Tag Archives: Washington Nationals

Christmas shopping spree

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A week ago I wrote the following:

“The MLB Winter Meetings have begun in San Diego and plenty of people are speculating about what big free agent news will be announced over the next few days (likely very little, based on recent years)”.

You could say I was a long way off the mark with that comment, although maybe I can latch onto the final caveat to save a bit of face.

Over the past two off-seasons there has been considerable discontent among players as to how the free agent market has failed to develop in the way they expected. Both times the fall-out descended into an argument with teams on one side and players and agents on the other. It takes two sides to make a deal. Whether it was the players being greedy or the teams being cheap depended on which side of the fence you were shouting from.

The first month and a half of the 2019/20 off-season can’t help but make you lean towards the players and agents on this one.

Take Mike Moustakas as a prime example. He had to accept one year deals in each of the previous two off-seasons due to finding no multi-contact offers to his liking. This time around he’s signed a four-year contract with the Cincinnati Reds. Whilst we do have to take the qualifying offer, and resulting loss of a draft pick, into account, that doesn’t go far enough as an explanation as to why he suddenly is now worthy of a multi-year commitment. The difference this time is in a greater number of teams looking to add a quality infielder.

It comes back to a topic I discussed just over a month ago, that of the essential element of competition that drives a free agent market. The impasse in the past two off-seasons has come from teams not upping their offers because they knew that they didn’t have to as part of winning the bidding, whilst players and agents were waiting for better offers that they thought should come, but never did.

This year, things have changed.

The Philadelphia Phillies were one of the few teams to make a big push a year ago, not least in the Bryce Harper contract, and the end result was making it eight consecutive seasons without a play-off appearance. The Phillies were never going to stand still after that disappointment and they’ve acted by bringing in Joe Girardi as manager to replace Gabe Kapler and then signing Zack Wheeler to a five-year, $118m contract and Didi Gregorius to a one-year, $14m contract.

Their NL East rivals, the Washington Nationals, were not going to take their foot off the gas after winning the World Series either. Having lost Harper last year, and rightly expecting to lose Anthony Rendon this year, there was no way they were going to let Stephen Strasburg be tempted by another team’s offer. That was why they blew everyone else out of the water with their seven-year, $245m contract offer that Strasburg accepted on Monday. It’s a huge commitment in a pitcher who has had injury problems in the past and, by all accounts, was not looking to leave Washington anyway, but the Nationals were not prepared to take any chances. They could afford to offer that contract, so they did.

This immediately ignited the market for Gerrit Cole. Strasburg’s deal took the other outstanding starter off the board and also helped to set the parameters for the contract Cole clearly was going to command.

A year ago, everyone was waiting for the New York Yankees to jump in and ramp up the bidding stakes for Manny Machado and Bryce Harper. There was no waiting around this year. The Yankees’ record of making the World Series at least once in every decade from the 1920s on came to an end in their ALCS defeat to the Houston Astros. With no Bronx Fall Classics in the 2010s, and a team with a great offence and bullpen but questionable starting pitching, there was no way that the Yankees would allow Cole to go anywhere else. No messing about: they put the largest ever contract for a pitcher on the table, nine-years, $324m, to make sure he became a Yankee.

And that then put the LA Angels on the clock. It was already a source of embarrassment for owner Arte Moreno that his team had squandered the first eight full seasons of Mike Trout, genuinely in the running to be considered the greatest player of all-time by the end of his career, by turning it into just one Division Series defeat. Having given Trout the most lucrative contract ever (12 years, $426.5M) to stay with the team for years to come prior to the 2019 season, there was no way that the Angels could get through this off-season without signing a big-ticket free agent.

With Strasburg and Cole off the market, the Angels immediately offered Anthony Rendon a seven-year, $245m contract. Just as the Nationals couldn’t let Strasburg leave and the Yankees couldn’t let Cole sign elsewhere, the Angels were prepared to offer whatever it took to make sure they didn’t miss out on Rendon.

This is what happens when teams with big pockets are motivated to out-spend each other to win now. Whatever Rob Manfred may try to claim, that has not been the context in which the free agent market has played out over the past two off-seasons.

It’s made for an exciting Winter Meetings and sets up the rest of the off-season perfectly.

Weekly Hit Ground Ball: Rookie Managers Making It Look Easy

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Alex Cora and Mickey Callaway must have their feet up in their respective manager’s office thinking that this managing malarkey is easy.

Cora’s Red Sox sit astride the Major Leagues with a 12-2 record heading into Sunday’s games, with Callaway’s Mets close behind on 11-2 having had their nine-game winning streak brought to an end by Milwaukee yesterday.

