Tag Archives: Washington Nationals

Off-season so far: National League

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

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

This part of the review focuses on the National League.

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

NL Central – Cubs on the prowl

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NL East – Waiting for a big move

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

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

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

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

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

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

MLB offseason begins with managerial merry-go-round

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While the Kansas City Royals and their fans will be basking in the glory of winning the World Series for weeks to come, the rest of baseball has already turned its attention to taking the title themselves in 2016 or in the years ahead.

The Washington Nationals are one of the teams in the sooner-rather-than-later camp and they made a major change this week to recover from their disappointing 2015 season by appointing Dusty Baker as their new manager.

The role of a manager in MLB was brought into question this year due to the Miami Marlins sacking Mike Redmond and temporarily replacing him with Dan Jennings, hitherto their General Manager and possessing scarcely any baseball coaching or managing experience. To an extent you do have to set the Marlins to one side when it comes to MLB trends as their owner Jeffrey Loria is unconventional, to put it politely, yet we’ve seen numerous other examples in recent years of teams appointing ex-players with little managerial experience.

The Nationals did this with Matt Williams and despite winning the 2014 NL Manager of the Year award, the award voters giving him the credit for their 96 wins with clearly the best roster in the league that year, which backfired as he failed to mould a group of talented individuals into a team producing consistent performances.

As is so often the case with managerial changes, the Nationals have gone for an opposite approach this time in the experienced Baker. However, the process of his appointment looks confusing to say the least, with former San Diego Padres manager Bud Black having been pencilled in to the position only for the team to turn back to Baker when they failed to reach an agreement with Black.

According to CBS’s Jon Heyman, it all started to unravel when the Nationals decided on appointing Black and then acted upon this by offering him a one-year contract.

Teams are entitled to negotiate contracts how they wish, but that either showed disrespect to Black or was an indictment on how unimportant they feel a manager is (or perhaps it was even a bit of both).

The Nationals went into the 2015 season with a 25-man roster payroll of $162m, a mix of veterans and young players who – based on how things played out last season – needed a skilled leader to keep them together whilst also running the strategic side of the game to maximise their chances of winning games and getting back to the postseason. There are only 30 MLB manager positions at any one time, so there are many candidates out there and any team actually in a period of competing for titles should want to get the very best they can.

You don’t attract such quality with a one-year contract offer. What the Nationals were effectively saying was “we’re not sure if this is going to work so we’re just going to give you a one-year deal and then if it goes wrong we can ditch you for someone else”. That’s hardly confidence-inspiring, nor does it help a manager in dealing with a clubhouse that therefore knows he could soon be out of the door.

They’ve ended up with a good manager in Baker, not without his faults but with plenty going for him too, so it may turn out well in the end for them, but potentially more through luck than judgement.

The Marlins meanwhile splashed out on a four-year deal with ex-Dodgers skipper Don Mattingly. He was on a bit of a hiding to nothing with LA, getting it in the neck when his expensively created team didn’t go all the way and yet likely to not receive a great deal of credit if they had done so anyway.  The Marlins have some good young talent so he has an interesting roster to work with, even if he may need to work around his owner’s unpredictable nature.

Mattingly’s replacement at the Dodgers is still to be decided. Plenty of names have been linked to the post and it’s a very attractive job even with the World Series or fail expectations to contend with. That seat on the MLB managerial merry-go-round should be filled soon.

WHGB: Notes from MLB Opening Week

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WHGB11There were 15 MLB games yesterday, 15 today and then another 14 tomorrow. After so many months without it, you very quickly get back into the swing of having baseball to enjoy every day.

I’m planning to publish articles a bit more regularly this season rather than bringing everything together into a weekly column, but there will still be weeks when I have a range of things to comment on that don’t fit into their own article.

I’ll badge them up under my usual ‘Weekly Hit Ground Ball’ theme, so just bear in mind that they might not be quite so weekly as the name suggests.

Good starts for some

It happens every season: several teams get off to good or bad starts and there’s an overreaction as to how representative that early record is compared to the true talent of the team concerned.

It’s not just baseball this happens in either. Aston Villa took 10 points from their first four games of the 2014/15 Premier League season and ridiculously gave manager Paul Lambert a contract extension on the back of it. “We can look to the future with real optimism”, Lambert said at the time. When reality set in (and considering their early good form included an unconvincing 2-1 home win against Hull and a 0-0 home bore draw against Newcastle, it shouldn’t have needed much thinking time) he ended up being hounded out in mid February with the team fighting a relegation battle.

