We are about a month into the season, which means that things are beginning to normalize. You can start to tell now which teams are really good and which ones are not. I thought about doing a monthly power rankings, but I hate doing them. I get bored with the middle. So instead, I will just write about a few things each month that I noticed, mostly going to be about the Pirates, but not always.
Instead of a full power ranking, I will do a Top 5/Bottom Five:
TOP FIVE
1. Red Sox (18-5)–A year ago everyone expected the Red Sox to just dominate and win the World Series. Maybe we were a year off.
2. Astros (17-9)–Defending champs…with a full season of Verlander, who looks like the 2011 version of himself. Very scary.
3. D-Backs (16-7)–They were winning while Goldschmidt and their other stars were having a terrible start.
4. Brewers (16-9)–They have won eight in a row. And they lost their closer for awhile.
5. Angels (16-9)–Mike Trout.
BOTTOM FIVE
5. Marlins (7-17)–They just took a series from the Dodgers. Other than that…they are pretty awful. They have that one starter (I am not looking up his name), but their bullpen is atrocious
4. White Sox (5-16)–We know they are rebuilding and that they would be bad. I just did not expect them to be this bad.
3. Royals (5-17)–Jorge Soler had a ball bounce out of his glove on a routine fly. Ugly baseball.
2. Orioles (6-18)–They are 1-9 in their last ten games. I cannot see things getting any better for them.
1. Reds (5-19)–They fired their manager. They should commit to this rebuild and just trade Votto at this point.
Sophomore Slump
Going into the season, I was curious about how a few players would fare in their sophomore seasons. Josh Bell, Cody Bellinger, Dansby Swanson, Rhys Hoskins, and Paul DeJong. Last year Swanson had a horrible season, Bellinger looked terrible in the postseason. Hoskins was a small sample. DeJong, was he for real? And Josh Bell…I like him, but damn, he has an ugly swing at times. I plan to keep track of them this season.
Not too terrible. Bell is not very good defensively, which hurts him a bit on WAR. He and Bellinger are not having the power success, but perhaps that has more to do with the weather so far this year. Well maybe for Bell, not sure what Bellinger’s issue would be (although, he was not known as a huge power hitter coming up). This will definitely be an interesting thing to keep an eye on all season. If you are wondering why I did not include Aaron Judge…well he is at a different level. I mean, if he repeats last season’s numbers, then holy crap, he is amazing. If he only hits 35 HRs, does that really count as a sophomore slump?
Weather
The big issue for much of the first month has been the weather. Games being played while it snows. Temperatures in the 20s/30s. This is not good. I heard Corey Dickerson talking about why he did not throw home the other day and he said that it was really cold and he knew that he would have nothing on it. Watching pitchers struggle in the early part of the season because of the cold has been pretty miserable. That Cubs/Braves game was so ugly. The pitchers for both teams were saying how they had no clue where the ball was going when they released it. Fortunately, no one has had a major injury, but it is fairly ridiculous. Here are some proposals on how to fix this…
- Northern teams should play a good chunk of their southern series early in the year. Why are Detroit and Pittsburgh playing in April? The Pirates travel to Arizona at some point, why not open the year down there? I realize it is not possible to have every team play like that, but you could find a way. Is there a reason that the Braves are coming to Chicago in April and not the other way around? Or at least try to get to as many domed teams as possible in the early part of the year.
- All new parks being constructed or proposed must have a retractable roof. If we are going to play games from the end of March until the end of October in some cases, then the weather needs to not be a factor. How can it be good for baseball to have 900 people show up to a game because it is cold and raining?
- Shorten the season. I think Anthony Rizzo made a great point that players would probably be okay with a pay cut if it meant a shorter season, which would probably mean a longer career for most players. And not shortened by five games or something. Drop it to 148. Play more scheduled double-headers!
Those are just a few of my simple ideas. I do not want to watch another game with snow. This is baseball, not football.
Pace of Play
The commissioner said that rules the implemented to speed up play are working. Whatever. I do not think it has greatly reduced the time of games. I still think my idea is better. I will repeat it a million times until someone gives me a reason why it should not be done: relief pitchers must come in and be ready to pitch (unless they are coming in due to an injury). They do not get warm-ups. If you have five pitching changes in an inning, this would cut out all of those commercial breaks (oh wait, revenue…duh, that is why this is not being considered).
The Pirates are Not Very Good
They almost had me. I was at this point where I was starting to convince myself that they could be a legitimate division contender. I kept saying to myself “hey, once the bullpen stabilizes, this is a really good team.” Right. Starting pitching that cannot make it past the fifth. Relief pitching that is…really bad. A bunch of very streaky hitters. Everyone thought that Gregory Polanco was about to have that huge breakout season. He is batting .200. All of his hits came at the beginning of the year. Remember, I mentioned before how he is super-streaky. Also, I think Jose Osuna needs to be up for the rest of the season. I get that he has some on-base issues, but he definitely has some pop. Half of his hits went for extra bases last year.
I hope Glasnow’s time in the bullpen helps him figure things out. There have been times where he has looked pretty good. Granted, he seems to come in during some pretty lopsided games, but maybe that is what he needs. Like I have said before, he has learned all he can at AAA. He now has to learn how to pitch at this level. He has the stuff, just needs to learn how to use it.
Gerrit Cole
Who would have guessed that Cole would be leading the AL in Strikeouts after the first month of the season? This is the Gerrit Cole that Pirates fans envisioned starting for us. So what happened? I do not want to speculate too much, but I know that the Pirates focus so much on downward plane and pitching to induce grounders. Cole is not that type of pitcher and I believe that is why he struggled at times. If you watch him pitching for the Astros, he is using the strikezone how he likes to and he almost looks to be having more fun out there. Some players are not built for certain systems. I think this is a failing of the Pirates at times. Same thing goes with the Orioles and Arrieta. They kept trying to fix things on him that were not broken, then he went to the Cubs and they said “do whatever makes you comfortable.” You hear hitters talk about this too. One team tries to change everything, another team says “whatever works.” I am very happy for Gerrit Cole, but also very frustrated that he was never fully utilized while in Pittsburgh. I should probably point out that I am totally speculating here…
