Who's Hot/Who's Not (Matthew Taylor)

Every Friday here at The Stand-Up Double we will be compiling a list of "who's hot" and "who's not" in Major League Baseball. Pretty much anybody can fall under each category; a player, a team, a coach, etc. All selections are certainly up for debate, and certain teams/players/managers will certainly be missed or forgotten. Here we go...

Who's Hot:

• Chris Davis - I bet a grand majority of baseball fanatics had never even heard of Chris Davis before this season. He's a guy who hasn't had much of an eye-popping career up to this point. He's never hit better than .285, he's never hit more than 85 RBI in a season, and he has such a common name that he is easily forgotten. Then there's 2013. With as terrific a season as Miguel Cabrera is having, you could easily make the case that Chris Davis is having a better season. As of 5:30 PM on May 5th, Chris Davis is 3rd in the majors with a .359 average, leading the majors with 19 HRs, and is 2nd in the MLB with 50 RBI. He is leading the charge for the dynamic Orioles offense that has more runs and home runs than any other team in the big leagues, and they are right in the thick of the AL east. In his last 10 games Davis is batting a whopping .541 with 7 home runs and 10 RBI. If that's not "hot", then I don't know what is. 
• Oakland Athletics - Is there a more likable team in the MLB than the Athletics (other than the Twins, of course)? They do things the right way year after year and seem to always compete despite significant disadvantages. The most obvious of those being their payroll. The A's entered this season with the 3rd lowest payroll in the major leagues with a $60M payroll (2.45 times LESS than the payroll of the Los Angeles Angels). While the Angles were busy digging into their pocketbooks to sign guys like Josh Hamilton and Joe Blanton (will be making a combined $31.5M this season), the A's were signing the likes of John Jaso and Jed Lowrie (will be making a combined $4.2M this season). Yet when you take a look at the standings in the AL West, there the A's sit..in 2nd place..5.5 games better than the Angels. The Athletics are currently tied for first place in the AL Wild Card race and seem primed for another playoff run. They are 8-2 in their last 10 games and seem to be just hitting their stride now. Why are they so hot? you may be wondering..well look no further than their stellar bullpen. The Oakland bullpen is 2nd in the MLB with a 2.84 ERA which has also helped them in 1-run games (.625 winning % in such games). Watch out for this team come playoff time.

Who's Not:

• David Price - First of all, keep in mind that I have David Price on my fantasy baseball team. So I am extremely biased to begin with, because I spent a 4th round pick on the guy and have seen little to no production thus far. That being said, let's remember the season that Price had last year. 20-5 record. 2.56 ERA. 205 strikeouts. CY YOUNG. Sounds like the real deal, right? Now, through 9 starts, Price is boasting a 5.24 ERA and a WHIP of 1.44. There are two things that are noticeably different between Price's 2012 Cy Young season and this young 2013 season. These two things are the amount of both hits and home runs allowed. Price is on pace to allow 30 more hits and 9 more home runs than he did last season. To get even more geeky on you, Price is allowing a BABIP (batting average on balls in play) of .314, up from .285 last season and a career .280 BABIP. This is what is leading to the unusually high number of hits that Price has allowed thus far. What does this mean? Basically it means that Price is getting extremely unlucky. You would expect his BABIP to dip down to his average and the number of his hits allowed to go back down to the norm. In regards to his high number of home runs allowed (allowed 16 all of last season and has already allowed 8 this season), look no further than his HR/FB% (Home run/fly ball percentage). Last season Price had a HR/FB% of 10.5% and he has a career HR/FB% of 9.5%. This season? In 2013 Price is allowing a home run on 15.1% of all fly balls that are hit off of him. Once again, one would expect this to be an outlier and that this number will dip back to his career norm. Price has had a very disappointing 2013, but after spending a couple weeks on the DL I fully expect him to come back strong and his hits and home runs allowed numbers to go back to normal and him to get back to his Cy Young form.
• Kansas City Royals - This was supposed to be the year that the Royals FINALLY put everything together. They have the young talent, the beautiful stadium, and their owner finally decided to put some money into the team by signing big name pitchers in James Shields, Wade Davis, and Ervin Santana. They were finally going to have the arms to combine with the big bats of Billy Butler and Eric Hosmer. And they started off the season as well as they could have hoped. Through 27 games (May 5), the Royals were 17-10 and in first place in the AL Wild Card standings. Would this finally be the season the Royals figured it all out and made the playoffs for the first time since 1985? Maybe it's fitting that after 27 games the Royals all but ensured they would extend their 27 year playoff drought. Because since el cinco de mayo the Royals are 4-19 and now find themselves on the bottom of the AL central, on an 8 game losing streak, and with no signs of finding their way out of this massive hole they've dug themselves in.