So, nobody should be too quick to put money on the 4-1 Colorado Rockies winning the NL West, nor to laugh at the Washington Nationals’ pre-season favourites tag due to their 1-4 start.

Having written that, the Atlanta Braves should be celebrating their 5-0 start considering their lowly expectations for the year ahead, just as Cincinnati Reds can delight in their 4-1 start at home, and the Kansas City Royals can see their 5-0 start as a thumb in the eye for all who considered their 2014 World Series appearance to be a fluke.

Those starts to the season may not be the least bit indicative of the year ahead, but that doesn’t mean fans of those teams can’t enjoy them all the same.

Breakfast baseball

One part of following MLB in the UK that I neglected to mention in my recent article was the wonderful bonus of breakfast time baseball that we occasionally get to enjoy. This is typically when a west coast game runs on for a while – perhaps going into extra innings or due to a rain delay – so that the game is still ongoing around 7 a.m. BST.

We got our first dose of Bonus Breakfast Baseball on Wednesday morning and it was a memorable way to start as it featured Craig Kimbrel making his San Diego Padres debut. Kimbrel didn’t disappoint, striking out all three LA Dodgers batters he faced and leaving his new teammates like James Shields laughing in the dugout at the ease in which he can make Major Leaguer hitters look so helpless.

Rodriguez record approaching

Pitcher Masahiro Tanaka captured most of the attention from the New York Yankees’ opening game as concerns about the state of his elbow continue to keep the Yankee beat writers occupied. However, the other main story coming out of the game was the largely positive reaction Alex Rodriguez received from the home crowd following his year-long drug-related suspension.

Rodriguez undoubtedly will be booed at every other stadium he plays in – although that’s nothing new – but it was less certain quite how the Bronx faithful would respond to him wearing pinstripes once again.

The majority appear to have taken the stance that he has served his time and so long as he is trying to help their team win games from here, they will support him like they do the rest of their players. That may well change if he starts slumping at the plate as the season progresses.

The interesting story will come if Rodriguez does have a decent season and continues to add more home runs to the one he hit against Toronto on Thursday. The Yankees spent much of the off-season seemingly trying to find ways to get out of their contract with him and particularly in respect of the marketing bonuses he will receive as he reaches new home run landmarks.

Heading into Sunday, Rodriguez is fifth on the all-time MLB home run list with 655 and just five homers behind Willie Mays. The Yankees will have to pay him $6m if he gets to 660 and the next man on the list to catch is Yankee legend Babe Ruth with 714. Ruth’s tally will likely prove to be out of reach as Rodriguez turns 40 in July, but 660 should be only a matter of time and as pessimism over the team’s 2015 prospects already starts to grow, we may find the Yankees make more of the event than you might have thought just a few months ago.

NL East: Off-season so far

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

If the awards matter, why announce them like they don’t?

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MlbHlSqDerek Jeter’s retirement had many scribes pondering who will become the new ‘face of MLB’ and how the sport could do a better job at promoting its stars.

Consequently it was wonderful to see Mike Trout, unquestionably one of the most dazzling young players the sport has got, receiving his first Most Valuable Player Award a couple of weeks ago.

The news stories, online videos and TV coverage garnered by him receiving a trophy from a legend of the game in front of a packed crowd at a gala event would have been a good way to keep MLB fresh in the mind.

That’s not how the awards are dished out in baseball, though.

Instead, there was a bland press release and various TV networks interviewing him on a video link from his parents’ house. From the point of view of demonstrating Trout is really just ‘a regular guy’ then that approach may have some merit.

From the point of view of celebrating a great baseball talent, and convincing people he’s someone special they should be excited about watching, it’s as much use as a chocolate teapot.

A televised gala award evening to celebrate the recent MLB season is a blindingly obvious way to present all the major trophies, reliving the pennant races, the postseason and also all the other smaller stories that made up the year, as well as acknowledging again the people elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame that year.

Getting everyone together in a single place in the offseason might not be the simplest task, but it is certainly achievable and would be a great way to send-off the season in style, whilst getting people excited about next season in the process.

MLB does many things very well. Promoting its players is not one of them.

It was only recently that MLB decided it might be worth making a show of the early rounds from the amateur draft. They are starting to build that up as a televised event now and an end-of-season review extravaganza would be a positive next step to further promote the game’s emerging young stars and established names.

