Spring Training has started, so we are very close to the start of the MLB starting up again. And I'm ready for it to start up again.

   We've got teams like the Cubs and White Sox all making big splashes in free agency. There's also the return of Alex Rodriguez and all the baggage that comes along with him. The Nationals will have one of the best rotations after adding Max Scherzer, and should be a top contender for a World Series this year.

   So, all discussion as usual can go in this thread for the season. The AL Central should be a tighter race this year, with both the Sox and Indians getting better, and the Tigers again leaving their bullpen to just sit there, which with their weaker rotation probably means another early playoff exit, and the Royals seemed to have taken a step back, but you can never really rule them out. The AL West should be filled with good teams again with Seattle, Oakland, and the Angels, and if Texas can stay healthy, maybe can mix it up a bit.

   Anyways, we are hopefully in for another good season of baseball. Feel free to post predictions for division winners or other predictions if you want now, or to just discuss some of the offseason moves.

As usual, I am going to be talking about the Mets a lot, and I know its only spring training and it doesn't count, but the Mets have just been pure spectacular both in hitting and pitching. After just three games, the Meta have the 2nd highest On Base Percentage in the majors, and scored 8 runs in their first game with more than half their lineup missing.

Their pitching was just as good, their only loss of their three games came from runs scored only against pitchers who have not debuted yet. Harvey threw 2 perfect innings with 3 strikeouts, an exact replica of Lester I believe and Syndergaard flashed a bit.

Matt Reynolds proved he's the shortstop of the future with another good hitting day by hitting a walk off home run and in yesterdays game, the new fourth outfielder, John Mayberry Jr crushes a home run against Max Scherzer.

Sure, its only Spring training, but the Mets haven't had such a good start to spring in years, back in 08 or 09, there was one year the team hit like 5 home runs combined all spring.

I'm excited to see how the Red Sox do... we have sneakily built a very very strong looking team for 2015.

C - Vazquez/Hanigan (defensive catchers!)
1B - Napoli (who has fixed his sleep apnea!)/Craig (who I still think can be valuable)
2B - Pedroia (who has looked healthier than he has in years so far this Spring)/Holt (who will also backup OF)
3B - Sandoval (who looks motivated and hungry!)
SS - Xander Bogaerts (Calling it, breakout player of the year right here)
OF - Hanley Ramirez (who beefed up and looks more like MANNY Ramirez right now)/Mookie Betts (who scouts love... for GOOD reason!)/Rusney Castillo (so so fast)/Shane Victorino (ugh)/Daniel Nava (Woot!)
DH - Papi!!!

SP - Buchholz/Porcello/Masterson/Miley/Kelly (no ace, but 4 #3 or better pitchers and Joe Kelly)
BP - Koji/Tazawa/Ogando/Mujica/Varavaro/Breslow/Ross (sneaky looking bullpen)

And we also signed that young kid, Yoan Moncada, who is drawing rave reviews. Word is he would have been taken #1 in the upcoming draft, if he was eligible. The Red Sox got a #1 pick and all it cost was money. Love it. So young, so talented, so excited.

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In other news, Marcus Stroman is down for the year with torn ACL. Which means the Red Sox path to the top has gotten easier.

In a matter of days, I have already lost my faith in the Mets as their pitching had been horrendous lately. Aside for todays game they have the 3rd worst era in baseball, though on the flip side, still one of the 6 best OBP's.

In other Mets news, apparently Jacob Degrom threw 51 pitches to get 5 ks in 5 innings, not bad

I don't know what to think of the Mets anymore, so far in Spring they have been amazing with hitting, and lead all N.L. teams in almost every category from Runs, hits, doubles, BA, everything, yet their pitching just can;t seem to get any better and still have the 3rd worst ERA in baseball and also now have the possibility of Zack Wheeler getting Tommy John.

I don't watch a whole lot of baseball, but when I do, I root for the Cincinnati Reds. After seeing how they were last year, I'm not feeling to confident about them for 2015 either. As much as I hate to admit it, the St. Louis Cardinals or the Pittsburgh Pirates will probably win the NL Central. If Joey Votto can have a big year though, I feel like they have a chance to make the playoffs.

Nolan Arendo is just amazing. I was in my school library and I saw some kid on his laptop watching this video and I loved it but I forgot all about it until I saw it on Bing recently. He caught the ball and catapulted from the tarp into the stands.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KytOUlwpqJk

Well, I sure enjoyed the Braves this season. They won their first 5 games, and that will all but do it. For the past couple games, they've already gone back to the 2014 Braves. They think that all they need to do is score 2 runs ( both from solo HRs ) and that's it. The first week, they played smart baseball...being aggressive on the base paths, stealing bases. They've now gone back to everyone trying to hit the ball 1000 feet.

