BGB Fantasy League 2016: Week One

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The 2016 BaseballGB Fantasy League is under way. Which teams are off to a flying start and which teams have been bitten by injuries already?

Team
R
HR
RBI
SB
AVG
OPS
W
SV
K
HLD
ERA
WHIP
Score
26
7
29
5
.288
.863
5
4
54
1
2.50
1.15
11
28
2
22
2
.253
.752
4
1
37
0
3.29
1.25
1
The biggest winners of the opening week were the Maltsters, who defeated the Bombers 11-1. So who led the Maltsters in homers? Goldschmidt? Fielder? Gomez? Murphy? No, it was Jean Segura, who hit three and also stole two bases. Goldy and Prince each knocked in seven, while Murphy joined Segura in driving in five. Segura, Murphy, Eaton and Gordon all hit over .400 for the week.Liriano was one of five pitchers with a win, striking out 13. Davis had a win and joined Gregerson with two saves. The Bombers salvaged runs thanks to Bautista, who homered twice, and Corey Seager. Iglesias had a win and 12 strikeouts.

Team
R
HR
RBI
SB
AVG
OPS
W
SV
K
HLD
ERA
WHIP
Score
25
10
32
1
.272
.869
1
1
70
6
3.33
1.02
9
22
7
23
3
.187
.620
2
4
36
1
4.37
1.34
3

The Riverkings are also off to a flyer, defeating Norwich 9-3. Jay Bruce was the star batter, hitting .391 with two homers and nine RBIs, while Abreu and Moustakas each had multi-homer weeks. The pitching staff racked up an incredible 70 strikeouts, including 14 from Kershaw (who helped take ERA and WHIP), 13 from Jose Fernandez and 10 from Volquez.

Kela, Giles and Watson had two holds each. Odor, Springer and Grichuk each had a steal for Norwich, while Rizzo homered twice and knocked in 10, but the team struggled to hit for average. Salazar and Maeda each had a win while Tolleson collected a pair of saves.

Team
R
HR
RBI
SB
AVG
OPS
W
SV
K
HLD
ERA
WHIP
Score
35
6
34
4
.314
.866
5
4
53
4
5.06
1.43
8
28
12
33
2
.280
.907
3
3
77
2
3.83
1.44
4
My Isotopes managed to defeat the Slugs 8-4 in a matchup which went back and forth all week. David Peralta scored seven runs, while Adrian Gonzalez hit .429 and knocked in six runs and Teixeira knocked in seven. Marte swiped two bases. Sale had two wins, Casilla and Britton collected two saves each and Romo racked up four holds. Archer (17), Odorizzi (14) and Bumgarner (14) racked up the strikeouts as the Slugs’ staff posted 77, while de Grom and the bullpen helped take ERA.The star player was Trevor Story, who batted .333 with seven homers and 12 RBIs – what a savvy pick-up he could prove to be.

Team
R
HR
RBI
SB
AVG
OPS
W
SV
K
HLD
ERA
WHIP
Score
34
8
26
5
.264
.791
2
2
40
3
4.89
1.39
8
30
10
33
3
.238
.730
0
3
25
4
5.59
1.52
4

The Chasers also picked up an 8-4 win against Iron Men. Donaldson scored eight runs, homered four times and knocked in nine, teaming with Posey to take average and OPS. Lester picked up a win and helped take ERA and WHIP while Shelby Miller struck out eight. Iron Men saw Cano homer four times and drive in seven, while Correa hit three homers and joined Ellsbury in driving in four. Jeffress had three saves and Storen three holds.