Quite simply, if MLB can’t be bothered to make a big thing of the awards, why would a casual sports fan care about them either?

Evaluating achievements

Irrespective of the ropy way they were announced, this year’s selections for the four main awards all gave reason to consider some of the subtleties around how achievements should be weighted when selecting a winner.

With the MVP awards, the main talking point was the decision to crown LA Dodgers pitcher Clayton Kershaw as the NL’s MVP alongside his now traditional Cy Young award. The fact that pitchers have their own prestigious award, and that they play in significantly less games over the season than a position player, does call into question whether a pitcher should win the MVP award.

The voting criteria makes clear that pitchers are eligible for the award; the case from there is how you measure a position player’s contribution against that of a starting pitcher. Starting pitchers may only take the ball one day out of five, but on that day they have a far greater impact on the game (delivering 100+ pitches) than a position player taking four or five at-bats and making a couple of fielding plays.

Giancarlo Stanton and Andrew McCutchen both had great seasons, yet neither were exceptionally above Kershaw’s outstanding performance for the Dodgers and consequently that made him a fitting choice.

There were fewer arguments around Kershaw’s NL Cy Young award success. In the AL version it was Corey Kluber who came out on top over Felix Hernandez. Both had excellent years so whichever way you went with those two there was a good case to say you had the right answer.

King Felix clearly has the more impressive track record over a number of seasons, which could be argued as being a crucial factor rather than just focusing on one exceptional campaign. Ultimately there’s a good case that Kluber had the slightly better season – for example, using Baseball-References’ WAR as a guide Kluber added 7.4 wins to his team over a replacement player, compared to Hernandez’s 6.8 – and if the award is there to honour the best pitcher that season then previous seasons should only come into it if there is really nothing else to separate them.

In the Rookie of the Year stakes, Jacob deGrom gave the New York Mets a rare reason to be cheerful and Jose Abreu was a similarly uplifting presence for the Chicago White Sox.

Abreu doesn’t quite fit the traditional image of a young, fresh-faced rookie. He made his Major League debut this year as a 27-year-old having defected from Cuba and came into the Big Leagues with considerable experience of playing in his homeland and on the international stage.

His unanimous selection as Rookie of the Year showed that his strict definition as a Major League rookie regardless of his previous experience was good enough for the voters. Considering the challenge he faced in competing against MLB pitchers and in adjusting to life in the States, it was a decision few could find much fault with.

Finally, the Baltimore Orioles’ Buck Showalter and Washington Nationals’ Matt Williams took home the Manager of the Year honours for the AL and NL respectively.

Showalter’s work with the Orioles has cemented his reputation as an excellent, experienced manager. In some respects this contrasts considerably with Williams for whom 2014 wasn’t simply his first year as a Major League manager, but a manager at any level.

His team led the National League with 96 wins and that’s a good starting point for any discussions on how successful a year a manager has had. Still, the impact that a manager can have in the standings is always largely determined by the roster of players he has at his disposal.

There is a school of thought that Williams made his share of mistakes this year. Had Williams been given his managerial break by the Arizona Diamondbacks – for whom he was a coach for several years before joining the Nationals – or perhaps a team like the Colorado Rockies, then I’m betting he would not have been any part of the Manage of the Year conversation.

The problem with that stance is that you end up penalizing a manager for having the benefit of a talented group of players to call on, as trying to put some subjective value on what a manager brings to a team is devilishly difficult.

Bruce Bochy would have been an obvious alternative for his postseason exploits, yet let’s give Williams some credit for leading the Nationals to 96 wins and wait and see if he can do it again in 2015.

A Friday filled with Division Series drama

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MlbPostseason2014We are only a few days into the 2014 postseason, but it’s safe to say that when we look back over the offseason Friday’s bonanza of baseball will turn out to be one of the most memorable days from it.

It was the only day on the Division Series schedule in which we were guaranteed games from all four series – Monday could provide that too if the two American League series both go to a fourth game – and all four served up the sort of drama and excitement that playoff baseball is all about.

The MLB.com Game Recap videos combined provide a great way to spend 15 minutes re-living the action from the four Friday contests.

Detroit and Baltimore got the day underway with Game 2 of their series starting at 17.07 BST. The Orioles staged an incredible comeback to turn around a 5-1 deficit and to put themselves in the best possible position of a 2-0 series lead heading to Detroit.