Meanwhile, it turns out the Phillies’ manager Gabe Kapler might not be completely clueless – as some declared after his first three games – as his team have won five games in a row to second behind the Mets on an 8-5 record.

The Nationals’ Dave Martinez (7-8) and Yankees’ Aaron Boone (7-7) are holding steady in the early going too, which just leaves veteran Ron Gardenhire among the new managers for 2018 for whom the start of the season is proving to be a struggle.

Gardenhire has been in the game long enough not to be too envious of those whippersnappers. There are only 30 MLB manager jobs at any one time and even being in charge of a rebuilding Detroit Tigers is a post to be proud of.

However, it is interesting that so many potentially plumb positions ended up in the hands of rookie managers.

Sport teams generally will change a manager when things have gone badly, with the manager holding responsibility for the team’s performance and being the easiest big part to change as opposed to making significant changes to the playing staff.

That often leads to an ‘opposite ends’ approach to the recruitment of managers, especially in football.  If a ‘back-to-basics’ experienced British manager gets the boot then a younger continental manager is just what’s needed.  If relegation looms with said younger continental manager’s brand of ‘tippy-tappy’ football not working in England, well of course you need a ‘back-to-basics’ experienced British manager to shake things up.

It’s not quite the same in baseball as the manager here has a different brief to work towards (accepting manager/head coach roles vary among football clubs too), yet you still see that approach being taken and, to varying degrees, that goes for the six new managers in MLB this year.

The situation in Washington was the most extreme. Ex-manager Dusty Baker has his critics from previous managerial stints, yet it’s difficult to see quite what he did in his two years at the helm with the Nationals to deserve to be pushed aside over the off-season rather than to continue with the team. They won 95 and 97 games in 2016 and 2017 and whilst consecutive 3-2 Division Series exits were bitterly disappointing when expectations of a World Series were so high, in the cold light of day there wasn’t much about those series defeats that you could pin on Baker.

His departure was a classic case of the team wanting to change something to get over the Division Series hump and Baker being the easiest option.  They changed from a 68 year-old with 22 MLB managerial seasons of experience to Dave Martinez, a 53 year-old who is taking on his first MLB managerial job after serving an apprenticeship under Joe Maddon at the Rays and Cubs.

The changes in Boston and New York were more understandable.

The Red Sox won 93 games and the AL East before being knocked out of the play-offs by a formidable Houston Astros team, so it was hardly a disaster on the field last year. However, it never seemed like a happy camp under John Farrell and so bringing his five-year reign to a close and moving on to the dynamic young Alex Cora looked like a shake-up move at somewhere that needed a shake-up.

The same could be said for the Mets, although in their case the 2017 season undoubtedly was a disaster.  Terry Collins had outstayed his welcome so bringing him back for 2018 was never going to work. Mickey Callaway’s glowing reputation from his five years as pitching coach under Terry Francona in Cleveland made him an obvious candidate to take over at a team whose fortunes are so heavily invested in the form and fitness of their starting pitching.

Aaron Boone was a left-field choice for the Yankees, yet fits into the ‘opposite ends’ idea by virtue of his excellent communication skills – shown to all in his work with ESPN – being cited as a crucial factor in his appointment. Joe Girardi had served a decade as the Yankees’ manager and many on the New York beat had started bemoaning his increased willingness to say very little in his managerial briefings long before it was announce he would not be returning for 2018.  It wasn’t simply the New York press wishing for someone more quote-worthy – although I’m sure that makes their lives much easier – but more that their experience was indicative of what they were picking up from players too: that Girardi was failing to inspire his team any more.

Those four situations are all about winning now, which is different to the roles that Gabe Kapler and Ron Gardenhire are taking on. In Philadelphia, they are firmly on the way up with a young team and so switched the 66 year-old Pete Mackanin for 42 year-old rookie manager Kapler.  In Detroit, they are at the start of a rebuild and decided that the experienced head of Gardenhire was what was needed at this point to move on from first-time manager Brad Ausmus, whose four-year tenure produced mixed results.

These are early days in the 2018 season and none of us can be certain how the six managerial appointments will pan out over the next few years, but it is likely we can take a good guess at the type of manager they will be replaced by when that time comes.

That is, someone the opposite of who they are replacing.

The Sunday Smasher

The Bangles sang that “It’s just another manic Monday”.

In MLB the song goes: “It’s just another Shohei Sunday”.

The Angels’ Japanese star is back on the mound today and after he went six perfect innings against the A’s last time out, he now gets to face the Kansas City Royals who have the worst record in MLB so far this season.

In other words, this has ‘potential no-hitter’ written all over it.  Or it will produce a big shock of the Royals being the line-up to knock Ohtani out of his stride. Either way, it will be worth watching.