Team
R
HR
RBI
SB
AVG
OPS
W
SV
K
HLD
ERA
WHIP
Score
30
6
21
1
.265
.755
4
2
65
1
3.75
1.22
7
22
6
19
2
.227
.673
3
4
46
0
3.70
1.05
4
Batteries Essential started with a win, beating Jesmond Dennings 7-4.Brandon Crawford scored five runs while Span knocked in six and Castellanos and McCutchen helped take average and OPS. Cueto had a pair of wins and struck out 12, while King Felix (16) and Richards (13) also racked up the strikeouts. Dickerson hit three homers and Heyward swiped a base in an otherwise quiet offensive week for Jesmond, while Osuna had three saves and the trio of Nicasio, Joe Ross and Nola helped take ERA and WHIP.
Team
R
HR
RBI
SB
AVG
OPS
W
SV
K
HLD
ERA
WHIP
Score
20
3
13
7
.213
.603
3
3
60
2
5.09
1.37
4
29
9
27
2
.290
.851
3
2
32
0
3.86
1.21
7

Another matchup, another 7-4 as the RBIs defeated the Lollygaggers. Fowler scored seven runs and hit .526 while Machado hit three homers and Castro hit two homers and drove in eight. Arrieta won twice and helped take ERA and WHIP. Altuve stole four bases for the Lollygaggers, while Hamels and Nelson each had 12 strikeouts, McGee had two saves and Hernandez two holds.

Team
R
HR
RBI
SB
AVG
OPS
W
SV
K
HLD
ERA
WHIP
Score
33
9
31
4
.255
.793
4
3
41
0
2.23
1.10
6
22
10
38
0
.280
.822
2
3
25
0
3.15
1.34
4

Last, but by no means least, the Knights collected a 6-4 win against the Sox. Puig scored seven runs and was one of four players to steal a base for the Knights. Price had a win and 10 strikeouts, teaming with Hammel to take ERA and WHIP. The Sox had the better of the offense, as CarGo homered three times, as did Kemp, who also knocked in 10. Papelbon had three saves.

Early injuries a factor

Batteries Essential suffered an early slice of bad luck after AJ Pollock was sidelined after the draft and before Opening Day and looks likely to miss most, if not all, of the regular season. The Riverkings also had to deal with Schwarber’s season-ending injury. Remember you can make trades straight away, so if you think you have a surplus in one position, have a look at other teams’ rosters and see if there’s potential for a deal. Or keep your eye on the waiver wire for the next Trevor Story…

Week Two Matchups

Maltsters (1st) v Iron Men (12th)
Riverkings (2nd) v Jesmond (10th)
Isotopes (3rd) v Lollygaggers (9th)
Chasers (4th) v Norwich (13th)
Batteries Essential (5th) v Sox (8th)
RBIs (6th) v Knights (7th)
Slugs (11th) v Bombers (14th)

 

MLB This Week: 18 early games to enjoy

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CovMLBUK2014It’s a bumper working week for MLB day-games.

There are 18 in total, at least one every day, and there’s a game on BT Sport and a free game online at MLB.com on Monday to Thursday evening UK time inclusive.

The games include three from the interleague series between the Pittsburgh Pirates and Detroit Tigers, a David Price start for the Red Sox against Baltimore, Kenta Maeda’s first start at Dodger Stadium and a Friday day-game from Wrigley Field.

All times are in BST.

Monday 11 April

18.10. Pittsburgh at Detroit (Niese – Greene) *BT Sport/ESPN
19.05. Baltimore at Boston (Gallardo – Price)
20.05. San Diego at Philadelphia (Cashner – Nola) *MLB.com Free Game
21.10. Chicago WS at Minnesota (Quintana – Gibson)
21.15. Milwaukee at St Louis (Jungmann – Wacha)

Tuesday 12 April

18.10. Pittsburgh at Detroit (Nicasio – Sanchez)
21.10. Arizona at LA Dodgers (Corbin – Maeda) *BT Sport1, MLB.com Free Game

Wednesday 13 April

18.10. Miami at NY Mets (Chen – Verrett)
20.35. LA Angels  at Oakland (Shoemaker – Surkamp) *MLB.com Free Game
20.40. Texas at Seattle (Griffin – Walker) *BT Sport1

