It’s too early to say:
If the Red Sox can maintain their good start and return to their status as a contender after missing the playoffs the last three years.
If the Yankees can overcome disabling injuries to half of their starting lineup, all four players still in recovery.
If the Angels can recover from their surprisingly poor start and justify their signing of Josh Hamilton.
If the Angels don’t recover if Mike Scioscia, the majors’ longest-running manager, would lose his job after 14 years.
If the Blue Jays can shake off their poor start and justify their uncharacteristic off-season spending.
If the Orioles will repeat their 2012 status as a playoff contender even though they have given that initial appearance.
If the Royals are a legitimate threat to win a division title or a wild-card spot.
If the Tigers’ mediocre start means they have been overrated as a possible repeat World Series guest.
If the Twins have recovered from their two-year sojourn in abysmal baseball.
If the Athletics’ good start indicates another division title is on the horizon.
If the Rangers’ strong start indicates they are ready to reclaim the American League West title.
If too much was expected too soon from the Nationals.
If the Dodgers can avoid squandering all of those many millions they spent to buy the team and stock it.
If the Pirates can end their losing streak at two decades.
If the Braves will use their strong start as a springboard to their first division title in nine years.
If the Marlins will lose more games than the Astros.
If general manager Sandy Alderson will make any moves that will help the Mets improve now that they are supposedly financially stable.
If the Phillies will crumble from old age and watch pieces of themselves crash to the ground.
If the Cubs can avoid replacing the Astros in last place in the N.L. Central.
If Theo Epstein, the Cubs’ chief baseball executive, can reward the owner’s eagerness to lure him from the Red Sox 18 months ago.
If the Rockies can sustain their fast start.
If the Giants can position themselves for a third World Series triumph in four years.
EUGAEL NACIREMA
The American League has had a backward first month.
With the addition of Jose Reyes, Josh Johnson, R.A. Dickey, Mark Buehrle and Melky Cabrera, the Blue Jays were expected to have a good shot at the division title. But a month into the season, they are in last place with the league’s lowest batting average and one of the highest earned run averages.
The Red Sox, meanwhile, weren’t given much of a chance to win a playoff spot, but here they are in first place. In fact, they have been in first or tied for first every day of the season. Mike Napoli and Clay Buchholz have been primary reasons.
Napoli, whom the Red Sox signed as a free agent, is among the leaders in runs batted in, total bases and slugging percentage. Buchholz has won all five of his starts and has compiled a 1.19 earned run average doing it.
Last season the Red Sox suffered from two major problems – injuries and Bobby Valentine. This season it’s the Yankees’ turn with injuries. As if they didn’t start the season with enough disabling injuries (Alex Rodriguez, Derek Jeter, Curtis Granderson, Mark Teixeira), three weeks into the season, catcher Francisco Cervelli broke his right hand when a foul ball hit it and is expected to be out for six weeks.
That latest mishap gave the Yankees five starters on the disabled list and three on the field – Robinson Cano, Brett Gardner and Ichiro Suzuki.
In the same game in which Cervelli was hurt, his batterymate Ivan Nova left prematurely with an inflamed triceps.
None of this bodes well for the Yankees, who can’t be certain when any of their wounded will return. Their .609 winning percentage entering Sunday’s game was impressive enough, but that percentage computes to 98 wins for a full season, and it’s difficult to see how the Yankees could attain that total. They last won that many games in 2009.
The Orioles have already found out how difficult repeating an achievement can be. Last season they won 29 one-run games and lost 9 and had a 16-2 record in extra-inning games. They have divided those types of games this season, posting a 4-4 record in one-run games and 1-1 in extra-inning games.
Baltimore, however, is playing well and had taken up second place in the A.L. East ahead of the Yankees.
Based on appearances in the first month, the A.L. Central could become a contest between the established Tigers and the upstart Royals.
The Royals haven’t contended since their George Brett days. Now they are in their Alex Gordon days, and he doesn’t have the plentiful support that Brett enjoyed. Jim Leyland will get the Tigers straightened out.
Scioscia is a good enough manager to get the Angels moving in the right direction, but a healthy Jered Weaver would help. The team’s No. 1 starter has made only two starts this season and could be out until mid-to-late-May with a non-displaced fracture of his left (non-pitching) elbow.
The Angels’ acquisition of Josh Hamilton was supposed to power them to the post-season, but Hamilton is hitting .227 with 2 home runs and 8 r.b.i. Albert Pujols, the previous off-season’s expensive addition, hasn’t hit much more productively, batting .268 with 2 homers and 13 r.b.i.
Yoenis Cespedes, Oakland’s left fielder, was hitting only .200 when he hurt his left hand April 12, but the Athletics could make a case for a link between his injury and their bad streak. They lost 10 of 14 games after he was hurt. However, the Cuban defector is expected back soon, which means all should be right with the A’s world.
All is not right with the Dodgers’ world, and it won’t be until and unless the biggest baseball spender west of the Hudson River doesn’t start winning with consistency.
Given that the new owners didn’t make major changes when they bought the team, it would be natural for them to change the upper echelon of the team, beginning with manager Don Mattingly and general manager Ned Colletti, if they don’t turn this season around and fast. George Steinbrenner would have done it already.