The loss for Detroit highlighted the flaws of a team containing several outstanding players, yet having weak links in other parts of their roster despite it being put together at considerable expense. Although a home win for the Tigers in Game Three will put a completely different spin on the series, you would expect the Orioles to complete the job based on their regular season performance and the first two games of the series.

San Francisco and Washington went next and the Giants showed the World Series-winning magic of 2010 and 2012 may still be with them by grabbing the advantage by winning Game One.

One big change from those two title triumphs and this year is the introduction of the Video review challenge system. We saw the huge benefits of that in the third inning when the Giants’ Travis Ishikawa was called out on a close force-out play at second base only for the review process to prove that he was safe.

Ishikawa came around to score the opening run of the game two batters later and that’s exactly why replay is so important; getting potentially crucial calls right rather than relying on the hoary old tosh of ‘luck evening itself out’. Just as importantly, the umpire was able to come out of the game knowing that even though his professional pride may have taken a very slight dent by getting a tricky call wrong, the mistake didn’t cost the Giants and he didn’t have to deal with a bunch of reporters and irate fans.

Two other things stood out from the game for me. Firstly, there was the monumentally important bases-loaded strikeout by Hunter Strickland to end a Nationals threat in the sixth inning. Save-compiling closers apart, relief pitchers tend to fly under the radar until the playoffs come along. Strickland’s 100MPH punch-out pitch will certainly have gained him some attention last night.  Secondly, the Bryce Harper hype is something I’ve written about before, but even the naysayers have to admit that he has enormous talent. Mark down his gargantuan moonshot in the seventh inning – off Strickland, such is the hero/zero highwire act that relievers walk – as his first real playoff highlight.

Then came the ding-dong drama of the series opener between the St. Louis Cardinals and Los Angeles Dodgers.

The Cards beat Clayton Kershaw in the playoffs yet again and whilst their fans will be desperate to take the next two games in as trouble-free a manner as possible, the rest of us can only look at all that happened in Game One and ask for four more of those, please.

It was a game that had everything, not least the sort of amped-up aggro that looks certain to turn the rest of the series into a passion-filled tussle that may well spill over from a figurative fight to a literal one.

In every best-of-five-game series, the home team that has lost Game One is desperate to win the next game rather than head to their opponent’s backyard in an 0-2 hole, yet it must carry even more weight here. The facts are simple: the Dodgers somehow lost after knocking out the Cardinals’ ace Adam Wainwright and handing a 6-1 lead to Kershaw to protect. If ever a team needed a win to wipe away the memories of yesterday with a win today, it’s these Dodgers.

A small crumb of comfort for the Dodgers is that they’re not yet in as big a hole as their cross-town rivals, the Los Angeles Angels.

After two games at home, they’ve now suffered two extra inning defeats to Kansas City as the completely spurious but always-attractive feeling of a ‘team of destiny’ really starts to take hold around the Royals.

Kauffman Stadium is going to be absolutely electric on Sunday night as Kansas City hosts their first postseason game since 1985. The Angels didn’t win 98 regular season games by chance and so a comeback cannot be counted out, yet they are going to need C.J. Wilson to find a quality start from somewhere after an inconsistent patch of form. Despite his nickname, ‘Big Game’ James Shields hasn’t been particularly impressive so far in his playoff appearances. Sunday night would be the perfect time for the Royals’ starting pitcher to live up to his billing.

Weekly Hit Ground Ball: Nationals nicely placed

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WHGB11The Washington Nationals have the best record in the National League going into Sunday with 84 wins against 63 losses and it’s possible that some onlookers may not have quite noticed.

It’s a product in part on the differing expectations placed on the team this year compared to the previous two.

The 2012 campaign saw the Nationals playing playoff baseball for the first time since the Expos were shamefully taken away from Monteral and rebranded in Washington in 2005.

Their 98 regular season wins were a giant leap ahead of previous paltry totals, although the back-to-back seasons of 100+ losses in 2008 and 2009 were precisely what allowed them to acquire Stephen Strasburg and Bryce Harper as number one selections in the subsequent amateur drafts. This not only added two exciting young talents but also changed the whole atmosphere around the club, with the Nationals being picked up by the national media as a team on the rise.

Unfortunately for Washington, the achievement of gaining 98 regular season victories was quickly blown away by a a crushing 3-2 Division Series loss to the St. Louis Cardinals. Going out of the postseason early is always a blow, yet the manner of their defeat made it seem disastrous. They led 6-0 after three innings in the decider and, despite St. Louis’s efforts to chip away at the deficit, everyone in Nationals Park was on their feet heading into the ninth inning with a 7-5 lead waiting to celebrate.