NL Thursday (Joey Almars)

One thing that we have been seeing in Major League Baseball recently is the building of super teams being more common. For developing super teams, the concept is simple: bring in established high-grade talent to compliment your current players at whatever cash amount necessary. Seems simple if you have a lot of money, and developing the farm system can drop lower on the to-do list if you have a lot of it.

Of course we have always seen this concept embraced by the Yankees and they have always been the go to team to hate because of it. Believe me, I would always be the first to make their argument that they have bought all their championships, but now I have found a little more respect for the Yankees. As of recent years we have seen teams like the Red Sox, Dodgers, Marlins (yikes!), Toronto (yikes!!!), and the Angels have tried this same method and have yet to find success. Boston had a bright moment in 2007 but in the year of 2011 where they spent big money to bring the hot free agents, Carl Crawford and Adrian Gonzalez they have had little luck since.

However, the Red Sox got bailed out of paying $250 million (through 2018) to those two players in addition to Beckett and Punto because it was seen as the Dodgers’ turn to create a super team. The Dodgers took on these players last season in hope to make a playoff run, they were unsuccessful. So the Dodgers simply inherited the troubles of the Red Sox and now Boston is free to use that money in other ways to help their team.

We have seen this more and more in the past 5 years and with little success to follow. After the big deal between Boston and LA, Dodgers co-owner, Magic Johnson said, “We understand that you have to spend money to be good in this league. We understood that before we bought this team.” With that said, may I make the assumption that the Dodgers are spending money in the wrong ways.

Obviously if you bring in that much talent you are going to bring in more interest for your ball club (even if it is in Canada), but if a team goal is winning… they need to go back to the drawing board and realize that the Yankees know something that these other teams don’t know. And creating a super team is harder than it looks. I am Joey Almars and this is the last time you will ever hear me compliment the Yankees.

Now with all that said I tell you my opinion on what teams should do to if they got the cash and want a super team.

1)     Do not inherit other people’s problems: We have seen this with the Dodgers, we have seen this with the Blue Jays and so far they have had roughly the same problems from the other team. If it didn’t work the first time, don’t put more money into it and try it again in a different uniform.

2)     Don’ t buy your team leader: When the Yankees go out and buy talent they know that the captain of their team is still Derek Jeter and no matter who they bring in it will always be his team. In other words there is no question of leadership and any player coming in (know matter what position he held last year) knows whose team it is. I could not tell you if this has been the problem with these teams as of late but it is something that is clear cut with the Yankees team and not so definitive for others. Obviously you get different characters on different teams and there are some people that will mesh and others that won’t but if you have a strong leader to build around I believe that building will be easier.

3)     What to Buy: Obviously the Yankees have pursued the hitting route more exclusively than pitching (although they have not ignored it all together). But for the sake of this analysis lets just say they know something we don’t know (or simply had years of practice). What I think is that anyone creating a super team should start with pitching. We saw this start in 2010 with Philadelphia and reach its peak in 2011. They acquired Roy Halladay and Roy Oswalt in 2010 and Cliff Lee in 2011 to accompany the arms of Blanton and Hamels. During this time, they led the MLB with wins in 2010 (97) and 2011 (102). And not to mention San Francisco won the World Series in 2010 and 2012 with one of the best pitching staffs in the league.

So what does all this mean? Pitchers are the safest bet if you are building a super team. In any trade or acquisition, GMs need to be aware of injury history of any player. If you exclude injuries from this equation on both the hitting side and the pitching side, pitchers are a safer bet because they are in their own world on the mound. There isn’t a question of leadership, because they simply go out and pitch their game. We are in the pitching age and it is clear how valuable pitching is once you arrive to the post season. In the market today I believe that there is a draw to getting big name hitters because seeing a HR is more interesting than a strikeout. But if teams are more interested in wins and not about filling seats, this is an option that hasn’t been tried enough and it has shown positive results.