Like I said, I enjoyed the 2015 season for the Braves, even though it was only a week long. I guess now I have to watch teams like the Royals play smart, fundamental baseball. Un-freakin-believable!

OK, I like the Red Sox a lot this year. Some brief notes on the first week...

C - Vazquez got injured, and is out for the season, but I don't think we'll miss him... Ryan Hanigan has stepped up in a big way, and keeps drawing walk after walk, and forcing the opposing pitcher to throw a LOT of pitches. It's astounding, because he can't hit at all, so it's strange they keep trying to pitch around him. They might eventually learn, but by then Swihart will be ready to take over.

1B - Mike Napoli struggled a lot in the first two series of the year, going something like 0-17 before finally heating up. Now he's seeing the ball, and hitting it hard. He hit a triple, and the Mike Napoli of last year would never do that. He's been a joy to watch, even when he's struggling.

2B - Dustin Pedroia seems to have his power stroke back, and is on pace to have his best offensive season in years. It helps he's finally healthy. He's also making literally every defensive play and is almost certain to win the gold glove again if this keeps up. Our pitchers (who are all ground ball guys) love him, and can't wait to see what he does next.

SS - Xander Bogaerts has gotten a little lucky on BABIP, tons of grounders up the middle and all that, but he's also been incredibly smart at the plate, and swinging at pitches he needs to swing at. He's become much more patient, and I think he's on the cusp of breaking out. He's also playing much better defense now, and has saved a few runs with his heads up defense.

3B - Pablo Sandoval has been about as advertised. He either hits the ball a lot, or not at all. He swings at a ton of bad pitches but always seems to get the bat on them, and either foul it off or put it in play. He's playing INCREDIBLE defense for a guy of his size, and seems to know what his role is. I can't wait to see him get more chances at Fenway.

OF - Hanley Ramirez doesn't just look more like Manny now... he swings like Manny too. He's got like 4 home runs in the first 9 games of the season (on pace for 72 at the moment!?), and should have 5 (rain and wind took away a sure game winning home run the other day). He's playing mediocre defense, but he's looking more like Manny by the minute... Our RF situation is sketchy (Daniel Nava/Shane Victorino) so I won't talk much about that. I can't wait for Rusney to be up. Only hole in the lineup. And my new favorite Red Sox, Mookie Betts... he's doing everything. In our home opener he robbed Bryce Harper of a home run, stole 2 bases (on one pitch) and then hit a home run of his own. He's been killing the ball. I can't wait for him to stop getting UNLUCKY. All the linedrives he hits seem to go STRAIGHT to outfielders. Awful luck so far, but he's still playing like a champ regardless.

DH - Papi is Papi. When summer gets hot, Papi gets hot.

SP - I'm not enthusiastic. Buchholz has been good and then awful. So basically he's been Clay Buchholz. Justin Masterson has had difficulty locating pitches and going past the 6th (which he needs to start doing). Wade Miley looked great in his debut, but absolutely awful today. Joe Kelly's second turn is Friday. He had a great game, but it was against a Yankees team coming off a 19 inning loss. Not much can be said about Kelly's performance, since he'll never get a chance like that again. The best pitcher has been Rick Porcello, who is locating everything perfectly, getting tons of grounders, and keeping us in the game. I love that guy.

Our bullpen is looking good, mostly, but there's nothing special about it.

Our team is 6-3 and has won all three of our first series (Phillies/Yankees/Nationals). Now we get a 4 game series against Baltimore that could be a true test.

I'm looking forward to the rest of the season. There's a lot of baseball to be played. We're playing smart baseball, and most importantly, winning.

What the heck is going on with the 3-6 Mariners? I thought they were supposed to be World Series Contenders this year. I mean, sure, they had 3 back to back extra inning games, and won the first two of those, but come on now! This does not look like my team that was claimed to be a World Series Contender. 

thing1 :

It's been 9 games total. And of the 9 games they played, they played them against the Angels (who they went 1-2 against), the Athletics (2-1), and the Dodgers (0-3).

The first series, against the Angels, was against what was a playoff team a year ago. The Mariners may have improved in certain aspects, but the Angels were always a step above you guys, and they didn't get much worse, if at all.

The first of the two losses against the Angels sucked, because you guys only lost 2-0, and had great pitching. Unfortunately, you only got two hits off a resurgent CJ Wilson. Every team has a handful of games where they can't hit the broad side of a barn. That was one of those nights.

The second of the two losses was another close game (5-3). This time, the culprit was poor pitching by Iwakuma. Gave up a two run shot to Pujols, then allowed two more runs, one of which was directly caused by an error. All told, that game was lost in the first inning. As Shoemaker kept you to three total runs. Iwakuma didn't have his best stuff, and the Mariners paid for it.

