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The Baltimore Orioles are 29-19.  They have a winning record against all except three opponents this year (Yankees, Angels, Rangers).  They were a last place team last year.  And the year before that.  And before that.  And every year since 2007, when the Devil Rays were an entity.  It’s more than possible (with every team in the AL East being above .500) that the Orioles could be a last place team this year as well.  They’re the single largest surprise in MLB this year.  But I don’t think they’re a total fluke.

Where to start?  The Orioles lineup is incredibly legit.  That was probably the case before this year as well.  The Orioles have an issue with their offensive depth.  Left Fielder Nolan Reimold got off to a .313/.333/.627 start, but he’s hurt (and backup Endy Chavez is hurt), so the Orioles have been forced to play 22 year old Quasi-prospect Xavier Avery.  Avery is the offensive black hole in a strong lineup, but he’s explosive enough with his speed and defense to masquerade as a part-time leadoff man for the O’s.  The great weakness on the Orioles is the outfield, where major league regulars Adam Jones and Nick Markakis are joined by Reimold/Avery/whoever they can field.  With a legitimate left field acquisition, the O’s may have the best offense in the AL East, although in it’s current state, they fall short of the level of the Red Sox and Blue Jays, and are roughly on par with the Yankees (minus Brett Gardner).

The big step forward in 2012 was two fold: they acquired quality depth on the corners (Wilson Betemit, Nick Johnson, Chris Davis during the 2011 season, meaning they turned their biggest weaknesses (hilarious ineptitude at 1B and DH) into a relative strength.  The other big step was made by CF Adam Jones, a long time frustrating prospect, who is currently sporting a .308/.349/.595 line, and a brand new 6 year/$80 million contract.  Nick Markakis has enjoyed a similar but less heralded power bump (.122 ISO in 2011, .200 ISO in 2012).

The O’s have already had to overcome four key offensive injuries.  Injuries to Reimold and Chavez have created a black hole in the lineup.  But injuries to 2B Brian Roberts and 3B Mark Reynolds have cost the Orioles a significant part of their payroll to the disabled list.  Reynolds has been activated by the Orioles for today’s game.

While it’s worthwhile to be optimistic about the Baltimore offense, it’s hard to know what to think of the pitching.  The Baltimore bullpen has been fantastic, and that has likely been manager Buck Showalter’s greatest personal contribution to this hot start, because while there are some strong names in this group, the Orioles have survived by featuring journeymen like Jim Johnson, Pedro Strop, Luis Ayala, Dana Eveland, and Darren O’Day over highly priced pieces such as Matt Lindstrom and Kevin Gregg.

The starting rotation started off really hot, but a couple notes on this group.  First of all, a bunch of great starts from the rotation fueled this team’s early April success.  That caused most observers to conclude that the Orioles’ couldn’t compete because the rotation would regress sharply and the team would hit a long losing streak.  Well, here are the ERA’s of the Baltimore rotation to date: 2.78, 3.31, 4.82, 4.87, 5.07.  It’s not a good rotation.  Tommy Hunter a 25 year old long man who is a bit out of place in a big league rotation.  Brian Matusz is a former 2008 top five draft pick and top prospect.  Jake Arrieta is another top prospect.  While Matusz has been better of late and might settle in as a nice number three pitcher, Arrieta continues to fight command issues.

Thing is, even after the rotation began to look more like the Orioles rotation of recent years, the Orioles look more like a .500 team than a true last place team.  The keys for the rest of the season rest perhaps on two pitchers: Jason Hammel, who looks much improved in his age 29 season with a 8.7 K/9 rate.  He probably can’t support a 2.78 ERA all year, but 3.5 is a reasonable hope.  The other is rookie Wei-Yin Chen, who might be the biggest candidate in the Oriole rotation for regression.  If Chen can beat the odds and put up another nine starts like his first nine, then the Orioles will be in this thing at the trade deadline.

This team will need to find another starting pitcher to move Hunter to the bullpen, and probably at the very least, a left handed power bat in the outfield who can platoon with Nolan Reimold once healthy.  Then they’ll need to hope for extremely good health, because the O’s are not a deep club, at all.  When the rosters expand to 40 players in September, the Oriole dreamers may start to entertain thoughts of a call up for 19 year old phenom Dylan Bundy, the team’s 2011 first round pick who apparently has no use for the minor leagues.  They also have Miguel Tejada playing on a minor league deal in AAA Norfolk, though I’m not sure if there’s anything there.  MLB veteran Bill Hall also plays for Norfolk, having just been outrighted after making it through waivers.

The upshot for the O’s is that they’ll need to go outside the organization for help if they want to compete in 2012.  There’s no one in the minors who is going to move quicker than Bundy, and although they sky is the limit for him, it’s not going to be Bundy alone that makes the Orioles a contender in 2012 or even 2013.  They need Chen, Hammel, Arrieta, and Matsuz, as well as veteran hitters like J.J. Hardy, Matt Wieters, Chris Davis, and Nick Markakis to carry the team.  That’s the good news: with a couple of parts outside the organization who the Orioles might be able to cash in their vast group of stalled prospects from yesteryear for, there is enough talent here to compete sooner rather than later.  The bad news is that for all Showalter has done for this group, the Orioles are going to need to get off the fence and either buy veteran help sooner than anyone in the AL East, or they’re going to want to sell high sooner.

The longer the Orioles wait without making a move, the more of a waste this hot start will have been.

