Tag Archives: Toronto Blue Jays

Weekly Hit Ground Ball: The first Sunday of MLB 2018

Leave a reply

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

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

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

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

Happ Happy, Jeter not so much

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

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

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

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

Extra thoughts on extra innings

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

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

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

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

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

Home runs and more home runs

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pillar pilfers three bases

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

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

Sunday Game To Watch

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

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

Weekly Hit Ground Ball: The Other Teams

Leave a reply

At this time of the year it’s traditional to publish predictions of how the MLB season is going to pan out.

If you asked most fans which ten teams are going to make the playoffs right now, you’re likely to find a lot of similarities.

In the American League, Houston, Boston, New York and Cleveland all look strong favourites, with the LA Angels the trendy pick for the second Wild Card.

In the National League, LA Dodgers, Chicago and Washington are the probable division winners and you can then take your pick from a group of teams to meet in the Wild Card game.

So, rather than focus on the potential division winners, we’ll look at another team of interest in each division.

AL West

Let’s start in the division of the reigning World Series champions with the team that many are awarding the ‘won the off-season’ prize to.

What exactly should we expect from the LA Angels this year? Any team with Mike Trout in it has a chance and they’ve made some good additions, but have they made a big leap ahead or a more modest improvement?

Part of that will be determined by their headline acquisition, Japanese two-way talent Shohei Ohtani. Every team wanted him and it was a coup for the Angels to win his signature. An adjustment period is to be expected and that leads us to Ohtani’s Spring Training, which politely can be described as disappointing. Despite the ever-present caveat this time of year that ‘it’s only Spring Training’, were he not a highly touted player from Japan it’s possible the Angels would have considered sending him to Triple-A given how he has performed.

That’s not a viable option and so he’s going to need to develop his craft in the Majors. Ordinarily it would be fine for Ohtani to take some lumps here and there as he puts together an encouraging debut season to build on, and in isolation that remains the case. The problem with that for the Angels is the rest of their starting rotation comes with plenty of question marks. If Ohtani isn’t really good, will the additions of Ian Kinsler, Zack Cosart and renewing with Justin Upton alone make them more than a potential second Wild Card?

AL Central

The Minnesota Twins proved last year that you can’t always count a team out based on previous form. Few if any picked the Twins to make the play-offs, yet some good performances and other teams not meeting expectations for various reasons meant that the Twins could look around, see no one else was really making a claim for the second Wild Card and take it for themselves.

They did that with no expectations on their shoulders, other than the expectation from others that at some point someone else would overtake them. Now the expectations have changed. That’s not to say they are favourites, but they’ve got something to live up to.

Although they’ve not exactly become big spenders, you can’t accuse the Twins of standing still and failing to add to their roster.

They started with their bullpen, adding Addison Russell and Fernando Rodney, and then took advantage of the slow-moving free agent market by picking up Logan Morrison for their batting lineup and two good starting pitchers in Jake Odorizzi and Lance Lynn. On the negative side, Ervin Satana will miss at least the first month of the season due to a finger injury and shortstop Jorge Polanco will serve an 80-game drug suspension.

The Twins are no juggernaut, yet they are a good team and it shouldn’t be overlooked that they’ll play 57 games combined against the rebuilding Chicago White Sox, Detroit Tigers and Kansas City Royals. Few seem to be picking them for a Wild Card, but I wouldn’t be so quick to count them out.

AL East

The 2018 AL East looks set to be a heavyweight fight between the Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees. We’ve been there before a few times.

The other three teams have all taken turns at upsetting the order in recent years. I wouldn’t say any had a great chance at doing that this time around, yet if I had to pick a team that would be worth watching it would be the Toronto Blue Jays.

The Edwin Encarnacion-Jose Bautista Blue Jays have gone, with neither player now with the club and fellow star Josh Donaldson heading for free agency at the end of the 2018 season. Nothing lasts forever. Toronto had a really good team there for a few years but many of the leading players are now either gone, past their best or potentially heading towards an exit.

That makes the Blue Jays’ season all the more intriguing. Are they going to slip back again or do they have one last hurrah in them?

They haven’t made any impressive additions to their roster: tinkering with the bullpen, adding a couple of former Cardinals in Randall Grichuk and Aledmys Garcia, and signing veteran Curtis Granderson. They do still have good players on the roster though and will look even better if Aaron Sanchez’s blister issues can be a thing of the past. If not, June and July could be dominated by rumours of where Donaldson will be traded to.

