony Bosch, to cooperate, as well as allegedly paying other employees for information. MLB isn’t a law enforcement agency so if they feel it’s necessary to play these people at their own game in bringing them down then it could be argued that the ends justify the means, but it does leave them open to questioning and, most pertinently, accusations from others who are trying to defend themselves in future.

In the case of Sharapova, she took the clever step of announcing the positive test herself and trying to control the story. Whether that was through a genuine attempt of accepting an innocent mistake or a cynical PR damage limitation ploy is in the eye of the beholder.

What we’ve found in baseball is that if a player actually comes clean – so to speak – then most people will accept it and let them get on with their careers. Nelson Cruz and Jhonny Peralta have both signed multi-million pound contracts after serving a ban for their Biogenesis links and Alex Rodriguez’s transformation last year from a pariah to a model repentant player was quite astonishing.

Of course, above all else it’s money and performance that counts. Rodriguez was owed so much money by the Yankees that there was little else they could do but bring him back for the start of the 2015 season. Once there, his good performances at the plate allowed him to be accepted back into the fold. Had he hit .200 through the middle of May, good will would have been in short supply.

In any case, it is a fact of life that there will always be a minority that will cheat to gain an advantage and, with the financial awards and prestige that come with it, sport will always have its fair share of them. Whilst the standard media line is to denounce a sport when someone – especially someone high profile like Rodriguez or Sharapova – is caught, in reality the sports that aren’t catching people (or are covering it up when they do) deserve just as much attention.

The idea that a strong drugs-testing programme and anti-drugs culture will stop everyone doing it is simply not true. The hallmark of a strong drug-testing programme is that it catches people. Baseball, and tennis, shouldn’t be scared of some knee-jerk bad PR in its fight against weeding out and punishing those who break the rules.

Jhonny B Broken

The St Louis Cardinals did receive some flak for signing Jhonny Peralta to a four-year contract in the 2013/14 off-season after serving his drug suspension; however he has repaid the faith they showed in him with two good seasons since.

The start to his 2016 season will be delayed though after he suffered a thumb injury that will keep him out of action for 10-12 weeks. Whilst the initial talk was of the Cardinals looking to bring in some cover, traditionally that has not been their way and instead they look for options in their minor league system. We saw this approach work to good effect in 2015 with Randal Grichuk and Stephen Piscotty and don’t be surprised if they go that way again until Peralta is ready to return.

Carter Capps

The Miami Marlins’ reliever Carter Capps won’t be quite so lucky as he has suffered an elbow injury that will require Tommy John surgery and over a year out.

Health is always a key factor for any team, but for the Marlins it will be particularly telling in 2016. They have two outstanding talents in Giancarlo Stanton and Jose Fernandez, yet both have missed a significant number of games over the past two seasons and they haven’t both been healthy and on the field at the same time since 9 May 2014.

If that can turn around and they get good seasons from other capable players then the Marlins could pull themselves into the NL Wild Card race. That scenario hasn’t started well as Stanton has sat out of Spring Training games for over a week now due to knee soreness.

Parker pain

Capps can take some solace from the fact that many pitchers now recover from Tommy John surgery and have a successful career. Elbow injuries are always an obvious concern and nobody knows that better than the Oakland A’s Jarrod Parker.

Parker has undergone two Tommy John surgeries and had his 2015 comeback derailed by a gruesome injury in May when he fractured a part of the same elbow. After months of rehab, Parker entered Spring Training camp with hopes of finally getting his career back on track, potentially taking a spot in the bullpen or being the first cab off the rank from Triple-A if a new starting pitcher was needed.

Instead, he suffered yet another fracture to his elbow this week. Parker is now considering his options and it’s possible he may have thrown his last pitch. It’s a sobering reminder that a playing career can be a fragile thing.

Baltimore Blues

Saturday was a good news, bad news day for the Orioles. The good news was that they finally won a Spring Training game, breaking an 0-10 start (much as Spring Training games don’t count, you’d prefer to win a few than not). The bad news was that catcher Matt Wieters left the game early due to experiencing soreness in his right elbow; the elbow that he had Tommy John surgery on – yes, that again – in 2014.

Hopefully for the Orioles it proves to be a minor issue rather than something that leaves them without a key everyday player for a significant period of time.

Off-season so far: National League

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MlbHlSqIt’s a good time to review how the MLB teams are shaping up now that we’ve passed the end-of-calendar-year hump in the baseball off-season

Some teams have already completed the bulk of their winter shopping; however there are still some good free agents on the market and where they end up could have a domino effect in encouraging rival teams to keep up.

This part of the review focuses on the National League.