Watching baseball in April isn’t anything like watching baseball in July.  I get that.  Common belief dictates that pitching starts ahead of hitting, and that the cold weather certainly doesn’t favor those holding the lumber.  But with the way that offensive totals have collapsed over the last two seasons, I was anxious to see how long it would take for the game to rebound in the direction of offense.

And as the first day of baseball occurs, there’s some more evidence that baseball is trending away from offense.

There are no conclusions to be made from this post, as the sample size is too small.  But for those of us looking for evidence that offense will be on the rebound, it is difficult to watch flyballs get knocked down in caught in the outfield at an astounding rate while teams

I enjoy the late comebacks as much as any fan (and we’ve had three already by the Red Sox, Nationals, and Blue Jays on Opening Day), but if baseball is going to ever compete with football or basketball again in terms of TV ratings, it would seem like the only way would be to create an offensive environment that swings the score back and forth like often happens in football.  If the first team to score leads throughout the first six innings, then I’m not sure the product will ever be compelling enough for the die hards, let alone the casual fan.

And I’m not sure that baseball can support a continued trend towards a tougher run-scoring environment.  Baseball could use the volatility.  Which means that although MLB has to be pretty happy with the exciting endings that they’ve gotten on Opening Day, even the purists have to be concerned that no team scored more than 4 runs today in the first nine innings.  And I’m skeptical enough to believe the Dodgers and Padres are going to force us to wait until tomorrow to break that streak.

Salary data in this post courtesy of Cot’s/Baseball Prospectus.

The big problem I had with the Albert Pujols deal the day it was signed is the nature of the contract.  The Angels were described as “having plenty of cable revenue” in order to execute such a deal with the game’s biggest star, which made sense.

What did not (and does not) support that notion is that this deal is very heavily backloaded.  The Angels have a ton of salary flexibility in 2012 and 2013, but after that, Pujols is to cost the Angels between 23 million and 30 million per season on an ascending basis for 8 years.  When you look at the Angels current payroll, you can see why they would do such a thing in terms of backloading Pujols’ money as they will free up plenty of salary each of the next three years.  But the only reason it makes sense is if you are skeptical that the Angels are currently awash in cash, or that this cash is burning a hole in their pockets.

There is no question the Angels are a large market team at this point, clearly the dominant franchise within their own locale, and just behind the Yankees in terms of total spending ability, but the payroll flexibility is an illusion.  You don’t need flexibility when you have Albert Pujols in his prime, but you most certainly will when you have Albert Pujols well past his prime.  It’s particularly disturbing when you look at some of the players the 2014 Angels may feature when you assume zero payroll flexibility (probably too tough an assumption, but still):

1. 34 year old Albert Pujols ($23 million)
2. 35 year old Vernon Wells ($21 million)
3. 31 year old Jared Weaver ($16 million)
4. 33 year old C.J. Wilson ($16 million)
5. 30 year old Howie Kendrick ($9.35 million)
6. Arb-eligible Peter Bourjos
7. Pre-arb Mike Trout
8. Arb-eligible Hank Conger
9. Arb-eligible Mark Trumbo?

A couple of those contracts look fine on their own merits (Jared Weaver’s contract still looks great and Howie Kendrick’s extension is a bargain if 2011 is a real glimpse of his talent).  But that list of nine players on the 2014 Angels exceeds $90 million in estimated salary, and simply won’t win a lot of games unless the Angels are able to add to it.  The Angels (I am guessing) will try to sit in the $150-$160 million range in payroll over the length of the Pujols deal, which means that they have enough flexibility to build a team around that core, but to stave off the effects of age, the core is almost going to have to be entirely drafted and developed.  It’s already 2012, so you might want to get started on that if you’re the Angels.

The Prince Fielder-Detroit Tigers deal makes a lot more sense for the Tigers.  The biggest argument against the deal, to me, is that it seems pretty frivolous.  The Tigers enter 2012 as a clear favorite in the AL Central, with the Royals and the Indians still about a year away from being true 90 win contenders, and needing the Tigers to decend to between 84-86 wins to be within the realm of contention.  The immediate reaction to the Fielder deal was that the Tigers accomplished this: with a Boesch-Fielder-Cabrera-Peralta-Avila middle of the order, there’s no team in the AL Central that can go blow for blow with that group, added to the fact that the Tigers were probably already going to enter the season with the most daunting rotation in the division.  But if you take Fielder out of that, you probably drop an estimated 3 or 4 wins off the Tigers total, yet, none of the things I wrote about the Tigers above are untrue.

But what I like about the Fielder deal is that it is in no way backloaded.  In the aggragate, the Tigers are going to end up raising payroll by about $15-$20 million over last season and are likely committing to hold payroll steady for the remainder of the tenure of Mike Illitch’s ownership.  They had planned to invest the money freed up by the expiration of Magglio Ordonez’ contract into arbitration raises and the backloaded portion of Justin Verlander’s contract.  The Fielder deal was most likely executed by ownership in an understanding that payroll would be raised over the life of the deal, obviously with the Franchises’ blessing.

The Tigers lose pretty much any payroll flexibility they might have had, but the first time this will even be a minor consideration for the Tigers is if/when Justin Verlander approaches free agency after the 2014 season.  The commitment by the franchise to stay in the $120-$130 million range in payroll for the forseeable future is as large a step forward as it was when they upped payroll in 2008.  But this time there is no Dontrelle Willis deal that will threaten the Tigers as AL Central favorites.  Only time can do that as the Royals and Indians attempt to join them as annual 90 win clubs.