NL East

Picking ‘another team’ from the NL East is a difficult task. The Washington Nationals were a country mile ahead of the rest of their division last year and that doesn’t look like changing in 2018.  The Miami Marlins finished second last year – yes, that surprised me too when I checked – but we all know what’s happened there over the off-season (fire sale number 4 or 5, it’s hard to keep count).

So, you’ve got the young talent of the Atlanta Braves, the young talent and two good free agent additions in the Philadelphia Phillies and the New York Mets.  Let’s go with the latter.

The period from mid-2015 to mid-2016 was a lot of fun for the Mets. They went to a World Series in October 2015 and then saw the Yankees trading away players the following summer.  It looked like the city was the Mets’s.

Well that didn’t last very long, did it? The Yankees, in a way that only the Yankees could, rapidly turned a rebuild into a strong Major League roster and loaded farm system.  The Mets lost the 2016 NL Wild Card game and then fell apart in 2017.

Frustratingly for their fans, they haven’t responded aggressively to this turn of events.  Jay Bruce and Todd Frazier are solid, experienced players, but they’re not going to convince a fan base that a team that lost 92 games last year is going to explode back into life.

As ever with these Mets, it all comes down to the starting rotation. If Syndergaard, deGrom, Harvey and Matz can make 100+ starts, and more starts than not reflecting their talent, then they’ll be a Wild Card threat. Mets fans have seen enough to be excited whilst also not being willing to bet their own money on it happening.

NL Central

Just as the Twins sprang a surprise in the AL Central, the Milwaukee Brewers were more competitive than most predicted in the NL Central last season.

Just as the Twins, the Brewers now have some expectations to live up to and, just as the Twins, they’ve not sat back and let the pack pass them.  However, they haven’t made the depth of signings as others and that may be their undoing, especially with Jimmy Nelson working his way back from shoulder surgery.

Lorenzo Cain and Christian Yelich are an excellent pair of signings to add to the outfield and the top of their batting order. It’s still not completely clear how the roster will shake out from there, with the original plan for Ryan Braun to play some first base already looking like an experiment too far.

It’s far from the worst problem to have as the outfield recruits offer plenty of reason to be excited for the Brew Crew, yet you get the sense that having started to push chips into the middle of the table, Milwaukee might have been better off – if not quite going all in – at least reaching for another starting pitcher to add to the group.

Within their division, you could argue they haven’t given up much to the St Louis Cardinals as they’ve also added an outfielder from the Marlins (Marcell Ozuna) but little else. Whether that’s going to be enough to beat others to a Wild Card remains to be seen.

NL West

I started planning this column in the middle of the week and had already decided to pick the San Francisco Giants for this spot.

Little did I know that the last few days would add more uncertainty to the Giants’ season.

Looking at 2017 in isolation you could say that everything fell apart for San Francisco and that wouldn’t be far from the truth.  What that disguises somewhat is that things started going awry in the second half of 2016. There was no ‘even year’ World Series that time around, they lost 11 of 13 after the All-Star break, and went 30-42 in total, to go from a 6.5 game lead at the top of the West to finishing four games behind the Dodgers.

Over the current off-season there was a clear decision to give it one last go with the Posey-Bumgarner-Crawford team and so trades were made to bring in experienced campaigners Evan Longoria and Andrew McCutchen.  Reliever Tony Watson was also signed as a free agent to add a quality lefty to the mix, hopefully behind last year’s big recruit Mark Melcancon if he’s fully recovered from forearm surgery.

But then it was announced that Jeff Samrdzija will miss several weeks with a strained pectoral injury and Madison Bumgarner took a line drive back on his left hand that fractured his little finger and could keep him out for the best part of two months.  Their Opening Day four-man rotation will consist of Johnny Cueto followed by Ty Blach, Chris Stratton and Derek Holland, which is a clear drop-off from what might have been.

The two starters shouldn’t have any lingering issues from their ailments so if the team can hold steady then they could build into the season and make a Wild Card run in the second half.  However, there’s an increased injury risk with a veteran team and their chances will depend on keeping their best players on the field, something that hasn’t started well.