In 2015, the Central division was the star of the show as the St Louis Cardinals, Chicago Cubs and Pittsburgh Pirates all made it into the post-season. The LA Dodgers and New York Mets were relatively comfortable winners in the West and East respectively, with the latter being crowned as the NL Champions in the play-offs before losing to the Kansas City Royals in the World Series.

NL Central – Cubs on the prowl

Although the Cardinals won the division last year, all of the talk was about the success of their bitter rivals the Chicago Cubs and how their exciting young group of players had blossomed ahead of schedule.

If Cards fans didn’t like the Cubbies getting all the attention then, the off-season has been even more painful.

The Cubs have added three quality players to their roster in Ben Zobrist, Jason Heyward and John Lackey, with the latter two leaving the Cardinals as free agents and deciding to go to the other side of the rivalry. Heyward’s defection was particularly painful as he reportedly took less money from the Cubs than offered to him by the Cardinals and explained his decision by saying he felt the Cubs had the brighter future.

The Cubs’ first trip to St Louis in 2016 comes in mid-April, so we won’t have to wait long into the regular season to see what Cardinals fans think of that.

The Pirates have been relatively quiet this off-season and even though they still have the bulk of their roster that won 98 games in 2015, repeating that feat will not be easy without making much in the way of improvements. St Louis has added free agent pitcher Mike Leake, but they’ve also lost Lance Lynn for the season due to Tommy John elbow surgery and rumours of them adding a bat in the form of Alex Gordon or Chris Davis have yet to result in an actual deal being made.

Without another decent batting addition for the Cardinals, it would be fair to say the Cubs have pushed ahead of both of their main division rivals on paper.

NL West – major upgrades in Arizona, but to what extent?

The biggest division shake-up has come in the NL West courtesy of the Arizona Diamondbacks’ capture of Zack Greinke.

For the D-Backs to come out of nowhere and sign an elite free agent pitcher was a big statement in itself, to do so by signing a player that their two main division rivals were desperate to obtain (or retain in the LA Dodgers’ case) made it all the more significant.

It made sense for the D-Backs to follow up that signing with another bold move and that’s exactly what they did by completing a trade with the Atlanta Braves for pitcher Shelby Miller. Whilst Arizona have been criticised for what they gave up in the deal – including shortstop prospect Dansby Swanson who they signed with the first overall pick in the amateur draft earlier this year – in the short-term they’ve improved their team in a major way.

The important thing from there in the division was how the Giants and Dodgers responded.

San Francisco have added two quality free agent pitchers in Johnny Cueto and Jeff Samardzija, whilst LA have recently signed a good pitcher in Scott Kazmir and reportedly are close to agreeing a deal with Japanese pitcher Kenta Maeda.

The difference has been that whilst the Giants’ moves have appeared decisive, the Dodgers have seemingly ended up with players down their pecking order after yet more deals fell to pieces (Hisashi Iwakuma’s three-year deal was taken off the table due to injury concerns and a trade for Aroldis Chapman went down the pan when news broke of a potential suspension coming his way due to an alleged domestic violence incident).

It looks like being a very tight division between these three teams. Adding in the inexperience of new manager Dave Roberts and I’d have the Dodgers slipping behind the Giants, with the D-Backs pretty even with LA for second place. The Dodgers are still a threat to add further players this off-season though, so that could change quickly.

NL East – Waiting for a big move

There are three genuine contenders in both the Central and West, but in the East we can bring that down to two with the Atlanta Braves and Philadelphia Phillies in rebuilding mode and the Miami Marlins being neither fish nor fowl (or perhaps more accurately they are fish and foul, depressing as that is considering some of the superb young players they have).

The Washington Nationals were an almighty disappointment in 2015 and that suggested there would be some major changes over the off-season. Not so, at least not so far. Dusty Baker has been brought in as their new manager and Daniel Murphy, the Mets’ play-off hero last year, has signed on as a free agent, but that’s about it.

They reportedly made a big play to sign Jason Heyward, so potentially there’s some money there to be spent and it wouldn’t be a big surprise if one of the available outfielders, Yoenis Cespedes and Justin Upton in particular, ended up in the U.S. capital over the coming weeks.

The Nationals’ hopes of regaining ground on the Mets has been helped by the latter keeping out of the main free agent mix. New York has revamped their middle infield by trading for Pittsburgh’s second baseman Neil Walker and signing free agent shortstop Asdrubal Cabrera, which are solid enough moves but not ones to get many pulses racing in Queens.

It’s also hard not be sceptical about the Mets’ ownership. They have such an exciting young (and therefore relatively cheap) group of pitchers that it would be criminal not to take advantage of the opportunity they have over the next few years. Maybe a reunion with free agent outfielder Yoenis Cespedes will come about soon, especially as they’ve had a stroke of luck with Michael Cuddyer deciding to retire with a year remaining on his contract, but it’s just as likely they will make another minor move or two and hope for the best, which really isn’t good enough for a New York team.