In other words, the 2014 Tigers have more free money and overall better contracts than the 2014 Angels do.  Take a look:

If I’m a Florida Miami Marlins fan, I’m pretty excited this morning: my team just made it’s biggest free agent signing in at least a decade, plucking SS Jose Reyes from the division rival New York Mets.  It remains the front runner to sign Chicago White Sox LHP Mark Buehrle.  The Marlins are still apparently in on the biggest fish in the pond, Cardinals 1st baseman Albert Pujols.  All of a sudden, wait…wha?  The Marlins are throwing their weight around.

You may notice that even though I typically use this blog as a medium for analyzing pro sports transactions, I try not to keep a running ledger of every move made by a baseball team.  But for the Marlins, this is a significant shift away from rhetoric about spending more to develop a ball club and a fanbase, and towards the actual action of building a larger market club.  When a team like the Yankees is involved in a three way trade, sure, that’s worth discussing.  When they sign Bartolo Colon or Freddy Garcia, or the Red Sox sign Marco Scutaro, it doesn’t and shouldn’t register on the public consciousness.  Despite my best efforts, LiveBall Sports has never been a baseball heavy blog.

Reyes to the Marlins is different.  We’re talking about a team that doesn’t draw well moving out on a financial limb with no guarantee of return on investment.  In fact, I will argue that this move will not generate even $50 million in additional ticket and jersey revenue for the Marlins, though I think they will not feel the financial impact of the trade right away.  The more interesting angle, to me, has to do with the Marlins and winning.  Manager Ozzie Guillen was the first big fish to fall.  Now: Reyes, and probably Buerhle could be additions to the club.  Hanley Ramirez is still a Marlin.  This move happens to solve the most gaping hole on the baseball diamond for the last two years: third base.

Or does is?  Well, yes it does, because the remarkably healthy and consistent Hanley Ramirez will slide over that way.  Sure, his long term contract with the Marlins doesn’t look like quite as much of a bargain at the hot corner, but there are maybe two third baseman in the National League who offer more value with the bat than Ramirez: Washington’s Ryan Zimmerman, and New York’s David Wright.  Pablo Sandoval is still very young, and Placido Polanco is still very productive, but neither is (or ever was) Hanley Ramirez.

But the bigger issue here is Reyes, who wasn’t healthy at all in 2009 or 2010.  He was then sensational in 2011, but to me, I’m just not sure how much more Reyes has to offer.  I am guilty of thinking Reyes may have been done as an everyday player prior to last season.  While that was proven obviously incorrect, $106 million is a lot to give to a guy who likely could never justify that.  It’s even more to give when you consider: these are the Marlins.

While there is clearly something brewing in Miami with Reyes joining Ramirez, Mike Stanton, and Gaby Sanchez in the same lineup, and it is easy to see how a team like the Marlins (or Braves, or Nationals) might start looking at the rusting on the armor of the Philadelphia Phillies and think that now is the time to build a perennial contender, I am highly skeptical that Reyes does anything to make the Marlins a contender of the highest order.  I think it just makes them a spender of the highest order.  Reyes heads into 2012 as the premier shortstop in the National League, but I don’t see too many ways he emerges as such in October.

I just don’t see any reason to believe the Marlins are going to allocate enough cash efficiently enough to overtake the Phillies this year, and you may have realized that the Braves have totally rebuilt their farm system and that the Nationals are also flexing their financial muscle, except with a team that now includes a healthy Steven Strasburg and Bryce Harper now in the high minors.  Reyes is a much better bang for buck signing than Jayson Werth was, but that’s not the real competition now for a Marlins team that has struggled to draw even better than three other MLB teams over the last four years.

The Marlins are pretty much just competing against themselves here, because moves like this are unsustainable on their current budget.  And sure, they were just pocketing a pretty hefty revenue sharing check instead of spending it on winning, and yes, I think Ozzie Guillen might have won tougher divisions with less talent than he is going to have in Miami this year.  But while year one jersey sales should support this deal, you know that it is also coming in tandem with other big free agent contracts.  And yet we have every reason to be skeptical that a winning Marlins team will follow.

Guillen is among the best at his job, as is Reyes and as is Pujols and Buerhle.  You can see clearly what the Marlins are trying to accomplish here.  But I can also say that I don’t think it will succeed, because like so many teams before them, the Marlins are trying to leap a lofty development curve by throwing cash around.  And since the MLB free agent market is typically a costly version of players in their prime vs. former superstars: take your pick, the effort to target select talents is admirable.  It may work out on the financial side after all.  I can offer a cost-benefit analysis, but I don’t have all the relevant information.

In terms of winning baseball games: Reyes is a costly investment, and I don’t know how confident I’d be that the wins the Marlins are chasing are going to come soon, if ever.

I have no hard evidence to back the theory that I am about to present, but I noticed earlier this month that the teams who were “sellers” at the MLB trade deadline (which just passed this last Sunday) have one common link: their inability to prevent runs.  Now, obviously, this is not a new deal to people in the know: bad teams are bad teams because either they score too few runs, or they give up too many runs.  With the exception of the punchless offenses in Oakland and Seattle this year, it’s pretty much exclusive to just the bad run prevention units that they are out of it.

There are bad offenses all over the place in baseball this year, and many of those teams are still in the hunt.  The LA Angels’ offense isn’t useful at all, but they’re 1.5 games out of first place.  Atlanta leads the wild card race, but they’ve done it without the benefit of an above average offense.  Pittsburgh is fading, but they weren’t scoring much even when they were winning.  The Giants have scored the fewest runs in the AL, and in fact have only outscored the hapless Mariners by 20 runs.  They’re leading their division.  Bad defense/pitching units though?  Pretty much just the Tigers are still in the hunt among teams that have given up 500+ runs this year.

