Trade Deadline Frenzy (The Major Moves)

The end of July 31st has come and gone and some pretty crazy trades that I think no one saw coming occurred and wow did they change the landscape of the races for the playoffs, not in terms of who is going to get there but who is more likely to make the final matches so let's take a look at the major moves made.

Trade of Jon Lester

The moving of Lester didn't really surprise me all that much because the Red Sox needed to make a change to their team in order to improve for the future and oddly enough they pulled kinda of a upper echelon version of what the Rays usually do and improved in a way that keeps them as a potential contender for next year. Now what they did manage to get for Lester was what surprised me, they traded him and Johnny Gomes to the Oakland A's for Yoenis Cespedes and $500,000, which is a shocker at first because Cespedes is a big power hitter who has delivered for Oakland since they signed him. However once you take a closer look it makes more sense, first since Jason Hammel haas basically imploded as of late the A's needed another starter if they wanted to continue their were in 100% thing then despite losing Cespedes they already have a good righty split hitter who can take his place in Brandon Moss and in true Oakland fashion they squired Gomes who, if you look at his splits, DESTROYS left handed pitching, sounds just like something Oakland would do and because of that the trade did put make any other holes to fill. On the Red Sox side, yes they did give up they best starter however they have Cespedes for an afforadable price for the next season (and let's remember the A's wouldn't be able to resign him so getting him out with high value was a good idea) as well as the remainder of the current one and they have the money to sign him long term which is a big deal since they have never really had a big power bat behind Ortiz, and let's not forget despite the fact that he can still hit he is getting old. As well we should remember that Lester was and still is very dedicated to being a Red Sox player so I wouldn't put it out of the realm of possibility that he signs back with the team in the offseason, so don't lose your shit Red Sox fans.

Trade of John Lackey

So might as well tackle the next Red Sox trade, again they traded away their only other consistent starting pitcher and one that is affordable for anyone. Now the traded itself was Lackey and minor league pitcher Corey Litrell  and some cash to the Cardinals for Joe Kelly and Allen Craig. This was strange to say the least, not just because the Cardinals got rid of guys who had recently been helping he pitching rotation but, Kelly, but who are motivators in the clubhouse. As well I recently found out that apparently the two of them didn't find out they were traded by the GM or manager it was through Twitter and TV that they discovered of the trade, which is not what you'd expect from th Cardinals as they are usually very good about how they treat their players. Now in terms off the value of the trade I think it's a wash, Lackey certainly does provide an improvement to the Cardinals rotation and bothe Joe Kelly and Allen Craig, while currently not playing terribly well have potential that could be brought out by a change of scenery and a better park to play in.

Trade of David Price

I don't think anyone saw this one coming, not just because of how close the Rays were getting to being in contention but also the fact that David Price still seemed completely convinced that he wasn't going anywhere. Additionally what Price was traded for was a shocker as well, no it wasn't a big blow up like the Lester for Cespedes trade as a matter of fact the Rays more or less shit the bed on this trade. The trade took place between 3 teams, the Rays, the Tigers and the Mariners, now the Tigers gave up Austin Jackson to the Mariners as well as Drew Smyly and prospect Willy Adames to the Rays for David Price. Now what is shocking about this is that the Rays got a pretty bad deal here, unless they have some sort of secret that they know Adames is going to become a Huge all star calibre shortstop they got screwed, not to mention he's still in single A so he's at least a cep years from making a difference on the team. Smyly while he was a decent prospect I has been fairly lacklustre in the big leagues in the last couple years and putting him up against the AL East hitters and parks I don't think is going to help and Adames is WAY outside the top 100 MLB prospects, which also makes you wonder if the Rays were of the mind they shouldn't trade him but had to make the first deal they had on hand due to a late change of their minds because there's had to have been more attractive deals out there. Now what this trade I does for the Mariners is it gives them a quality defensive centre fielder in addition to a lead off hitter that the team sorely lacked and giving up Nick Franklin is no big loss either as they still have Brad Miller to fill in (hoping that his bat can gets back to his norm). Then the Tigers got the best of the deal securing another ex CY Young winner into their rotation, however we shouldn't forget what they traded away, Jackson leaves a big hole in both centre and in their lead off spot, while the team has plenty of power bats they don't have as many who can carry that lead off spot as well as Jackson did, which may hurt their offence. Additionally they have no real defensive replacement for him, the obvious ones would be Dirks and Davis and while both of them are good they aren't at the defensive level Jackson was.

Trade of Prado and Drew

Not huge returns for these players but big upgrades for the team that received the, those being the Yankees upgrading from Brian Roberts and Kelley Johnson to Martin Prado and Stephen Drew. Now of the other hand like I've said to friends the Yankees making this kind of moves is like a multiple stab victim trying to treat himself with band aids. I personally believe it will fail in the end as nearly every player on that team is performing far above their typical level.

Trade of Cabrera

Another sort of major move in a trade of the Indians shortstop Asdrubal Cabrera to the Nationals. Now this was a bit of a surprise as they already have a logjam at middle infield as Espinosa, Rendon and Desmond are all in on time for 2B,SS and in the case of Rendon and to a lesser extent Ryan Zimmerman,3B, though Zimmerman is supposed to split time there and in the outfield. Either way though makes you wonder if they plan on trading away one of those players in that logjam.

Current State Of The AL East

So we've been seeing some interesting developments in the East, the first of which is the surging Rays. In this case the Rays have rocketed from mediocrity to being a potential contender for the playoffs, though that will still depend on whether or not they can stay on the winning side until they are closer to first place otherwise they have a better chance and just falling short and then they will likely regret no trading Price. On the opposite side of this the Red Sox seemed like they were going to carry towards a similar surge after they beat the Blue Jays 14-1, however after that game, they lost the 3 following games against the Jays and are falling to the Rays in their current series and as we know the games against rival division teams are the most important especially when your behind them in the standings. Then we can look at one of the teams I more regularly talk about, the Orioles. Now honestly I was in with the majority in thinking that the Orioles would be crushed under the difficulty of the remainder of their schedule since they had series against the Athletics, Angels and other higher ability teams and after the series against the A's it looked to be that way as they only managed to win 1 of the 3 game series and we're beating by several runs in the games they lost. However they came back from at and won 2/3 against the Angels in rather convincing fashion and hell the game they lost was only by 1 run. Then add to that the fact that they have already played 2/4 of their games against the Mariners and again have won both in very quality performances, basically this all means that myself and many other writers and analysts have underestimated the Orioles. So it is very much possible given what we've seen over just a short stint of the most difficult part of their season that the Orioles could run away with the AL East. From there we go to the remaining 2 teams in the division, the Jays and the Yankees. The Yankees recently traded for 3 players to improve their team (Headley, McCarthy and Capuano) however all of them are rather lacklustre players, they are having luck currently but that is likely to change when the league begins to adjust to them as they have not faced these players either ever (Headley) or in a VERY long time (McCarthy and Capuano). Now the most entertaining part about the Yankees and listening to others talk about them is that people seem to assume that this is helping their team, however all they are doing is making sure thir team stays old ( all of these players they have traded for are on the wrong side of 30 and are looking for a hope to turn around their current standing as all have played rather badly in their previous teams. As well add in the fact that in order to make these trades the Yankees are destroying their already barren farm system and according to their GM they plan to trade for another starting pitcher. Another bit of entertainment is listening to commentators, I can't count the number of times I've heard a baseball writer or analyst say that they expect David Price, Cliff Lee or Cole Hamels to end up with the Yankees because they have the money to cover to contracts because the Yankees DO NOT have the prospects to land ANY high end trade chip because of how deserted their farm system is that's why they have had to settle for McCarthy and Capuano. Then finally we have the Blue Jays who are in a bit of an odd place, they won 3/4 games against the Red Sox in a very convincing manner but then they blew it on today's game against the Yankees. Honestly it seems like the Jays have a bit of a stigma when playing the Yankees at their home stadium especially in this game because you can see they jumped on Kuroda early in the game driving in 3 runs in the first inning due to Kuroda pitching rather badly as he lacked control and was throwing a lot of balls. However after the first 3 innings all the Jays couldn't take advantage of those bad pitches as there were several items when some of the higher ups in the batting order got on base or in scoring position  and then the guys lower in the order couldn't drive em in. Now the Jays are in a perilous spot as they are just behind the Yankees in the standings and given that the potential for the Orioles to fall back in the standings and have a chance to throw the guys they are directly in competition with makes this an ideal scenario but they have to get their shit together and win. They do have some improvement to look forward to however as Lind, Encarnacion and Reimold won't need a rehab assignment and could be back as early as this coming week, which would really improve their offence. All in all there are some interesting developments that are to come in this division for these 5 teams.

The All Star Events

So the past couple days we've had the various all star events, those being the home run derby and the all star game in specific. Now first off the home run derby, we saw Yoenis Cespedes win his second derby back to back. The interesting part about this is that he is one of only 2 players to do this in MLB history and that other person is Ken Griffey Jr, making this a fairly impressive feat. On the other hand the new format for  to derby does seem to still have some kinks to work out, specifically related to the players who get a bye through to the 3rd round and this is because both Giancarlo Stanton and Jose Bautista managed to hit very few if any home runs after getting said bye. Now the reason I say this is because both Stanton and Baustista are known to just destroy the ball and Bautista has already won 2 home run derbys in his career. However in both cases they had to wait over an hour and a half until they got a chance to hit for the second time and many people, including myself believe that they got out of their groove and we're unable to get settled at the start of the third round. But either way Cespedes performed great and was very deserving of the win, my problem was more that Todd Frazier got to the finals since Stanton hit no home runs in the third round. Oh and Puig completely whiffed.

Then we had the All Star the next day and aside from the expected farewell to Derek Jeter stuff there was only a couple interesting situations that occurred. The first of those was Adam Waignwright who was being interviewed after giving up a double to Jeter, a triple to Trout and a home run to Miggy, and he said that he gave Jeter a few balls right down the middle that he coule hit. Now I don't have any problem with this seeing as it happens a fair bit when big name players are retiring, however it think Adam shouldn't have said anything about it and not so people can keep the illusion that Jeter hit those himself but by saying I the is making himself the centre of attention and the focus comes off Jeter. While this was a stupid move I don't believe that Waignwright did this on purpose because from what I can tell from his personality in interviews or quotes in articles just seems like a straight up and honest guy. Aside from that there wasn't anything all that crazy that happened, the AL won 5-3 over the NL and in classy fashion Jon Farrell had the pair of Glen Perkins and Kurt Suzuki, both Minnesota Twins players, close out the game and get the save giving the city a sense of accomplishment. Overall a good game though again like the Home run Derby it could use some tweaking since the whole thing seems just like a kids sports game where everyone needs to participate and get a ribbon. Additionally I can say from experience, it is. NIGHTMARE to try to score, I have done it twice successfully but only because of having the MLB app open at the same time since some changes weren't announced on the TV broadcast. Anyhow what should be done is include a good number of guys but play it like a real game and Rey to win instead of just try to get in as many players as possible (ie. keep the starting pitcher in for 4 innings before getting into the bullpen). Hopefully we can see some positive changes on this stuff in the near future.