MLB Sleepyhead Summary: Yankees sweep whilst the Rangers keep winning

Leave a reply

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

Yankees sweeping up New York

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

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

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

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

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

Rangers making a run for it

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

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

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

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

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

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

NL Central remains close

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

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

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

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

April highlights from MLB

Leave a reply

One month into the MLB regular season and there have already been enough stories to last a year.

Here are some of the key things that have happened.

Early struggles

Any team or player can go through a tricky month, so we should be wary of taking a bad April to always be a sign of things to come. It’s not easy to be pragmatic like that when it’s your team in the stir, though.

The Toronto Blue Jays have been a constant source of worry for their fans during the first month. They’ve picked up a bit of late so they no longer hold the worst record in the Majors, but having the second-worst record (8-17) isn’t much of a consolation.

They’ve been bedevilled by injuries – a common theme as we’ll see – and the return of Jose Bautista, who looked likely to leave as a free agent over the off-season, has not started well.  Bautista has always been the sort of player loved by his own fans but hated by opponents, and it’s fair to say his struggles have not evoked much sympathy. He has the sort of attitude that would use that negativity to spur him on; however at 36 years old it’s possible this may not just be a one-month blip and instead a sign of his decline as a force at the plate.

The team that does hold the worst record is the Kansas City Royals. The tragic death of pitcher Yordano Ventura continues to cast a shadow over the club, as does the looming free agent status of a number of core players (Eric Hosmer, Mike Moustakas, Lorenzo Cain being the main ones).  It looks like this is the end of the line for this World Series-winning group and they may be set for a rebuild, which is a shame for their fans but the memories of their 2015 triumph will sustain them for years to come.

In the National League, it’s the Royals’ World Series opponents from 2014 and 2015 that are getting most of the flak.

The San Francisco Giants have started slowly and whilst there’s enough talent on their roster to get back into the Wild Card race, losing Madison ‘I’m just a crashing dirt bike numpty’ Bumgarner for a couple of months at least is a significant blow. Much as it would be just like the Giants, and especially just like MadBum, to defy the odds and stage a glorious comeback, they’re making things very difficult for themselves.

The same could be said for the New York Mets. Injuries, injuries, injuries is the story here and what’s most concerning is the sense that this isn’t just down to bad luck. Yoenis Cespedes and Noah Syndergaard are the latest two stars to reportedly pull rank and play through fitness concerns, only to make matters worse. You don’t like to criticise players who are desperate to be on the field, but it does raise questions as to who is in charge and looking at the bigger picture of a long season.

10-day DL

The Mets’ management of injury concerns comes at a time when we’re seeing a significant change in the approach of teams towards injuries.

One of the many changes brought about by the new Collective Bargaining Agreement signed over the off-season was the introduction of a 10-day Disabled List, down from the 15-days that it had been for many years.

The disabled list is something that can confuse Brits new to MLB. The starting point is simply that the players on the DL are injured; however formally placing them on the DL is part of managing the strict limit of 25 players that a team has at their disposal on a given day.

An MLB team’s 25-man roster is part of their overall 40-man roster of players, and this is then part of an organisation-wide group of players throughout their 5 or 6 Minor League teams (‘feeder’ teams, in a sense).

The Disabled List is there so that teams can’t simply game the system by having a large squad of players to mix-and-match from every single day. If a player on your active 25-man roster picks up an injury, you either have to play short-handed while he recovers or place him on the DL so that you can put someone in his place.

With a 15-day DL, teams were more inclined to keep hold of a player for minor niggles rather than have to be without them for a couple of weeks. The Players Association (union) were keen to change this as it tended to mean players were back out on the field earlier than they probably should have been.

The idea of the 10-day DL is that the shorter time period will make teams err on the side of caution and give the player time to recuperate fully. The first month of the new rule has shown this to be the case. More players are going on the DL and this has a knock-effect in ‘real’ baseball (opportunities for other players to get some Major League service time) and in ‘fantasy’ baseball.

Doing well despite the injuries

The Washington Nationals were many people’s favourites for the NL East division this season and they’ve shown why during April by amassing an MLB-leading 17-8 record. That positivity comes with the recent blow of losing off-season recruit Adam Eaton to a knee injury that looks set to see him miss the rest of the season.

The actual impact of his absence on the Nationals’ play-off hopes is lessened by how strong their roster is, although losing a good player like Eaton is always going to be a blow.

You could say the same about the Boston Red Sox and David Price. They’re not pulling up any trees so far, but a 13-11 April keeps them nicely in the running and Chris Sale has been outstanding.