First pitch from Kauffman Stadium is at 19.15 BST and the game is available to watch on MLB.TV.

MLB 2017 Final Day: Everyone gets to play in October

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It’s always a shame when we get to the final day of the MLB regular season and there is nothing significant still to play for.

Looking through the standings, the only potential thing to ‘win’ would be the first draft pick in next year’s amateur draft, which goes to the team with the worst win-loss record.

The San Francisco Giants (63-98) are one loss ‘better off’ than the Detroit Tigers (64-97) in the race to the bottom. If the Giants foolishly go and win today against the San Diego Padres and the Tigers lose then they’ll be matched on 64-98.

Normally with tie-breaker situations you look at the results of the games the two teams played against each other, but I’m not sure quite how that works here.

The Tigers won their inter-league series 2-1, which should mean they finish higher, although in the circumstances they might feel that the victory should result in them finishing last so they get the number one pick. Such is the weirdness that creating an incentive to finish last leads to.

Anyway, despite the Tigers’ protestations, I suspect that the Giants do have the worst record sewn-up already on that tie-breaker (I was going to look it up, but thought better of it), so we are where we are and can enjoy the final day as simply a day of baseball with not much riding on it.

Division winners

Looking at the almost-final standings, you can’t escape the conclusion that the teams most people thought would win the six divisions heading into the year have done so.

Neither the LA Dodgers and Washington Nationals had a strong challenger on paper and so it proved, whilst the Chicago Cubs also came through with a handy gap in the end despite the NL Central being harder work for them than we might have thought.

The Cleveland Indians blitzed the AL Central, in no small part thanks to their incredible 22-game winning streak, Boston kept the New York Yankees at bay in the East and the Houston Astros took all the fun out of the AL West (for the other four teams at least) by going 38-16 across April and May and never looking back. An 11-17 August counted for little, particularly when they responded with a 20-8 September.

Wild Cards

The above is partly the whole point of having the Wild Card round. We had predictable division winners this year because they were all blatantly going to be really good teams and were only going to be beaten if they had a disaster or two to give someone else a chance.

That’s not a bad thing in my book. Whilst surprises are always fun, ultimately you should want there to be impressive teams that rack up wins in the regular season and make their eventual clashes in the post-season all the more enthralling.

The Wild Card, especially the second Wild Card, adds something else to the play-off pot.

It creates the potential for other strong teams to get in, such as the Yankees this time around. Despite the negatives you can throw at the Wild Card play-in game from a fairness point of view, the AL East was a great example of one of the main positives.

There is a huge potential difference between winning the division and going straight through to the best-of-five Division Series, compared with flipping a coin in the lose-and-you’re-out Wild Card game. Potential is the key word there, as if you manage to win the Wild Card game your odds of winning it all aren’t all that much lower than the other Division Series competitors. However, the risk of your play-offs only lasting one game means that the division is always worth fighting for now, which wasn’t the case when there was only one Wild Card per league.

NL W(ild Card)

The second Wild Card means that if there are three strong teams in one division in a given year, they could all have a chance of making it to the post-season.

That’s happened this year in the NL West. The Colorado Rockies were a somewhat surprising third-placed finisher last year behind the Dodgers and Giants, yet their 75-87 record to get there – after losing 96 and 94 games in the previous two seasons – gave reason to be cautious about being too optimistic for their hopes in 2017.

In fact, it proved to be indicative of the potential that was there at Coors Field and they’ve fully earned their first play-off appearance since 2009.

The Rockies’ progress in 2017 is nothing compared to that of the team that will be hosting them for the NL Wild Card on Wednesday. 2016 was a disaster for the Arizona Diamondbacks after they made big moves in the off-season – spending $206m on Zack Greinke and a king’s ransom in a trade for Shelby Miller – only to lose 93 games. Various people lost their jobs as a result, but there was still some talent at the club and the potential for a quick return to respectability.

They far exceeded that and enter the final day of the regular season with the joint-sixth highest win total across the Majors with 92. No one can say the D-Backs haven’t earned their play-off appearance.

Twins and the AL Wild Card game

As for the Minnesota Twins, well, some people aren’t being quite so generous in their praise of the second AL Wild Card winners.

They’ve earned their spot because they’ve got the fifth-best record in the American League and five teams qualify for the play-offs from each league. However, they enter the final day with a win-loss record of 84-77.

In football people often say the league table doesn’t lie at the end of a season; in other words, where you end up is generally a good reflection on how good your team was.

MLB takes that further by playing a 162-game regular season. Randomness can still come into, but by and large that’s more than enough time for the cream to rise to the top, the chaff to be separated from the wheat, and the middling middlers to settle in the middle.