Another Slew Of Injuries

Well it seems the injury bug just decided to take a break from after the beginning of the season until now to bite a crap load of other players. This week we have seen both Brandon Phillips and Yadier Molina to muscle issues in their thumbs, Masahiro Tanaka has a minor tear of his UCL and if he's lucky may avoid Tommy John surgery, Encarnacion fell with a hamstring injury the week prior, Gerrit Cole went back on the DL after his previous injury flared up again, Justin Masterson is out with a nagging leg injury, Kawasaki and Reimold, two fill ins for the Jays roster, each were injured in a recent game, and many others.

It really is amazing how many injuries are coming about this year, I do always remember when injuries happen throughout each of the last decade or more of baseball I've watched but this honestly feels like it's reached a new height in terms of the numbers. In fact heres an interesting fact in this year alone, leading up to May 30th we've had 26 major league pitchers have to undergo Tommy John surgery, with an additional 13 pitchers in the minors who have been under the knife as well racking up a total of 39. Now what is so amazing about that? Well in 2013 we had 36 cases of Tommy John surgery in both the majors and the minors on the entirety of the season. Thats right we had already reached the same total number of surgeries from last season in the first 2 months of this year, now thats unfathomable to me and we've already had more creep up since that bit was posted on MLB Daily Dish.

Now a lot of these injuries have definitely changed the landscape of the MLB and to be perfectly honest I believe it has pretty much put the last nail in some teams coffin. Specifically that refers to the Yankees, the Diamondbacks, the Indians (though not sure they were all the in it to begin with) and to a less extent the Braves since they have lost the big consistent hitter on their team, aside from Freeman, Evan Gattis, The Reds and the Cardinals. Now not much needs to be said about the Diamondbacks being out due to their latest blast of injuries because they were already really far back from first place to begin with. However the Yankees did seem to be potentially be in the running before this however if you looked at their record and stats when Tanaka was not on the mound there were some really major issues and losing Tanaka along with C.C being currently on the DL makes it almost impossible for them to find 5 guys who can put together quality starts. Additionally like I've said before the Yankees have aged or aging players who has for the most part a declining skill set so their offence is not likely to get that much better. The Indians are a similar situation to the Diamondbacks, they aren't playing nearly as badly as the Diamondbacks are but their barely at .500 right now and they with their top prospect Miguel Sano out for the year and then Danny Salazar and Trevor Bauer, their two big name pitchers playing badly, the team doesn't have much hope of getting back in it during the second half.

The other teams I mentioned are on a slightly less obvious loss, in terms of the Cardinals I'm a little vary to say that the loss of Wacha and Molina to be the final nail because they are one of the teams that have their farm system loaded with top o the line prospects so they could easily turn around and replace all of  the guys they have currently on the DL, which is likely necessary to a certain extent. On the side of the Braves they have lost a couple of their front of the line starters at the beginning of the season, and now are down almost all of their pitching depth as well since Floyd has hit the DL as well and Harang is beginning to fall back into his career numbers. But additionally we've come to know the new Braves to be a big strikeout team and due to that their scoring isn't consistent and losing Gattis, who is one of their most consistent power producers their offence is going to suffer a fair bit, which is something they can't really afford to happen since the pitching issues they have are going to make close games harder to win. Finally we have the Reds, these guys are a unique situation and their pitching seems rather unfazed, they got Latos back recently and he's pitching very well, Cueto is pitching like he's 5 years younger, and Chapman is destroying opposing hitters. Now they recently lost 3 players to the DL 2 long term and 1 short term or maybe long term depending on the recovery. The 2 long terms are Brandon Phillips and Joey, these two guys have been the backbone of the team for several years offensively, defensively and in terms of team morale, even more so after losing Shin Soo Choo to free agency. However Phillips has an issue with his thumb and is expected to miss at least 2 months and Votto, who is back on the DL with the same previous injury, is expected to miss a decent amount of time and potentially could be out for the season. Then finally Homer Bailey is the most recent Reds player to hit the DL, while he has been playing consistently at a quality rate, thankfully current news seems to indicate the injury isn't severe and believe that he will only be gone through the all star break meaning maybe a week into the post all star game, which means their rotation should stay in tact, however who knows what'll happen without the offence.

All in all this year is by far and away the year of the injury with a specialty in UCL tears.

Half Way Playoff Projections

Well were at the halfway point of the seasons now and think its time to put out my guesses on who is going to make it to the postseason. Ok so we'll break it down into each division then the wild cards before going to the next league.

American League:

-East: in the east I have the Blue Jays winning the division. There are dozens of people that seem to have little faith that the Jays will continue to hold onto first in the division, however despite the Yankees and Orioles gaining some ground on them a week or so ago, they have been recently giving up the ground they previously gained. Now just a mini rant on the Yankees playoff potential. The reason I do not believe they will make the postseason is because they have a TERRIBLE rotation without Tanaka and aside from Sanchez they don't have much in the way of desirable prospects to make a trade for a quality starter by the deadline, and even if ey did I think they need 2 of them to make it. Additionally like I've told people before they Yankees made terrible signings this offseason because almost all of them are either injury risks (Beltran and Ellsbury) or have been on a downward trend with their skill set for some years (Ellsbury and McCann). Did I expect things to go wrong with the signings this soon? Nope but it's happened anyway and won't be getting much better for them anytime soon. The Jays on the other hand have a VERY stable offence ( they could use a good batter who can hit lefties but that's all offensively). Meaning that they have to secure is a frontline starter, which there are plenty of out there  and unlike the Yankees they only have 1 other spot aside from the starter they need putting them in a situation to more easily improve enough to hold up or make that next step.

-Central: Detroit wins this one and there isn't much to discuss, a couple weeks ago I may have said Kansas City but they have since fallen back 4.5 games from the lead and Detroit has seen some major improvement form Rick Porcello and Verlander could be making some progress back to a better form. On the other side the Tigers have the same issues they had coming into the season, defense at shortstop and a closer, however their lacklustre defense at shortstop hasn't killed them and Joe Nathan sucking big time has been some what negated as there starters give them good leads to deal with and their heavy hitters in V-Mart and Miggy are continuing to drive in the runs they need to stay in the game.

-West: Oakland, again not much to write here, Oakland is by far the best team in baseball and the most well rounded, all this while having 1/3 of their initial starting rotation being out for the year. Now here's the shocking part here, some of their more well known players have been hitting badly, especially Jed Lowrie, however if you look at his stepper stats like BABIP you'd notice that he's likely in for some correction to his career numbers meaning he is likely to get better and improve the A's offence in the process, almost unfair isn't it?

Wild Cards: I've got the Angels and the Mariners coming in with the wild cards, this is due or the fact that they both have the pitching necessary to keep up with the high end teams this year, especially once Taijuan Walker is back in form for Seattle and even more so when James Paxton is back in action, while the Angels have Weaver as usual and then Garrett Richards who is pitching like an ace this year, which is a formidable combo. As well a good amount of their offences have been quality this year as well, Pujols and Hamilton are performing closer to what is expected of them, Cano, while not hitting as many home runs he is hitting well above .300 and driving in runs and then Kyle Seager and Dustin Ackley are on fire as well.

National League

-East: Nationals are going to win this one hands down, Mets and Phillies can't put up a fight in their condition going into this season, the Marlins are well......the Marlins and the Braves are again a high strikeout team but are relying on pitchers who are playing above their ability and the floor will collapse from under them soon. Additionally the Braves have lost some of their major run producers to injury, such as Evan Gattis. On the other hand the Nationals are still in first place despite not having Bryce Harper for an extended period of time and all of their starters have been performing up to expectations or better, in the case of Jordan Zimmerman.

-Central: In the central I have the Cardinals winning it's inreally don't buy the Brewers as the team who will remains atop the central as they have more or less been beating up on weaker teams and there are unfavourable stats to their starters as well such as Estrada who has given up the most home runs in the whole of MLB. On the side of the Reds they just aren't the same team, while they do have the starting and relief pitching to make a push Brandon Phillips continues his mediocre streak from last year, Joey Votto has had a serious power drop and is dealing with injury and they no longer hand Shin Soo Choo as a OBP master, though Billy Hamilton is a decent replacement.

-West: here I have the Dodgers winning the west, while they are slightly behind the Giants right now I believe that San Francisco's offence is going to drop its production a bit, though not by much. The main reason is because almost all of their starters are performing above like Tim Hudson and Tim Lincecum. In addition you can't discount the scariness of the Dodgers rotation with Kerahaw, Grienke, Ryu, Beckett and to a lesser extent Haren ( who is benefitting from the more pitcher friendly Dodgers Stadium)

-Wild Cards: I've got the remaining guys from the central and west divisions, those being the Giants and the Brewers because even if they do have the decrease I expect the rest of the competition is so much more worse.