Thursday 14 April

17.35. Detroit at Pittsburgh (Pelfrey – Cole)
18.05. San Diego at Philadelphia (Pomeranz – Velasquez)
18.10. Chicago WS at Minnesota (Danks – Santana)
18.10. Cleveland at Tampa Bay (Salazar – Smyly) *BT Sport1, MLB.com Free Game
18.45. Milwaukee at St Louis (Peralta – Garcia)
20.10. San Francisco at Colorado (Cain – De La Rosa)
21.05. Atlanta at Washington (Teheran – Ross)

Friday 15 April

19.20. Colorado at Chicago Cubs (Bettis – Hendricks)

All of these games are available to watch or listen to live via an MLB.TV subscription. TV coverage of MLB comes courtesy of the BT Sport channels and these are highlighted above, as are any games that are available to view online for free via MLB.com. The above list of games just shows those starting before midnight UK time. The full schedule of MLB games can be found on MLB.com

Weekly Hit Ground Ball: Opening week stories

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

Story of the week

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

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

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

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

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

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

Slide rule

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

DH in the NL? Not for MadBum

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

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

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

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

MLB This Week: Opening Week

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CovMLBUK2014Sunday was Opening Day; Monday is Opening Day.

The MLB season gets going in a slightly confusing way, but why have one Opening Day when you can have several?

Sunday’s three games were all good contests. Pittsburgh immediately gave everyone a reminder that there’s a third competitive team in the NL Central with a win against St Louis, Chris Archer and Marcus Stroman duelled at Tropicana Field with the latter taking the honours, and the Mets-Royals opener went the way of the World Series, right down to including a fielding clunker from Yoenis Cespedes.

Opening Week is a real celebration of baseball being back as the starting rotations are normally aligned so that aces or near-aces match-up against each other. It’s even better for us as teams schedule plenty of day-games this week making them perfect viewing for us.

As a reminder, every Monday I round-up all of the pre-midnight BST starts for the traditional working week ahead. This is on the basis that these are the games that you don’t need to sacrifice too much sleep to watch.

The games that are on the BT Sport channels are listed, as are any of the early games selected to be the MLB.com Free Game (available to watch online via MLB.TV without a subscription). MLB.com only seems to list those three days ahead, so it’s possible an early game on Thursday or Friday may be available to watch free too.

Monday 4 April

18:00. Houston @ New York Yankees (Keuchel – Tanaka) *BT Sport/ESPN
19:10. San Francisco @ Milwaukee (Bumgarner – Peralta) *MLB.com Free Game
20:05. Minnesota @ Baltimore (Santana – Tillman)
21:00. Seattle @ Texas (Hernandez – Hamels) *BT Sport/ESPN
21:10. Boston @ Cleveland (Price – Kluber)
21:10. Washington @ Atlanta (Scherzer – Teheran)
21:10. Philadelphia @ Cincinnati (Hellickson – Iglesias)

Tuesday 5 April

21:15. New York Mets @ Kansas City (Syndergaard – Young) *BT Sport/ESPN

Wednesday 6 April

18:10. Toronto @ Tampa Bay (Sanchez – Moore)
18:40. San Francisco @ Milwaukee (Samardzija – Garza)
19:05. Seattle  @ Texas (Miley – Lewis)
20:40. Colorado @ Arizona (Chatwood – Corbin) *MLB.com Free Game
21:55. Detroit @ Miami (Zimmermann – Fernandez)
23:10. Boston @ Cleveland (Buchholz – Carrasco)

Thursday 7 April

17:35. Philadelphia @ Cincinnati (Morton – Stephenson)
20:35. Chicago WS @ Oakland (Latos – Graveman) *MLB.com Free Game
21:05. Houston @ New York Yankees (Fiers – Eovaldi)
21:05. Miami @ Washington (Conley – Gonzalez)
21:35. Los Angeles Dodgers @ San Francisco (Wood – Peavy)
23:10. Boston @ Cleveland (Kelly – Salazar)

