A New Year A New Season (AL Breakdown)

So it's less than a week until opening day for baseball and several teams look quite sharper than they did at the end of last year, let's tale a quick look at the changes to each division over the offseason and subsequent spring training.

AL East

• Yankees signed McCann, Beltran, Ellsbury, Tanaka, Johnson and Roberts to cover for departures at C, CF, LF, 2B, 3B and SP (I personally think most of these position player signings will come back to bite the Yankees, though I believe thats because most of the position players have shown to be injury risks and have all been signed onto lengthy contracts, so I expect for the first 2-3 yrs they will get what they paid for but then the players will degrade like what happened with Texiera, Granderson and others and the Yanks will be stuck with their dick in their hands once again)
• Red Sox didn't do all that much, signed A.J. Pierzynski and nabbed some other players including Grady Sizemore (whose spring training may indicate he can play up to around the same level he could before, if he manages to stay healthy, which would make the Red Sox a dangerous team again. Although their loss of Dempster in the rotation does put a small hole in their pitching as well)
• Rays, like the Red Sox didn't do a hell of a lot, they re-signed players, snagged some more bargain free agents, which is what they do, and given their ability to develop players, they will undoubtably be a force come postseason time
• Orioles signed some new pitching, specifically guys like Ubaldo Jimenez, now I don't like this guy much (as a pitcher not a person) and thats because he has been incredibly inconsistent bouncing back and forth from good yr to bad yr and on top of that people are over hyping what he did last year since he only managed it for HALF a season. In addition to improvement to their rotation they changed around their bullpen with the departure of Jim Johnson and also filled holes left by Brian Roberts and others as well as finding a temporary fill in for Machado. Like the Rays they have had winning in their eyes and will likely again be a competitive team this year
• Jays, well unfortunately my team didn't do much of anything, they made several rather meaningless minor league deals (except getting Kawasaki back), signed Dioner Navarro (who would be a fantastic signing if he can get to the numbers he had last year in a part time role with the Cubs. In addition they have taken Happ out of the rotation (mostly due to injury) and slotted in 2 of the 3 returning from Tommy John, Drew Hutchison and Dustin McGowan, both who have had productive spring training numbers. The level of success the Jays see this year will solely depend on 3 things, first the teams ability to stay healthy (while lots of people say the Jays were just bad last year there was not a single game where we fielded the lineup AA had set up and a lot of bad performances can be attributed to injuries, like Melky and the tumour or Dickey and his back issues), second the starting rotation needs to pull it's weight and not fall flat on it's face like last year (while injuries were a big part of it the Jays got off to an incredibly slow start due to the rotation, no pun intended, dropping the ball for most of the year and the depth we used to fill being unable to keep up), and third breakouts or progression from McGowan, Hutchison and Lawrie, we all know that Encarnacion, Bautista, Reyes and Rasmus (to a lesser extent) have the ability to drive this offence but the problem we had offensively last year was an inability to hit with runners in scoring position (in essence our first 4 batters would set the table but everyone after was unable to clear it)

AL Central

• Tigers made one decent to 'meh' trade and one really crap trade, they obtained Ian Kinsler for Prince Fielder (a not so great trade for them since Fielder is obviously the more premium player in the deal and Kinsler's skill set has been declining in recent years and moving him to a less hitter friendly park will hurt his numbers more. Then they also let go of Doug Fister for some prospects from Washington, those of which were not of high quality, this was terrible as they were giving up a very solid #2-#3 starter for no real immediate pay off, which is what they need and given that Fister is a ground ball pitcher he would have benefitted from the better defence provided from the newly acquired 2B and Iglesias once he's back. All in all the Tigers slightly downgraded and since last season showed us Miggy is human as he got injured, now while this open the floodgates for Miggy injuries? Maybe but we'll have to see
• White Sox, now I really like what these guys did, they secured through trade and signing some real stellar young talent and then managed to sign some key young players like Jose Abreu that will hold as the core of their roster for years to come. If their pitching in the minors catches up the White Sox could very well be contenders within the next 3-4 years.
• Royals, now I'm in awe at what they have been able to do, they increased their offensive ability and defensive ability by taking on Norichika Aoki as well as Omar Infante, they re-signed Shields and they are bringing up a fireball throwing youngster in Yordano Ventura to cover the last spot in their rotation and if any of the Cardinals young pitchers have shown us anything, these young guys can be stars right off the bat. The Royals will, in my opinion, likely take the AL Central or at least give a real close chase with the Tigers
• Twins, not much of anything to say. They signed Nolasco, Hughes and other mediocre pitchers who are unlikely to really change their situation, I expect they will still be at the bottom of the barrel
• Indians will be in a similar situation to the Tigers in that they let go some key players and didn't do a hell of a lot to make up for their absence and this year they don't have that ridiculously easy schedule to rely upon to get by. All in all in order for the Indians to replicate their 2013 success all of their players are going to have to play at 100+% and they will need breakouts from some of their younger guys like Danny Salazar, Trevor Plouffe or Lonnie Chisenhall