My other observation here is that I’ve found the umpiring (balls/strikes, tag/no tag) to be more erratic this year than in other years.  But empirically, this is not the case.  The difference is that the strong offenses are doing a good job getting themselves into favorable batter’s counts, and likewise, the pitchers on bad teams are doing a bad job of staying ahead of hitters.  The effect of this, I believe, is that struggling teams are more sensitive to the variance in umpire calls.  And that bad defensive units are unable to get out of the cycle of balls and hittable pitches.

In the past, I think baseball had been more balanced between scoring and preventing runs.  The count mattered in the past, but it mattered for all hitters.  I’ve noticed that weaker hitters — more abundant in this current hitting environment — don’t capitalize on the extreme hitters counts (2-0), (3-1) like good hitters do.  That trend isn’t exclusive to this year: good hitters have always dominated in hitters’ counts.  But if you’re a team that has the pitching staff of the Baltimore Orioles, Kansas City Royals, Houston Astros, or Chicago Cubs, one of the biggest single reasons for all the losing is that it’s become nearly impossible to expect called third strikes to be called in pitcher favorable counts.  Though the umpires aren’t doing anything fundamentally different from any other year, the depressed run environment means that every run counts, and sometimes on the margins, a good pitch that gets called a ball, or a check swing that gets appealed and ruled no swing — those events are having a greater effect on the outcome of the game in this run environment than they were just three years ago.

And it would be great if someone could run the numbers on this, but I believe that this is related to the disparate way that we’re seeing teams struggling with run prevention struggle in the win column, relative to their run differential.

If you’re the front office of the Baltimore Orioles, Kansas City Royals, Oakland Athletics, or San Diego Padres, you may want to pull out your notebook, and start taking notes.  It’s the Pittsburgh Pirates who have become the example for winning baseball games on a budget.

Since its inception in 1994, the NL Central division has not been kind to the Pittsburgh Pirates.  This is remarkable, really.  We’re talking about the NL Central.  The Pirates were run into the ground for the first twelve years of the NL Central division, and it’s still incredible they didn’t make the postseason.  The freakin’ 1998 Cubs made the playoffs.  That wasn’t a good team at all.  The Pirates have been more than just a bad team, but they’ve failed to reach levels of hilarity that would have made watching their losses entertaining.  They’ve been an attraction best defined by their ballpark.

The fact that the NL Central has lined up in such a way that two of the six teams are among the worst in baseball is hardly surprising.  In fact, if you lent any credence to the preseason previews, it’s actually not that surprising that the Pirates aren’t at the bottom of the division this all star break.  However, any spectacular achievement in the first half driven by a quality, young offensive group was certain to be drowned out by a pitching staff which entered the season hoping to be just good enough to sell off a part or two at the trade deadline.  But at the all-star break, the Pirates pitchers have been worth so much more to them than that this season.

When you look at the teams that are truly struggling this year, listed in order above, but also including the Minnesota Twins, Houston Astros, and Chicago Cubs, bad teams have struggled on the run prevention side of the baseball equation.  This is where the Pirates were projected to struggle, but their 345 runs allowed is in the upper half of all of baseball and perfectly matches their much sustainable 345 runs scored this year.

If .500 is the true talent of the 2011 Pirates, then there’s reason to believe that they aren’t overachieving much.  The Pirates pitching rotation has been unable to find a true strikeout threat between Paul Maholm, Jeff Karstens, and Kevin Correia, but only Correia is truly struggling to strike out batters.  This is reflected in his results: a pedestrian 4.01 ERA at the all-star break.  Perhaps, though, the current depressed run environment actually favors the sustainability of the Pirates’ staff.  Their one below average starter is also the team’s strikeout leader, James McDonald.  McDonald struggles with putting too many guys on and had a flyball tendency.  Even in the current environment, his 4.42 ERA plays as a fifth starter.

If this was an article about how suprising the Pittsburgh Pirates are, I’d write about Charlie Morton here.  But this is an article about the chances that the Pirates push for first place deep into September, and I think that Morton best represents the amount of depth the Pirates have created themselves.  If this team actually does make the playoffs, Morton doesn’t figure to be part of the playoff rotation.  He lacks the raw power (and lack of command) of McDonald, and isn’t as well regarded as Correia, Maholm, or Karstens.  But his 5.3 K/9 rate could help him pass for other pitchers in the Pirates rotation.

The competitive advantage of this team is that it is deep for a low-budget operation.  The bullpen has six different guys having strong years — led by fireballing closer Joel Hanrahan — and can hope for a seventh when they get last year’s all-star Evan Meek back from the DL.  They can also go to that bullpen early in games because the arms are as young as they are talented, and they’ve been there for the Pirates as they’ve been needed.

The offense has not progressed according to plan, exactly.  The Pirates entered the season ahead of the game at catcher, but both Chris Snyder and Ryan Doumit have been hurt this year and neither has been much defensively when they’ve been behind the plate anyway.  Nobody in baseball likes homegrown Neil Walker’s defense at second base, but his 84 hits would lead a couple of teams at the break.  They don’t lead the Pirates, however, because the Pirates have Andrew McCutchen, a five tool prospect and budding superstar who is my pick for NL MVP at the midway point over Jose Reyes.  Opponents appear to be lost on this “McCutchen is the most dangerous player in the NL” thing because he’s been intentionally walked just once this season.  I suppose that’s understandable, because as much as teams should be fearing his bat, they are fearing what his speed on the basepaths can do to change a game.  McCutchen, who has reached base 149 times this year, has stolen 15 bases while being caught only five times.

