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.