AL West:

• Athletics, now I love most of these small market teams because they manage to be so damn smart about winning, now the Athletics like many small market teams didn't make much of a splash this offseason, they changed closers to Jim Johnson, which couldn't hurt since Oakland has a smaller ball park and better infield defence. In addition they traded away some guys for some pitching depth. Now recently however a couple of their starters have managed to get themselves injured, specifically Jarrod Parker who is out for the year getting Tommy John surgery, which will undoubtedly hurt them in the long run. However the A's still have a good set of pitchers including one of the star young pitchers from last year Sonny Gray and given that every team in the AL West seems to be getting hit by the injury bug I expect them to be the main source of competition in the AL West.
• Rangers, now on the other side of the Tigers trade, they got the best f the deal and they even managed to sort out issues they would have initially had in their bullpen by bringing back Feliz and setting up Soria as the set up man. Now that was before all the injuries hit, Derek Holland, Matt Harrison and countless others will be out for extended periods of time putting a big dent in their pitching as well as their offence (Profar and Andrus). If these players can come back in good shape in a hurry they will probably finish second in this division
• Angels, made a couple 'meh' trades to increase pitching depth but similar to the Jays if their players can stay healthy, they get breakouts from some of the younger players and these new pitchers deliver then they could be a force to be reckoned with, especially with the potential ceiling with guys like Tyler Skaggs
• Mariners, these were the big guys who signed Robinson Cano to the most ridiculous deal in the history of baseball, in addition they made other additions like Corey Hart to their offence and brought up some of their high end pitching prospects to start the year (Taijuan Walker, James Paxton, etc.). They have the same kind of out look as the Angels, though their offence has several more questions than the other teams so they aren't likely to make the playoffs or anything
• Astros, while they will likely be looking at another at or around 100 loss season looking at the progress of their prospects and how close they are to the majors, the Astros are going to be a very scary team in the next 4-5 years and the addition of Dexter Fowler will help with holding things down now and maybe helping ease in the new kids when they get called up. All in all I look forward to seeing the progression of the Astros as their farm system risings from the grave to take a shot a the post season.

Well thats the run down for the AL, I'll post the NL version shortly they I'm going to go back and let you know what I would have done if I was in Alex Anthopolous' position during the offseason.

-Eric

Blue Jays Offseason Needs

Alright so lately I've been seeing lots of rumours surrounding what the Jays are doing or what they should do, now what I'm going to do is outline possibilities that have cropped their heads up and realistic moves I think the Jays either should or could make for the areas they need major help in.

Catcher:

-Ok so the first thing I read this morning was that the Jays were targeting Chris Ianetta and/or Hank Conger from the LA Angels via trade. Now this is a TERRIBLE idea, the reason is because one both of these players are FAR more expensive than J.P. Arencibia (salary wise we're talking 510k for J.P and more than 4 million for either of the LA catchers), two they aren't that much better (Conger and Ianetta have better OPS and walk rates but they still have lacklustre defensive skills as they still have a 25% or below stealing throw out and both have several based balls and errors) and three neither of these guys are that good at calling games (that means calling pitches and pitch locations) and with a staff that could very well consist of a lot of new guys (if we have injuries in 2014, which we likely will at some point) intelligent catchers like Yadier Molina are needed. So overall I don't think this move will happen as it will downgrade our already not fantastic prospect pool for a very lacklustre upgrade

-On the other hand there are still possibilities at the catcher position, specifically we can look at how Mike Napoli was only signed for a 1 year deal with the Red Sox. If Boston is not open to shelling out more than another 1 yr deal for the catcher we could give him a 2-3 year deal since that still covers the window where we have the core players in place. As well we must not forget that Brian McCann and A.J Pierzynski are also a free agents this year as well and would fit in quite well offensively and defensively, especially considering Pierzynski has played with Buerhle before. The final possibility is this cuban catcher that I've read some about, now this could be good mainly because of how effecient we've seen some Cuban players be (Puig, Cespedes and Chapman).

Second Base:

-Not many reports have come out in terms of what the Jays plan to do here, the logical move for most people would be to throw Ryan Goins a bone and let him start at 2nd considering how well he played in the last month of the season. Now while I think this is an awesome idea because of how much Goins reminded me of Roberto Alomar, I'm not sure it is what they need right now as we have only 2 years until that window of time where we have all of our stars locked down ends and trying to integrate a young player like Goins may take some time. Not to mention I'd rather have our future stars lined up to come out at one time to make another all star calibre team rather than one at a time and fade into mediocrity.