AL Wednesday (Matthew Taylor)

Every Wednesday here at The Stand-Up Double we will have a post highlighting the American League. Whether it is and article on an AL team, an AL player, or discussing the pros and cons of the designated hitter position, you will be able to find it here every Wednesday. This Wednesday I will be focusing on the best player in the American League. This, of course, is Miguel Cabrera.

We all know about what Miguel Cabrera did last season. The Triple Crown, the .330 average, the 139 RBI. There's a reason that Cabrera was the first player to win the Triple Crown since 1967; it is incredibly difficult to do. If I were to tell you this past March that Cabrera would actually have a BETTER season this year than he did last year, you would have told me I was crazy. However, Cabrera is quietly having a better season than he had last season and is on pace to crush his AVG, HR, and RBI numbers that he put up last year. Through 42 games, Cabrera is boasting an insane .337 average with 14 HRs and 57 RBIs. If he keeps up this pace he will surely be right in the Triple Crown Race again which would make him the first player to ever hit for the Triple Crown in back-to-back seasons.

(Completely off topic, but here is an awesome .gif courtesy of fangraphs showing the incredible plate coverage of Miguel Cabrera. This shows six different Cabrera ABs with six completely different pitch locations and Cabrera knocks each of them out of the part. There simply is no way to pitch around Miguel Cabrera.)



Just how great of a career is Miguel Cabrera having? The graphic below shows Cabrera's season-by-season statistics. I have highlighted his HRs, RBIs, and AVGs for each season. Never once (not including Cabrera's rookie season where he was called up midway through the season) has Cabrera hit less than 25 HRs, hit less than 100 RBIs, or hit worse than .290. If you were to take Cabrera's WORST season in the majors (once again, excluding his rookie season) you would be looking at a .294 hitter with 33 HRs and 112 RBIs. Which would still be better numbers than Hall of Famer Harmon Killebrew averaged for his career (sorry Twins fans). Cabrera has never missed more than 12 game in a season. He is the definition of consistency. I cannot stress enough how incredible it is what Miguel Cabrera is doing, and he is still only 30 years old!!

What I really appreciate about Miguel Cabrera is that he doesn't demand the limelight. He is one of the greatest offensive baseball players of all time and he seems to slide under the radar year after year. Apart from a 2011 DUI charge, Cabrera has stayed out of the news and merely goes about his business and quietly gives nightmares to pitchers everywhere. He doesn't celebrate after hitting home runs, and he doesn't trash talk. Miguel Cabrera is the best player in baseball right now and we all need to take the time to enjoy what he is doing.

Twins Tuesday (Joey Almars)

When I say that Joe Mauer is my favorite Twins player, I know that I am in a pool with a bunch of different people. He is the consistent All-Star catcher and without him, Minnesota would never have a shot at being chosen for Fox Baseball’s Game of the week on Saturday afternoons.

            The reasons I love Joe Mauer are the same reasons that I love guys like Neal Broten, and new Wild player Zach Parise (welcome home prodigal son), they are from the Greatest State, Minnesota. Despite Joe’s talent, and the possibility of getting more money, he stayed and wanted to finish out his career here in Minnesota.

            There was the hiccup in Mauer’s career that gave me a scare of another “just our look, Minnesota sports” moment. In 2011, he was plagued with injuries and at one point he even started at 1B to give his knees a break. After signing that giant contract, I facing the reality that the twins might have paid all that money for a AVG. specialty, first basemen rather than a power hitter.

            In 2012, we saw the old Joe Mauer return and we continue to see him being a consistent threat for the Batting Title with current OBP and AVG. numbers being in the top 5 or fringe top 5 in the MLB.

            ESPN reporter Jayson Stark, stated in his blog on April 18 that as baseball fans “we don’t know how good we have it.” He focused on the players Cabrera, Kershaw, and Mauer. It reinforced my faith in Joe as a hitter and how blessed the Twins are to have this hometown hero.