It is fair to say that Minnesota are more middly than creamy.

That doesn’t matter in the least for the Minnesota Twins, who can smile away any jibes by knowing there are 20 other teams that would love to be in their position. They’ve made it to the play-offs a year after losing 103 games. They’ve won 25 more games than they did last year and can make it 26 if they win on Sunday. That’s a real achievement for Paul Molitor and his team.

And as for the AL Wild Card game

The problem some have with the Wild Card game in a situation like this is that a team that has earned a significantly better record over 162 games than their opponent can be knocked out by losing one game.

There’s no escaping that this isn’t completely fair, but there’s one important thing to note about it this year.

The New York Yankees have won more World Series than any other team and broken more hearts than anyone else along the way too. The ‘Evil Empire’ moniker isn’t being thrown around quite so much now as it had been the previous 10-15 years, but there’s a reason why it became a thing in the first place. Yankees fans, like fans of any all-conquering team, understand that people love to hate them.

So if it does happen and the Twins do dump the Yankees out on Tuesday night – and it certainly could – then whilst the strict analysts may bemoan it, the rest of us can have a good chuckle about it.

#ThumbsUp

MLB Sleepyhead Summary: Nationals clinch the NL East

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On Sunday, the Washington Nationals became the first team to win their division in 2017.

The Nationals completed a 3-1 series win over the Philadelphia to bring their NL East magic number down to 1 and then had to wait for the conclusion of the ongoing game between second-placed Miami and Atlanta.

The Marlins scored three runs across the eighth and ninth innings to lead, only for Atlanta to draw level 8-8 with three runs in the bottom of the ninth.

The Braves then walked-off in the eleventh to ensure Washington couldn’t be caught and could start their celebrations.

It’s the fourth time in six years that the Nats have won the NL East, but they’ll be hoping this time they can turn that into more than just a brief play-off run, as they’ve been dumped out in the Division Series stage the previous three times.

Dodgers’ dip becomes a downward spiral

For weeks it looked as though the Los Angeles Dodgers would be the first team to clinch their division, but the once seemingly-unstoppable team are now making very hard work of getting over the NL West line. They were just swept in a four-game series by the Colorado Rockies to make it ten losses in a row and 15 losses from their last 16 games.

The Dodgers still have the best record in the Majors at 92-51 and a nine-game lead in the division, which shows how incredibly well they had been playing prior to the last two weeks.

It really is curious how a talent-laden team like this can suddenly go into such a tailspin. Still, when the Dodgers were threatening a historic win total it was noted that for many ultimately their play-off results would determine whether the season was a total success or not. They’ll come out of this bad spell soon enough, complete the formality of booking their play-off place, and if they go on to win the World Series at the end of it these regular season losses will seem a distant memory.

Elsewhere in the National League

The Arizona Diamondbacks had their winning run ended at 13 on Friday as they lost two of three against the San Diego Padres. The D-Backs still have a five-game lead over Colorado for the first NL Wild Card, despite the Rockies’ broom-wielding ways against the Dodgers, and the two teams will face each other at Chase Field for four-games starting on Monday night.

On Friday I pretty much had the Chicago Cubs pencilled-in as the NL Central champs, but then they were swept by the Milwaukee Brewers in a three-game series at Wrigley and the St Louis Cardinals also won three games against Pittsburgh to make it close once again. The Cubs have a two-game lead over their two rivals, whilst the Brewers and Cardinals are three behind the Rockies for the second Wild Card.

Milwaukee now host three games against Pittsburgh but will have to play out the season without starting pitcher Jimmy Nelson who unfortunately injured his shoulder in a freak accident when diving back into first base. St Louis host the Cincinnati Reds for a three-game set, whilst the Cubs host the New York Mets.

Cleveland – 18 and counting

In the American League, the Cleveland Indians are going to lose again one day but they’re determined to put it off for as long as possible.

They swept a three-game series over the Baltimore Orioles to increase their winning run to 18 games, three behind the all-time MLB record of 21 held by the 1935 Chicago Cubs.

The American League record is 20 and set by the Oakland A’s in 2002, as featured in the film adaptation of Moneyball, and the A’s decided to honour that streak by sweeping a four-game series over the Houston Astros this past weekend.

That was good news for Cleveland too. The Astros had won seven straight heading into their series, but the A’s sweep plus the Indians’ continued run means they have edged ahead for the best record in the American League, 87-56 to 86-57.

Others chasing play-off spots

The gap at the top of the AL East remains at 3.5 in Boston’s favour over the New York Yankees after both teams won their respective series 2-1 (Red Sox over the Rays, Yankees over the Rangers). The Yankees now have a 3.5 game lead over Minnesota for the first AL Wild Card after the Twins split a four-game series with the Kansas City Royals.