-Now heres what I think is possible for the Jays, they could make an attempt at signing Robinson Cano (though anything past a 5 year deal would be suicide) which may go over since most big money teams either have an established second baseman or have come out and said their not going to be taking part in Canopalooza. The second option is to trade for a quality second baseman, now out of all the players out there the ones I believe that fit best and are most likely are Chase Utley, Ian Kinsler and Marco Scutaro. Now heres why for each, Utley makes sense because his production level is still on the up and the Phillies have all but collapsed in recent years and are in serious need of remodelling for their team. Scutaro makes sense as well because the Giants just came back from a World Series win and barely managed to scrape together a over .500 season, now with Scutaro I don't think we're expecting a home run hitting machine but he's obviously a lead off hitter and behind Reyes that would be great for loading the bases before the big guns come up. Now the one that most will think stands out and doesn't make sense is Ian Kinsler but just let me explain. First off we know Kinsler has agreed to an extension that ties him down until the 2017 season so theres a fair amount of money involved (not that it's an issue for the Rangers or the Jays) and then the Rangers have nearly made Jurickson Profar a regular, but the 2B/SS doesn't have a spot to fit in unless someone gets injured and to develop him they need to make room, so the obvious thing is to trade Kinsler and slot in Profar as their second baseman. Overall it makes sense for both teams. Then of course there is lovely free agency, which has Cano, Uggla, Infante and potentially Zobrist coming out. I personally don't think Uggla or Cano will end up coming to Toronto, because Uggla has been just as bad if not worse that J.P Arencibia in the batting sense this year and because the price tag on Cano is too high unless he'll take a lower year contract. On the other hand Infante and Zobrist are intriguing because thy are both quality defenders and when on can be more than above average at the plate, more so with Infante, though Zobrist has some serious multiple position ability which would be a big life saver for the Jays as it seems every year someone goes down on injury.

Pitching:

-Not much to discuss here in terms of news, the only trade whisper I've heard is the Jays taking a look at Brett Anderson, which I think is a bad idea since we already have enough pitchers with terrible injury history and taking on another pitcher injury reclamation project would be suicide until we get the ones we currently have done (Morrow, Johnson, Hutchinson, Drabek, etc.). On the international side though there has been some interest show in the Japanese pitcher Masahiro Tanaka (Ma-kun), now I've gone to Japan before and had the pleasure of watching many Japanese baseball games and boy are thy exciting, the outfield is reserved for hardcore fans of each team (left is the home team and right is the away team). Hell it's like a soccer crowd in a baseball stadium. Anyhow Tanaka has a similar repetoire to Yu Darvish and has been just a successful, which leads me to believe that he would be a good pick up for the Jays. Though if thats not enough for you lets look at another few factors. First off the fan base, this year has shown us that there is plenty of love for Japanese players in the Jays fan base (2 words Munenori Kawasaki) and on top of that one thing Darvish didn't have when he came over was a Japanese team mate to help him integrate and considering how friendly Kawasaki is and how crazy fans go for him I can't imagine the same wouldn't happen for Tanaka. Second we have the stadium, Darvish has been wildly successful in Texas and if we look at it Rogers is a FAR more pitcher friendly park than Arlington so it'd be easier for Tanaka to gain the same level of performance as Darvish in Toronto. Overall he seems like a great fit and I would be ecstatic to finally see a good Japanese pitcher get into the Jays rotation. 

-Now on the other hand there isn't much available in the free agent pool for starting pitchers, now don't get me wrong there are a few pitchers that would vastly improve the rotation but those guys I expect to get offers from their current teams and come back to there (ie. Hiroki Kuroda, A.J Burnett, etc.). So theres not much to offer there.

Alright so I'll be doing this for the Orioles this weekend and possibly for the Cardinals the following week (though it doesn't look like they need much of anything with that lineup)

-Eric

Playoff Predictions - Teams and Bracket

Ok so whats all on every baseball fans minds at this point? Who is going to the playoffs, thats what! Well there are some obvious teams that are going to the playoffs, however there are still some battles for division 1st place or wild cards still going on that means a lot so in essence I'm going to give you what teams I think are going to be going to the playoffs and whose going to go how far.

AL:
East Winners: Tampa Bay Rays - Now the reason I think the Rays will take this division is because in my honest opinion, the Boston Red Sox having been playing over their heads for the entire year, that is to say EVERYTHING has gone right and nothing has gone wrong. So overall I think they will slip back and the Rays will win the division, I mean their only 2.5 games back at the moment so it's not all that farfetched idea to begin with.

Central Winners: Detroit Tigers - Now this is an obvious one but honestly for ages I've been in the group that has considered the Tigers INSANELY overrated. Now before you get your pitchforks for me going against Miggy and Verlander you have to remember that usually they aren't the top placed team in terms of win-loss record in the AL and several years they haven't even been 2nd. That of course means that their percent win-loss was below that of the AL West and/or AL East winners and thats even more disturbing when you consider that about half of their games are against division rivals, and honestly do you think that a team would have a harder time against the East teams (Yankees, Red Sox, Orioles, Rays and Blue Jays) where all the teams are in hitter friendly parks and with high end teams or Central teams (Twins, Royals, Indians, Tigers and White Sox) who are balanced in terms of pitcher parks vs hitter parks. Now after looking after looking at that and considering the amount of talent that the Tigers have and the weak schedule they have, them finishing with less than the highest W-L percentage in the AL is disturbing. Anyhow Tigers should take the Central no problem.