Bird Watch: Cardinals Potential Needs

Now this one is a little harder to write, though that's not because the needs for the Cardinals going towards the trade deadline are unclear, it's because they have the prospects to pretty much secure anyone they want. Anyhow the Cardinals are more than likely going to be in the market for positions that pretty much the same as the Orioles and the Jays oddly enough second base and starting pitching in addition to centre field, though that depends on whether they want to move forward with Oscar Taveras and if they are willing to trade him. Now it is also possible they add a few arms to the bullpen however they still have a fair few quality pitchers there and having Motte back means they have another effective pitcher with closer experience in case Rosenthal begins to falter. So basically the situation for their pitching is that both Wacha and Garcia are on the DL at this time leaving them with 2 major holes in their rotation, since both have been serious contributors, however they have filled one of those holes with a potentially permanent solution by having Carlos Martinez start. As well they have Joe Kelly coming back soon, which likely means that Martinez will get sent back to the bullpen. So depending on how the Cardinals approach this situation (ie. do they try to pull in more of their home grown prospects into their rotation) which will determine whether they go for a starting pitcher through the trade deadline. As for who they would get, like I said they have the prospects to get any of the players out on the market currently though given the quality evaluators the Cardinals have I would imagine they would only go after the best, meaning someone like David Price or Cloff Lee/Cole Hamels if they are made available. I don't take Samardzija into account t because I doubt the Cubs would trade him to a team that would be regular competition. On the second base front the Cardinals went into the offseason expecting to hand the job over to their prospect Kolten Wong, however they signed Mark Ellis from the Dodgers as a backup. Unfortunately neither one of them has really run away with the job, which is really why they could be looking for a second baseman going into the trade deadline. Again the Cardinals coule realistically get anyone who is put on the market but if they did they would go for maximum potential return so I would see someone like Ben Zobrist since he is affordable, a quality defender and can be cycled to all sorts of positions on the field. The outfield situation for the Cardinals is not necessarily an unstable one but again it depends in how dedicated they are to their top prospect Oscar Taveras, now given their history with these prospects I don't see them trading him or moving him back to AAA for the rest of the season, so expect to see him running centre field for the rest of the year. Last but not least is the bullpen, like I said there aren't that many holes there for the Cardinals but given that some of their pitchers have faltered here and there they would look for an upgrade. I would expect the Cardinals to likely go after a closer or set up man type in these trades like Joakim Soria of the Rangers or one of the many quality middle relievers from the Rays (ie. Jake McGee, Joel Peralta) or, of they are ok with taking on some extra salary maybe even Jonathon Papelbom. Overall out of these potential outcomes I expect them most likely to get bullpen and starting rotation help, while the idea of upgrading their second base position will be tempting we must remember that they have a highly touted prospect for that position and another signed regular so in the near future that prospect should be taking over. As for the outfield I don't believe thatch Cardinals will do anything negative towards Tavares that would warrant them going out to upgrade centre. 

Bird Watch: Orioles Potential Needs

Ok so heres the second post on trade deadline needs, this time for the Orioles instead of the Jays. As of now the Orioles have been more or less cruising, they haven't really gone on any amazing tears making an extended winning streak but on the other hand they haven't had any serious losing streaks either keeping them in the running in the AL East however even though that is the case it doesn't mean that they don't have some areas that should be addressed if they plan to continue to compete this year and maybe make the playoffs. The first and most obvious area that the Orioles need to fill is obviously their catcher since Matt Wieters their having elbow surgery and will be out for at least the rest of the season and maybe longer. Now I understand that the Orioles have acquired Nick Hundley to take care of starting catcher duties as of now and he's been doing a good job defensively as he's thrown out a fair number of attempted steals and hasn't made any bad mistakes to date, however he is only hitting .226 and not for much power, which is something that Wieters did provide as he has hit in the range of 20 homers over the last few years. So perhaps a new starting catcher would be good and then move Hundley down to spot starts as a primarily defensive catcher. The next area that Baltimore needs to address is, much like the Jays, their starting rotation, I will go on record saying that its amazing what Buck Showalter has managed to get out of his starters as a good number of them are really average or below average performers according to their career stats (ie. Bud Norris, Miguel Gonzalez, Wei Yin Chen and thats not even getting into Jiminez). Finally the last spot that the Orioles need to look at getting someone to fill in at is 2nd base as they have the same issue there as they have at catcher, they lost Brian Roberts to the Yankees via free agency and he provided good defence and a fair amount of power where as the replacement Johnathan Schoop is, like Hundley, more of a defensive replacement who isn't that quality of a hitter.

Now there in terms of replacements for catcher there isn't all that much out there in terms of catcher so saying that the Orioles should trade for an upgrade there may just be moot so I won't try to argue one way or another there. Their position with Schoop seems to be a more flexible one as there are players like Ben Zobrist who are expected to be on the trade market who would fit into the Orioles lineup rather nicely and given that Zobrist hasn't played spectacularly this year it would make him more affordable for the Orioles without having to give a lot of prospects that they may be attached to. Another potential second base opportunity could be with the Phillies Chase Utley, though I wouldn't put much stock into a trade for Utley though because the Orioles are a smaller market team like the Rays and they are more of a 'build the team around the farm' type organization so expect them to got for a more cheap alternative to Utley. It is possible however that they could make a more for Rickie Weeks of the Milwaukee Brewers, Weeks has been a bit of a thorn in the Brewers side for a few years now after he had a bit of a monster offensive season. After that however he seemed to just fade away and now Gennett has the starting job at second. Now while Weeks may look like he is diminished he has been hitting well as of late and moving him to a more hitter friendly division could help those numbers get back up there and lets not forget that so far the AL East has been pretty weak and all but one of those parks are fairly hitter friendly making it pretty ideal place for someone like Weeks. Then there is another similar situation to Weeks in Dan Uggla, however he would be a bigger gamble than Weeks would be since he is on the wrong end of 30 and has been a bit of a defensive liability as well, though in a hitters park he could potentially do some major damage offensively. The last couple of options that the Orioles have are decent but they are long shots due to who they would have to give up or how much money they would have to commit to the player's already established salary. Those would be the Reds Brandon Phillips, the Cardinals Mark Ellis, the Pirates Neil Walker (though I don't expect them to trade him even if they end up sellers) and the Dodgers Dee Gordon or Alex Guerrerro (though this is dependent on the Dodgers fall close to out of contention and both of these guys performing really well warranting one of them to be moved). Overall I believe that the most likely scenario would be the Orioles moving in on Rickie Weeks since it kind of fits they style of getting cheaper players that would benefit from their hitting situation.

As for pitching there is a large number of problems in the Orioles starting rotation as, like I said before, almost none of them are above average starters. So where do they go to improve it? Well the first is option they have is the most obvious, wait until he is considered better then bring up their other top gun pitching prospect, Dylan Bundy. Now there is no guarantee he will hit the ground running, especially since Gausman had a bit of a stumbling start when he was called up last year. However given that the AL East is not what it was last year it is likely an ideal time to pull him into the majors to not only get him used to who he'll be pitching to in the future but to take advantage of weaker lineups in an attempt to make a playoff push. The other options they have would be all the same ones that I listed with the Jays; David Price, Jeff Samardzija, Jason Hammel and James Shields. Now I could see the Orioles making a a play for any of these starting pitchers though again whether they secure them or not is all going to be based on how many prospects they are willing to give up, for example if they want to supplant 2 of their current starters then they might want to go smaller and snag Jason Hammel back and then call up Bundy, or they could go all out and put together a package, likely including Bundy or Gausman, for Price or Samardzija. Overall given that the Orioles are a more prospect focussed team I would expect them to go for Hammel but they do have experience with him before so they understand better than most whether he would work with their team or not and when you look at the trade market for Samardzija and Price there are only a few teams with the need that have the prospects the Cubs/Rays would be looking for so the Orioles may be able to leverage that into a lesser than normal deal for one of the two. Basically I'm saying that who the Orioles will go after isn't so cut and dry because there are major upsides for all of them and they have the resources to secure any of those starters as well.

There is one last spot that the Orioles seem to be looking at upgrading, and that is in left field as David Lough has been really disappointing. The one team that I see with a perfect fit for that is the Dodgers as they have that major 4 big time outfielders to fill 3 spots so there is potential for a trade there, however if the Orioles were to secure one of with Crawford or Kemp (since Ethier is their only REAL center fielder) the Dodgers would likely have to swallow a lot of their current salary to get him moved. All in all the Orioles have pretty much the same issues the Jays do, with the exception of a few more offensive woes but what they do have over the Jays is a farm system that is still ripe with high end talent making them much more capable of pulling of bigger trades to improve the club.

Bird Watch: Potential Needs For The Jays

We'll it's that time of year again in the baseball season, the time when teams list themselves as buyers or sellers as. They find themselves potentially being contenders or realzing they aren't. So let's take a quick look at what these teams need and what they could realistically get given their circumstances.

Blue Jays: The Jays are in the worst position of the bunch, now I don't mean that in the sense that they have the most holes he'll they probably have the lease, however their main need is a front of the rotation pitcher and that's likely to cost them pitching prospects and they spent most of them on last off seasons trades. Before I get more into it I'll just pint that this is another of the reasons why the Jays needed to sign Tanaka because money can easily be found and put into the team, especially given that Rogers is one of the richest owners in the MLB, and prospects can't be as readily replenished. Ok so the Jays need just what they needed during the offseason, a second baseman and a front of the rotation starting pitcher. The potential players that they could obtain would be Chase Utley, if the Phillies get their heads out of their asses or maybe Mark Ellis, though that is dependent on what the Cardinals decide to do with Kolten Wong. For starting pitching they have a fair number of choices, David Price, Jeff Samardjiza, though the price for these two May be too high and they have gone in the record saying they are after rental players (only on contract for the remaining year). As well Jason Hammel, Cliff Lee, James Shields, Cole Hamels and maybe some of the Reds/Pirates pitchers if they end up being sellers (Cueto, Liriano, and maybe Morton). Now if the situations with those second basemen work out in favour of the Jays they have equal ability to get either of those players since neither of them are really high class players and the Jays do have a plethora of position player prospects available. On the other hand there are far more complexities with the potential trade bait pitchers. First off we have the big guys Price, Samardjiza, Lee and Hamels, now All of these guys are going to require a high price and like I said before the Jays have been more looking at rest of the season rental players making a trade for Price or Samardjiza unlikely since they would likely cost at the very least 1 of their Stoman or Sanchez. On the other hand both Hamels and Lee are still signed to more years but for a VERY high salary so if the Jays offer to cover a great deal of it they may be able to get off without having to ditch a lot of their high end prospects so again if everything falls in place for the Jays it's possible that they trade for  Lee or Hamels but a bit unlikely that they sign Price or Samardjiza. Then there's the next level of pitchers being Cueto,  Liriano, Shields and Morton, in this case these pitchers will only be made available if their respective teams falls out of contention, and soon. And if they do I don't tank the Jays SHOULD NOT trade for  Liriano or Morton as they are lacklustre pitchers who have just been succeeding due to their park and their pitching coach. The possibility of them trading for Cueto is possible but considering it's not a rental it's likely they would need to again give up multiple high end prospects, which puts it as just as unlikely as Price, on the other hand if the Royals falls out of contention Shields is a very real possibility as he IS a rest of season rental player and given his past success in the AL East has the ability to pitch well and since his price wouldn't be as high as Price he would be a very likely trade to the Jays, again though if things fall right for Toronto. All in all the Jays have a plethora of options potentially available to them but when it comes down to the wire they are going to have to suck it up and make a trade for a ACTUAL fron of the rotation starter at the least and not go half assed and get a less than stellar pitcher if they hope to get anywhere in the playoffs.