Then, against the Athetics, a team that while different looking, is still threatening, and not a cakewalk. You lost the game embarrassingly. Not only did Taijuan Walker and the rest of the pitchers give up 12 runs (when you do that badly, you don't deserve to win), but the offense, again, could only muster three hits off Pomeranz and the A's. Two of those hits were by Austin Jackson. Miserable game by the Mariners.

Most interesting was the Dodgers series...

The Dodgers might be the World Series favorite in the National League, especially if the Nationals continue to suck like they are.

The first two games were losses, but there's not much that can be said. They were won via clutch hitting in the bottom half of a tied game. In those games, you can blame poor starting pitching and bad luck (to a smaller extent). The third game, you just flat out lost. No excuses. Walker was bad (again), and the offense left too many guys on base.

I can boil down the Mariners failures in the first week+ of the season to three bullet points.

1. The starting pitching is bad. (OK, so is the bullpen) According to MLB.com, the Mariners have the worst SP in baseball right now, the only team with worse SP than the Boston Red Sox (which get by on their offense, and are 6-3). Not only are they pitching dreadfully, they aren't even going deep into games. They are averaging 5.4 innings per start, which means the bullpen has to pick up the slack for each bad start. Not only that, but the Mariners BULLPEN is bad too! 21st in ERA by relievers, they manage to not only be a bottom 5 team in SP, but a bottom 10 team in RP. Why is the team so bad at pitching...? They keep allowing too many hits. What's strange is that they are doing it with a middle of the pack GO/AO ratio (groundouts to flyouts), which means they aren't just getting terribly unlucky either. The starting pitching (and bullpen) have been legitimately bad this first three series.

2. The offense is pretty mediocre. Not only is the pitching bad... but in terms of OBP, the Mariners are 28th. In OPS, they are 21st. And again, they are about equal in groundouts to fly outs, which would imply that they just aren't making contact often enough for that to matter. They've only managed to put a handful of balls in play, compared to other teams, and right now boast the WORST OFFENSE in the AL West. Making matters worse, they are ranked 24th in BA with RISP (which means they are one of the least clutch teams in the league). Not only are they not getting on base often, but when they do, they don't make it count. You can put a lot of these struggles on a few key players. Kyle Seager (.229/.270/.400), Brad Miller (.172/.219/.310), and most importantly, Robinson Cano (.211/.211/.368). Once those guys heat up, the offense will stop being garbage.

3. Finally, and most importantly... strength of competition. The Mariners have played not only three good teams, but three potential playoff teams, two of which are serious World Series contenders (Angels and Dodgers). The Mariners aren't doomed, but they need to turn things around eventually, and learn to both pitch and hit.

They are honestly lucky to be 3-6 with how poorly they have played.

The way it looks, I'm already starting to have some hopes foe the Mets at least for within the division. Today was the first day at any regular season point in over two years the Mets are in 1st place and they won 5 straight games now. Sure, the teams they are playing against are mainly bad but they are all in their division which gives them a huge boost.

Lets start talking about Kris Bryant now since he was just called up, I have high expectations for this kid.

I am really proud of the Mets right now. They won 7 in a row and I believe have the best record in the National League and maybe the 2nd or 3rs best in all of baseball and their starting pitching has been amazing. Colon is already 3-0 with a pretty good ERA in the 2's and then you have degrom who has now gone about 17 innings without giving up a run and brought his ERA down below 1, and Colon, Harvey, and Degrom combined for a strikeout to walk ratio of more than 10-1 so far and are a combined 7-1 which is amazing, heck, 7-1 would be amazing for an entire starting rotation.

The team is getting there with hitting, People are starting to hit home runs and their Batting average went from around 28th place to 12th place in a matter of a couple days.

Hopefully they can continue winning and stay in 1st for as long as we can.

I'm a Wisconsin guy, and I've always been a
Brewers fan, so this year has been disappointing so far.  We should be
playing much better, but both our pitching and our offense has been terrible so
far. Here's the lineup:

1B - Adam Lind

2B - Scooter Gennett

3B - Aramis Ramirez

SS - Jean Segura

LF - Khris Davis

CF - Carlos Gomez

RF - Ryan Braun

C - Jonathan Lucroy

OF - Gerrardo Parra

IF - Hector Gomez

1P - Kyle Lohse

2P - Matt Garza

3P - Willy Peralta

4P - Jimmy Nelson

5P - Mike Fiers

RP - Francisco Rodriguez

RP - Jonathan Broxton

RP - Will Smith

RP – Tyler Thornburg

With some young guys starting to play better and
everyone staying reasonably healthy, I think the expectations were pretty high
for this season. C. Gomez and Lucroy both look to repeat as all-star years and
maybe even compete for NL MVP. We had four guys hit above .280 last year (C.
Gomez, Ramirez, Gennett, and Lucroy - with Lucroy hitting above .300), and two
more that had down years and have proven they can hit that well (Segura and
Braun).