West Winners: Texas Rangers - Not much discussion here, there is a bit of a close call with the Oakland A's right now but considering that the Rangers have been on a roll lately and have a better rest of the schedule than Oakland I expect they will be the ones to stand atop the AL West.

AL Wild Card Winners: Ok so the wild card winners I've picked up are the other two teams I spoke about in the West and East winners, that being the Oakland Athletics and the Boston Red Sox.

NL:
East Winners: Atlanta Braves - No question here as the the Braves have been dominating the NL East and they have a 13 game lead on the 2nd place Nationals so there is no hope of anyone catching them during the rest of the month.

Central Winners: St. Louis Cardinals - Now again this seems like a no brainer but the main reason I think the Cardinals are going to take it over the Pirates is because as I previously mentioned in my Last Month post, the Pirates have a series of games against the Reds in the last month and some middle of the road or somewhat difficult opponents where as the Cardinals have games against nearly all below .500 teams.

West Winners: Los Angeles Dodgers: Now this seals up the National League and just like the East the Dodgers have nearly a 10 game lead on the Arizona Diamondbacks and considering how the Diamondbacks have been playing over the last couple weeks it is unlikely that they will be able to catch up to the Dodgers, especially since they will be having Kemp come back into their lineup soon enough.

NL Wild Card Winners: More obvious ones though surprising that both of them are coming out of the NL Central as thats usually the worst division over several years and wild cards usually came out of the East (Phillies or Nationals). So in this case I've got Pittsburgh and Cincinnati taking the Wild Card spots for the National League.

Wild Card Round:
Ok so for the wild card game I think that for the AL Oakland is going to come out on top and for the NL Pittsburgh is going to come out on top. Now again the reason I think Pittsburgh will win the NL is because they are honestly more of a complete team as they have a good blend of players and there bullpen and starters are solid where as the Reds have a bit of an issue with their bullpen, with exception to Aroldis Chapman. In addition to this their going to be getting back Starling Marte, Grilli and a few other star players back from the DL prior to this game. Now why do I think the Athletics are going to beat out the Red Sox? Well first off I'll point back to the fact that again I think the Red Sox have been playing above their actual talent level all year as most of their players are not nearly as good as they've been playing over the last 2-3 years, mainly guys like Johnny Gomes, Shane Victorino, Mike Napoli, and a couple others. But like the Pirates the Athletics are getting some important players back from the DL before this playoff game, namely Bartolo Colon who has been a horse in their starting rotation and Brett Anderson.

ALDS Rounds:
Ok so in the ALDS I believe that the match ups are going to be Tampa vs. Detroit and Texas vs. Oakland. Though to be honest all of the top teams are currently within 1.5 games of each other for beat W-L record in the AL so it could go any way. But anyhow I expect that the winners of these two series are going to be Tampa and Oakland and the reason I believe that is because recently Miguel Cabrera has had to leave games with injuries, whether they are serious or not is irrelevant because if those things nag him into the post season the Tigers will be without their best player and on top of that the Tigers starting rotation has started to show signs of being human (that is Scherzer and Sanchez) as Scherzer almost lost the last game pretty badly if not for a very late game rally. Now why I think Oakland will win over Texas is for a couple reasons, the first being the people their getting back from the DL and the fact that Texas is missing a key player in Nelson Cruz thanks to the Biogenesis suspensions. The second reason is because of Ron Washington, who in my opinion is probably one of the worst managers in all of baseball and yea go ahead and harp on me for saying it but if you watch the Rangers World Series performances, Washington seems to lose his shit when they are a game or two away from winning the whole thing and just starts to make ridiculous moves, like bringing in Tommy Hunter to relieve despite the fact that he was supposed to start 2 days down the line.

NLDS Rounds:
Alrighty, so here I figure it's going to end up Atlanta vs. Pittsburgh and St. Louis vs. Los Angeles. Now the winners of these series is a bit more difficult as all teams have been playing amazingly but sadly I have to. SOOOO I think that Atlanta is going to win against Pittsburgh firstly and thats because they have pitching depth to spare and despite the injuries to their key bullpen guys they have managed to stay dominant pitching wise in the late innings. In addition to this their starters have been great and having really dominant young starters who hitters have little experience against is a god send, those being Alex Wood and Julio Tehran, not to mention the potential greatness of Brandon Beachy if he goes full force into the post season. As for against Pittsburgh they have been less active on the offensive than Atlanta has and given that plenty of Atlanta's starters are so key the Pirates will likely not get many opportunities to score runs. Now on the other side I'm going to take the less likes side and say the Dodgers are going to win it. Now for a long time I was convinced that the Cardinals were going to go to the WS and take it without a problem, however after seeing what the Dodgers have in their starting 3 pitchers and what Kershaw has been doing stat wise I have changed my mind because like Oakland the Dodgers are getting guys like Kemp and others back right before the post season kicks off and Brandon League has taken to his position in the bullpen instead of when he was closing earlier and the mightier strikeout machine Kenley Jannsen has taken over as closer.