Bird Watch: Interesting Weeks

We'll this was an interesting week for the Orioles, Jays and Cardinals, why you ask? Well that's for a couple reasons. First for the Jays, despite their offensive turn around in one of the games against both th Twins and Orioles they continue to have major struggles with their offence and their starting pitching situation is still more or less the same. This is evident because when you look at box scores you see that the Jays again have fallen back into their slump of terrible hitting with runners in scoring position with 1:13 or 0:7, just absolutely terrible and that's not even getting into some of e less patient hitters on the team falling back into swinging for the fences at whatever they want. The basic take away here is that Kevin Seitzer needs to sit down with some of the guys and give em another talk because it's obvious when they get frustrated at a slump they too fall back into old habits. On here side of the Orioles we have them just playing steady but that's not the interesting news, the interesting news is good ok' Manny Machado, see during the last weekend series against the Athletics he got into a bit of a bitchy mood after he was tagged out by Josh Donaldson, which he claimed was too hard. So next he hit the A's catcher Derek Norris in the head on his back swing several times and when it looked like a relief pitcher was throwing at him he decided to throw s bat, albeit poorly, at the pitcher. Now I do understand that this is a very young kid and other than this people have generally raved shout him being respectful, but the problem I have is how he handled it, which included a public apology followed by a contradictory appeal of his 5 game suspension. It's kind of ridiculous that he'd try and appeal, a suspension like that after putting up a 'heartfelt' apology but we'll see what happens with the appeal and if ten comes back to bite him. Now finally on the Cardinals they have had 2 serious things happen, the first is a bit of a reversal of their pitching mainly seen in Wachas recent struggles, which were coupled with major success from Miller and Garcia, which wasn't there before. Now again that's not much to be worried about because remember Wacha is a young guy in s first full season of baseball so don't fret unless this continues for a few more starts. The second, and more influential thing that happened with the Cardinals, which is that Adam Waignwright suffered an injury to his elbow! Fortunately this doesn't seem to be terribly serious as many on the Cardinals side have claimed that the issue is closer to tennis elbow than to a torn UCL, which would result in another Tommy John surgery, which might very well knock the Cardinals out of playoff contention. Similarly with Wacha the issue with Waignwright will likely become more clear once his supposed next start that he is supposed to make. 

Well He Came Out Of No Where

This post is unfortunately not just an opinion or update on teams but just a re-hash of an article I read on  Bleacher Report on the Houston Astros pitcher Dallas Keuchel. Now I play in plenty of fantasy baseball leagues so I noticed pretty quickly that Keuchel was putting together some pretty good numbers and as such he's managed to put himself a top the Astros rotation and for good reason. However I never really considered him an 'Ace' level pitcher, now thats because when you look at his outings he's not usually striking out more than 5-7 batters, from fan graphs you can see he's more of a ground ball pitcher and well ……he's playing for the Astros. Now those are all really just stereotypical things because we all relate ace starting pitchers with those that have great control and can pound the strike zone to end the year with upwards of 200+ strikeouts. Now I couldn't be more wrong about Keuchel being an ace and here's why.

First off we look at his ERA, now that is at a surreal 2.38, and the even weirder thing is that the previous season had him post a 5.15 ERA. Now as you well know one of the first ways to check if a pitchers ERA is for real or not is to check their FIP and xFIP, and in this case Keuchel has a FIP of 2.82 and an xFIP of 2.80. Thats right the man is sporting field independent pitching stats only half a run higher than his ERA, so in short this is one indication that his performance is far from a fluke. Additionally we have his strikeout rate, which as I said, is about average at about 7.44 K/9 however to contrast this he has a 1.79 BB/9, so he's striking out an average number, allowing VERY few walks and then to top it off he has a ground ball percentage of 65.6%, and thats HUGE. Though the next question is how the hell he can keep that % high over the year because we see high GB% all the time and they all inevitably falter.

So how does he maintain the strikeouts and ground balls, well thats the work of his slider, which he gets the majority of his strikeouts from, but additionally he has the second highest swing and miss % (52.2) on his slider in the majors second only to Clayton Kershaw (57.9), thats right KERSHAW. Now saying his slider isn't really an explanation as to why it works so here is a little more, Chris Sale throws a cutter that for one is hard to hit because of his funky arm action, however it also has approximately 3.82 inches of horizontal movement making it harder for a hitter to lock onto and hit. Now if we then look at Keuchel's slider you'd find out that it in fact has 5.23 inches of horizontal movement, you heard me right 5.23 inches thats nearly a 6 inch sub sandwich! Hell thats about 1/3 of the length of a bat or so.

Now outside of his slider Keuchel also has a sinker that happens to be responsible for 81% of his ground balls and if you watch him throw it in a game you notice just how low to the ground it stays and that in itself makes the ridiculous GB% make a whole lot more sense. Finally rounding out his main pitches are his cutter and his change up, now the cutter isn't as good as the previously mentioned pitches but given how much movement he can get on his pitches its a good weapon to have. Finally his change up has batters a tad confused as well since batters are only hitting .208 on it.

All in all Dallas Keuchel is a force to be reckoned with and my god if the Astros manage to turn their prospects into a winning team in the next few years their pitching rotation with Keuchel at the front is going to be scary as all hell.

Bird Watch: One Up One Down

So this weekends games between the Cardinals and the Blue Jays made a couple things a bit apparent, first off the Jays still need one more star starting pitcher before they are complete contenders, the Jays offence isn't undefeatable and the Cardinals pitching staff seems to be getting back into the swing of things. All of the Cardinals starters for those 3 games managed to hold the Jays down so I think we can look forward to a second half comeback by the Cardinals. Though while the offensive showing during those 3 games by the Jays was disappointing they did manage to score 5 runs against the Twins Monday despite Janssen being a bit shaky and allowing the first runs he has this season. These performances just mean that both teams are not quite what we think they are, the Cardinals are not a flop and will more than likely make up a lot of ground in the coming months and the Jays, while on a bit offensive streak are likely to hit a brick wall or two on the way.

Maybe Fans Shouldn't

I decided to write to post when, several times, during the games I've been watching today fans booed it when the pitcher threw to first second or third base to pick off a runner. Now I understand why fans do it because it puts a damper on the action of the game and makes the pitcher seem I guess cowardly as if their running away from the current batter, and the thought I guess is that the booing will stop the pitcher from keeping up the pickoff attempts. However ts is actually a good thing for our team, why you ask? Well that's because this part of the game is a major part of the mental game in baseball and yea yea I understand that doesn't equal on field excitement, but the result of it often does. You see a pitcher is throwing a ball at speeds between 75-95+ mph over a distance of 60 feet, 6 inches and that requires a LOT of concentration. When the pitcher throws a pick off attempt it divides the pitchers attention, all of a sudden their trying to concentrate on pitching to the current batter as well as keeping an eye on the runner to ensure they know if he's going for a steal. As a result pitchers often end up giving up hits or having lacklustre control during these times because of this divide of attention, hell there are even times where this can lead to throwing errors due to bad pick off throws. In summary don't boo pick off attempts by opposing pitchers, it means that the runner on base is getting to the pitcher and he is likely to faulter fairly soon.

Bird Watch: Aw What The.........

So here I was sitting and watching the first inning of the Jays game on my computer when suddenly I get an alert on Bo my iPad and iPhone. I of course take a quick glimpse and see some very unfortunate news, good ol' injury risk Johan Santana, who I might add was pretty much thought to be coming up to help the Orioles rotation due to their series of injuries, has gone down when he tore his Achilles during extended spring training. Now this is just straight up terrible luck for he Orioles because they've lost a couple of their pitchers to either major or minor injuries over the last few weeks and I'm sure a lot of Oriioles fans had hoped that the gamble on Santana would turn out for the better and maybe they would have him back in ear his Cy Young calibre pitching. Unfortunately it was not to be, now I'm not going to say that the Orioles were stupid for trying to sign him, I thought at the time it may be a smart move, mainly because they have a lot of high end young prospects but the brunt of them still have a way to go until their major league ready so getting a guy like Santana who could act as cheap pitching depth until these guys were ready would have been great for the Orioles. 

So the obvious next question, what do the Orioles do now? We'll they have to hope the hit that Bud. Norris took to the hand isn't that serious and they've already called up Kevin Gausman, though they may need to look at their other star pitching prospect Dylan Bundy as we but the choice to leave him down isn't a terrible one either since they still aren't nearly out of the running in the AL East as they only trail the Jays by 5.5 games. 

All in all it's really crappy news for the Orioles  but given that their farm system is in good shape they have the pitching depth to carry on even if it means that they have to bring up some guys a little earlier than they were expected to come up.

Bird Watch: Make Or Break Time

So the Blue Jays have been on a bit of a tear recently, now one thing that I have had to keep reminding myself about this is that for the most part they have been facing teams that are either bad or are struggling bit time. So basically taking a look at their schedule it seems that the results of their next few series will likely tell us if the way they are currently playing is really because they've turned over a new leaf so to speak or if its just a function of the bad teams they've been beating up on, so lets take a look at whats in store.

Current Series: @ Detroit. Now this one is obviously already underway and the results have been rather surprising so far as the Jays have managed to take the first 2 games of the series with a pretty commanding lead though in both instances their starting pitcher was almost too much of a challenge to get a leg up on. The fact that Anibal Sanchez and Rick Porcello combined for only 1 earned run over their time pitching in these 2 games tells us that there may still be a bit of work to be done since these two guys aren't even the cream of the crop pitching in the MLB. Now our pitching in these games is like Jekyll and Hyde as Hutchison went pitch for pitch against Sanchez and even got more strikeouts, however Dickey, despite only allowing 2 runs, had little control of the knuckleball and it seemingly got worse as the game went on, he allowed one hit in the first inning, 2 in the second, 3 in the third and then it pattered out a bit but ended in a bases loaded situation. Overall if you look at these outings together out pitching would be rather average, basically we're still in need of another solid contributor to our rotation since Dickey has been so inconsistent and we can't really count on stellar outings from Happ and Stroman on a regular basis as Happ is just not that kind of pitcher and Stroman lacks the experience to be able to do that (unless he's secretly Matt Harvey or something). As well we could very well complete this as a sweep since Happ's last couple starts have been quality and Verlander has been kind of shaky (at least for what he normally is).

