Despite having the best player in baseball and a resurgent Albert Pujols, the Los Angeles Angels are off to a disappointing 11-12 start, failing to take advantage of spring injuries to Texas and Oakland that seemingly had opened a window of opportunity. Even with all their big contracts, the Angels haven’t been more than a single game over .500 since the end of 2012.

Thanks to the otherworldly performance of Mike Trout, along with Pujols, Howie Kendrick and friends, the problem hasn’t been the offense, but rather a pitching staff that ranks in the bottom half in ERA, FIP and xFIP. Not that this is necessarily a surprise, of course; the Angels’ pitching staff was a big problem last year, and even with the additions of Hector Santiago, Tyler Skaggsand Joe Smith, it was expected to still be a weakness this year, too.

There are more than a few reasons why that is — Jered Weaver’s declining velocity and sudden homer problem chief among them — but here’s one that may not be immediately obvious when watching the games: The Angels’ pitchers throw fewer first-pitch strikes than any other team in baseball. In fact, since data first became available back in 2002, this particular Angels team has thrown fewer first-pitch strikes (52.8 percent) than any other team on record.
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It has been only three starts, and it has been only three starts against the Toronto Blue Jays, Baltimore Orioles and Chicago Cubs at that. Almost anything can happen over a few starts; just look at Aaron Harang’s success. But so far Masahiro Tanaka has been everything the New York Yankees could have hoped for and more.

Remember the controversy that swirled in February when Yankees GM Brian Cashman said Tanaka “had the potential to be a No. 3 starter?” That wasn’t exactly what Yankee fans wanted to hear after seeing their team drop $155 million in salary, plus a $20 million acquisition fee on top of that. But if this keeps up, that price might almost look like a bargain. Read the rest of this entry »

On Monday in St. Louis, Cincinnati Reds center fielder Billy Hamilton led off the game with a single to right field against Michael Wacha. Or at least it would have been a single, had it been struck by 99.9 percent of hitters who have ever played baseball. Instead, Hamilton never stopped running, and not only did he turn the single into a double, he was almost on second before the cutoff man even received the throw. It was an astounding display of speed, and it shows why Hamilton is considered such a promising player.

Unfortunately, that hit was Hamilton’s first of the season, and was only his second time on base. Add another hit Tuesday night, and Hamilton has bumped his average up to .091, with an .130 on base percentage. Hamilton has yet to score a run. He has yet to steal a base. And while it’s early, the total lack of production from the top of the lineup is a big part of why the Reds have lost six of their first eight, and have scored just 2.86 runs per game, tied with Houston for 26th in MLB.

It’s also a big reason why Joey Votto has only one run driven in. It’s much too soon to discuss sending Hamilton to the minors, but it’s not at all too soon to make an easier change: Cincinnati needs to get him out of the leadoff spot immediately. Read the rest of this entry »

Let’s say you’re a big league pitcher. You’ve had some success at the highest level, but like any good professional, you’re looking to improve. How do you do it? Getting into peak physical shape helps, but it’s extremely rare for a pitcher to add significant velocity in a single offseason, and command is generally improved over a period of several years, not all at once.

So what can you do? For many pitchers, the best route is to add a new weapon to their arsenal in the form of a new (or improved) pitch. As just one example, Clayton Kershaw came to the big leagues without a slider and threw it infrequently for most of his first two seasons. Now it’s not only one of his best pitches, it’s one of the most feared offerings in baseball.

Each spring, you hear about numerous pitchers coming to camp hoping to showcase a new pitch. Today, we’ll focus on four of them to watch for this season. Read the rest of this entry »

Congratulations! If you’re a major leaguer and you survived spring training, you’re already doing a whole lot better than a number of your peers. From the near-endless run of pitching injuries — sorry, Brandon Beachy, Patrick Corbin, Derek Holland, Kris Medlen, Jarrod Parker, Bruce Rondon and others — to Jurickson Profar’s torn shoulder muscle to Jose Iglesias‘ stress fractures and on and on, this year’s spring has been a meat grinder, and the domestic season hasn’t even started yet.

With injuries to valuable players comes an inevitable impact on pennant races, particularly when some of those teams have realized that their backup alternatives are far from adequate.