So far the whole team has struggled, and Carlos
Gomez just went on the disabled list. Losing Gomez is going to kill our offense
even more, as he is usually the one that gets our offense going.  

I do like the fact that we have started to see
some good play out of our young guys (Gennett, Segura, Davis, Peralta, and even
H. Gomez in the few games he's played this season).

Then there's our pitching. Basically
all five of our starters are number 3 guys. We don’t have an ace. Lohse and
Garza are past their prime, and can’t strike guys out like they used to.  We have a couple promising young arms
(Peralta, Nelson, and Tyler Thornburg are all 25), but they really need to step
up in order to have a respectable season.

eclipse9508 :

I don't know how high expectations can be in Milwaukee, unfortunately, the Brewers play in the toughest division in baseball.

You already had to deal with the Cardinals and Pirates (who in recent years have been high level teams), but now you can add the Cubs that look a lot more threatening than they have in years past. When I did my most recent projection scan, the Brewers were more or less JUST above the Reds, in terms of talent.

Their 2-10 start this season has been ugly, but not completely unexpected. Of the players you listed, few are really worthy of being all stars this season, and even fewer are playing up to that level.

The offense looks ugly (25th in BA, 30th in OBP, 30th in SLG), to an embarrassing degree. The OBP in particular NEEDS to change for them to be successful. I can't name any playoff team in recent memory that was this horrendously bad at getting on base. Because no playoff team has ever BEEN this horrendously bad. Not only that, but their K/BB ratio is getting ridiculous. 93 ks to 23 walks? You can't strikeout 5 times per walk. Not only does it kill your chances of competing throughout the year, but it kills you in a game by game basis as well.

Further, they are 5th in GO/FO ratio, (1.37 GO per FO). You need to put the ball in the air to have the best chance of getting on base. Getting your hits on the ground isn't sustainable. The only teams with a higher GO/FO ratio (Dodgers, Marlins, Red Sox, Nationals) all have OBP that dwarf the Brewers. To put this into numbers...

Dodgers - .278/.363/.486
Marlins - .240/.300/.350
Red Sox - .244/.337/.363
Nationals - .226/.298/.380
Brewers - .217/.267/.303

As you will notice looking at those numbers, the Brewers are below even the Nationals and Marlins in offensive efficiency. Of the four teams that aren't the Brewers, only one isn't likely to make the post season. The Marlins. And coincidentally, that's the team that the Brewers look most like, out of the four. The Nationals offense is weak, like the Brewers, but the Nationals also boast the best pitching staff in the game, so they get more leeway on offense.

The Brewers pitching is not nearly as good.

The Nationals staff is ranked 5th in ERA. The Brewers? 30th. They have what is presently the worst pitching in baseball by the "blanket" stat people use most when determining pitcher worth.

However, I think the pitching will improve. They are presently allowing the highest batting average against (.286), as well the 5th highest WHIP. Those things are simply not sustainable. No matter how bad the Brewers pitching has been, it cannot continue to be this bad. Both FIP and xFIP (stats I prefer to ERA) indicate the Brewers are closer to a middle of the pack team (or fringe playoff team, if you prefer the term).

The Brewers probably aren't making the playoffs. If they do, it will be as a second wild card. The NL Central is just too tough, and the Brewers lack a lot of everything.

legacyme3 :  I get what you're saying, numbers never lie.  But with such a small sample size, it isn't necessarily the best predictor of the results of a 162-game season. That being said - things certainly look bleak. 

eclipse9508 : They sure do look bleak man. another tough loss tonight too. Having 2(in my opinion) MVP candidates on the DL doesn't help but I hear Gomez is doing really well as far as recovering. Our pitching was going to struggle this year anyways though and so far besides being worse than expected they have gotten no help what so ever from our pitiful offense. But..it's a long season and teams go on big winning streaks too, guys get called up and outperform expectations, I never lose interest at least. At least the Bucks won a game tonight?

Ferdinand : Ya it's nice to see the Bucks show a little promise, and hey the Brewers managed to win a decent game tonight. Garza got a quality start (even tho he only had 4 K's), and we hit 4 homers so that's a good sign. I've got tickets to next Saturdays game, so hopefully we can hit some more of those dingers against the Cubs.

eclipse9508 : Yeah, I'm super-psyched about the Bucks. Not so much this year but I expect them to contend for the top spot in the east next season once Parker gets back and they don't start the season with a problem child like Larry Sanders. Oops, sorry, baseball..And yep, Braun even had a grand slam while I had the game on. Hope you have good weather for the game. I heard there's a chance Gomez may be back already this weekend. Maybe after they rest tomorrow they can go down to Wrigley, win some games, and get back to respectability at least. I can't believe after last year's start they're so bad so soon. Guess their luck ran out.

How about those Royals though?! They are definitely looking like a team that wants to go back to the World Series. I like their chances too, especially if they keep playing like this.