ALCS Round:
Ok so after the ALDS that would make the ALCS a series between Tampa and Oakland and I think that Tampa will come out on top because of their stellar pitching that has been on since the beginning of the season and the trades they've recently made that have already been turning dividends and getting them more runs in must win games. On the other hand, despite Oakland having more players coming back off the DL they haven't really bolstered their offence or defence so I imagine that since the Rays have done the exact opposite they will have a fair advantage over them.

NLCS Round:
Ok well heres the NLCS and I'm guessing if this match up does come to fruition I expect that the Dodgers will win, however it honestly depends on some of the Atlanta hitters as most of them are fairly streaky and can be top 5 hitter level production one month then bottom 250 hitter production the next. Though because of this inconsistency and the consistency of players like Crawford, Puig and the entire pitching staff of the Dodgers I think they'd take the NLCS from the Braves.

World Series Matchup:
Ok so this makes the final match up for the WS the Tampa Bay Rays vs. the Los Angeles Dodgers. Now my personal opinion would be for the Rays to win as I always love seeing lower budget teams succeed, especially when a brilliant manager like Joe Maddon is at the helm of the team. However I believe that if this does come to fruition that the Dodgers will take it as when you look at the teams it's going to come down to a duel of the pitchers and while Price, and Cobb could take on the starters for the Dodgers, Kershaw, Grienke and Ryu, the other Rays pitchers, Archer, Moore, Hellickson and Hernandez, have yet to show that they can be consistently good over a long period of time and I think that is what would be the downfall of the Rays as they lack the hard hitting offence that the Dodgers have.

Ok guys, hope you enjoyed this one, so I'll put up another post late next week as things have been picking up on my end and it's getting pretty busy.

-Eric

End Of Year Award Predictions

Ok so one of the major things people should be thinking about as the final month of the baseball season winds down is who, of the greatest players this year deserve the various end of year awards. Those are the AL MVP, Cy Young and Rookie Of The Year in addition to the NL MVP, Cy Young and Rookie Of The Year, so I'll be going over who I think should win those awards and why. We'll start off with the AL.

AL:

MVP: Well this seems like this one is pretty much a no brainer, so my thoughts have this one going to Miguel Cabrera again. Now this would be a bit of a different story if Chris Davis was keeping up the pace he was setting himself up for during the first few months of the season but Cabrera has been holding top spot in nearly all batting categories except HR including some of the additional stats (OBP, OPS and SLG). And it's not just that he's leading those categories it's that he's destroying them, as in nearly all categories only the 2nd place guy is anywhere near him. For example in HR Chris Davis currently leads with 46, with Miggy just behind at 43 and the next best is Edwin Encarnacion at 33, a full 10 home runs below Cabrera. If that doesn't scream MVP I don't know what does.

Cy Young: Now this one gets a bit foggy as there are 2-3 pitchers that could take this for varying reasons. Now, my opinion is probably not going fall in line with the popular belief but I think that the award should go to Yu Darvish. Now plenty of people are going to be up in arms about me not giving it to Scherzer, now I do respect what Max is doing this season I don't pretend to forget that darvish has been the lead in strikeouts by nearly 30, Darvish is 3rd in ERA and is only off the first place pitcher (Anibal Sanchez) by 0.07 (better than Scherzer), is only slightly below Scherzer in WHIP and right behind Scherzer in all other categories. Then of course let's not forget that if you watch him pitch you'll notice not only is his power still the same as it was last year but he's picked up the control as well and as a result is kicking ass even more than the previous season.

Rookie Of The Year: Another slightly difficult decision to make on this one, mainly because there aren't any real big stand outs like that last year, but I suppose the closest to the right pick for this would be Tampa Bay outfielder Wil Myers. Now Myers hasn't been perfect or anything to that extent but to be honest he's the best of a fairly thin selection this year so there isn't really another quality rookie to pick in that case.

NL:

MVP: Ok so heres another one that didn't necessarily have a no questions asked winner, though again I expect people may not agree with the prediction I'm making for this one but my winner of the MVP is Clayton Kershaw. Now yea I realize pitchers don't usually win this thing unless under extreme circumstances and to be honest everything about Kershaw's stat line is ridiculous with exception to his Win-Loss record, which is near meaningless to begin with. The fact that there is only 1 month of baseball left and he's posting the lowest ERA and WHIP since 1968 should tell you all you need to know, not only that but he's also just barely behind Matt Harvey in strikeouts in the NL and he's aiming for a career high innings pitched and that's not including innings he'll likely pick up during the playoffs. Now if that doesn't convince you take a look at this stat line: 2.40 ERA, 24-5 W-L, 251.0 IP, 53 BB, 250 Ks, 0.92 WHIP, those stats belong to the 2011 MVP, Justin Verlander. Now what you should know is that Kershaw is shattering Verlander's MVP ERA and WHIP (1.72 and 0.85), he's on his way to about 235-240 strikeouts, nearly in line with Verlander's MVP season and he's poised to walk about the same amount as well. All in all this pretty much slots Kershaw in for winner of the MVP in my mind, though the common argument against it is that his W-L record isn't nearly that of Verlander's and while that may be true the Dodgers have had serious injuries to their star players and as a result he hasn't gotten the run support necessary to get those precious wins, hence why his win total is only at 13 despite having pitched twice that many games and if you need any more proof of that notice that his FIP is actually 1.44, a bit lower than his current ERA and his xFIP is still under 2.00 as well. So if you don't think Kershaw deserves this take a good hard look at the stats then come back.

Cy Young: Ok so after what I just said about Kershaw in the MVP paragraph I'm sure you can guess I'm giving him unanimous for the Cy Young, no conversation required.

Rookie Of The Year: Now this one again is a hard one as there are many front runners, be it Matt Harvey, Jose Fernandez or Yasiel Puig. Now if you just look at what all three of these players have done this year it's hard to pick one over the other because they've all been amazing however I have to narrow down to one person and that player is Yasiel Puig. The reason I chose Puig over the other two is because not only did he put up amazing stats for the first month of his career but even when it looked like he was going to hit a prolonged slump he figured it out and jumped back into it, hell he's still hitting in the .350's, tut thats not the main reason why I chose him. The reason I chose him is because he got the call up when the Dodgers were without Kemp, Ethier and overall a consistent offensive performance but Puig not only brought that offensive presence but he also kick started the Dodgers as a team back into action, which can be seen in the pick up of the Dodger's games won and run differential increase from the time Puig joined the game. In addition to this we have seen that Puig is very much the definition of a five tool player, he has an amazing glove, can easily hit for power and average, he's got speed on the base paths sure enough to steal bases and he has a cannon for an arm that has allowed him to make some ridiculous throw outs. This is really what sets him apart from the others because he not only delivers on the offensive side but in all aspects f the game he can help in and was responsible for getting the Dodgers back on track towards a playoff push.

-Eric

Bird Watch: Down To The Last Month

Ok so we're down to the last leg of the race for the a playoff spot and well needless to say we have all three of the teams in varying positions. The Blue Jays are 100% out of the running and have been playing worse as the days go by, so much as to lose to Houston the other day, the Orioles are holding on but are nearing the back of the pack for the wild card in the AL and the Cardinals are so far ahead of the rest of the wild card teams that they've nearly got a guaranteed spot, it just comes down to whether they can steal the NL Central from the Pirates or not because if they can't they'll have to play that dreaded 1 game playoff agains the other wild card team (likely the Reds). So for the interest of time I'm not even going to mention the Jays as they've been playing awful, so there isn't much reason the mention them and as a Jays fan it just hurts to look at how bad they are currently.

The Orioles:
Alright so the Orioles here have been sitting anywhere in the top 3 spots of the AL East all season, flopping anywhere from 1st to 3rd, now there is still hope for them to win the division as they are only 4.5 games especially since they have played 3 games less than the Red Sox. Recently however the Orioles haven't been playing terribly well as they've begun to slump back into playing games that they win or lose by only 1 or 2 runs and considering that their closer Jim Johnson has begun to have a bit of a bad luck streak and they overall don't have the same sort of close game winning finesse that they did last year it is entirely possible that they may come up a bit short in the run for a playoff spot especially with the Rays playing as well as they have been not to mention getting back Matt Moore and Alex Cobb, two of the teams biggest starters. Now the rest of Baltimore's schedule is quite difficult as all but 3 of their series for the remainder of the year are against teams that are a fair bit over .500 and have been playing solidly over the last month or so but whether that is a positive or negative all depends on how you look at it because 3 of those remaining 10 series are against Boston or Tampa, the teams they need to get a leg up on in order to make the playoffs as the AL East champs so those games are worth even more to the Orioles down the stretch in addition another 4 of those series are against teams who are just ahead or behind them in the wild card standings so nearly all of them are worth a great deal. On the other hand however the under .500 teams the Orioles are facing have been seen to show a bit of a fight every now and then (specifically the Jays) so if they closer and bullpen struggles continue it may be more difficult for them to gain ground when they should be. All in all it's likely going to be pretty tight as there are 5 teams vying for the 2 wild cards in the AL and all of them within 4 games of each other.