Instead of jumping for joy, Nationals fans ended up drowning in despair as closer Drew Storen – another first round draft pick – went into meltdown and conceded four runs as the Cardinals prevailed 9-7.

An overall terrific season suddenly seemed like a disaster.

The then-manager Davey Johnson’s bullish ‘World Series or bust’ cry heading into 2013 came true in a sense when his team missed out on the playoffs completely last year and created question marks over just how good these players were coming into 2014. The appointment of a rookie manager, Matt Williams, as a replacement for the retired Johnson gave further cause for doubt.

Fans of the Atlanta Braves certainly felt confident about their chances of retaining their NL East crown. The division has produced some entertaining rivalries over the past decade and the latest battle for supremacy between the Braves and Nationals is as good as any before. Part of the needle between the two stems from the national attention on the likes of Strasburg and Harper and a feeling among many Braves fans that their team is unfairly overlooked, or more specifically that Washington get generous coverage that their actual performances don’t deserve.

So far this season only the most-biased Braves fan would deny that their team has been second best. The Nationals have a 9.5 game lead over the Atlanta Braves in the NL East and have earned this cushion without the fanfare that has previously surrounded the team. None of their players have especially gaudy conventional statistics, but what they’ve got this year is a whole assortment of players making good contributions, not least on a pitching staff that is right up there as one of the best in the Majors.

The Nationals were a much-hyped team in 2012 and 2013 and didn’t quite live up to expectations. Maybe this year, with less attention on them, might be the one where they make it all the way to the Fall Classic.

‘Crush’ Davis crashes

Thankfully MLB hasn’t been the subject of many negative news stories of late, the NFL has cornered that particular market among U.S. sports recently, but a drug suspension for a key player on a playoff-bound team is always likely to create a few waves.

In the case of the Baltimore Orioles’ Chris Davis, he has fallen foul of the drug-testers for a relatively minor contravention after testing positive for amphetamines. He even had a medical exemption for using the product, Adderall, prior to this season, so probably will avoid landing firmly in the ‘drug cheat’ class set by public opinion, even though his MLB-leading 53 home runs last season raised an eyebrow or two among the conspiracy theorists.

It’s the timing of the suspension that raises its prominence. A 25-game ban normally makes for a month out of action in MLB terms, but the Orioles only had 17 regular season games left when his ban came into effect on Friday. Baltimore have a comfortable lead in the AL East so his absence will not be felt too badly there; it’s the gap he’ll leave in the first eight playoff games, if they get through the best-of-five Division Series, that will be key.

How big a blow it will be remains to be seen. Davis has had a very disappointing season compared to 2013; however his ability to change a game with one swing of the bat is still there, as shown by his 26 home runs this season, and the Orioles only need him to get hot for a few days to turn a short playoff series around. The question will be whether Davis can contribute much in the second-part of a potential Championship Series after not facing competitive MLB pitching for a considerable length of time.

The Orioles’ all-but-certain AL East title will be a remarkable achievement considering the obstacles they have faced, particularly losing Manny Machado and Matt Wieters to injuries. If they reach the Championship Series, Davis may well find a place on the roster as Baltimore try to find what potential game-changers they’ve got left.

Playoff schedule

As we’re on the playoff theme, the postseason schedule was announced on Thursday.

The two Wild Cards will take place on Tuesday 30 September and Wednesday 1 October and although start times haven’t been announced for any of the games as yet, those two undoubtedly will be played at night in the States and therefore be early morning contests on Wednesday and Thursday for us in the U.K.

As for the World Series, that will start on a Tuesday night this year (so early hours of Wednesday for us), a day earlier than the Wednesday start we’ve become familiar with in recent years. Arguably the main impact from a British perspective is that it means Games Three to Five will be played in the early hours of Saturday, Sunday and Monday for us, which may make it easy to arrange to watch them live than the previous Sunday-to-Tuesday morning sequence.

Weekly Hit Ground Ball: Hate for Harper

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WHGB11When you watch an MLB game on BT Sport or ESPN, the chances are high that at some point – probably more than once, in fact – you will see an advert containing the Washington Nationals’ Bryce Harper.

Harper is shown on the field with some of the greats of the game stood next to the likes of Babe Ruth and Ted Williams, all leading to the final statement:

“Bryce Harper is only 21 years old, but he already looks like a legend”.