The Mariners lost the finale of their three-game series against the Los Angeles Angels, but took the first two to gain a little ground in the Wild Card race and they now have the cavalry coming in the form of Felix Hernandez (Thursday) and James Paxton (Friday) returning from the Disabled List. Seattle are three games behind the Twins for the second Wild Card, as are the Orioles. The Mariners now head into Texas for a crucial four-game series against the Rangers.

The Angels are the closest competitors to the Twins, trailing by one game, and have a home series against the Astros up next, with Kansas City and Texas 2.5 back.

The Rays are now at the back of the pack trailing by 3.5 games and will play their home three-game series against the New York Yankees at the Mets’ Citi Field due to the devastation caused by Hurricane Irma.

MLB in May

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Just three days of games into June showed us that we are in for another exciting month in MLB.

On Saturday alone, we got to witness a moment that has only happened eight times previously in the history of MLB.

Albert Pujols hit career home run 600, doing so in the grandest style of all with a grand slam. Whilst a no-doubter might have been more fitting for ‘The Machine’, it was all the more exciting due to the couple of seconds of suspense waiting to see if it would stay fair or go foul.

On the same day, the Miami Marlins’ Edinson Volquez pitched the first no-hitter of the 2017 season. It was a magical yet poignant moment when the final out was made, coming on the day that would have been ex-team mate Yordano Ventura’s birthday (Ventura was tragically killed in a car accident over the off-season) and with the memory of the late Jose Fernandez still burning brightly for all in the Marlins family.

However, we shouldn’t let the last couple of days distract us from looking back at all that happened in May. If you’ve not been able to keep up with it all, here are the division-leading teams.

Houston Astros (AL West 40-16)

We have to start with the rocket-propelled Houston Astros.  They have the best record in MLB, lead the AL West by a massive 12.5 games and head into their game against the Texas Rangers on Sunday having won nine games in a row.

The Astros went 22-7 during May. Their impressive batting lineup managed to score 180 runs in the process – Carlos Correa in particular having a great month at the plate – and when you’re averaging six runs per game, that gives your pitching staff plenty of breathing space.

In any case, Houston’s hurlers have been contributing handsomely and their rate of 10.34 strike-outs per nine innings was the best of any team in the Majors. With the AL West looking relatively weak, the Astros are a good bet to keep motoring along and to earn the best regular season record in the league and the home-field play-off advantage that comes with it.

Minnesota Twins (AL Central – 28-24)

Whilst the Astros’ pitching staff has been dominant, the same can’t be said for those toeing the rubber for the Twins. They were actually the second least-valuable contributors across MLB in May among pitching staffs when grading performance based on FanGraphs’ Wins Above Replacement (only Cincinnati were behind them).

Their 14-12 record in May (following a 12-11 record in April) came despite them allowing more runs (152) than they scored (125). That would suggest the Twins are getting some breaks so far that may go the other way soon enough.

Still, let’s not be too harsh on them. Few would have predicted that they would be leading the division at this point heading into the season so we should enjoy the fact that they are rather than getting too bogged down on their chances of staying there.

New York Yankees (AL East – 32-21)

Even though it was big news when the Yankees traded away Andrew Miller, Aroldis Chapman (since re-signed) and Carlos Beltran last summer, believing that it would start a rebuilding phase in the Bronx was always likely to be just wishful thinking for those who see them as the Evil Empire.

The Yankees aren’t for rebuilding, re-tooling or whatever term you wish to use. Their goal every year is to win and the changing of the guard last year was more about getting better for 2017, rather than 2019-2020, than some realised at the time.

Aaron Judge has been the undoubted star of the show. He leads the Majors with 18 home runs (although his 7 in May was second on the team behind Brett Gardner’s 9) and seems completely comfortable with all the attention he is getting. Fairly or not, it’s a simple fact that Judge doing what he’s doing in a Yankee uniform hits the headlines more than if he was wearing an A’s or Rays uniform.

Every sport needs new stars and what Judge is doing so far is great for the game.

Washington Nationals (NL East 34-20)

It’s no surprise that the first two months of the season have shown that the Nationals are a really strong team.

Their ten-game lead over the New York Mets is partly down to the latter’s issues – those crowing last summer about the Mets now being the star team in New York were perhaps a bit quick with their judgement – but that doesn’t take away from the Nationals’ performance as the team to beat in the Senior Circuit.