Friday 8 April

18:10. New York Yankees @ Detroit (Severino – Sanchez)
18:10. Philadelphia @ New York Mets (Eickhoff – deGrom)
21:10. Cleveland @ Chicago WS (Anderson – Danks)
21:10. San Diego @ Colorado (Rea – Lyles)

All of these games are available to watch or listen to live via an MLB.TV subscription. TV coverage of MLB comes courtesy of the BT Sport channels and these are highlighted above, as are any games that are available to view online for free via MLB.com. The above list of games just shows those starting before midnight UK time. The full schedule of MLB games can be found on MLB.com

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

MLB 2016 – American League Preview

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

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

That’s especially the case in the American League.

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

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

AL East

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

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

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

AL Central

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

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

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

AL West

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

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

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

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

My predictions

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

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

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

Weekly Hit Ground Ball: Good Friday by name …

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WHGB11Good Friday loomed like a bad omen this week.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The scorecard

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

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

Other MLB notes

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

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

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

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

Baseball Basics for Brits review: Volume 3

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BBfBThe third volume of our Baseball Basics for Brits series has now been reviewed and republished.

I always think that this is a particularly important for Brits to look at. It concerns player development and contracts and this is an area that is generally very different in MLB to what we have in most British sports.

The very fact that players normally can be shipped between teams with no say-so on their part is a complete contrast to the ‘player power’ landscape seen in football.

What goes along with this is that the contracts signed are for the player and carry across to whichever team they move to. That ensures they don’t lose out financially if they get traded from one of the giants of baseball to a minnow, but also means that a player at a smaller club can’t really force their way out to sign a more lucrative deal elsewhere.

A few of the key things to pick out are:

  1. One of the main updates in this version is taking into account the current ‘draft pool’ money that is given to each team. It’s been a goal of MLB owners to reduce money being spent on drafted players and – rightly or wrongly – the Players’ Union that represents MLB players has seemed more prepared to compromise on this area as it doesn’t directly affect current MLB players (although clearly affects future ones).
  2. Alongside this, the Players’ Union doesn’t actively represent players in the Minor Leagues (again, even though pretty much all MLB players come through the Minors). Minor League salaries are extremely low compared to MLB salaries and this is an ongoing issue that is becoming all the more noticeable whilst MLB trumpets the historic amounts of money that it generates.
  3. Finally, I’ve added in a case study of Jason Heyward to show how a player’s earning power changes as they move through the standard initial six-year MLB contract and then into free agency.

In reviewing the text, I was mindful that all of the contractual rules covered here – alongside everything else in MLB – come out of the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) between MLB (the 30 teams) and the Players’ Union. The current CBA expires at the end of this year and ideas around potential changes are already being thought about, so this is likely to be revised again in a year’s time.

MLB heads to Havana as live games return to BT Sport

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Weekly Hit Ground Ball: Living in a fantasy world

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WHGB11It’s two weeks from today that the 2016 MLB season will get underway and we’re starting to see managers using Spring Training games to get their opening series lineups set.

The same goes for many of us that play fantasy baseball.

Our BaseballGB league had its draft on Friday night, as recapped by Mark George. You always like to set a draft as close to Opening Day as possible so that there’s a bit more certainty on which players will be making teams. Having Easter fall on the weekend before the season starter makes that slightly trickier this year so, like many others, we’ll be keeping an eye on the MLB news over the next two weeks in the hope that key selections don’t have any last-minute accidents before the games get underway.

The BGB League is a 14-team, MLB-wide, Head-to-Head setup and Yahoo was quite kind to me in randomnly selecting me at #5 in the drafting sequence. Clayton Kershaw was there for me to select in the first round, but I’m always wary of going for a pitcher so early – even one of the class of Kershaw – and couldn’t look past the all-round package that Josh Donaldson provides at third base, so he was the first name on my team sheet.

My first dilemma came in the next round where the stolen base collector Dee Gordon was a tempting option, yet Buster Posey‘s consistency and ranking as the best catching option seemed too good to turn down.

