First Look: AL West

First Look: AL West

            Well the seasons coming up and we have few free agents left to wonder about so its time to start looking at teams.  I’m going to look at each team in a division a week and say what I think of them so far, not super in depth but more of an overlook of what they could look like at seasons start.  So lets start with the AL West and start with the team I think is going to far the Oakland A’s.

Oakland A’s

Pitching: While they didn’t add any major additions here I don’t think it’s really not too big of an issue.  With Jarred Parker, Sonny Gray and Dan Staily in the rotation they have a strong foundation to keep the rotation strong.  Scott Kazmir will help the back end of the rotation and AJ Griffin will fit well with the rotation to round out what could be baseballs best if the young arms can hold up.  Where they did do some improvements was the bullpen by getting Jim Johnson, Drew Pomeranz and Luke Gregerson will add some good arms in the bullpen and Johnson will probably fight for the Closer spot.  Overall the A’s did a good in getting new pitching not hurting themselves.

Batting: Much like last year this is the weak point and they but they have potential to be much better this year but things have to happen.  With players like Josh Reddick, Yoenis Cespedes and Josh Donaldson they have a strong core hitters if they can all hit well.  Sadly that’s the problem with this teams hitting, besides Donaldson and Coco Crisp the rest of the offense is built on potential.  If they can hit for what they “could” hit then this team can rival most offenses in the AL.  Overall they offense didn’t get an upgrade but the potential is there to be a big one.

Texas Rangers

Pitching: Their pitching is bad but not terrible, think of them as a 40 in the 20-80 scouting scale.  Sadly I can see them really hurting if they don’t do something soon.  After Yu Darvish and Matt Harrison the rest of the rotation is up in the air with Robbie Ross, Tanner Scheppers and Alexi Ogando fighting for spots among other rookies.  The bullpen gets stronger with Neftali Feliz deciding to be in the bullpen full time for this career, if he can come back to form he’s a deadly closer.  After Feliz though the bullpen is just average if they get lucky.  Overall it’s bad and needs a lot of help if they want to compete with the A’s.

Batting: You’d think that this would be the team’s strength and you’d be right but that’s honestly not as good as it has been.  Don’t get me wrong they have a strong offense and adding Prince Fielder and Shin-Soo Choo only made it stronger.  But they didn’t improve overall, losing Nelson Cruz weakened the OF offense and Choo actually is starting to show his weakness against LHP who’s slash line goes down every year against LHP.  Jurikson Profar getting full time is a good thing for the offense and defense but we have yet to see how he plays in a full season and he didn’t exactly light the world up last season.

Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim-

Pitching: The Angels did a nice job trying to fix their rotation and bullpen with trades for Hector Santiago and Tyler Skaggs though the jury is still out on Skaggs effectiveness moving forward.  He’s lost a lot of velocity in the last year or two so there’s a question if he could be a ML pitcher.  Joe Smith was a good MR pitcher and will help take some pressure off the rotation.  Other than that the Pitching hasn’t changed.  Many of the pitchers underperformed last season and guys like CJ Wilson should bounce back to a 15 win 3.20 ERA pitcher but I still don’t think it’s a very good rotation or bullpen.  Frieri is NOT a closer and I’ve said this for the last few years, the Angels need a better end game guy that can throw strikes with more consistency than Frieri or this could be a tough season.

Batting: While the loss of Trumbo is going to hurt their power I don’t think it’s as bad as people think.  Raul Ibanez is pretty much Mark Trumbo with a better OBP and a little less power.  I can see him have a 20-25 HR season with a .250 AVG and an OBP of .350.  David Freese could be quite interesting depending on which Freese they get, is he the 25 HR .300 AVG guy or the 15 HR .275 AVG guy?  We will have to see.  As for the rest of the team I expect them to do much better with a “healthy” Albert Pujols and Josh Hamilton I believe will get better though not by much.  Trout will be the person to watch for and he will try and capitalize on a fabulous first 2 years.  The team is got a lot of potential but it’s a crapshoot if they can live up to the potential that we’ve put on them.