Price is continuing his rehabilitation from an arm injury that many feared could see him miss the entire season and whilst there’s still no firm timetable for his return, currently it looks like he may be back on a Major League mound at the end of May or beginning of June. There’s no need to rush him, despite the competitive nature of the AL East, and if he can be up to speed for the second-half of the season then they’ll have an intimidating front three to their rotation with reigning Cy Young Award winner Rick Porcello an impressive ‘number three’ to call on.

The ‘nice’ start for Boston comes with the ominous signs of a young New York Yankees team that doesn’t see 2017 as a rebuilding year. They’ve looked really impressive in April, Aaron Judge in particularly showing off his incredible power at the plate, all whilst being without Didi Gregorious for most of the month and their best young player, Gary Sanchez, heading to the DL. He could be back in the lineup by the end of this week so this could be much more than just a good start.

If they can keep it up, the Yankees will be in a very different position at this year’s trade deadline than they were in 2016. Whilst last year they were shopping veteran players for prospects, this year they may use some of their prospect depth to add a starting pitcher (Jose Quintana would be the obvious one) to make a play-off push.

The Colorado Rockies and Arizona Diamondbacks also shouldn’t be overlooked as they’re the NL West front-runners in the early going.

The Rockies have started well despite their main off-season recruit, Ian Desmond, only just making his debut yesterday due to recovering from a fractured left hand. As for the D-Backs, they’ve suffered the blow of losing pitcher Shelby Miller to an elbow injury that will almost certainly require Tommy John surgery and over a year on the sidelines. It’s a cruel blow considering he’d shown positive signs in his first couple of starts after a miserable 2016 and will add to the case of Arizona signing him being one of the worst trade decisions by a team in recent history.

Other players standing out

Marcus Thames has been the big story of April, swatting 11 home runs for the Milwaukee Brewers in his first month back in the Big Leagues after a three-year stint in the Korean league. Sadly his power surge has prompted the inevitable sniping from some that drugs may be involved, but Thames came back with a great response (“If people keep thinking I’m on stuff, I’ll be here every day. I have a lot of blood and urine”).

The Houston Astros’ Dallas Keuchel beat the Oakland A’s on Sunday to make it a perfect 5-0 record from his first five starts. Painful as it was to watch for this A’s fan in some ways, you have to appreciate a pitcher like Keuchel who doesn’t rely on 95+ mph fastballs to mow down opposing line-ups.

Ervin Santana will look to equal Keuchel’s record 5-0 record on Tuesday night starting against, of course, the A’s (Sonny Gray will make his much-anticipated first start of the season for Oakland in that game too). Santana’s strong start for the Minnesota Twins has been a great surprise for his team and, as is the way, puts him in the shop window for a potential trade later in the season.

Finally, Chris Coghlan deserves a mention for what he did against Yadi Molina and the St Louis Cardinals. Dives in football are rightly condemned; in baseball, they can be a thing of wonder.

Weekly Hit Ground Ball: Opening week stories

Leave a reply

WHGB11Whether it was Rajai Davis battling the snow to make a catch in the outfield, Tom Wilhelmson getting smacked around by his former teammates – and then thrown out of the game for throwing at one of them – or Kyle Schwarber suffering a season-ending knee injury, the Opening Week of the 2016 MLB season has not been easy for some, but it’s certainly been eventful.

Story of the week

Where else could we start than Trevor Story’s first four games in the Major Leagues. Whilst his home-run hitting streak came to an end on Saturday, his six long-balls had already made him the big story of the week, all the more so thanks to him having a surname ripe for puns and headlines.

It will be said time and time again this month that we should not get caught up in April performances. Players and teams can get hot for days or a few weeks at any point during the season and it’s easy to exaggerate the real significance of this when that hot streak comes so early in the season.

We saw a similar event ten years ago. Then it was the Detroit Tigers’ Chris Shelton who hit five home runs from the first four games of the season. He hit only 11 more across the rest of the season and played just 50 further Big League games across 2008 and 2009 before his Major League career came to an end.

Later that same month, the Texas Rangers’ Kevin Mench hit a home run in seven consecutive games and left some wondering if the streak would ever come to an end. It did, of course, and he subsequently hit only five more bombs across the rest of the season with the Rangers and Milwaukee Brewers before playing out the final 179 games over the next four years during which he hit eight home runs in total.