There are always moments in a draft when you’re left watching 4 or 5 other people and hoping that they haven’t got designs on the player you want to take.

The first of these occasions came in the 9th round when I thought that Hanley Ramirez might fall into my lap. Now that the disastrous left-field experiment has been ended by Boston, I can see Ramirez having a bounceback year at the plate. He’s currently listed as an outfielder on Yahoo, yet I had designs on bagging him and then moving him to first base. Unfortuantely, no sooner had I double-checkd Yahoo’s rules on when a player obtains eligibilty at a different position than the Mighty Slugs proved none-too sluggish in nabbing in him three picks ahead of me. Brandon Belt wasn’t a bad second prize though.

The second occasion came in the 13th round and once again it was those dammned Slugs that foiled my plans. This one was especially painful because it concerned Addison Russell. As an A’s fan, it’s painful enough to see our former top prospect playing in a Cubs uniform, but at least I thought I could enjoy his first full season in the Majors with him picking up points as my fantasy second baseman. Alas, it seems destined that Russell will always be out of my reach.

I responded by taking a flyer on Dustin Pedroia regaining fitness and form. Apologies to Red Sox fans if I’ve jinxed him.

My one shaky selection came in the 12th round when I drafted Shelby Miller. It’s shaky because my hunch is that the D-Backs’ all-in gamble will backfire and, if it does, part of that is likely to be down to Miller failing to live up to his 2015 performance with the Braves. All things considered Miller looked like a good option at that point in the draft so I went against my hunch and added him. We’ll see how that one plays out.

The other starting pitcher conundrum came in the 17th round when I selected Andrew Cashner. I was very optimistic about Cashner’s prospects last year and drafted him in the 11th round, only for him and many other Padres to disappoint. One year on and I’ve decided to give him another chance. Whether it’s his impending fee agency at the end of this season that inspires him, or my show of faith, I’m hoping that he won’t let me down again.

All in all, I achieved my modest drafting objective of not completely stuffing myself up from the beginning. Looking at my roster, I’m aleady taken by the fact that there will be a whole host of teams that I’ll be keeping a keen eye on that I otherwise may not concentrate on so much. It doesn’t get in the way of my actual supporting interest in the A’s (Josh Reddick is my A’s fantasy pick this year, and I adhered to my ‘no Angels but Trout’ stance – top fantasy tip: don’t touch Jered Weaver with a smelly stick), but one of the great things about fantasy baseball is that it gives you a reason to care about games that have little meaning to your ‘real’ team.

Add it to the list of reasons to be excited about the coming season.

Other thoughts

There’s always a late injury before a fantasy draft to keep on top of and this year for the BGB league it was the Rays’ project closer Brad Boxberger, who faces at least eight weeks out following abdominal muscle surgery. Tampa Bay needs good health to compete against the Blue Jays, Red Sox and Yankees this year (I’m underwhelmed by the Orioles’ prospects) and this isn’t a great start for them.

The Adam LaRoche retirement fiasco over the past week has been completely bizarre and the way executive vice president Kenny Williams has handled it all has shown a surprisingly poor lack of judgement for such an experienced member of the Front Office. The general idea of limiting La Roche’s 14-year-old son’s time in the clubhouse seemed reasonable enough; however confronting the first baseman about it half-way through Spring Training has needlessly caused a significant amount of discontent and aggravation.

There were already some doubts about the White Sox’s competitiveness this season and manager Robin Ventura‘s job security as a result. Irrespective of what actual impact this issue has, if they start slowly over the first 6-8 weeks then Ventura, General Manager Rick Hahn and the players will all be pointing the finger in the same direction.

Finally, don’t forget that Nat Coombs’ new All American Sports Show begins on Tuesday at 18.00 on talkSport2, taking place at the same time that the Rays take on the Cuban national team in a historic game in Havana (broadcast live on BTSport/ESPN) . The show will also be available as a podcast if you can’t catch it live.