The Pirates have issues they need to upgrade on the left side of the infield, where they’ve received sub-par performances from Ronny Cedeno as SS (which was expected) and the recently demoted Pedro Alvarez at 3B (they had hoped for better).  They have some options here on the trade market as buyers.  The Royals are looking to deal Wilson Betemit and have Mike Aviles sitting in AAA right now, and it wouldn’t be that hard for the Pirates to put together a package that lands both of them.  Even though the Indians are in the midst of a playoff run, they’d probably be willing to deal Jack Hannahan for a C+ pitching prospect.  Greg Dobbs of the Marlins could also be a target.

Unless they make a package deal with a team like the Royals, the Pirates are likely to simply sit on Ronny Cedeno at shortstop.  Cedeno isn’t a good player, but he has a strong defensive reputation, and UZR bears out his good glovework this season.  If the Bucs would consider moving Walker to third base for the rest of this season, Alexi Casilla of the Twins could be a smart pickup.  Problem there is you’re moving one of your lineup staples into a spot where he is blocking a top prospect (Alvarez).  Mark Teahen of the White Sox could be another solution.

The Pirates’ solutions to their problems could define their road to the playoffs because the main competition, the Milwaukee Brewers, have the same left side of infield needs.  The truth is though the wisest moves the Pirates could make is simply to focus on increasing the value of their roster taking advantage of a buyers market and trying to find good players at any position.  Really, in terms of building a team for the future, the only untouchable in terms of losing a job is McCutchen.  And that shouldn’t limit the Pirates options at all.

They shouldn’t be considered the favorites to win the NL Central because they simply won’t be able to match the Brewers pitching, but the Pirates could, very easily, enter 2012 as the favorite if the Brewers do not return Prince Fielder.  To do so, they will need to be smart and add value to their organization throughout July and August and into the offseason, but this shouldn’t be a problem.  After all, it’s how the Pirates got to this position in the first place.

Milwaukee’s own Zack Greinke (6-1; 4.69 ERA) is 6-1 for only the second time in his seven year baseball career.  The other time he was 6-1, the BBWAA gave him the award pictured above.  Equipment producer Mizuno gave him this.

However, no one is throwing a parade in a plaza for Greinke this time around.  Back in 2009, Greinke was sitting on a 0.50 ERA at this point, and could be considered a hard luck 6-1.  This time, NL opponents have scored 26 times off Greinke already.  But the differences are remarkable.  Greinke is stranding the lowest rate of baserunners in his career: 63.0%.  He is suffering from a flyball tendency in a way he has not struggled with since his formative days in Kansas City.  Greinke’s BABIP has soared over his last two starts (both wins) to .344 on the season.  And the reasoning for all those problems resulting in a 4.69 ERA instead of something more resembling the numbers he put up in Kansas City is exclusively related to the homerun ball.

Greinke has allowed six homers this year, including yesterday.  And those homers haven’t been of the common, solo variety either.  They’ve been potential back-breakers to the Brewers chances.  It’s a combination of the opponents being able to get the ball in the air, having runners on base against Greinke when it happens (Greinke is allowing a fraction over a baserunner per inning, so this has to regress at some point), and the Brewers defense simply not getting to balls in play.

But Greinke could care less about that ERA stat.  For the first time in his career, he plays for a team that bails him out by way of run support.  And Greinke himself, who has already scored twice this year, including the game tying run yesterday on a Rickie Weeks go-ahead 6th inning homer, is now part of that run support equation.  It’s really made all the difference for him to go for hoping to get 2 or 3 runs to work with from the Royals offense, and not even getting that at times, to being able to give up 3, 4, or even 5 runs in a start, and still find a way to be pitching from ahead deep in the game.

It is not probable, but it is possible, that Zack Greinke could do the whole career high in games won this season despite missing roughly five starts due to a DL stint for a fractured rib in March/April.  Greinke lost his first start coming off the DL in Atlanta, but having pitched at home in Miller Park in all but one of his next seven starts, the Brewers have managed to win each one of those seven games, now the longest single-season winning streak in games started by Zack Greinke (he had a longer one lasting from September 2008-May 2009).

Two years ago, there was a situation revolving around the all-star game starting pitcher, which Greinke had clearly identified as either himself or Toronto’s Roy Halladay.  Two years later, we can wonder if anything has really changed.  Greinke is in the National League, as is Halladay.  Cliff Lee is a pitching leaderboard mainstay.  Felix Hernandez also has a Cy Young award to show for his efforts.  One of those four pitchers has to be the best pitcher in baseball.

The majority would probably sat that Halladay is still the best.  It’s hard to disagree.  Greinke probably wouldn’t disagree.  Look at the year to year production.  Roy Halladay is still the toughest pitcher to beat in a major league game.

The only group of people I might think of that could disagree is National League hitters.  Collectively, I don’t know if there’s a group out there who has less success than NL hitters against Greinke.  60 players have struck out against Greinke this year.  56 players have reached base against Greinke this year.  If dominance for a pitcher is represented by those two numbers even being close (like they were in 2009 for Greinke, or they have been for Halladay throughout his career), the pace Greinke is on in 2011 is nothing short of historic.