On the other hand our offence was stellar, and I say that even despite the lack of offensive production against the starters because we took advantage of the Tigers weak point, their bullpen, and just drilled them into the group with 7 runs in the last 4 innings of the second game and 5 runs in the last inning of the first game. Overall this is a good start and the fact that most of these guys are much better with their approach at the plate makes things all the better, thank you Kevin Seitzer!

Next Series: Home against the Cardinals: Now when I heard the Cardinals were coming over I expected this to be the tipping point however, the Cardinals are on a really lacklustre streak with their offence and the starting pitchers we are set to face (Garcia, Miller and Lynn) are unfortunately the worst of the batch. Still despite the bad offence the Cardinals are still formidable defensively and given that they have probably the best catcher for throwing out runners in Yadier Molina speed may be eliminated from the Jays usual game. This however is still a turning point in my eyes since we know how strong the Cardinals can be when their on and even a slight tweak of their rotation could very well have us facing Wacha or Wainwright to VERY deadly pitchers.

Now the next set of series have us up against the Twins, Orioles, Yankees, Reds, Yankees and White Sox until the end of June, which gives us a up and down ride as the Yankees have been pretty crap over this year but the Twins have been having some pitching success and the Orioles players seem to be putting things together and lets not forget that the Reds have Johnny Cueto and could have Mat Lator back by then as well. The 2 weeks following that are the next surge of 'prove yourself' games as we go into series against the Milkwaukee Brewers, Oakland Athletics and L.A Angels, all of which are on a tear both offensively and in pitching. Meaning that the true strength of the 2014 Blue Jays will be decided between now and the start of the All Star game, if we're in the same position we are in now or at least within a few games of it then the Jays are legitimate World Series contenders.

Bird Watch: Update and 1/3 Mark

So writing here has been a bit difficult to keep up with as of late however going to be committing to write more on here. Anyhow, onward! As the title suggests I'm just going to be looking at the teams performance over the first 1/3 of the season this year.

Baltimore Orioles:
So the AL East has been really weird these days huh, we've got all the teams who are only treading water above the .500 mark, which is pretty ridiculous when you consider where everyone finished the year at and how many major signings the Orioles and the Yankees have made that haven't seemingly made major differences yet (besides Masahiro Tanaka). Now the Orioles have been doing well in holding things together, now the current position is in part because of a slow start by some of their major offensive players (ie. Chris Davis and J.J Hardy) and a lacklustre performance by some of their starting pitchers (ie. Ubaldo Jimenez, Wei Yin Chen and Bud Norris) as well as some major players out of the lineup for a good amount of the first section of the season (Machado).

Now while these major negatives have kept the Orioles out of first and second place of the AL East or from really running away with the division while everyone else is down, many of their acquisitions have been very positive contributors. Going into the new season I thought a number of the signings that the Orioles made were a BIG mistake, Ubaldo Jimenez had really only had a small period of consistent success outside of his Cy Young season and had been pretty bad when it came to holding down the long ball. As well Nelson Cruz had come off of his PED suspension and I shared a view with other major analysts that his PED use may have been keeping him healthy, as before suspicion of PED use came about he was in and out of the DL almost every season. Now I'll be honest I was only 50% right there, Ubaldo so far has been a big disappointment for what he was expected to be, HOWEVER I was completely wrong about Cruz, he has been holding the offensive end of the Orioles lineup since the start of the season and in some of the early games I watched he surprised the hell out of me.

Now while, like other AL East teams, the Orioles have started slow some things are looking up, Chris Davis is heating up big time (he had a 3 home run game not long ago), Chris Tillman is working himself back into a groove, despite their closer Tommy Hunter getting injured Zach Britton has been able to hold his own very well. Now one of the odd things this season is that the Orioles have a winning record against the AL East, West and National League, however they are 7-13 against the AL Central and that comes off as odd because for one the Central has a more pitcher friendly set of parks, which should make it easier on their pitchers who aren't necessarily star calibre players and their hitters are weaker than the East or most teams in the West. In addition to Hunter running onto the DL, the Orioles have also lost Wieters for the foreseeable future making them a little weaker at the catcher position as well.

All in all it seems like, given where all of the other AL East teams are at, the Orioles are on pace to still keep in good competition in the AL East, as well they have a fairly easy/balanced next couple of months on their schedule leading up to the All Star Game. So if they can pick themselves up from the DL woes they've had and improve a bit on their offence, which seems to be happening, and get their 3 mediocre starters to take it up a notch they could easily see themselves in first or second in the AL East.

St. Louis Cardinals:
Oddly enough the situation the Cardinals have found themselves in over the first 1/3 of the season has been kinda similar to that of the Orioles as they are much lower in the standings than I'm sure people were expecting them to be. Also like the Orioles some of their major offensive producers from last year have been rather quiet, though some are heating up, those being Matt Adams, Matt Carpenter and Allen Craig. Now do I expect these 3 to continue being lacklustre? Not a chance! But this slow start is a big reason for them being where they are right now.

When the Cardinals hit the offseason there wasn't a lot of areas they needed to sign anyone significant to fill a spot in the roster, with exception to shortstop because of the injury issues to Rafael Furcal the years before and the fact that he was pushing 39. So they went out and signed Jhonny Peralta, again much like Cruz I thought this was going to be a bust because of his unusual spike in power last year and then being followed by his PED suspension. However shows me what the hell I know because he's been more than an above average offensive producer on the Cardinals batting order, and has kept about the same level of defence that he did when he was with the Tigers. Additionally they had some rotation and bullpen spots to fill so they slotted in a lot of their newbie pitchers (Wacha, Rosenthal, Martinez, Mille, etc) and there has been about a 50-50 turn out of these guys so far. Wacha has been fairly dominant in the bulk of his starts, which is great considering he didn't even play a full season at the major league level last year, on the other hand Miller has been a bit wobbly as he turns in some stellar outings and then others when he gets away with ALOT of bad pitching, though he has been turning it around as of late. Finally the Rosenthal and Martinez in the bullpen have also been showing the same sort of duality, Rosenthal has been, similar to Miller, struggling with command and because of that has blown a fair number of saves in addition to have some outings that could have been disastrous but thankfully were't due to things like he big time heater. Martinez on the other hand has been all smooth sailing since they put him in the set up role, which was a bit disappointing as most people, including myself, thought he's get the last rotation spot over Joe Kelly because well his stuff is just a lot better and he has the better prospect pedigree.

Overall the Cardinals have done a good job despite their struggling core of their offence and some shakiness to their pitchers however you have to keep things in context because despite Miller and Rosenthal having bad outings now and then, their not blow outs and when you consider they have Wainwright who is definitely a top 5 pitcher this year to back them up they have the potential to hold out and improve. Rosenthal though does have something to worry about since Motte has just recently come off the DL from his Tommy John rehab and if things keep going sour for Rosenthal we could see him losing the closer job, though that would make you wonder what they do with him or Martinez (ie. push them back to 7th/8th inning, send one down to AAA or move one to the rotation?). Either way as they always do the Cardinals have more than enough potential to make a run at the NL Central and the NL as a whole.

Toronto Blue Jays:
Many people will look back on my posts during the offseason about railing Alex Anthopolous because he did nothing for the team, I mean I applauded his signing of Navarro because I thought he'd be a good fit for the rotation since, from his stats, he seemed to be a catcher who enhanced a pitchers abilities when they followed the pitches he called. However that was pretty much all he did and it drove me insane (not going to go into the Masahiro Tanka rant again). The main issue I thought that was going to bite them to begin with was their starting rotation because they hadn't made any significant changes to it, now yes they did add Hutchison and McGowan from the DL however what we've seen from history is typically it takes about a year for a starting pitcher to get completely back into form after returning from tommy john surgery, which both of them were. That alone made me very wary about trusting this rotation, that added with Brandon Morrow lacking any sense of consistency as usual. All in all this is pretty much exactly how the first month of the season played out, Hutchison pitched above average, Dickey did slightly better than what he did the year before, Morrow collapsed and got injured, McGowan was terrible, and then Mark Buerhle……had an ERA under 2?

Now oddly enough this year so far and most years previous the Jays have seldom had problems with offence, they have led the league or been in the top 5 of home runs hit in several seasons past, so their prime problem has been keeping good healthy starters on the mound for a full season. The Buerhle stuff so far this year really caught me off guard but like I said about Navarro enhancing a pitchers ability by being good at calling pitches I think may have worked BIG TIME for Buerhle since he doesn't shake off any pitch calls by the catcher and due to his diminished velocity has had to develop pinpoint accuracy. Don't get me wrong though I don't expect him to keep this ERA and everything up but I wouldn't be surprised if his ERA at the end of the year was somewhere around 3.00-3.10, where he usually ends up at 3.40-3.50 or higher and with maybe 15-18 wins, as he usually gets somewhere between 13-15 on the past few seasons.

Currently the lights seem to be all coming on for the Jays, nearly all of their offensive pieces are pushing forward at full force, Dickey has seemingly got past his 7th inning woes (the being that he had consistently collapsed in the 7th inning in several games), Reyes, Gose and Pillar have turned on the speed on the base paths, and our bullpen has stabilized a great deal with the return of Casey Janssen and our starters being more consistent. They have already swept both the A's and the Red Sox before that, which bodes well as a sweep of the Red Sox in their current condition doesn't mean much, but being able to beat out the best team in the AL right now is definitely something big and their match against the Rays today showed that the offence isn't slowing down.

Going into this season not much was expected out of the Jays, now that isn't necessarily because they were thought to be a bad team, just that all of the teams around them in the AL East had either made big signings to improve their club or were keeping a solid group of players together with major success last year, however with that backfiring on most of the other AL East teams if Toronto can keep up this offensive surge, keep up with quality pitching and maybe add another front of the rotation starter by the trade deadline then they could very well be a force to be reckoned with in the playoffs this year.

-Eric

Bird Watch: Has It Helped?

Ok so here I'm going to evaluate whether the big acquisition of the three teams has made a contribution worth what they signed him for during the offseason so far, starting with the Cardinals and their signing of shortstop Jhonny Peralta. Alright so some, including myself were a bit confused when the Cardinals signed Jhonny Peralta to a 4 year deal over the offseason, mainly because of all the controversy surrounding him and PED allegations, though I guess the Orioles did the same thing with Nelson Cruz so let's take a look at what he's done so far.