It’s a neat feat of production skill to make his image seamlessly blend in with footage of the past and as a 30 second promotional piece for MLB and one of it’s young players, it works really well.

However, it doesn’t half rile up some people, especially Stateside.

There’s a growing group who look at Bryce Harper’s career so far, not least his performance in 2014, and start tapping furiously at the keyboard or on their mobile device to explain that Harper is not a legend and is instead an overhyped kid who hasn’t done anything to deserve being associated with such a label.

And it’s not just the online loonies and big-mouth media ‘personalities’ that are piling in. On Wednesday, Harper’s manager Matt Williams lost patience with the latest reporter to question if the outfielder might be better off heading back to the Minor Leagues to work on his game. Williams responded in no uncertain terms that this was not going to happen and that he was fed up of such nonsense being stirred up, stating his case so strongly that he felt the need to apologise the next day for his behaviour.

Harper has had to live with lofty expectations ever since he appeared on the front of Sports Illustrated in June 2009. At the time he was 17 years old, still at Las Vegas High School and a year away from even being eligible to be drafted by a Major League team. In baseball, where the college scene doesn’t garner anywhere near as much attention as the gridiron and basketball competitions, a player doesn’t receive such national recognition until they are making waves as a rookie in the Majors and this often comes when the player is around 23 years old and has ‘paid his dues’ in the Minor Leagues.

Harper essentially had a target on his back before he had ever got near a Major League field. He has been firmly under the spotlight since that point and every transgression, and he had a few where his competitive spirit – being kind to him – got the better of him, and every dip in performance was always going to be picked over.

In many ways Harper has always reminded me of Wayne Rooney, who gained national attention in the U.K. when he made his debut for Everton as a sixteen year old. They both come across as being a bit rough around the edges, not your usual permanently smiling completely media-savy young guys. They are precociously talented and the fire within then has a tendency to push them over the edge at times.

Harper has faced criticism for his 110% style that sees him banging heavily into outfield walls trying to make stunning catches (and then facing even more criticism the very few times he gave anything less than 100% running down the line), whilst Rooney has been accused of letting his team and country down by letting his temper get the better of him, most notably after being sent off for stamping on Portugal’s Riccardo Carvalho in a 2006 World Cup quarter final (and then criticised heavily when he wasn’t charging around and ‘showing passion’).

The comments in parentheses drive home the point: because of who they are, anything less than complete success will be jumped on.

Both of them have already benefited handsomely from all the attention with lucrative contracts and promotional deals, so there’s no need to take violin lessons so as to serenade their poor downtrodden souls. The criticism is also a back-handed compliment to them: we expect and hope for great things from them and we’re disappointed when they don’t do something special.

In Harper’s case, it’s valid to look at his numbers to date on their own and to say they are not of a legendary level yet. Across his first 312 MLB games he has produced a .268/.350/.462 batting line with 46 homers.

They are not outstanding numbers, but they are good numbers and the whole point about Harper is that he’s such a talent that he has played those first 312 games at an age when the vast majority of players who make it to the Majors were competing against High School, College and low minor league competition.

I suspect the majority of baseball fans do understand this and the analysts fighting back against the Harper haters shouldn’t lose sight of baseball being a compelling drama of heroes and villains.

A lot of the grief Harper receives is because sports fans enjoy having a pop at a talented young player who doesn’t wear their chosen team’s uniform. It’s the way it works: those looking at the game from a rational perspective criticise players that aren’t very good, those looking at the game from a fan’s perspective criticise opposing players precisely because they are very good.

It all makes sense in a moment such as happened on Thursday, a day after Williams’ defence of his outfielder, when Harper launched a two-run walk-off homer against the New York Mets. It was a dramatic, exciting moment, made all the more so because Harper is a lightning rod for attention, both good and bad.

And that’s exactly why MLB has him starring in a promotional video.

Weekly Hit Ground Ball: Dizzying deadline day

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WHGB11It’s the nature of most things these days that they are hyped to the moon. Promising something good isn’t good enough. It has to be the biggest, the best, the most controversial or outrageous to be worthy of anyone’s attention, apparently.

All of which leaves any sane person viewing any ‘big event’ with a healthy dose of scepticism. If you’re guaranteed excitement and drama, the chances are it will not live up to the billing; you might as well accept it to begin with and not get sucked in by the hype.

And yet every now and then that scepticism proves to be misplaced. The drama foretold really does unfold.

That’s exactly what we enjoyed last Thursday evening from the MLB trade deadline.