Seattle Mariners-

Pitching: Decent but not great, in fact besides a few shinning stars like Felix Hernandez and Hisashi Iwaskuma the pitching is slightly above average.  Blake Beavan is a good pitcher but after that there isn’t a lot to worry about.  Taijuan Walker is someone to watch and see him progress but for now he isn’t going to blow the world away this year.  The bullpen is just a mess and they don’t even know who the closer is going to be.  With a 3 way battle between Danny Farquhar, Tommy Wilhelmsen and Charlie Furbush and no clear winner at the moment.  All of them have talent and are good pitchers but after that the team is just, average at best.  Overall they didn’t do anything to fix the teams problems and didn’t add anything to help them move forward.

Batting: Robinson Cano is the thing that everyone is going to watch and honestly it was a bad contract but a good signing.  He will add a lot of power to a team that is starved for it.  Though the signing of Corey Hart is going to be over looked but not under felt, Hart is a good hitter and will be a good complement to Cano.  Kyle Seager is one of the best-underrated 3B in baseball, really he is and this may be the year he finally gets the praise he deserves.  Why did I list these three specifically?  Because after that they have no one and this team is going to hurt bad.  The OF is one of worst in baseball.  Michael Saunders is the only one that has any real potential after that they have nothing to help Cano, Hart and Seager.  Logan Morrison is a guy that could do something but doubtful.  Overall this team isn’t going anywhere but they did spend a lot of money getting there.

Houston Astros-

Pitching: Wow this doesn’t even look like the team that played last year.  Scott Feldman, Jesse Cain, Chad Qualls, Matt Albers and Anthony Bass are great additions to the team and a great way to help this young team with good experience and all of them good pitchers.  Having a rotation of Feldman, Jarred Cosart, Brett Olberholtzer and Brad Peacock could be a lot worse but this is the start of a good young rotation.  Now don’t get me wrong they aren’t going to win and World Series so and while the bullpen is improved its not so much improved that its going to help now.  Overall very much improved but it is the Astros and they had nowhere else to go but up.

Batting: They didn’t really do much to improve the offense but they did do it.  Dexter Fowler is 
a great improvement over Brandon Barnes but after that they didn’t do much else.  The team’s 
real improvement will come when the team starts with Jonathan Singleton, Domingo Santana and George Springer.  Other than that the teams the same, they’re going to strike out a lot and they will surprise you with guys like Jason Castro and Jose Altuve but other than that it’s the same team.  Overall its going to be a good year this year for an Astros fan just to see them 

Future Outlook: Alex Rodriguez

Future Outlook: Alex Rodriguez

            What can I say that hasn’t been said about Alex Rodriguez?  Well how bout this, a career slash line of .299/.384/.558 puts him as one of the best in history, a career HR total of 654 put him in reach of the highest HR total in history.  In his prime he was arguably the best player in the game.  Not only that he is one of the best defensive players in the game and the fact that he moved flawlessly from SS and 3B.  So what does this mean for Alex Rodriguez moving forward?  Absolutely nothing since his career is completely tainted by his own choices.

            I’m not going to delve to deep into the workings of the entire situation other than the details we know and what I feel this means for Rodriguez moving forward.  Alex Rodriguez was suspended from all baseball activities for failing a drug test, which found 3 different types of banned substances in his blood.  I mention this because its how he was originally suspended 211 games versus the 162 plus playoffs he is now suspended for.  According to the Joint Drug Agreement if a player is found with the same substance in his blood on a second test after failing his first test it is considered to be 1 strike still.  The chances that it’s still working through his system are there and it’s a fair to the player.  If a player is found with multiple banned substances, as an example 3 like Rodriguez, each substance counts as 1 strike.  In Rodriguez’s case that ment he would have had a lifetime ban right there but the Union felt that was unfair to him.  That is why they had the arbitration hearing to see if the 211 game was fair or not and arbiter Fredric Horowitz he agreed that it wasn’t fully just and lowered it to a full season and the playoffs.  Rodriguez is currently suing MLB and the MLBPA (Major League Baseball Players Association) in a federal court.

            What does all this mean for the future of Alex Rodriguez?  Well quite a lot, history has shown that federal courts don’t tend to hear cases that have already been through an arbiter, in fact about 95% get thrown out.  If that fails Rodriguez will be forced to miss the next season.  This means the Yankees will not have to pay his contract, which will free up roughly $24 million off the luxury tax.  As for his future that’s now in limbo, the likely outcome from this is the Yankees will just buy Rodriguez’s contract that they owe $61 million.  Once that’s done the real question becomes if a team wants to take on Rodriguez and the circus that comes with him and that may very well be a no.  That’s not to say that it won’t happen but the odds are not in his favor.