Well the shortstop position has been a bit confusing for the Cardinals this year, first they shell $53 million over 4 years to Peralta, then they sign Aldemys Diaz to a 4 year deal worth $8 million but he's holding up in AAA. Well Peralta is who has the starting job so lets look at his stats. Well as of now he is sitting with a .063 AVG, 2 HR, 4 RBI, 2 H, 3 R, 0 SB and .189 OBP, now those are some very terrible stats. While I understand that it's early in the season he hasn't been facing a lot of elite level pitching the whole time, as well his fielding has been pretty bad as well since he has already made 2 errors, which is 50% of the errors he made last year.  This just seems more and more like a case of can't play without the PEDs, which it may very well turn out to be, now there isn't much to focus in on thats positive but I suppose the fact that he hasn't raised his strikeouts a whole lot is a good indication that it's not likely to get any worse as thats usually an indication of lost ability in a hitter (and with Arencibia as the Jays catcher last year I know that all too well). Overall it seems that Peralta is not what the Cardinals were hoping for and he is certainly not pulling his weight on the 4 year deal he signed.

Next up are the Orioles and their big spending addition Ubaldo Jimenez. Now I once said if I were an exec or fantasy owner I wouldn't touch Jimenez with a 10 foot pole, and guess what? That still stands. So when I saw Baltimore sign him to a 4 year $50 million deal I nearly threw up a lung. And as expected through his first 2 starts Jimenez has been awful, sitting with an ERA of 6.75, 10K, 1.97 WHIP, 8BB, 13H and a W-L record of 0-2. Now the issue for him was coming to the AL East, he was coming from the AL Central, the weakest of the AL divisions (and don't give me any crap about the AL West being light, just look at who they have pitching wise and not to mention Beltre, Trout, Pujols, Hamilton, Cano, Hart and even Castro to a lesser extent). So it was expected to be a rough transition, however the 2 games he has pitched have been against division rivals in both the home park and on the road, and he seemed to have the same issues as before, problems commanding his pitches, which lead to the total 8 walks he currently has and the 2 home runs he gave up in the first game. Due to this he has thrown more pitches and worn himself out in these outings (ie. 106 pitches in 4.2 innings in his last outing). Again just like Peralta, Jimenez is sure not pulling along the $50 million the Orioles are paying him.

Now the Toronto Blue Jays only had one real acquisition this offseason and that would be Dioner Navarro, now plenty of people looked at this signing with confusion since Navarro wasn't a starting catcher and his numbers weren't phenomenal if you stretched them to a full season. However Navarro has been earning the 2 year $8 million deal he got, now the first thing Navarro has been doing is taking control of the pitching staff, this is a big deal because a smart catcher can play pitches often better than the pitcher can and it's been showing in the outings the McGowan, Hutchison and Buehrle have put up so far this season. In addition Navarro hasn't driven himself to a huge number of stats (.269 AVG, 4R, 11H, 0HR, 7RBI, 2BB, and 1SB). What Navarro has been able to do is act as a quality bat, which was a problem with the 'strikeout alley' we had in our 6-9 batting order positions, this year even though Navarro doesn't often get the pitch to drive out of the stadium he more often can make quality sacrifice plays that move the runner along, which is part of why the Jays hitting game has been weak for a while. Additionally other members of the team seem to like the chemistry between Navarro and the starting rotation and I'd say thats a good thing if the other players think highly of what he is doing. Unlike the previous signings Navarro was kind of a gamble as he was a part time player and even though his stats were good there was no guarantee he could replicate his part time numbers into a full time catching position. So far however Navarro has been pulling his weight and then some on his contract.

Bird Watch: The First Week

Ok so heres going to be a little overlook at the 3 team's performance over the first week of the season.

Baltimore Orioles: Not hell of a lot to bitch about or praise here, the Orioles are sitting at a 2-4 record after this week oddly enough their biggest issue of this week is also their biggest strength in a way. That of course is their pitching. I say that because in 2 of the 4 games they lost they got blasted, and it was obviously because they had a far more inferior starting pitcher on the mound for who they were facing. However on all the other games they either won (2 of the remaining 4 games) or barely lost by 1 run meaning that their pithing in those situations was able to keep them in the game, basically they need to get more out of those 2 starters who fucked up this week (Gonzalez and Jimenez). On the offensive side they did what Baltimore usually does, get a fairly high number of hits but still manage to make the game a close one, honestly I'm interested to see what they do offensively when Machado comes back and they have their full offensive core in place.

St. Louis Cardinals: Well it's been interesting for the Cardinals, their even 3-3 after the first week, which may come as a surprise but for the most part the  young pitchers they slotted into the rotation, and Wainwright have delivered and even the games they lost were close with the exception of one. Now the one game I speak of was the first against the Pirates and Shelby Miller just didn't have his stuff that day, he left a fair number of pitches over the heart of the plate that  game, hence why he allowed 3 home runs. As well I think it's safe to say he had a bit of shaky control during the game as well as he walked 3 and only struck out 2, which is fairly unlike him as his control is fairly pin point and usually allows him to get high strikeouts and low walks. In addition to poor pitching that game was very terrible for the Cardinals on offence as well only scoring 2 runs despite having players in scoring position 8 times during the game, and none of them could be attributed to the 2 runs. Now while I can say this, it's only one game and the offence and pitching of the Cardinals has done well otherwise so theres no reason to distrust Miller quite yet, though a couple more outings like that could change my mine

Toronto Blue Jays: What a roller coaster first week, we start with R.A. Dickey getting pounded, then Drew Hutchison and Mark Buehrle have a flash of brilliance, followed by 2 more stumbles by Brandon Morrow and Dustin McGowan, then to finish the week we get the exact opposite, a magnificent outing from Dickey and a horrible one from Hutchison. Now first off I think McGowan will get better as it came to light that he was tipping his pitches during that outing. Tipping your pitches basically means that your in essence developing a tell that is letting the batter know what kind of pitch your going to throw (ie. letting them accidentally see the grip of the ball before it's thrown) so if he can correct that and get over the nervousness of being back after a little over a year he'll be good to go. On the other hand Morrow looks like he's still completely lost and he seems to need a lot of work since he allowed 4 runs to the Rays and just didn't look like his dominant self we saw a couple years back. Hutchison and Dickey are harder to read strictly because we've seen two completely different outings and theres no real evidence to suggest one outcome is more likely than the other. Buehrle on the other hand is the master of consistency so I expect him to throw well, not like the last game but on average 4 strikeouts 7 hits and a couple runs, which should very well give us a chance to win if the offence can get moving. Speaking of offence we had a similar duality as with the pitching, when the pitching was bad we got a lacklustre number of hits and runs but when the pitching was good we all of a sudden were on fire. Now like I said in the last post there still are a fair number of very big positives to take home in regard to the Jays offence so like Miller of the Cardinals it's time to play the waiting game and see if the Jays can right themselves in the next series.

-Eric

Bird Watch: Opening Day Performances

Ok so first bird watch of 2014 eh? Anyhow as the title states I'm going to give a quick run down of the opening games for Baltimore, St. Louis and Toronto and give them a letter grade.

Baltimore:

Pitching - Ok so looking at the score initially we can tell this was a prototypical Orioles game as the score was low and the margin they won by was only 1 run (they had the most of those wins last year in I believe the entire MLB). Anyhow you had Chris Tillman taking the hill against Jon Lester and in both cases each pitcher performed very well, Tillman isn't known as a strikeout pitcher so his 4 K's on the game is pretty typical of him and he managed to stay in control of his pitches and only allow 1 run and 1 walk, which is good in my book (especially if you watched the Blue Jays pitching). Additionally surprisingly Tillman only allowed 7 hits, I say that because he pitches to contact so you would expect the potential for more hits but since there isn't that means the Orioles defence was obviously on the ball today. As the Orioles usually do they had Tillman handle the first 5 innings of work then turned their bullpen on the Red Sox and again worked out fantastically, together all 4 pitchers only allowed 2 hits and 2 walks while striking out 2 as well. Now Tommy Hunter did get into a bit of bind in the 9th inning when he hit Will Middlebrooks and then one out later allowed Pedroia to single and get 2nd and 1st base full with David Ortiz coming up thankfully he was able to get out of it and get the next 2 outs. Overall the pitching in this game from the Orioles was solid, not perfect but definitely solid, the type of play that would ensure you get into the playoffs if you can repeat it at least every 2nd game.

Hitting - Ok on the hitting side theres not a whole lot to talk about, mainly because the game was so low scoring, however it is telling that about half of the batting order got on base at one time or another, and like I said in the last post about the Jays the Orioles had the hits dispersed throughout their lineup allowing to keep an offensive wave going. On the other hand however the people who didn't get on base did strikeout a fair bit like Chris Davis (and Matt Wieters to a lesser extent), now while Wieters is expected since you don't really associate catchers with high averages Chris Davis, one of the 2 big hitters for the Orioles, is expected to have an AVG in the high .200's so this start is not necessarily good for him. As well their team batting AVG with RISP (runners in scoring position - a runner at 2nd or 3rd base) was 0-1 so that tells me that despite having several hits and getting people on base not many times only once did someone get over the 2nd base. Now a surprise show was the home run from Nelson Cruz in the 7th that ended up being the game winning run. I'll be honest that I've been down on Nelson Cruz and it's mainly because 1.) his skill set is declining and 2.) the timing that showed he could finally stay healthy coincides with when he started taking PEDs leading me to believe health could be a risk for him again. However he surprised me by hitting a home run off of Jon Lester a tough opponent.

Grade: Pitching - A-, Hitting - B-, Overall - B+
An overall quality job pitching and about average performance from the offence, though I' m skewing this grade a bit considering that the Orioles have been geared for these types of games for the last couple seasons.

St. Louis:

Pitching -  Ok so this was a pitchers duel if I've ever seen one, both guys went 7 innings and allowed only 3 hits a piece, unfortunately for Cueto one of those 3 hits was a home run that cost them the game. On the other side Wainwright issued 4 walks throughout the game, now I guess I could call that 3 since he intentionally walked Brayan Pena, however 2 of these walks were almost right next to each other in the 6th inning and could have cost him. To make up for it Wainwright was dominant the rest of the time striking out 9 over the 7 innings he did pitch, now I think that I can't really fault him that much for the walks when he puts up stats that basically show he more than doubled his walks in strikeouts, allowed less hits than walks and didn't allow a run. After the 7th they threw in the bullpen and just like in the Baltimore game the St. Louis bullpen cleaned shop with Trevor Rosenthal ending it with 2/3 strikeouts in the final inning, Pat Neshek did allow 1 walk in the 8th, however thanks to the Cardinals having a very smart manager they continued with their patented match ups on pitching and continued to dominate on pitching.