Not much was expected of Shelton or Mench. In Story’s case, it was already thought that he could provide some legitimate power to the Rockies’ offence. His Baseball Prospectus 2016 capsule noted that he had amassed some high strikeout totals in the minors that could carry across the Majors, but “in between some awkward flails at wayward breaking balls he’ll inflict serious damage”.

Six homers in four games certainly falls under the definition of “serious damage”. Like all young players he will go through some growing pains as pitchers learn and exploit his weaknesses and he will then have to adjust his approach, but there’s reason to believe that Trevor’s story won’t end on these first four games and there will be plenty of chapters to enjoy in the years ahead for him at Coors Field.

Slide rule

After Chase Utley broke Ruben Tejada’s leg in the high-profile 2015 NLDS game between the Dodgers and Mets it was inevitable that a new rule would be introduced.

It was also inevitable that it would cause some problems early in the season; however, few could have predicted those problems would come in two game-ending plays during the first week.

The first occasion between the Rays and Blue Jays was more clear-cut once the emotion of the game was removed and John Gibbons’ embarrassing ‘wearing dresses’ comment was rightly condemned. Jose Bautista made his slide into second base and then clearly went to grab Logan Forsythe’s leg with his hand. That’s not breaking up a double-play, that’s intentionally interfering with a fielder.

 

The ruling that ended the Houston Astros’ ninth-inning rally against the Brewers on Friday night was not so clear-cut. It was clear in the sense that Colby Rasmus broke the new rule by sliding past second base, but not in the sense of complying with the reason for bringing the rule in. The infielder was at no risk and had no intention of trying to turn a double-play, yet the umpires correctly applied the rule as it’s now worded and awarded the Brewers a double-play to end the game.

It’s safe to say that some clarification on how the rule should be interpreted will be provided by MLB in the next couple of weeks to bring it more in line with expectations.

It’s equally safe to say that having games end on a replay review is one of the most jarring compromises to be accepted alongside the benefits of the replay system.

DH in the NL? Not for MadBum

The debate around whether the Designated Hitter rule should be extended to the National League has some very entrenched views on either side.

Personally, I like to see professional athletes having to work on different facets of their chosen sport – skillful rugby players needing to get their tackling and positional sense up to a level where they’re not a liability etc – and I’m quite happy to live with pitchers getting over-matched if that means they have to develop their ability to get a good bunt down.

It also means that the pitchers that can hit get to enjoy themselves occasionally. Madison Bumgarner did just that against Clayton Kershaw yesterday with a home run to left-field, the second time he’s taken Kershaw deep.

MadBum won that battle, but Kershaw and the Dodgers won the war that day with a tenth-inning 3-2 victory.

MLB 2016 – American League Preview

5 Replies

MlbHlSqA new baseball season always creates plenty of excitement, yet 2016 promises to be something a bit special.

There are so many great potential story lines – a part of so many teams that potentially could make it to the play-offs – that it’s difficult to know where to begin in rounding them up.

That’s especially the case in the American League.

Whilst there are teams that likely will be out of the play-off conversation when September comes around (to my reckoning: Baltimore, Chicago White Sox, Minnesota, Oakland and Tampa Bay), none of them are punting on the season and it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that one of them could still be in with a sniff if things go their way.

You can put together realistic scenarios for most of the teams to at least have a shot at the Wild Card. Here are a couple of the main stories in the three AL divisions alongside my predictions (i.e. somewhat educated guesses) as to who will finish where.

AL East

The Toronto Blue Jays clearly had a good team last year and the logic of them winning the AL East division in 2015 made many overlook that this was a club that hadn’t made it to the play-offs since their back-to-back World Series triumphs in 1992 and 1993.

It was a tremendous achievement for John Gibbons and his men and they will hope that having taken that leap they are set for a period of success; however, there’s a shadow hanging over the club that may call that into question. Sluggers Jose Bautista and Edwin Encarnacion are both out of contract at the end of the season and neither have signed an extension as yet, with their own self-imposed ‘start of season’ deadlines about to expire. If that doesn’t change in the next few days, the possibility that two of their core players could both be leaving at the end of the season will add an extra dimension to their campaign.