            Personally speaking I think his career is pretty much at the end of its line and its pathetic how it happened.  He had all the talent in the world and was gifted beyond measure and he threw it away because he “wanted to be the only person in the 800 HR club” which is one of the more selfish things I’ve ever heard.  He doesn’t care at all what his legacy is or his fans as long as he has his money and his fame.  The fact that he used his money to try and make the problem go away (offering to send his drug dealer to Columbia and buying his records from the company and shredding them.)  In the end he’ll get what’s coming to him and its starting to catch up to him now.

What Makes a Hall of Famer

What Makes a Hall of Famer?

            I want to start this out with a quick comparison.  A example of 2 pitchers that I want to see if you can guess before looking up the numbers yourself just by looking.  After the Hall of Fame vote on TiT I decided to ask what to me made a Hall of Famer and since I’m a stats guy I figured I’d take a look at an example.  A note that these are obviously their career numbers as HoF (Hall of Fame) only takes that into account.

Player A) ERA: 3.38, FIP: 3.39, WHIP: 1.18, K/9: 6.93, BB/9: 1.94, K/BB: 3.58, AVG Against: .249, K%: 18.8, BB%: 5.2

Player B) ERA: 3.36, FIP: 3.37, WHIP: 1.21, K/9: 7.42, BB/9: 2.08, K/BB: 3.56 AVG Against: .253, K%: 19.9, BB%: 5.6

These are players that played very similar amounts of years and have very similar careers and as you can see they’ve had very similar stat lines.

            Before I give the answer to this comparison lets talk about HoFers and how I view them.  Personally I believe that the stats have to dictate it and then we let what they’ve done outside the game become a factor after the stats.  What stats do I think are HoF worth?  Well there’s the obvious ones like 500 HR’s and 3,000 hits but we can’t be blinded by simple counts like these since just 1 doesn’t make you a star if that’s all you did.  I know Mark McGwire broke the HR record years back and in the end was a terrific HR threat but lets look at his stat line in general. .263/.394/.588 I admit this is way better than I expected and honestly this makes me reconsider my option of him, it doesn’t hurt that he broke the HR record and has a career 586 total HR’s.  Also many of his sabermetric stats are very good as well such as an ISO of .325 and a BB% of 17.2.  But does that make him a star?  Honestly I think he needs more consideration and should be getting some more votes than he is but his stats are just very good other than the power numbers and his HR’s.  Edger Martinez is a very similar case with a slash line of .312/.418/.515 and an ISO of .204 with a career HR count of 309.  An exact opposite of McGwire and again is very good in his area but not elite in any 1 area.

            Another stat we could look at is WAR, a favorite among sabertitions like myself.  Let’s do a similar thing as above and look at a few WAR’s.

A)   65.6

B)   80.3

C)   72.4

D)   113.9

E)   60.4

Remember when you look at WAR these are the wins that this player accounted for mathematically over a league average player.  It takes offense and defense into account making it a good judge of overall usefulness on the field.

A)   Edger Martinez

B)   Jeff Bagwell

C)   Frank Thomas

D)   Greg Maddux

E)   Sammy Sosa

According to WAR Bagwell was more valuable to his team over his career than Martinez, Thomas and Sosa and shows that Greg Maddux is well deserving of his election to the Hall of Fame.  While this isn’t a sure fire way of determining a players worth in is career we can use this and the “magic number” stats and ever career highlights to get a very accurate picture on who deserves to be in the Hall.

            In the end everyone has their own way of choosing this would be mine, I don’t feel its fair for writers to become the “moral authority” because they have a vote.  If you have a vote you should let the stats talk and not accuse players that have never tested positive for substance abuse or if you liked the player since he gave you good quotes.

            So who we’re those players at the beginning?  Well player A was Roy Halladay, someone that most people have considered to be a Hall of Famer.  Player B is Roy Oswalt, a player that will not get much hype as a Hall of Fame candidate, I am in no way saying either are Hall of Famers in fact I don’t believe either are.  In the end the system is flawed by bias and writers that feel like the should be able to use their power to dictate who gets to go into a place where the stats should speak louder than these writers words.