The perennial bullpen question in Washington still lurks in the background. So far this season, their relievers have the second-lowest FanGraphs WAR in MLB with only the aforementioned Twins beneath them and even with Koda Glover showing promise as their closer, they will once again be shopping for a reliever or two as we head towards the trade deadline to try to prevent another play-off disappointment.

It would be a major shock if they don’t reach the post-season though. Stephen Strasburg and Max Scherzer were predictably brilliant in May, Anthony Rendon started to heat-up at the plate, and Bryce Harper continued displaying his prowess with the bat, although not so much when it comes to throwing a batting helmet.

Los Angeles Dodgers (NL West – 35-22)

The Arizona Diamondbacks and Colorado Rockies held them off for a good while, but the Dodgers have now climbed to the top of the division thanks to a blistering 19-9 May.

Cody Bellinger’s home runs (9 in the month) have stood out and he looks set to be a force in their line-up for years to come. However, don’t overlook the contribution made by the less-heralded Chris Taylor. He was acquired in a low-key trade with the Seattle Mariners last June and, despite hitting the headlines by hitting a grand slam as his first Big League home run against Arizona a month later, Taylor didn’t make the Major League team out of Spring Training.

Injuries have given him an opportunity and so far he has taken it. He led the team with 1.3 fWAR in May whilst showing flexibility in playing different positions in the field (mainly second base and centre field, with a few starts at third base and shortstop). Alex Wood also had a noteworthy May on the mound, putting up a 1.37 ERA in five starts.

Milwaukee Brewers (NL Central 29-27)

The Chicago Cubs are in second place and looking ominous, but for now the Brewers are leading the way and that’s a great story for a team that few people gave much of a chance to heading into the season.

Eric Thames added only three home runs during May to the 11 he swatted in April and you would suspect part of that drop-off to be a reflection of teams studying his approach from the first month – having spent the previous three seasons playing in South Korea – and adjusting how they pitch to him. That’s what makes it so difficult to have continued success in the Big Leagues, but don’t write Thames off as a one-month wonder just yet.

Jimmy Nelson and Chase Anderson have formed a good one-two punch in their rotation, whilst Nerd Power has arrived in Milwaukee with Eric Sogard building on his cult fandom from his time in Oakland with heroics in May. A’s fans like myself will know that Sogard doesn’t offer much with the bat normally, so enjoy this little hot spell while it lasts, but also that he offers decent defense at second base and is an easy player to get behind and want to do well.

April highlights from MLB

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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.

What could Bryce Harper’s April lead to?

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As we head into the games on Saturday, the Washington Nationals hold the best record in the Majors at 16-7 (.696).

Whilst Ryan Zimmermann’s outstanding April catches the eye after a poor 2016 season, the figurehead for the Nationals’ great start once again has been Bryce Harper.

He’s hitting .405 /.519/.786 with 8 home runs through the first 23 games and if you had him down as your prediction to be the National League MVP this season, there’s reason to be confident that he’ll prove you right.

However, when I saw him at the top of FanGraphs’ WAR position player leaderboard, my first though was ‘didn’t he does this last year?’

This is Harper’s monthly breakdown from 2016:

Month BA OBP SLG OPS HR
April/March 0.290 0.410 0.710 1.120 9
May 0.200 0.420 0.360 0.790 4
June 0.280 0.380 0.420 0.800 3
July 0.180 0.300 0.320 0.620 4
August 0.310 0.400 0.540 0.930 3
Sept/Oct 0.210 0.330 0.320 0.650 1

In a sense the answer is ‘yes’ as he launched a load of home runs, but his strong batting line in April 2016 pales in comparison to the ridiculous numbers he has this year.

Looking at that table though, what stands out is how April was his best month. There was plenty of talk of potential injuries that Harper was playing through last season, so the next question to ask is whether last year was just a one-off?

The following provides Harper’s batting lines over his career so far per month (I’ve left out HR’s as April would understandably be boosted by his 2017 total compared with the other months).

Month BA OBP SLG OPS
April/March 0.324 0.431 0.638 1.069
May 0.264 0.405 0.545 0.950
June 0.304 0.387 0.505 0.892
July 0.236 0.344 0.393 0.737
August 0.286 0.376 0.482 0.858
Sept/Oct 0.290 0.384 0.518 0.901

The first thing to note is that he doesn’t exactly get into a slump at any point, although he looks mortal in July for some reason, but the stats show that April has been his best month and that he hasn’t matched his start the rest of the year. His 2017 numbers boost the April line too, of course, but the trend is there regardless.

The MLB season is a 162 marathon and we hear a lot about how the games, and heat, catch up with everyday players as the season goes on, so it’s worth considering if this is a more general trend. Firstly, we can look at the other great young position player in the Majors, Mike Trout.