The Cardinals:
Ok so the Cardinals, unlike the Orioles are in a pretty interesting position as 3 of the teams in their division, including themselves, have dominated the playoff spots and are pretty much a lock for the playoffs as the closest team to any of them is still 7 games out and the Diamondbacks unfortunately haven't really shown any signs of a potential winning surge coming up anytime soon. Now if we look at those 3 teams, the Pirates, the Reds and the Cardinals, we notice that they are all within 3.5 games of each other meaning this is going to come down the wire. Now of course I don't mean that in terms of securing a playoff spots I mean it in the sense that obviously the team wants to win the division so they don't have to risk that extra playoff series against the other wild card team. Now when we look at the schedules for these teams we notice that the Cardinals are actually in the best shape and thats because they have 2 series against these other two competitive NL Central teams then their remaining games are against under .500 NL opponents that should honestly make for some pretty easy wins down the stretch. Now what makes their schedule more favourable than that of the Reds and the Pirates is that despite the Reds/Pirates also having series against these weaker teams as well they face each other in 2 series during September excluding any series they have against the Cardinals. So what this means is that as the Cardinals are beating up on weak teams like the Mets or the Brewers the Reds and Pirates are going to be knocking each other around making it a little easier for the Cardinals to sneak into first place in the NL Central. Overall it should be interesting to see what happens with this interesting clump of teams in the NL Central as it has historically been thought of as one of the weakest divisions in the MLB.

Ok so thats all for the remainder of this week but I'm going to be doing a major award prediction post sometime next week and likely also a post in regards to my thoughts on the potentially playoff bound teams.

-Eric

Lack Of Posts

Hey all, sorry for the lack of posts over the last couple weeks, I was back home in Canada for a wedding as well as some other important family events that had me really busy, anyhow I'm unpacking today but I will have some more content within the next couple days.

-Eric

A Quick Guide How To Evaluate A Player

Ok so heres a quick guide on evaluating players, you can use this to see what to expect from new players to your team, figure out if a player is worth picking up in fantasy baseball, or even what to expect from call ups.

Look At The Situation:
Ok so first thing you should do in evaluating a player is first figure out what kind of situation your looking at, for instance is this a minor league call up who has no experience in the majors, a traded player, a high end free agent signing, a player returning from the DL, etc. Now the reason for this is because there are certain expectations you should have in these different situations because obviously a player returning from the DL will not likely jump back into the same production they had pre-injury the game they return to the lineup. Also don't forget to adjust for what ball park they are in as some are more hitter or pitcher friendly.

In addition to this if you hadn't noticed hitters that go to the AL generally get a bit of a break and thats because the pitching isn't as strong in the AL as it is in the NL (see pitchers like Clayton Kershaw, Stephen Strasburg, Gio Gonzalez, Adam Wainwright, Matt Harvey, etc.) and the opposite applies to hitters moving from the AL to the NL, which is also amplified because the presence of the DH in the AL, which allows hitters more opportunities to get regular at bats. Now pitchers that move from the NL to the AL generally have a reduction in their stats again because the AL in a much harder hitting division and if their going from the AL to the NL expect an improvement to their stats. Now stat changes from going from one league to the other should be taken with a grain of salt and thats because it is doubtful that if an ace level pitcher like Felix Hernandez, Yu Darvish, Matt Harvey or Clayton Kershaw were to change leagues they wouldn't have that sharp of a decrease or increase as they have proven what they are as pitchers. The inverse can be said about crappy pitchers because you wouldn't expect say John Danks of the White Sox to move to the NL and get a huge boost in ability, and thats because he's a bad pitcher, so these things really only apply to those who are saddled in the middle of pitcher ratings and show potential in one way of another.

Now minor league call ups are another thing entirely, first off you should note which level of the minors they are coming from (low-A, high-A, AA, AAA, etc.) and then find out what league in the minors they were in, this is because certain leagues like the Pacific Coast League is a BIG TIME hitters league so hitters stats will obviously be skewed and inversely good pitching stats will look even better from this league. So again be thorough when looking at minor league records. As well as this standard research make sure you remember, and this is often forgotten by fans out there, that minor league players generally won't immediately start hitting/pitching what they were hitting/pitching like in the minors when they get called up and thats obviously because the pitching or hitting they will experience with their new major league team is FAR better than anything they faced in the minors.

Check Their Base Stats
After this you should look at their standard statistics, through sites like Baseball Reference, Fan Graphs or ESPN, those statistics being Runs, RBI, HR, SB and AVG for hitters or Wins, K, Saves, ERA and WHIP for pitchers, though saves only apply for relievers, but remember to focus on their previous numbers, those being years past in the majors or equivalent minors and career averages. These numbers should give you a brief idea of what they put on the board in a regular season and from there you can adjust based on the situations I went over above. So basically you should be slightly adjusting these stats given the situation.