The Boston Red Sox know that this will be David Ortiz‘s last season as he is set to retire and they will want him to go out on a high note. They’re an interesting team this year. The starting rotation includes plenty of question marks after the newly-recruited ace David Price, but from there this is a roster that should be competing at the sharp end. The thing is, you could have said the same before the 2014 and 2015 seasons and in both cases they didn’t just miss out on the play-offs, they finished dead last in the division. David Ortiz’s send-off is far from the only reason that 2016 has to be different.

AL Central

The projection systems have written off the Kansas City Royals yet again despite back-to-back World Series appearances and capturing the ultimate prize last year.

The Royals are not an extravagantly talented team loaded with stars and instead very admirably have found ways to work around their limitations to be more than the sum of their parts. Their Opening Day starting rotation of Edinson Volquez, Ian Kennedy, Yordano Ventura, Chris Young and Kris Medlen looks underwhelming, for example, but they’re an excellent fielding side and if they can hand over the game to their bullpen with a lead then that’s normally good enough to win the game. Doubting their ability to make it three Fall Classic appearances in a row isn’t unjust; however you shouldn’t be surprised if they do.

Conversely, the Detroit Tigers are still being looked at favourably despite falling to pieces in 2015 and falling to the bottom of the division. They’ve just become the first MLB team to hand out two $100m+ contracts in the same off-season – signing outfielder Justin Upton and pitcher Jordan Zimmermann – so their worst-to-first intentions are clear. If they get some luck with good health to their key players – and that’s a big if – then they just might do it.

AL West

Look through all the predictions and this is the division that has the most people scratching their head when trying to pick a winner. If in doubt, the best starting place is to look back to how things turned out last season, and that would mean the West being a Texas two-step battle once again.

The Houston Astros’ excellent 2015 was a surprise even to the team itself and they will be an exciting club again this year with Carlos Correa and Dallas Keuchel leading the way. It’s worth remembering, though, that they got off to a dazzling start by winning 15 of their 22 games in April and then played just a shade over .500 the rest of the way (71-69) to an 86-76. They will enter this season with expectations on their shoulders, so we’ll have to say how they carry that load.

The Texas Rangers went in the other direction. They struggled through April and on 3rd of May were bottom of the division on an 8-16 record, 9.5 games behind the leading Astros. The Rangers then swept a three-game series in Houston on their way to a 19-11 May and ultimately swept past their Lone Star State rivals on 15 September to go on and win the division.

All of which means that we shouldn’t overact to how the standings look at the end of the first month. The full 162-game regular season showed that both the Astros and Rangers were good teams in 2015 and, irrespective of their April records this year, that’s likely to be the case again in 2016.

My predictions

AL East – Toronto, Boston (WC), NY Yankees, Tampa Bay, Baltimore.

AL Central – Kansas City, Cleveland (WC), Detroit, Chicago WS, Minnesota.

AL West – Texas, Houston, Seattle, LA Angels, Oakland.

Weekly Hit Ground Ball: Good Friday by name …

Leave a reply

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.

2016 MLB Spring Training starts today

Leave a reply

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Off-season so far: American League

1 Reply

MlbHlSqGetting on for two weeks ago we looked at the off-season so far in the National League.

When I made some notes for this article they began by stating that no major deals have happened since that point, yet on Saturday that changed with reports of Baltimore re-signing Chris Davis.

There are still a number of free agents on the market that you would have expected to have signed by now though and they may prove to be a difference-maker, especially if signed by a team in the American League.

Currently, whilst the National League has clear dividing lines between genuine contenders and the rest (at least so it appears, we’ve all learned that MLB is capable of surprising us), it’s much harder to nail your colours to the mast of many teams and say they are clearly better than their division rivals at first glance in the AL.

AL East: Boston bouncing back?

The main off-season story has been the two big moves made by the Boston Red Sox. After finishing dead last with a talented but underperforming roster, they’ve responded by signing the best free agent pitcher in David Price (taking him from the reigning division champions) and trading for arguably the best closer in Craig Kimbrel.

Bitter rivals the New York Yankees hit back by trading for flamethrower Aroldis Chapman and, even though he is likely to start the season serving a suspension for an alleged domestic violence incident, he will help to give them a fearsome bullpen as they hope their group of veterans can hold together for one more year.