Month BA OBP SLG OPS
April/March 0.305 0.391 0.558 0.948
May 0.306 0.386 0.568 0.955
June 0.349 0.431 0.605 1.036
July 0.319 0.413 0.610 1.022
August 0.289 0.401 0.525 0.926
Sept/Oct 0.280 0.413 0.511 0.924

Although his batting average goes down in August and September (again, down is relative here), his on-base percentage is higher and there’s certainly not the clear difference we see with Harper’s numbers.

Trout and Harper may be linked as the two great players of their generation, yet they’re not identical hitters so let’s complete the research by looking at batting lines across the whole of the Majors in 2016.

Month BA OBP SLG OPS
April/March 0.249 0.319 0.405 0.724
May 0.255 0.319 0.414 0.733
June 0.263 0.328 0.432 0.760
July 0.252 0.318 0.413 0.730
August 0.259 0.323 0.428 0.751
Sept/Oct 0.253 0.322 0.411 0.733

We’re bringing together a total of 184,580 plate appearances here and the averages, by their nature, will smooth out the exceptions, so this doesn’t show that Harper is unique in hitting better in April, but it does show there isn’t a wider trend that this is part of.

However, there has been one notable season from Harper in which he didn’t peak in April: 2015.

Month BA OBP SLG OPS HR
April/March 0.286 0.440 0.545 0.985 5
May 0.360 0.495 0.884 1.379 13
June 0.370 0.452 0.691 1.143 6
July 0.300 0.440 0.575 1.015 5
August 0.327 0.460 0.449 0.909 2
Sept/Oct 0.333 0.469 0.747 1.216 11
Season 0.330 0.460 0.649 1.109 42

There was no drop-off from April there, in fact he went bananas in May with 13 homers. Harper does tend to get into home run grooves – as do most power hitters – but when you can hit two homers in a month and still put up an OPS of .900, as he did in August, it goes to show that he is much more than ‘just’ a home-run hitter.

Harper’s 2015 season won him an MVP award. He’s going to have a post-April tail-off this year because he’s hit .405 /.519/.786 in April (with a couple of games to go) and you can tail off quite a bit and still put together a great season.

Yet his other-worldly start does make me excited for what numbers Harper could put up this season and what that could mean for the promotion of baseball.

Harper is exactly the sort of player who could grab the attention of sports fans in countries that don’t currently concentrate much on baseball.

Even if his performances on the field don’t quite manage that, the contract he signs when he becomes a free agent at the end of next season certainly will.

Weekly Hit Ground Ball: 0-10 Avoided

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WHGB11Friday was a night of relief for the Atlanta Braves and Minnesota Twins.

They were both staring at the indignity of beginning the MLB season with ten consecutive loses and managed to avoid that fate with timely victories. Both teams also followed up their first wins with a second on Saturday to start bringing some semblance of hope for their fans.

The terrible 0-9 start was no surprise for the Atlanta Braves who have specifically designed this team to be close-to-hopeless.

For all of the good that MLB has done in recent years to bring parity and hope to many teams, the rewards (never mind lack of penalties) that incentivize teams to completely blow up their Major League roster to build for the future is one that needs addressing.

There is a clear logic to what they’re doing, as there was to the way the Chicago Cubs and Houston Astros broke everything down to start again a few years ago, but with so much money flowing into the sport it’s difficult to justify teams charging fans Major League ticket prices, and earning Major League revenue from national and local TV networks, whilst fielding Triple-A teams.

A balance needs to be struck between helping teams to rebuild and not encouraging teams to deliberately field poor teams. One way would be to strip teams of early first round draft picks if they are not within a certain percentage of the wins amassed by best team in their league, or at least in their division. That would be a good way to avoid the unappealing race to the bottom where teams want to have the worst record so that they get the number one pick in the following year’s draft.

Maybe ‘tanking’ as it’s known will be addressed in the new Collective Bargaining Agreement? For now though, the Atlanta Braves will spend their final season at Turner Field putting out a team that only diehard fans will have the least bit of interest in watching.

The Minnesota Twins have been on a similar rebuilding project, yet their surprising second-placed finish in the AL Central last year raised hopes that a return to the good times may be closer than was predicted.

We’ve not seen much evidence to support that just yet, even though there is a group of young players there that can help to turn things around to a certain extent and give Twins fans a reason to watch – and enjoy – their team this season.

Gaining wins when the going’s good

We should also be mindful of the quality of opposition different teams face in the early going, particularly when it comes to the pacesetters.

In the American League, both the Baltimore Orioles and Chicago White Sox have started well and both have done so in part by winning games against the Twins and Tampa Bay Rays. Five of the Orioles’ 8 wins so far have come against those two teams, whilst the White Sox swept the Twins in a three-game series and are 1-1 against the Rays heading into Sunday’s series decider.