Check The Averages
Ok so for this we should be looking at OBP, SLG, OPS, BB% and K% for hitters and then K/9, BB/9, K/BB, HR/9, K% and BB% for pitchers. Now I'll talk about these stats separated by hitters and pitchers. So the hitting averages are as follows, OBP and BB% will give you an idea or how much the batter walks as OBP (on base percentage) is their batting average plus inclusion of their walks and then BB% is the walk rate separated from OBP so if a hitter has a high walk rate it either means they are a big time hitter that pitchers are afraid of or they are patient at the plate and have a good approach, either way this is desirable in hitters. Then we have SLG and OPS, which represent power hitting and SLG plus OBP respectively, now these numbers give you a relatively brief look at what kind of power the hitter provides. Then finally for hitters there is the K%, which is obviously the % of times they strike out, and then tells us the opposite of the OBP and BB% of whether they have a bad approach at the plate or if they can't make consistent contact with the ball when they swing. On the pitchers side we first look at K/9 and K%, now these will tell us first what type of pitcher the 'subject' is because your typical 'ACE' level pitchers have K/9 ratios of about 9.0 or higher, the low end pitchers generally have 3.0-4.0 or sometimes lower than that so obviously the higher the strikeout % the more effective the pitcher is. Now this is not 100% true as there are also fly ball and ground ball pitchers so if a pitcher has a low K/9 and K% but you think their good look at their ERA and WHIP and if it's in the 3.00-4.00 and 1.00-1.50 marks then they are most likely are a contact pitcher, they will be talked about a little later too. Next up look at BB/9, BB% and K/BB, this will tell you how many batters the pitcher walks and overall is a good indicator of how much control a pitcher has over his pitches. The last of these averages in the HR/9 ratio, which gives us an idea of how susceptible the pitcher is to home runs, which may have to do with the park they are pitching in. After looking at these numbers you should have a better picture of how effective the hitter or pitcher is overall and usually these numbers tend to regress or increase to match or become close to the player's career average so you can tell whether they are expected to go up or down, but again consider the situation as you can't really make those assumptions about call ups or players who don't have a decent amount of experience in the majors, and thus a biased career average.

The Extra Shit:
Ok so the next set of stats are those to better look at a hitters power, speed and a pitchers performance, taking out defence and home runs, thats right we're going to ISO (isolated power) SPD (speed), FIP and xFIP. Now ISO is similar but slightly more accurate that SLG in terms of determining a players raw power at the plate and well thats because it uses SLG in it's calculation (SLG-AVG) so again treat this just like the other averages, expect it to turn to the players career average. Next up is SPD, pretty much the only indication of a players speed on the base path, now there are different versions of this stat as some websites or evaluators take different things into account when calculating it hence why there aren't really any other base stealing oriented stats available out there, but again treat it like other averages. Then we have FIP and xFIP, these 2 stats are nearly the same as both indicate where the pitcher's ERA should be if you took team defence out of the question, except xFIP removes home runs as well so if they are pitching in a homer prone park xFIP is the thing to look at. These stats generally are a better indicator of where the pitcher SHOULD be, so if the defence is in a slump expect the pitcher's ERA to improve over to his FIP or xFIP, however remember a shitty defence is still a shitty defence and thus if a pitcher say for the Astros has a FIP of 2.50 but an ERA of 4.30 it's not likely going to change as the Astros are just a bad and unexperienced team to begin with.

Types of Hits:
Ok so this area is important to both pitchers, so we're looking primarily at HR/FB and GB/FB for both hitters and pitchers. For hitters the HR/FB ratio is important a it indicates how many balls hit actually go out of the ball park, and just like everything sometimes it can seem a bit lopsided so expect it to move toward the career average, but also recognize when they have an excessively high ratio that is likely not sustainable, like if they have the same HR/FB ratio but have moved to a serious pitchers park. Now for pitchers it means something slightly different as this show how effective a pitcher is at getting fly balls because contact pitchers rely heavily on their ability to get fly balls that are easy for the outfielders to pick off, overall the same evaluation rules apply as to the HR/FB comparison of hitters. GB/FB ratio is in essence the same as the HR/FB for hitters but for pitchers it will show you what type of contact pitcher a player is and if it turns out they have a high GB/FB ratio, meaning their a ground ball pitcher, you should look at their LD% or line drive ratio to determine their overall effectiveness, as it is similar to the HR/FB ratio.

The All In One Stat:
Ok so there is ONE stat that is the mother of all stats as it was put together to take everything into account and that stat is WAR or Wins Above Replacement, basically the people who put this together basically said that this stat indicates how many games a team will win by having this player on their team instead of a player of average ability in all categories. In addition to standard WAR there are more specific break downs in oWAR (offensive WAR), dWAR (defensive WAR), etc. These act the same but are more accurate for the side they are looking at and overall WAR can be looked at similarly to the averages we went over previously.

All in all once you've looked at all of these stats your probably wondering,'What the hell do I do with these numbers?'. Well from here you need to think about what things can or have effected the numbers as compared to previous years or career averages and whether said change is legitimate or likely to change back to normal. Some situations would be reduced SPD/SB in a player that just got back from a hamstring injury, in that case of course those stats will be hampered but gradually they will come back to the norm but one shouldn't expect it to completely right itself considering the time lost and the fact that they WILL have a period of lacklustre performance in that category. So just remember when your going over all of this stuff be thorough because the more information you have on a player the more likely your predictions are to being correct.

-Eric