There’s just no reason to think he can keep that pace up.  Unless, of course, you believe that Greinke is better than he was in 2009.  I’m not saying he is.  I’m also not saying he isn’t.  What I am saying is, from the perspective of hitters alone, putting aside his value to an organization or all-star credentials or other distractions, Zack Greinke is the most dangerous pitcher in baseball to face, and also possibly the very best.

After being swept at home in four games by the Texas Rangers it may be time to ask if what we’re seeing from the Cleveland Indians is simply natural regression, or something more detrimental to the playoff hopes of the Tribe.

First, lets define the competition of the Cleveland Indians.  For awhile, when it looked like the Indians were going to run away with the division, it seemed like they would certainly finish with a better record than the wild card team from the AL East.  That now looks more or less impossible.  The Yankees and Red Sox have been hot recently, and the AL East is primed to send two teams to the playoffs for yet another year.  The Indians will have to win the AL Central to make it to the AL Postseason.

Right now, their primary competition is the Detroit Tigers, who sit just 2.5 games back.  It’s likely the gap between the Tigers and the rest of the division (White Sox, Royals, Twins) will close over the next two months.  If the Indians keep winning over the next two months, this race will be over around the trade deadline.  If the Indians slow their pace, this could be a dogfight throughout the last two months.

Regardless, the truth about the Indians seems to lie somewhere in the middle.  Their pace will slow a bit, and the door will be opened for the Tigers.  But how much will it slow?  The numbers tell an interesting story.

The Indians have already been hit hard by injury and by underperformance.  The problem over the last two weeks has been that the Indians have been hurt by these factors before they could be helped by the natural regression of middle of the order hitters Shin Soo Choo and Carlos Santana.  The 3-9 record since May 24th is most likely a mirage, because the Indians aren’t getting their offensive production from anywhere, even though they have a strong lineup.  Furthermore, they are hurting in terms of depth right now, as they weren’t exactly constructed to compete this year.

I may be biased as a Royals fan, but I’m pretty sure I haven’t seen Michael Brantley every get out.  Right now, he’s just on basing a pretty good .349.  That’s better than everyone than Santana and Asdrubal Cabrera (pictured above).  Now, 3B Jack Hannahan, who was as much a part of the Indians strong start as any player, is regressing — probably because he’s Jack Hannahan.   Most of the timely power hitting has come out of the 8 hole from former top prospect Matt LaPorta.  Laporta, Cabrera, and Brantley are the breakout studs who can power the engine that is the Indians offense, but even with those players, the team must overcome their weaknesses at second base and at third base.

Lineup theory tells us that a team can score a bunch of runs with seven above average players, and while the Indians had 8 or so players playing over their heads most of the season, it’s clear that they’re going to have to produce throughout the outfield, and from the DH position as well to continue to score enough runs to win games.

This is where it makes sense to discuss the effect of the Grady Sizemore and Travis Hafner injuries.  Hafner has been sensational this year, but he’s also been to the DL twice.  It’s an identical situation for Grady Sizemore.  He started the year on the DL, and now is back on.  This is relevant because without Sizemore, the Indians have been forced into a mostly ineffective platoon with Travis Buck and Austin Kearns.  Of course, without Sizemore and Hafner, Shelley Duncan is the every day DH.  And that means that even if Brantley, Cabrera, and LaPorta continue to rake, they still can’t outpace the rest of the division offensively even when Shin Soo Choo and Carlos Santana begin to drive the ball consistently.

The Indians will likely require some sort of upgrade at second base because Orlando Cabrera’s defense just isn’t good enough make him an every day player while he OPSes .581.  But they’ll also need to get some help should Hafner and Sizemore not return at full ability.  A strong Indians lineup counts on production from veterans as well as the breakout candidates.  The young players have held up their end of the bargain thus far, but if the Indians are going to ride out the inevitable summer struggles of LaPorta and Brantley, they’re either going to need a better trainer or more depth.

The Indians have been able to hold late leads because of their bullpen strength and defined roles.  But the rotation is of great concern, and the issues there may limit the ability of the Indians to acquire their much needed offensive depth.  Justin Masterson looks like a developing ace, though his K rate places him squarely as a middle of the rotation pitcher.  Josh Tomlin pitches to the corners, and though he had great success early (1.4 BB/9), he’s starting to be hit hard (1.4 HR/9).  Lefty Mitch Talbot can get strikeouts, but is nothing more than a back of the rotation guy on a playoff contender.

The problem here is that young Carlos Carrasco isn’t yet good enough to be in a big league rotation on a contending team, and has merely survived to date by keeping the ball in the park.  The other problem is that Fausto Carmona isn’t very valuable at all as anything more than an innings eater, and needs to be upgraded.  Prospect Alex White is currently on the DL.  If he can come back healthy, he’s likely the second best pitcher in the Indian rotation, after Masterson.  If his arm gives him problems all year, the Indians have no choice but to go outside the organization to get help.

Carmona isn’t going anywhere, but the Indians will only be able to hold off the Tigers if they can start four valuable pitchers every time they turn over the rotation.  Masterson is a given.  They have to hold out hope on both White (injury) and Tomlin (effectiveness) that they have at least one all season.  Then there’s Talbot, a good no. 4.

The Indians will have to trade for a mid-to-front line starting pitcher to hold of the rest of the AL Central, and they probably should not wait, as Carrasco is a liability.  The Twins and Royals aren’t playing competitive baseball (not even head to head — 2 sweeps in three series), but have hardly any pitchers that would be of value between them.  The Indians could target Scott Baker of the Twins, who is still owed $10 million between now and next year.  It’s probably too early for the A’s to be sellers, so absent Baker, the Indians are likely looking at trying to acquire a pitcher in the National League, such as Wandy Rodriguez (who is also on the DL), Chris Capuano, R.A. Dickey, Tom Gorzelanny, Ryan Dempster, or Aaron Harang.  The translation ability of an NL pitcher to contribute on an AL team is typically not a good risk.