The British football transfer deadline is, ‘thanks’ to Sky Sport News, a ridiculous farce in which every minor potential deal is talked about as a major news story. ASBOs in waiting crowd around a gormless reporter at a dark training ground and get excited about a distinctly average player signing for an inflated fee who will soon become forgettable. Still, for that fleeting moment he gives the team the feeling that they are at least doing something and that’s all the matters.

It is still exciting if your team does happen to land a player who will genuinely improve the team, but there’s a lingering thought that most of the players couldn’t care who they play for anyway. The majority of transfers are characterised – fairly or not – by a player forcing his way out of the club, demanding his contract to be paid up in full alongside a loyalty bonus so that he can get a signing-on fee and a bigger salary at another team.

Nothing summed it up better than the sight of striker Peter Odemwingie sat in his car outside Loftus Road having driven himself to the club he wanted to join despite his present team, West Brom at the time, not having actually agreed to sell him. In that case ‘player power’ didn’t rule the day: Odemwingie’s move fell through and he was left looking like a prat and condemned forever more as the butt of many a joke.

In complete contrast, most trades in MLB happen without a player’s say-so. Austin Jackson was merrily standing in centrefield at Comerica Park on Thursday playing for the Detroit Tigers, the team he’s been with since the start of 2010, before he was called off the field mid-game and told he had been traded to the Seattle Mariners.

There was nothing he could say or do other than hug his team mates and start to pack his bags.

Asdrubal Cabrera was at Progressive Field, the place he’s called home since 2007, looking ahead to his team’s game against the Seattle Mariners when he found out that he wouldn’t be donning the Cleveland uniform that day after all. Instead, he sat on his own in the concourses outside the clubhouse and quietly took in the news that he would be moving to Washington.

That photo sums the emotions up well. Cabrera is moving to the current NL East division leaders and so it’s a good opportunity for him – rather than being traded away to a cellar-dweller as can sometimes happen – yet that doesn’t soften the initial blow of leaving behind the people and places you’ve become so accustomed to being part of your daily life.

Before we feel to guilty about taking such pleasure in players being cast hither and tither, they are of course doing what they love and getting paid very handsomely for the privilege.

In fact, it’s sometimes the amount that they are getting paid – or soon will be upon signing a free agent contract – that leads to a team trading them away.

Jon Lester’s preference clearly was to be a lifelong Red Sox player, yet he was unable to come to agreement with the team on a contract extension so he was traded to the Oakland A’s in the first shot of a thrilling deadline day of dealing. Both Lester and Boston have stated that their separation may not be forever and that they could still be reunited this offseason when he becomes a free agent; however you have to assume that if Boston couldn’t find a figure they liked when negotiating exclusively with the pitcher, they’re even less likely to once other suitors get involved.

There was even less chance of David Price staying with the team that drafted him and for whom he’s played his entire career so far. The Tampa Bay Rays probably couldn’t even afford his 2015 salary in his final year before free agency, so he was dealt in a three-team trade to the Detroit Tigers (the Seattle Mariners being the other team involved). The Tigers are not exactly shy at spending big on players, although as with Boston and Lester they were unable to agree a contract extension over the past off-season with Max Scherzer.

Acquiring Price will make it easier to part ways with Scherzer this offseason, both in having a ready-made replacement for 2015 and giving them another opportunity to sign an ace-level pitcher to a multi-year contract.

Seeing where Lester and Scherzer end up over the offseason, and if the Tigers can reach a deal with Price, will be fascinating, but the free agent market will struggle to match up to this past trade deadline.

Waiver deals

And don’t forget that the trade deadline is only a partial deadline, as deals can still be completed, just not in such a straightforward one-on-one team negotiation process. MLB Trade Rumors explains the process well here.

Weekly Hit Ground Ball: Head-first hurts

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WHGB11Josh Hamilton was one of the major question marks hanging over the Los Angeles Angels coming into the 2014 season.

If he could regain his position as a fearsome hitter then the Halos would be one step closer to pushing for playoff contention; if he got lost in a mire of wild swinging again then they’d need to hope someone else could pick up the slack.

As always seems to be the case with Hamilton, things haven’t turned out quite that simply. He had shown encouraging signs at the plate that he was being more selective over his first eight games. The trouble is, he’s not going to be stepping into the batter’s box again for at least six weeks after tearing a ligament in his left thumb whilst sliding head-first into first base.

