As the title of this post describes, it's been a real roller coaster ride for a lot of teams in the mlb this season especially the Blue Jays, Dodgers, Angels, Royals and, to a lesser extent, Nationals. Most of these teams were expected to achieve greatness this year because of offseason trades, major free agent signings or just how complete their team looked after a couple less major signings.
Of course the trades refers specifically to the Blue Jays and the Royals, while Kansas City did pull off the same magnitude in trades as the Blue Jays have it's been a similar ride for the fans. For the first month or so Kansas was performing great, though players like Eric Hosmer weren't hitting to well, but they were stringing together wins and keeping in the top 2 in the AL Central, which was an amazing feat considering where they were last year. Then as of late the rest of their bats have cooled down and their pitching has dropped a notch as well settling them down to the bottom of the AL Central, which is disappointing for the fans I must say, and I feel their pain. This is because the Jays have seemed to have the reverse of Kansas, at least to an extent. That is that they started out playing terribly, making errors left, right and centre, not hitting well, and not pitching well. Currently I can't say they've turned it around but they've been slowly showing signs of life in each of those categories, their no longer making stupid errors, the bullpen has been performing pretty well and the bats are better than they were. However the bats have been up and down, if you look at their batting avg with runners in scoring position over the last week or so it's been one step forward two back.
Then we look at the both LA baseball franchises who are both in hot water due to poor performances after seriously increasing their payroll over the off season. The Angels dropping $125 million dollars on Josh Hamilton, after dropping more than that on CJ Wilson and Albert Pujols the year before and the Dodgers signing Hyun-Jin Ryu, Zack Grienke and re-signing Brandon League for a total of $205.5 million dollars. Now the poor performance I've been more surprised with is the Dodgers and thats because their starting 3 pitchers (Ryu, Grienke and Kershaw) have been anything less than spectacular, their offence has just been off so far, which is a bit disappointing. Where as the Angels in my opinion made a series of poor signings, signing Pujols wasn't a bad idea but for the amount of money they dropped it was a terrible idea (he's been dropping in production, though not by huge amounts) and he's getting old and any player will start to drop in skill as they age (see whats happened to Roy Halladay). The CJ Wilson signing I had no problem with since he was pitching well for the Rangers and going to Angels Stadium meant he'd be in a MUCH better park, which would only work better for him. Now the Josh Hamilton singing in my opinion was the worst thing they could have done, not only is Hamilton a strikeout machine but he went from the 3rd best hitters park to the 3rd worst hitters park (not to mention his stats at Angels Stadium were horrific, and when people say its a small sample size thats bull shit, we're talking nearly 200 at bats). Overall both teams dug themselves into a hole at the beginning of the season and have shown some life only to be shot back down into losing games again.
The last example, the Nationals are in a very similar situation, from listening to baseball podcasts and news online I know that going into the season almost everyone in the baseball world was expecting the Nationals to either make it to the World Series or take it. Now the reason for this was because they at a first glance had a very 'complete team' that meaning they had 3 guys who could easily be a closer to cover the 7-8-9 innings and they also had their first 3 starters who could easily be aces on other staffs and their 4-5 starters if they performed well would easily be 2-3 guys in other pitching staffs. Now outside of their pitching they had good defence with guys like Zimmerman, LaRoche and Harper in the field and the same guys for offence. Now where it all went wrong, first off LaRoche hadn't been hitting the way he was expected to, Zimmerman had been having throwing issues, all of their starters except Strasburg and Detwiller have been having trouble, and like I expected some of their other 'offensive producers' were counted on too much (ie. Jason Werth, who is Werthless in my opinion). Now since the entire team hasn't collapsed they are still in 2nd place in the NL East but they are barely playing over .500 and the reason they are 2nd with that winning % is because all of the other teams in the NL East aside from Atlanta are terrible with a capital T.
Now what do I expect to happen with these teams? Well I think the Angels are going to come up short and not make the playoffs again because even if they can play to their potential from here on out the Rangers and Athletics have been playing much better from the start and they have too much ground to cover. The Dodgers and the Blue Jays I expect to be able to get back into things, since they are similar in the fact that they have one part of their team working on full cylinders while others are not (starting pitching for the Dodgers and the bullpen for the Blue Jays). If either team manages to get to .500 or better by the All Star Break I can see them potentially winning the division because with both teams since no one in either division is running away with it, it's pretty evenly spread. Though if they don't I think the best they can hope for in that situation is 2nd or more likely 3rd in the division and considering how well 3 of the 5 teams in the NL Central and AL West have been playing I don't thing they'd get the wild card either. Now the Royals I think are unfortunately going to fade away, they may be able to make it back from the abyss and make 3rd in the NL Central but I don't think they will get any higher, this is because the afore mentioned hitters are still not showing any signs of turning things around, which is necessary for the Royals to turn it around and finally their starting pitchers are showing signs of becoming mortal (specifically Guthrie and Shields). Lastly the Nationals, I expect they will get back into the groove of things especially since most of their games will be against the other weak NL East teams but considering how well the Braves have been playing I doubt they will win the division, more like they will make it by Wild Card. Either way we'll just have to wait and see what happens.
-Eric
No comments:
Post a Comment