Still, the Indians are sitting pretty in the AL Central.  Maybe not so much right now, as the Tigers are healthy and have more obvious places where they can improve by mid-season transaction, but the Indians’ young talent has done anything except turn back into a large pumpkin at midnight.  They’re still being driven forward in the AL Central by the young guns.  Its now time to find the veterans who can stay healthy and help push the Cleveland Indians into the playoffs.

On Saturday, June 4th, 2011, Matt Kemp of the Los Angeles Dodgers hit a grand slam in the 8th inning off of Cincinnati Reds Pitcher Logan Ondrusek to send the Reds and Dodgers to extra innings at Great American Ballpark in Cincinnati.  This was of great significance to a struggling and maligned Dodgers offense.  But was also more significant is that Kemp sent the Dodgers and Reds to Major League Baseball’s 100th extra inning game this season.

The 100th time that two teams and four umpires were sent to extra innings this year came on the day where MLB played its 870th game of the season, which is 36% of the way through the full season schedule.  So it’s still early, and a lot can change very quickly.  But I felt like, for sure, this season was featuring a higher rate of extra inning affairs than any other recent MLB season.  So I ran the numbers, and this is what I found:

Year	% X-Inn MLB R/G
2011	11.49%	4.21
2010	9.05%	4.38
2009	8.02%	4.61
2008	8.57%	4.65
2007	9.05%	4.8
2006	7.62%	4.86
2005	7.49%	4.59
2004	8.98%	4.81
2003	8.11%	4.73
2002	8.25%	4.62
2001	8.03%	4.78
2000	8.32%	5.14
1999	7.87%	5.08
1998	8.52%	4.79
1997	8.65%	4.77
1996	9.62%	5.04
1995	8.93%	4.85
1994	8.94%	4.92
1993	8.64%	4.6
1992	9.97%	4.12
1991	10.46%	4.31

source: baseball-reference.com

This shows the run environment alongside the percentage of games that took longer than 9 innings to decide.  X-tra inning games are happening more in 2011 than at any point in the prior 20 seasons, and by a substantial margin.  The last time that more than 10% of games went to the 10th inning happened in 1991  Furthermore the correlation between the current MLB run environment and the percentage of games that go longer than anticipated is fairly clear from this exercise.  When more teams score more runs, a higher percentage of games get decided in nine innings.  That is fairly straightforward.  The Kemp game is an anomally: grand slams in regulation typically do not take us to extra innings, they usually decide the game.

Of course, beyond the trend between run environment and extra innings, its far more difficult to establish a clear trend that we’re seeing more extra inning games now than ever before.  Let’s take that table above, and throw out the 2011 and 1991 lines.

Year	% X-Inn	MLB R/G
2010	9.05%	4.38
2009	8.02%	4.61
2008	8.57%	4.65
2007	9.05%	4.8
2006	7.62%	4.86
2005	7.49%	4.59
2004	8.98%	4.81
2003	8.11%	4.73
2002	8.25%	4.62
2001	8.03%	4.78
2000	8.32%	5.14
1999	7.87%	5.08
1998	8.52%	4.79
1997	8.65%	4.77
1996	9.62%	5.04
1995	8.93%	4.85
1994	8.94%	4.92
1993	8.64%	4.6
1992	9.97%	4.12

Here we see that the trend is actually way more clear when we throw out the numbers from 2011 and from 1991: the percentage of extra inning games in baseball is actually going down, substantially, over the last 20 years.  The outliers in the data include any time that more than 10% of baseball games go to extras in a season.  It is unlikely, given the recent sample, that more than 10% of games will go to extra innings over the rest of the season.

There is one qualification I need to make on that: it’s not unlikely that we can see all time highs for extra inning games this year IF offensive levels continue to drop over the next four months.  That in itself is unlikely for two reasons: natural offensive regression, and the warmer weather in the summer typically offering a bump to offensive totals.  But it’s been an odd MLB year to date to say the least, so it’s at least possible that offensive totals could fall between now and September.

This run environment is NOT a historical outlier with regard to producing a higher rate of 10th innings.  The outliers in this data set actually occurred when runs per game in baseball were over 5, most recently around the turn of the century (1999-2000), and also immediately post-strike (1996).  Based on the last 20 years, there should have actually been fewer extra inning games in those seasons, but, relatively speaking, there were many.

I can conclude from this research that in the last twenty years, extreme valleys in offensive numbers have created more extra inning games, which is a primary reason that we have seen a spike in long games when the run environment dips below 4.3.  But the overall trend in MLB has been away from extra innings, at least in the last 20 years.  Clearly, there are other factors at play here besides run environment on extra inning occurrences; factors that have been causing more and more games to be decided in 9 innings.  I will revisit this at the end of the season, and try to address what else is causing the downward trend in extra inning games, and whether or not circumstances have changed now in the 2011 MLB season.

Four days of baseball tells you…not much about teams. What it might tell us is that we just didn’t know what we were talking about in the preseason. After the seasons’ first series, I really want to take back all those picks I made without conviction.