Hitting - The Cardinals had the same problem on offence that the Orioles had only to a bit more of an extreme, their team RISP was 0-4 again showing us that they managed to get guys on base but just couldn't get them home, and because of that they were lucky to get the home run from Yadier Molina  or it would have just been a war of attrition. As well if you were to look at the box score of the game those times when players got on base it was narrowed down to just 3 players (Kolten Wong, Yadier Molina and Matt Adams) now thats not good, yes it's a positive that the guys in the lower to middle area of the batting order got hits because thats usually where the offence weakens in a typical batting order, however in this case the guys in 3 and 4 positions who are supposed to be the power hitters who drive base runners in didn't get a single hit, and even worse their lead off man, Matt Carpenter, was only able to get on base once. Now just as a side note I'll include defensive flops in here because the Orioles had 3 errors on the game by Boujos, Wong and Adams another unsightly issue during the game and again something they were lucky didn't cost them the game.

Grade: Pitching - A, Hitting - C+, Overall - B+
Now the Cardinals had a DOMINANT game on the mound however the offence was not what we expect from them on a regular basis and the defensive errors they made were pretty bad and they got lucky it didn't cost them a run or just like the Orioles game it could have moved into extra innings and given that the Cardinals had used double the relievers that the Reds used could have made it difficult.

Toronto:

Pitching - I'll be honest I was excited to see/listen to this game because despite the lack of movement from AA in the offseason Dickey had a decent spring and said in his last outing he was working on other pitches to throw into games to throw hitters off balance and McGowan and Hutchison looked great in spring training as well, there still was hope. Or so I thought, this game pretty much embodied everything that was bad about last season. Now the pitching, if you can call it that. Was just like what happened early last year, Dickey's pitching was wild as hell he allowed 5 hits, but topped that off with a 666 line, 6 runs, 6 earned runs and 6 walks, with only 4 strikeouts to write home about. Now the issue here is that this is EXACTLY what Dickey was like last year, I think most attributed his bad start to him rushing through spring training to open for the World Baseball Classic and the back injury he played through the first half of the season. However if this is whats going to be coming out every time he takes the mound I'm really worried. Now things smoothed out when Esmil Rogers got the ball as he cleared through the following 2 innings with a couple of hits, a walk and a pair of strikeouts fairly typical performance by him but then things were handed to Jeffress in the 8th (who honestly I don't think should be in the bullpen) and he proceeded to allow another 3 runs on 1 inning. Oh man that pitching was BAAAAD today.

Hitting - Ok so unfortunately just like how Dickey's pitching today was pretty reminiscent of his pitching last season the offence had the same problems as last year as well, first off we lost Reyes to injury in the first inning (god damn it, was after the first 10 games not soon enough?!?!?!!?), then the same usual hitting happened, the front of the batting order got on base but as soon as we moved down the order everyone ceased to be able to hit leaving the team with a RISP of 0-5, which again is pretty atrocious. Now I did see some glimmers of hope in this game, Izturis managed to get on base even against David Price, Navarro got on base as well (which was a nice surprise to see our crap acquisition from last year and this years acquisition were productive against a heavy handed pitcher). As well Rasmus and Lawrie were both MUCH more patient at the plate, hell I saw Lawrie take balls and force Price to throw 10 additional pitches to get him out, and like I've said even if you can't get on base the next best thing to do is tire the pitcher out by forcing him to throw as many pitches as possible, so good on Brett for making such progress from being a bit of a strikeout machine last year. Now while those were great Lawrie did strike out 2 of the 4 times at bat and because of that in conduction with Thole and Goins we had a section that acted again as the 'strikeout alley', where offensive rallies go to die. Basically the inability of Goins and Thole to actually make an offensive impact often ended up ending innings where we had multiple men on base, which is why we should have been looking for a 2nd base option during the offseason, I'm not knocking Goins' defensive prowess but he needs more time in the minors to develop his offence before he'll be an impact player. On the other side Thole came as expected, we notched him as Dickey's personal catcher and he came to us as an offensive mess so can't expect much but you would think that Kratz might get a little more of a nod since he's much better with the bat (hell he was responsible for 2 of their 3 runs). Now my argument when they sent him down was because his ability to catch Dickey wasn't as good as Thole, but on the other hand if we stretch out their spring training both to 51 innings Kratz would have allowed less stolen bases and caught more players stealing, in addition his range is better than Thole. It seems to me after that display today Kratz should get a shot over Thole.

Grade: Pitching - D, Hitting - C, Overall - D+
Like I said that pitching was some of the ugliest I've seen in recent memory (though it looked like the Rangers v. Phillies game was worse) the reason the pitching didn't get an F was because there was some good pitching by Esmil Rogers who held the Rays to their current score for 2 innings and struck out a pair on the way. Hitting wise I'm sure some would think that it should be lower but again people got on base, some strikeout heavy players last year had better use of their eyes in this game and overall it showed the team has at least progressed a bit and it's hard to doc their score that much do to the shitty performance of 2 players.

-Eric

What If I Was The Blue Jays GM For The 2013/2014 Offseason

Alright so if your a Jays fan, or just a baseball fan in general you'd know that Alex Anthopolous, the Jays GM, made next to no moves during the offseason, which in all honesty is likely to hamper the teams progress this year and let's face it if your in win now mode you have to spend money to improve the team otherwise you could fall a couple steps behind and make it more difficult the next year or two. Anyhow lets see what I would have tried to spin in order to make the offseason successful

1.) Signing Dioner Navarro - Now I did not think this was a bad signing by any stretch of the imagination, it seemed like a very AA type signing, taking in a player who has shown promise in a part time role and convert him to the position full time and see how he does. All in all Navarro has the chops to pull off a good year behind the plate offensively and his solid defence is a HUGE upgrade from what we had last year.

2.) Sign Masahiro Tanaka - Now I know plenty of people would say 'But The Jays Don't Have That Kind Of Money'. WRONG that is bullshit. And you know why? Well it's because Rogers Communications, the owners of the Blue Jays, have one of the highest incomes for baseball owners (right up there in the top 4 or 5), which means they DO have the money the ownership just needs to step up and offer it. As for what I'd offer I'd go for a similar contract to what the Yankees offered him because you need to indicate to him that the team is serious about winning and that spending spree by the Yankees likely attracted him there but on the other side if he got the same offer from Toronto and saw all the big name players we acquired last year he might've changed his tune a bit. Additionally I believe that AA made a HUGE mistake by not going beyond 5 years, and that is because Tanaka is only 25 and a 7 or even 8 year deal would only take him to age 32-33, which is pretty much statistically the end of a players prime, which means you wouldn't really be eating any of the players downhill performance from getting 'over the hill'. Now I'm not writing any other pitchers in case we lose Tanaka because in my mind it's Tanaka or bust, because time and time again we heard over the offseason we need a front of the rotation starter, but outside of Tanaka every other FA pitcher was at best a 3rd spot in the rotation player.

3.) Trade For Chase Utley/Sign Mark Ellis - Ok so early in the offseason the Phillies re-signed Chase Utley along with some of their other aging players, which was confusing as all hell. But given the size of Utley's salary it would have been easy to try and acquire him by offering up some of our major league ready position players since the position players (nearly all of them) on the Phillies were getting to the point where they wouldn't be able to drive the team anywhere close to the post season and Utley was still able to produce at an offensive level that was a fair bit above the average for second baseman and his defensive prowess was still pretty high level as well. As well considering that we traded Brad Lincoln to the Phillies later in the offseason for Kratz and we still have a surplus of relievers we could have likely put together a package of relief pitchers as well. On the other hand if Utley still optioned to resign with the Phillies for whatever ungodly reason I would go after Mark Ellis, and for the same reason as Utley, he's not going to break the bank like signing Cano would have, but he's about average level offensive production wise and defensive wise. Add on the fact that he was playing in a much bigger park the years before, Dodgers Stadium, moving him to the Rogers Centre in the AL East could have very well given a bit of a boost to his numbers.

Ok so those are the signings/trades I would have attempted to make as the GM of the Blue Jays. Now From here we wonder how the line up would be organized.

Batting Order
1.) Jose Reyes
2.) Melky Cabrera
3.) Jose Bautista
4.) Edwin Encarnacion
5.) Colby Rasmus
6.) Chase Utley/Mark Ellis
7.) Brett Lawrie
8.) Adam Lind
9.) Dioner Navarro

Now obviously the batting order isn't changed much from last year, I moved the second baseman up and kept Navarro down at the bottom, the reason for this is because one of the glaring issues for the Jays last year was inability to hit with runners in scoring position. Now if we look at Utley/Ellis and Navarro they have had pretty high batting avg. over the last couple years, what that tells me is if we sprinkle contact hitters in the late end of the batting order we can ensure that players continue to get on base instead of the 'strikeout alley' we had last year when we had Arencibia, Rasmus, Lawrie and Izturis/Bonifacio all lined up in a row.

Starting Rotation
1.) Masahiro Tanaka
2.) R.A Dickey
3.) Mark Buerhle
4.) Drew Hutchison
5.) Brandon Morrow

Now again heres something I actually liked that AA did, put Morrow in the 5th spot, now that doesn't say anything about his ability as a pitcher but what it does do is, because of travelling days and even lengthen road trips, gives him more rest between starts, which will allow the Jays to stretch him out better and keep him in consistently good shape to prevent wearing out his arm. As well Hutchison had a fantastic spring so I gave him the #4 spot to even things out, otherwise the rotation is the same as last year with the addition of Tanaka.

-Eric

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A New Year A New Season (NL Breakdown)

Alright, here comes the NL side of things.
NL East:
Atlanta Braves: This offseason the Braves didn't do a whole lot, probably because they spent a lot on the Upton brothers and a couple other things last year, what they DID do, and I applaud them for this, is they have been slowly but surely been extending the current players they have to keep their core group of players together for a longer period of time. This will likely ensure they have a quality team to put out on the field for years to come. On the spring training side however the Braves ended up getting the short stick as both Mike Minor and Kris Medlen went down with injuries and will not be available for long periods of time, severely hampering their rotation. So to counter the Braves signed Ervin Santana, who will likely head up the back of the rotation with new guys like Alex Wood coming in to fill the more top of the rotation spots. All in all a good offseason followed by a bad injury hit spring training.