There’s no doubt that the all-action head-first slide looks good; it gives the impression of a player going all out to try to be safe regardless of any risk to his body. It’s not a smart way to play the game though; the Angels needed Hamilton in their lineup for the next six weeks much more than they needed him to be safe at first in the seventh inning of an early April game.

Sliding into bases does pose an injury risk, whether head-first or with your legs, and, as with any risk, you have to weigh up the rewards for the effort. The Nationals’ Ryan Zimmerman fractured his right thumb diving back into second base on Saturday and he’ll be a loss to Washington, but from second base through to home plate the slide is often your only option to get there quickly whilst avoiding a tag play. You accept the risk that it’s the right way to do it and every now and then a digit can get caught in the wrong place.

That’s not the case at first base. The rules specifically allow you to run through the bag and not be tagged out. It’s the quickest way to get there, as shown in an ESPN Sports Science experiment, and is much the safer way. In a crucial late inning moment when a throw to first base is high it can be worth the gamble to slide, but in any other case it just doesn’t make sense and calling it ‘playing hard’ is to overlook the facts.

Facts that include Josh Hamilton sitting on the sidelines for the next six weeks or so, rather than helping his team to win games that may prove to be the difference between making the playoffs or not.

Injuries

Hamilton and Zimmerman were only two of the players to land on the Disabled List this week.

Much of the Tampa Bay Rays’ recent low-payroll defying success has been built on their young pitching talent and their ability to keep their hurlers relatively healthy.  That made it all the more painful a sight to see Matt Moore clutching his pitching arm elbow after throwing a pitch against the Royals on Monday.

Moore had problems with his elbow last season and was able to come through them. His consultation with Dr James Andrews didn’t provide a definitive prognosis so there remains some hope that he will not be added to the Tommy John surgery list, but the Rays will be looking at their pitching options with the potential that they could be without Moore’s services for the next year or so.

That fate has already been decided for another bright young pitching prospect. The Pirates hoped to add Jameson Taillon to their rotation at some point this season, joining fellow youngster Gerrit Cole as a great duo to build around for years to come. Instead, Taillon will spend the next year rehabbing after undergoing Tommy John surgery on his right elbow this week.

Elbow injuries to pitchers are a common theme, which makes them all the more frustrating as – rightly or wrongly – they seem like something the sport could do more to prevent.  Injuries will always be a part of the game though and we saw that this week when the Chicago White Sox’s outfielder Avisail Garcia landed awkwardly on his left shoulder when attempting a diving catch against the Rockies on Wednesday. Had he landed slightly differently he may have just been winded, instead he suffered a torn labrum in his shoulder and will now miss the rest of the season recovering from surgery.

When is a cheat not a cheat?

Cheat: verb, “act dishonestly or unfairly in order to gain an advantage” (definition as per Oxford Dictionaries)

Cheat is a word that gets bandied about quite a bit, but despite the seemingly straightforward definition, it is a muddled label to apply to someone, based predominantly on subjective opinion.

Take the topical case of Michael Pineda, the New York Yankees’ resurgent pitcher, and the dirty mark on his pitching hand during Thursday’s game against the Boston Red Sox.

Rule 8.02, paragraph 4 of MLB’s Official Rules states that a pitcher shall not “apply a foreign substance of any kind to the ball”. Within the Rules themselves, the only indication of what constitutes a foreign substance is in Rule 3.02, which explains that  “No player shall intentionally discolour or damage the ball by rubbing it with soil, rosin, paraffin, licorice, sand-paper, emery-paper or other foreign substance”.

If, as it appeared, Pineda was putting some pine tar on his pitching hand, and therefore onto the ball, then that would contravene the rules and be an illegal act. The Boston Red Sox TV crew made much of the footage, not surprising perhaps after two of Boston’s pitchers – Clay Buchholz and Jon Lester – were hauled over the coals for the same thing last season. However, after the game players from both teams collectively shrugged their shoulders.

Pineda claimed it was just dirt used to stop the ball from slipping from his grasp and – after seeing Omar Infante get hit in the face by a pitch this week – if a bit of dirt or similar helps to avoid pitches slipping into a batter’s head then you could understand players being relaxed about such ‘cheating’.

Something brewing in Milwaukee

We’ve seen teams get off to hot starts in the past many times, only to quickly fall away. Still, the Milwaukee Brewers were touted as a team that could potentially pull itself up into Wild Card contention this season and their MLB-best 9-2 record to start the year gives fans of the Brew Crew something to shout about again after their disappointing 74-88 season in 2013.