Baltimore will live and die by the longball this season and we saw how effective a plan that can be on Friday when they clubbed five against the Texas Rangers in an 11-5 victory. Whether they can mount a challenge in the AL East for the whole season will come down to how many of their homers are of the one-run variety.

The Orioles placed a large bet on ‘hack and hope’ by adding Mark Trumbo and Pedro Alvarez this off-season to a lineup not blessed with much patience as it was and their 8-4 loss to the Rangers on Saturday – when they out-homered their opponents 3-0 – showed the other side of their approach.

Equally in the National League, the Washington Nationals’ 9-1 start, with a seven-game winning streak on the go, has been fueled by going 5-0 against the Braves and taking the first two games of this weekend’s series against the similarly-rebuilding Philadelphia Phillies.

Every win counts the same in the standings and the Nationals can only beat the teams put in front of them, but it was always likely they would get off to a good April based on the strength of the schedule they would be facing.

After today’s game against the Phillies they travel to Miami for four-games and then have three against the Twins and three more against the Phillies. By the 29th it’s quite likely that Washington will have a win-loss record of something around 15-6. They’ll then start a 10-game road trip against the St Louis Cardinals (3 games), Kansas City Royals (3) and Chicago Cubs (4) and we’ll have a better handle on their early season promise once they’ve faced some sterner opposition.

Equally the 4-6 New York Mets will have an opportunity to gain ground on their rivals during the same period. After finishing their series against Cleveland today, they have three games in Philadelphia, three in Atlanta and three at home against Cincinnati. The reigning NL Champions need to follow Washington’s lead in taking advantage of three of the weakest teams in the league this season.

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

Outfielders come off the market

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The top two remaining MLB free agents have come off the market in the past couple of days and so it’s worth revisiting the off-season review to take these signings into account.

The Detroit Tigers have firmly pushed themselves up into second place in the AL Central division, and become a real Wild Card threat, with the addition of outfielder Justin Upton on a six-year contract worth $132.75m (a shade over £93m, or approximately £300k per week).

We all know the story here: the Tigers’ 86 year old owner Mike Illitch has once again dipped into his savings and upped the payroll to try and win a World Series for Detroit.

The only knock on the signing is that Upton adds another right-handed bat to a lineup that already leaned heavily that way. It makes them a little more vulnerable against good right-handed pitching, yet, as Upton himself noted at the press conference to announce the deal, Miguel Cabrera doesn’t mind which hand the ball comes out of.

It rounds off a good off-season for the Tigers, one much needed after they fell down the trapdoor in 2015. The need for Cabrera and Victor Martinez to stay healthy remains; however they do at least have another good hitter now to help cover in case they miss any games.

The other major outfielder signing hasn’t been confirmed as yet, but the announcement of Yoenis Cespedes’ return to the New York Mets is just a formality.

Like many others, I had questioned whether the Mets’ owners would actually go out and spend some money to back up their great young pitching. The market has worked favourably for the Mets in the end. It looks like Cespedes never got the big offer he was hoping for and was therefore open to a return to New York that could give him another bite at the free agent cherry in a year’s time when there will be less free agent competition.

Although the headline figures on the reported deal are three years for $75m, only a bad injury or collapse in performance is going to prevent him from pocketing a $27.5m salary (£19.2m, or £369k per week) this season and then opting out of the remaining two years of the contract.

That should work well for both parties. Cespedes is a difficult player to rank because his highlight reel exploits (home-run hitting spurts, ridiculous throws from the outfield etc) tend to see him elevated to the position of a star attraction, even though his overall contribution in a season shows him to be a good rather than great player.

Adding a good player is always a good idea though. The claims that he turned down a larger offer from division rivals the Washington Nationals makes it all the sweeter for the Mets.

I’m not sure it tips the balance either way to any significant extent. The Mets’ roster still had a decent margin in hand over the Nationals on paper without Cespedes and, even though it would have made for an interesting story, adding him to Washington’s lineup at the expense of the Mets would not have made me elevate them ahead of the reigning champions.

That’s not to say the Nationals couldn’t put together a great season, with or without Cespedes, just that it’s hard to bank on them doing so following last year’s disappointment (and describing it as a ‘failure’ wouldn’t be overly harsh in the circumstances). Cespedes joins Jason Heyward and Ben Zobrist in resisting the Nationals’ overtures this off-season. There’s a sense of negativity around Washington at the moment, not just from Jonathan Papelbon’s continued presence either, and, more than most, they look like a team that needs to have a good April if they are to have a good season.