Specifically speaking, I feel like I just overlooked the NL Central defending champion Cincinnati Reds.  And this is an incredibly pre-mature mea culpa.  In LiveBall’s NL Central preview, I hesitantly picked the Brewers to win after expressing concern that I was picking a sucker’s bet in a weak division.  Well, the Brewers have begun 0-4, but you know, the Cardinals haven’t won either, and the Cubs didn’t get started on the right foot at Pittsburgh, while neither the Pirates or Astros can yet be taken seriously.  The team I so obviously overlooked was last years winner, the Reds, who emphatically crushed the Brewers at home in a three game set.  None of the games were close after Opening Day, when the Reds won in comeback, walk-off fashion.  The Brewers have now fallen to 0-4, and while I think they will rebound to win 80-some games easily, the assertion that there is no clear favorite in the NL Central appears wrong.  The Reds are a clear favorite.  The Brewers may be the best of the rest, but after being swept in Cincinnati, it’s the Reds that are the team to beat.

What the Brewers have shown early on is a complete lack of depth.  Corey Hart has a strained rib cage muscle, and is on the DL.  The assumption with those picking the Brewers is that the always potent Brewers lineup would “score runs.”  Of course, they traded their starting SS and potentially starting CF to the Royals in the Zack Greinke deal, and even though the now incumbent CF Carlos Gomez is showing some production with the bat, the Brewers simply don’t have the depth in RF with Hart out.  Even with the top four in the lineup off to a good start, the bottom of this order after Casey McGahee is dreadful.  Yuni Betancourt, an Erick Almonte/Nyjer Morgan platoon replacing Hart, and then George Kotteras and Wil Nieves at catcher.  As a 6-8 in the NL, that’s a horrendous lineup.  The Brewers will make a run when Hart and Zack Greinke come off the DL, but if the Reds play like they did last year, it’s not going to matter.  The Reds will win the division with one of the NL’s best records, and the Brewers will have to scrap for a wild card berth.  If they get that Wild Card, I still like them to go deep in the playoffs, even at 0-4 to start the season.

The weirdest series of the weekend was played in Kansas City, where the Royals won the series 3-1 winning TWO games on walkoff homers.  In the entire 2010 season, the Royals won just once on a walkoff homer, by Alex Gordon, over the Orioles the week before Buck Showalter took over.  They’ve doubled that total, and there are still 158 games to play.

One of the reason for increased walkoff homers is that the Royals never hit so many homers in a series in general.  The Royals hit six homers in the series (all but one a solo shot), and they were hit by six different players.  The Angels spent the entire series playing longball as well, going yard 9 times.  15 homers in a single series at Kauffman Stadium is a lot, even considering 4 games, and typically only happens when Royals pitching is feeling up to the task.  For the Angels to hit 7 homers of 9 homers in a three game span, losing all three games in the process says a lot about the Angels.  The weather was whacky as well, as both the Angels and Royals’ television production crews were forced to move out of “high home” position, thanks to gusting wins that blew water out of the signature fountains at Kauffman Stadium and would have potentially destroyed the cameras if left in normal position.  Water wasn’t the only thing blown around by the wind, as Bruce Chen “fastballs” also ended up traveling further than they might have otherwise, if only for effect.

The Royals’ series win could spell trouble for the Angels — the Royals rarely outscore a team in a series.  The Angels can’t trust their bullpen, can’t trust Scott Kazmir, and bat Bobby Abreu and Alberto Callaspo in a lineup of otherwise overrated hitters as they wait to bring 1B Kendrys Morales back to the lineup when he’s fully recovered from a broken leg suffered at home plate after a walkoff homer in 2010.  But the Royals feature unbelievably impressive depth in their bullpen mostly from arms under the age of 25.  Their ability to hold late leads and play defense late in games is an ability they pretty much lacked last season, and could prove to pit their decision makers in an odd dilemma: whether to push starting pitching prospects up to make a previously unfathomable run in the AL Central if they leverage a weak April schedule into a lot of early wins and a hot start.

Angels fans aren’t panicking quite like Red Sox fans after an 0-3 start.  The Rangers played longball off Red Sox pitching, and though the Red Sox will score this year, pitchers Jon Lester, John Lackey, and Clay Buccholz simply weren’t up to the task on baseball’s first weekend.  The Rangers meanwhile, threw fine in their first series without Cliff Lee on the roster, and look to be every bit the favorites in the American League this year.  The Red Sox will be fine, but maybe were exposed a bit as overrated by the masses considering better than 70% of fans expected the Red Sox to beat the other four teams in the division.  That’s a sizable majority, but the standings say: two games behind the Yankees (and three and a half behind the Orioles)!

Wrapping up, the AL East is also the place of the most meaningful early series, where the Orioles swept — yes, swept — the Tampa Bay Rays.  This blog has the Rays returning to the playoffs behind only, ahem, the Red Sox, but those chances took a big hit as all-world 3B Evan Longoria will head to the disabled list, rendering the Rays offense largely punchless.  Time to see if Ben Zobrist, John Jaso, and BJ Upton are worth the big bucks in Tampa, and it’s time for that rotation to carry them.

But the Orioles are the story of baseball in the early going, if only because their late season production last year seemed unsustainable.  At this point though, last year’s season-best finish is a reason to buy the Orioles as a potential wild card contender.  I don’t think they’ll be able to do it, but it does look like the Orioles aren’t heading to last place anytime soon, and could have the talent (particularly in the pitching staff) to hang with the Big Boys in baseball’s best division.  After all, the standings are the only thing that matters this early in the season, and we’re still waiting on the first team to beat the Orioles in 2011.  The Detroit Tigers will take another crack at pulling off such a feat tomorrow as baseball’s regular season hits high gear.