Today, we count down five teams who are in better shape now than they were even a few weeks ago, if for no other reason than that their rivals for October have been slowed. Read the rest of this entry »

Value in baseball is relative. Robinson Cano, for example, is expected to contribute plenty of on-field value to the Seattle Mariners, but they’re paying for every bit of it (and then some) thanks to his $240 million contract. True value comes when teams can get contributions from players that exceed the salaries the player is earning, such as Mike Trout’s making approximately $1 million total in his first two years total despite being the game’s best player in each of those seasons.

But Trout is an outlier, and the Angels’ insanely beneficial cost/benefit position is about to change as he moves out of his cost-controlled years and into either wildly expensive arbitration years or a massive long-term contract. The Angels will still get his production, they’ll just very soon be paying him considerably more to do so. If we’re searching for the true king of excess value, we need an elite player who not only has been already been underpaid relative to his production, but one who is signed to a deal that will likely continue to underpay him for years to come. Read the rest of this entry »

Imagine this: You’re a 2013 playoff team coming off a huge turnaround from a poor 2012 season. You accomplished this largely due to a pitching staff that allowed 183 fewer runs to score than the year before. When the offseason comes, 40 percent of the rotation departs via free agency. To replace them and support a good offense that hopes to contend in 2014, you do … nothing.

If that sounds crazy, well, maybe it is. But that’s the path the Cleveland Indians have chosen to take this year. Instead, they are going to entrust their playoff hopes to a starting rotation made up entirely of internal options in their 20s, several of whom many fans would have difficulty naming were they spotted half the letters in their names.

Maybe that works out, and maybe it doesn’t. Either way, Cleveland is counting on its own young talent, which is generally preferable to gambling on the low-upside Jason Vargases and Edinson Volquezes of the world. The end result is a rotation that might have one of the highest variances in possible outcomes between “great” and “terrible” of any playoff contender, and though they might not be the best in the game or even their own division, that makes them among the most intriguing.

That makes them, if we can use a word too rarely used in the game today, fun.

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We’ve been spoiled by Bryce Harper, Manny Machado and Mike Trout. To have a single top prospect reach the big leagues and prove himself to be a star before he’s of legal drinking age is rare, and the few who have been able to do it in the past 25 years have often proved to be among the all-time greats — names such as Ken Griffey Jr. and Alex Rodriguez among them.

To have three of them doing it simultaneously, well, that’s nearly unheard of. We are almost unquestionably living in something of a golden age of elite young offensive talent.

The flip side of that is that they take up so much of the air in the room that it’s easy to forget those who came before them, players who have been very good but not quite on that historic level. It means the hot young names of just a few years ago now seem like old news, even if “old” is absolutely not the correct way to refer to them.

It means we’ve forgotten about Jason Heyward to some extent, because he was the Trout of just a few years ago, when he made it to the big leagues at age 20 in 2010. But, although Heyward might be somewhat under the radar right now, the confluence of forces at play involving the economics of baseball, his own age and the actions taken by his team mean he’s set up to be in high demand very soon. Read the rest of this entry »

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Rick Porcello is on the verge of having a big season this year. That’s a statement that seemingly pops up every year, most notably last spring, when Porcello was doing his best to disprove the long-held theory that spring training stats don’t matter by striking out 21 without walking a single batter.

Yet the anticipated breakout didn’t quite happen, not when Porcello put up an ERA north of 4.30 for the fourth straight year and was the subject of trade rumors this offseason.

So what makes this year different? Here are three reasons: Read the rest of this entry »

The Cincinnati Reds are in trouble heading into 2014. That might sound like a controversial statement, though it really shouldn’t be, considering how circumstances have changed in the NL Central. The St. Louis Cardinals, fresh off a trip to the World Series, will get the benefit of a full season of their celebrated young pitching and have finally filled their black hole at shortstop. TheMilwaukee Brewers will have Ryan Braun back along with Matt Garza in their rotation, and while the Pittsburgh Pirates haven’t added anyone of note, a full year of Gerrit Cole and the impending arrivals of Gregory Polanco and Jameson Taillon should make them dangerous once again.

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