Philadelphia Phillies: Now I still don't think I understand what Ruben Amaro Jr. is trying to do here, it's like he's in a delusional state that still thinks he can win despite the fact that the core of his team is getting to the point of being a rotten apple and his rotation has been falling apart ever since Oswalt started to fall apart a few years ago. Now they again didn't do much in the offseason, they made a few trades (like for Brad Lincoln), they resigned Chase Utley (huh?) and got some players to fill out their starting rotation. Now like the Braves they took a major hit when one of their ace starters, Cole Hamels, went down with an injury. Now it's not as serious as what happened with Medlen but given the glaring weakness the Phillies have in their rotation behind Hamels and Lee it's likely to make big problems for them for the time he is gone.

Washington Nationals: Now all I can do is say bravo to what the Nationals have done so far, they made an INCREDIBLY lopsided trade with the Tigers for Doug Fister, they've managed Stephen Strasburg perfectly so they can now let him off the leash this year and they could make some potential player moves that could play off (ie. slot in Rendon at 3rd and move Zimmerman to 1st). Their spring training thankful hasn't come with any serious injuries to their team and on the other hand Bryce Harper came into camp looking like a god damn tank. The only thing they didn't do was address their bullpen issue as Rafael Soriano was fairly shaky last year in the closer position, though this isn't a huge worry as they still have Drew Storen and Tyler Clippard, 2 proven closers, ready to take over if he stumbles.

Miami Marlins: Not even going to say anything here, they made more questionable signings, and honestly I think the Marlins franchise will be forever tainted after last offseason because after hearing from the guys who got traded it seemed like Jeff Loria has complete control of the team and has no regard for player's livelihood. This can be further seen by the fact that Giancarlo Stanton doesn't seem to want to sign an extension with them, overall I think Loria has damaged the reputation of the Marlins and they will find it hard to sign players for a while, unless they can show otherwise.

New York Mets: Now the Mets again didn't make any huge splashes, they signed a couple aging players like Marlin Byrd and Curtis Granderson, but again thats just what they are aging players, so don't look for them to make any glaring differences in the teams play. Spring training wise it was a bit odd with the Mets, not so much because of injuries but there was a bit of a spat between the Mets and Matt Harvey about where he would rehab his arm, as well as their GM saying that he believed they were capable of winning 90+ games with their current roster. A bit odd, on the other hand, and it pains me to say this, but ex-Jays prospect Noah Syndergaard, who is with the Mets now looked fantastic this spring and is more than likely going to make the starting rotation in a year or two. All in all the Mets are going to be a force to be reckoned with in a couple years as they have Johnathon Niese and Dillion Gee, coupled with Zach Wheeler, Matt Harvey and Noah Syndergaard all three of which have the potential to be top 10 starting pitchers.

NL Central
Chicago Cubs: Well the cubs again like many developing teams, did not make any big time changes to their roster over the offseason. Luckily they managed to stay rather clean in the way of injuries and have made a good decision to slot Mike Olt in at 3rd base for the season, which will no doubt better integrate their future players and there has been talk about bringing up Javier Baez, their SS prospect. Hell even Starlin Castro even has said he'd be willing to move to 2B to make room for Baez, this is very good to hear, not only do they have one of their biggest prospects close to breaking the major league roster but its good to hear that other stars in the roster are excited and willing to bite the bullet so to speak in order to get him in. Much like the Mets, if the Cubs prospects break out at the same time they will be a deadly team in a few years.

Cincinnati Reds: Again like the Cubs, the Reds didn't make any serious moves during the offseason, though they did say goodbye to catcher Ryan Hannigan, and outfielder Shin Soo Choo. The loss of Choo was a pretty big deal as he has a big OBP and was VERY key as their lead off hitter, losing Hannigan however wasn't as much of a big deal as he hasn't recently been a huge piece on the team defensively or offensively. On the other hand they have made changes using internal options, specifically bringing up prospect Billy Hamilton and Tony Cingrani to cover the holes in the oration and outfield. Now both of these guys tore it up in the minors and are looked at as big time prospects, now Cingrani has proved his talent with about half a season under his belt last year. On the other hand there are many detractors to Billy Hamilton since he isn't really profiled as having very good batting stats and abilities, however he has been fairly good during spring training flashing some good ability to act as the Reds lead off hitter and if he can put that speed of his to use it'll be a big help for the Reds (he can beat out a throw from Yadier Molina, the best defensive catcher in the game)

Milwaukee Brewers: Seems like a pretty common thing in the NL Central but the Brewers again didn't break the bank making any major signings either outside of getting Matt Garza back after their trade of him to the Rangers mid last year. Now again like the Reds the holes that were left after last year have been filled by younger players that many analysts believe have some high potentials, such as Khris Davis (yes different from the Baltimore Chris Davis) and Jean Segura. Both of these guys are expected to be fairly high end players in the next few years and given what has been seen from them in the minors, spring training and their limited last year exposure it is very much possible that they could achieve it.

Pittsburgh Pirates: Now I know this may be a surprise but the Pirates………..DIDN'T make any big moves this offseason! It's get a bit odd typing this over and over but its' the truth, the Pirates lost A.J Burnett but not much else and they had Wandy Rodriguez coming back from injury so they already had a worthy option to fill that void, so no issue. Overall they still have the ability to make a splash in the NL Central and potentially make it to the wild card again this year.

St. Louis Cardinals: Now I don't want to sound like I'm branding over for the Cardinals but in my mind these guys are like the gold standard that every baseball organization should strive to be like. Now I say that because they have made some good moves this offseason (signing Johnny Peralta, trading for Peter Bourjos and signing Mark Ellis). Now the Peralta signing may not be perfect but it will likely help with the offensive hold left by Beltran and trading for Bourjos does the exact opposite that happened with Beltran, it gives them a Gold Glove caliber player who can easily cover the range. Now I'm not saying defence is better than offence, but a highly defensive centre fielder is a HUGE asset when you live in a more pitcher friendly park as they can make the catches a slower more power focused CF might not be able to. The only funny thing is that after signing Mark Ellis to cover 2B they noticed Kolten Wong, who broke camp and took away the 2B position from Ellis as his performance in spring training was great. Now this is very helpful because now they have one of their star infielder prospects in and a very usable defensive and offensive replacement ready to go if anything goes south. Then in terms of pitching they have the return of all of their huge new players who dominated last year in the rotation and hell they even have 2 of them (Rosenthal and Martinez) holding up the back end of their bullpen. With their prospects in more fortified positions the Cardinals are again a HUGE bit of competition.

NL West
Arizona Diamondbacks: Ok so the Diamondbacks did make some moves on the offseason for instance being involved in that 3 team trade with the Angels and the White Sox, however they seemed to get the short stick of the trade as they gave up big prospects like Skaggs and Eaton and only got Addison Reed and Mark Trumbo in return. Now I don't think Trumbo is a bad player but with Goldschmidt at first they have to slot him in the outfield and as he's a slower player he's a bit of a defensive liability and he has been a bit strikeout happy over the last couple seasons, which again is not that great even if he hits 30 or so HR a year. Reed on the other hand is good for a closer but not for the trading away of Skaggs and Eaton. Outside of that they have brought up prospects Chris Owings and Didi Gregorious to play SS and it looks like they will likely platoon those guys against their respective pitchers for the best results, in addition they also signed Bronson Arroyo, which was a bit odd because it fortified the back end of their rotation, which you think they would like to keep open since they have younger players that will or already have come up and need to get experience in those 4/5 rotation spots (Randal Delgado and Archie Bradley). However during spring training they lost their ace Patrick Corbin to Tommy John surgery and will be out for the remainder of this year and will likely not be back not be back to full power until about half to a full yr after that (which is pretty typical of pitchers who undergo tommy john, which is why the Nationals held a innings limit over Strasburg the first year back).

Colorado Rockies: Not much was done here, only real move of any consequence that the Rockies made was trading Drew Pomeranz to the Oakland Athletics for Brett Anderson, who will sit mid way in their rotation, which could help but still moving any pitcher to Coors Field is always a bit sketchy but we'll see.

LA Dodgers: Much like the Diamondbacks, the Dodgers only made a few changes to their roster and they weren't all that significant. They first added the Cuban defector Alexandre Guerrero who was supposed to take the place of Mark Ellis at second, however through spring training it was VERY apparent he had a LONG way to go in order to make the major league roster so he's starting the season in the minors and Dee Gordon is getting a second chance in the roster at second until Alex is ready. The other change they made was signing Dan Haren, now the Dodgers slotted him into the 4th position in their starting rotation, which seems to be about the right spot of Haren, however he is a injury risk given his current injury history, which could pose problems since they have lost some of their starting pitching depth to injury or free agency (i.e.. Capuano, Biilingsley, etc.). As well there have been some minor injuries to Dodgers players that will only really affect the first couple games and likely won't effect their finishing position.

San Diego Padres: Ok so the Padres actually have an interesting team this year, now they didn't many changes outside of grabbing up Ian Kennedy, Josh Johnson and Joaquin Benoit. Now these 3 pitchers might not be huge deals in any team in a VERY pitcher friendly park like Petco it increases their value significantly, now Johnson has gotten injured AGAIN so he is likely not to contribute much during the year however Kennedy could very well help the rotation and Joaquin Benoit is a quality set up man and could be invaluable as a backstop behind Huston Street both to protect the lead or fill in if Street gets injured like he has before. Now the reason I say they have an interesting team isn't because of these signings it's because they have 2 high end prospects who have high upside settling in their rotation, Andrew Cashner and Tyson Ross, now Cashner has already proved himself as a top of the rotation starter and can hold his own against most. In addition if Venable, Maybin and Cabrera can continue their production from last year or even make a slight step forward their offence will be in a good spot. Additionally they have their big name catcher Yasmani Grandal back from the DL and again that gives the offence a boost and if Gyorko can keep his production from last year and Headley can step back to his 2011 skill set then the Padres could be a logical postseason candidate.

San Francisco Giants: Much like the Dodgers, the Giants made only a couple of signings under the radar because they weren't high end players, those being Tim Hudson and Michael Morse. Now these two signings are good for the Giants because Hudson may be an aged pitcher but AT&T park is one of the best pitcher friendly parks which should make him a more worth while pitcher and Michael Morse is a good candidate to get his power back given what we saw in Spring Training and at the tail end of last year. Outside of this there wasn't any significant changes mad to their roster and their spring training didn't bring about any serious injuries or prospects that could break camp, overall expect more of the same or maybe a slight improvement for the Giants this season.

Ok so that wraps up the Offseason and Spring Training breakdowns for both the AL and NL. Next I'm going to be putting on my GM hat and letting everyone know what I would have done if I was in the position of Alex Anthopolous over last offseason. Now I don't plan on saying I would sign ALL of the big name free agents, I will give specific players that would make sense and explanations to them all.

-Eric