As for the Toronto Blue Jays, there’s no doubt that losing Price is a blow to their hopes of retaining their crown, especially with him staying in the division. They haven’t done all that much over the offseason – the main moves seeing a reunion with pitcher J.A. Happ and a trade for reliever Drew Storen – and the plan is to hope for full seasons from Marcus Stroman (injured for much of 2015) and Troy Tulowitzki (a mid-season acquisition who also lost time to injury) and that their batting strength continues to come through for them.

I don’t think any of those three teams will be exceptional, but they all have a chance to win 91-92 games and take the division. I’d rank them as 1. TOR, 2, BOS, 3 NYY for now, although I just have a hunch that the Blue Jays might not quite live up to their 2015 season.

I’m putting the contender cut-off at that point even though Baltimore appears to have made a big move this weekend by re-signing Chris Davis. They went 81-81 with him last year and haven’t yet replaced starting pitcher Wei-Yin Chen (who has signed with the Miami Marlins), so don’t look a good bet to improve. Neither do the Tampa Bay Rays, who haven’t done little this off-season and look set to put together a good but not great team again, whilst still punching above their weight against teams with vastly greater financial resources.

AL Central: Royals reign, but can Tigers roar again?

The Kansas City Royals won the Central handsomely before winning the World Series and they have to be favourites again in 2016. Although they parted ways with mid-season recruits like Johnny Cueto (signed with the Giants) and Ben Zobrist (Cubs), they kept hold of Alex Gordon when he appeared to be leaving as a free agent and have added pitcher Ian Kennedy this weekend on a five-year contract.

Alongside the Royals winning it all, the AL Central in 2015 was marked by the Detroit Tigers collapsing after their run of dominance. That plays into two storylines for 2016.

The Minnesota Twins and Cleveland Indians ended up in second and third place respectively, yet being honest you would have to say they were just above average. Neither team has much in the way of money to throw around and they haven’t made significant signings to push forward over this off-season, with the main move being the Twins taking a punt on South Korean slugger Byung-ho Park. The Twins will be looking for youngsters Miguel Sano and Byron Buxton to excel, and the Indians to somehow find some runs to support their strong starting pitching, to try to keep in the running.

That’s going to be difficult because the Tigers have added Jordan Zimmerman to their rotation and revamped their bullpen, including signing closer Francisco Rodriguez. Add in some decent roster additions for depth, including outfielder Cameron Maybin, and they are back to the position of being favourites for second place and a shot at a Wild Card if Miguel Cabrera and Victor Martinez can stay injury-free.

The Chicago White Sox made plenty of moves over the previous off-season and they didn’t have the desired effect. You can understand why they’ve tried again, trading for Todd Frazier from the Reds and Brett Lawrie from the A’s, through wanting to take advantage of having one of the best pitchers in the league in Chris Sale. They need everything to go right to get back into the race and that’s a bit too much to rely on to predict they’ll do it right now.

AL West: Your guess is as good as mine

The West was taken over by Texas Rangers and Houston Astros in 2015 (strange as that is based on their locations, but that’s how the divisions shape up in the AL), so the question is can they stay in front?

They can as neither team has got worse over the winter, yet neither has made additions that would clearly keep them ahead either. The Astros have added Ken Giles as their closer in a trade with the Phillies, whilst the Rangers’ main move actually came before the mid-season deadline last year when they brought in Cole Hamels (also from the Phils).

So what about the chasing pack?

The A’s have completely revamped an awful bullpen and resisted the temptation to trade Sonny Gray, but it would be a stretch to push them too high up the predicted standings based on that. Last year’s third placed team the LA Angels traded for star shortstop Andrelton Simmons and will always be dangerous with Mike Trout and Albert Pujols at the heart of their lineup, although that potential makes it all the more surprising that they haven’t added further (yet) to really take advantage of the talent they do have.

In contrast, the Seattle Mariners have been very active this off-season. They re-signed Hisashi Iwakuma after it looked like he was off to the Dodgers and also traded for Wade Miley from the Red Sox to give them a potentially strong starting rotation. What will define their season is if their position player additions (including Nori Aoki, Adam Lind and Leonys Martin) provide a solid complement to the Cano-Cruz-Seager core, of if they make that trio’s contributions count for little.

I can genuinely see a way in which the Mariners get into the race here, and it’s not completely beyond the realms of possibility that the A’s could as well, so this is the most difficult division to predict. I’ll duck the issue and keep the five teams in their finishing positions of 2015 for now, as Spring Training injuries or late off-season additions could have more bearing on this division than any other.

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

1 Reply

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.