They would still be favourites for the division right now, but a big signing for the Nationals and a Spring Training injury or two for the Mets (if the owners are reluctant to invest to replace missing players) could close the gap and make it a tighter race than you would expect considering the Mets’ dominance in 2015.

Division Series: Some teams have a leg-up, some have a leg broken

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We’re two games in to each of the four Division Series and there have been plenty of talking points to set up the rest of each series.

The Toronto Blue Jays are the team in the biggest hole, trailing the Texas Rangers 2-0 having lost the first two games in their home ballpark. The second game on Friday night was a real killer as their 14-inning effort went for nought.

Both teams had their issues with the strike zone being called and there was certainly some variance there during the course of the game. However, the MLB Network coverage was no help at all. On numerous occasions their commentators, Bob Costas and Jim Kaat, confidently complained about the strike/ball call only to then see a replay including their ‘Strike Zone’ box that showed either the umpire had got it spot on or that the pitch was very close (so hardly a grave error by the umpire).

Time and again, they chose to make excuses when the evidence before them didn’t match their original comments, only making themselves look ridiculous in the process. Kaat was particularly bad at this and it was symptomatic of a disappointingly poor presentation by MLB Network that can be summed up as being ‘by the over-50s, for the over-50s’ (right down to the pre-advert music that included such current acts as Phil Collins).

MLB knows its audience in America tends to be on the older side, but they rightly have the ambition to market the game for a younger audience too. It’s a shame that despite bringing in features such as Statcast, the strikezone box and their defensive shift graphics, the overall tone of their own TV coverage is old fashioned.

In the other American League series, the Kansas City Royals won a crucial Game Two at their Kauffman Stadium to level the series at a game apiece. Every team is desperate to avoid losing the first two games at home, but in the Royals’ case it was more imperative than ever to ensure Game Three couldn’t seal their fate.

Dallas Keuchel will start for the Houston Astros on Sunday night (a 21.05. BST start, although unfortunately on MLB Network coverage) and he has been unbeatable at home this season. His home record – 15-0 with a 1.46 ERA – shows just how tough it will be for the Royals, yet, as you always find in these extreme situations, there is a positive spin that they can put on it. If they can somehow find a way to beat him, or perhaps more likely to knock him out of the game and then get the better of the Astros’ bullpen, that will be a huge blow for Houston and you’d fancy the Royals to go on and take the series from there.

It will be a similar scenario in Chicago for the St Louis Cardinals. They have to face the Cubs’ Jake Arrieta in Game Three, whose masterful display in the Wild Card win against the Pittsburgh Pirates only enhanced the seemingly invincible force that surrounds him right now. The Cardinals at least now Arrieta can’t knock them out on Monday, although a 2-0 series lead rather than a 1-1 series split would have made a potential Game Three loss easier to recover from.

The added ingredient here is this being the first ever play-off game between the two teams at Wrigley Field. Cubs-Cardinals is one of the game’s most publicised rivalries and I’m sure that I am far from the only baseball fan who didn’t realise until a few days ago that the two had never actually met in the postseason during their 100+ year existences.

The LA Dodgers and New York Mets have their own rivalry due to both claiming a link back to the Brooklyn Dodgers. As two teams from mass-media markets, they didn’t need anything extra to hype this series up but their Game Two on Saturday produced it anyway thanks to Chase Utley’s slide into second that left the Mets’ Ruben Tejada with a fractured fibula.

We’ve been here before recently with the Pirates’ Jung Ho Kang suffering a similar fate to Tejada in mid-September. In this case, it was a decisive moment in the contest as it fed into a game-winning inning for the Dodgers that allowed them to draw level in the series 1-1. The Mets are rightfully aggrieved by the incident, although had the shoe been on the other foot, or more accurately the protective splint on the other leg, they would be making the same supportive comments as the Dodgers in the aftermath.

The added issue here came in replay being used to call Utley safe and the ruling that it wasn’t a ‘neighbourhood play’. It has long been accepted that an infielder turning a double-play just needs to be close to second base to record the out, rather than actually touching it, precisely because of the risk of injury that is inherent in forcing the player on the pivot to leave their legs in harm’s way. Consequently those plays cannot be challenged on replay and the explanations as to why it was allowed here have not been convincing. It’s definitely an area that needs to be clarified or else you will just see more players in hospital.

So, we have a bit of controversy thrown into the mix here even before the Mets’ self-made controversy around Game Three starter Matt Harvey. Much was made about a potential innings limit on the ace pitcher following his return from elbow surgery, something stirred up in part by Harvey’s own apparent taste for the limelight. Actions always speak louder than words and we all know how dominant Harvey can be. How he performs on the mound at Citi Field on Monday night could go a long way to determining the outcome of this series.