Some people may be on the spot in Pittsburgh, too. The current regime of president Frank Coonelly and general manager Neal Huntington is in its sixth season, which means it has overseen 25 percent of the 20-year losing streak.
The Pirates, who haven’t had a winning season since 1992, have had a winning April, but they had a winning record last Sept. 18 (74-73) and lost 10 of their last 15 games.
The Rockies, who won 14 of their first 21 games, look like one of those typically mediocre teams that start strong and fade quickly.
The Braves, on the other hand, have enjoyed a great start and are good enough, especially with the Upton brothers, to carry it through. The Nationals, on the other hand, have had a staggering start, and Stephen Strasburg has lost the last four of his five starts. Last season he lost 6 of 28 starts.
This year’s Strasburg is the Mets’ Matt Harvey, who has a 4-0 record and 1.54 earned run average in five starts. A 24-year-old right-hander, Harvey was the Mets’ first-round draft choice in 2010, which made him the last No. 1 pick by Omar Minaya.
When Minaya was fired as general manager later that year, his critics said he left the Mets without good minor leaguers. Harvey is a pretty good answer to that criticism.
Meanwhile, Minaya’s successor, Alderson, has done nothing noticeable in his two and a half years to build the Mets. When he was hired in October 2010, he brought in two former general managers who had worked for him in Oakland, Paul DePodesta and J.P. Ricciardi.
The new crew was initially hamstrung financially by the Mets’ calamity with the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme, but back in Oakland, Alderson’s protégé, Billy Beane, built a playoff team with far less money than Alderson had in New York.
Back to this season, as much fun as it is to watch good teams fight for division and other titles, a novelty race may grab attention this year. Which team will lose more games, the Marlins or the Astros?
One thing I don’t understand about this race. How did Jeffrey Loria, the veteran skinflint owner of the Marlins, allow Jim Crane, the new owner of the Astros, to come in with a payroll $15 million less than his?
DAVIS, HARPER FOR TRIPLE CROWN
Of course, it’s too early to talk about the Triple Crown; we’ve barely finished talking about Miguel Cabrera’s achievement last season. But given that Cabrera won it last season in the American League, it wouldn’t hurt to pay attention to the progress of the challenge this season.
The last time before last season that a hitter finished first in his league in batting average, home runs and runs batted in, it marked the second straight season someone won the Triple Crown. Frank Robinson won in 1966, Carl Yastrzemski in ’67.
The early leaders in the clubhouse this year are Chris Davis, the Orioles’ left-hand hitting first baseman, and Bryce Harper, the Nationals’ outfield phenom.
Going into Sunday’s games, Davis was tied for first in home runs in the A.L. with 8, was second in runs batted in with 25 and was fifth in hitting with a .346 average.
Harper was second in the N.L. in home runs with 9, second in batting with a .373 average and tied for sixth in r.b.i. with 18.
MAKING HISTORY WHEN IT ISN’T
MLB.com is determined to make an historic baseball figure of A.J. Burnett. In its headlines that run on articles about the veteran pitcher, “history” and “historic” often appear even though those terms don’t apply to whatever Burnett has done.
He, however, is not the only player whose performances benefit from the exaggeration button that MLB.com often pushes.
Here’s a recent headline about the Boston pitcher Clay Buchholz:
Buchholz’s historic April continues
And one about Bryce Harper:
Harper’s historic homers
This recent headline is about the Upton brothers Justin and B.J.:
Uptons make history with back-to-back HRs
And two about Burnett:
Burnett makes Pirates history in stellar debut
Burnett flirts with history in shutting down Cards
None of these events or performances was historic; they weren’t happening for the first time. Someone had already achieved them.
In his first start for the Pirates last season, Burnett pitched seven scoreless innings against St. Louis and struck out seven. “In doing so,” the MLB.com article said, “Burnett became the first Pirates hurler since 1907 to pitch at least seven scoreless innings and record at least seven strikeouts in his first start with the club.”
“The only other Pirates pitcher to accomplish the feat was right-hander Nick Maddox, who tossed a shutout and notched 11 strikeouts in his Major League debut in 1907.”
Maddox made history; Burnett didn’t.
In the second Burnett instance, the article never explained how the pitcher “flirted” with history. Burnett, however, pitched 6 2/3 hitless innings before the Cardinals got a hit so I can only assume that the headline writer believes that all no-hitters are historic so he credited Burnett with a flirtation.
All no-hitters, however, are not historic. On the other hand, last season’s collection of three perfect games were historic because three perfect games had never been pitched in the same season.
What about “Buchholz’s historic April?”
MLB.com compiled a list of seven pitchers who since 1916 won five or more games in March and April and had a sub-1.20 e.r.a., added Buchholz to the list and called it historic.
The one about Harper’s historic feat is even better.
Noting that Harper hit his eighth home run, the baseball Web site said, “The eight home runs through the team’s first 22 games represent the second-highest total for any Expos/Nationals player. Henry Rodriguez had nine in 1996, and Vladimir Guerrero had eight in 2000.”
So please tell us. How are Harper’s home runs historic? He didn’t even hit the most in the first 22 games.
Finally, we have the Uptons’ home runs in consecutive times at bat. (I do not use the term “back-to-back home runs” because I believe it’s physically impossible for two batters to stand back to back and have each swing and hit baseballs.)
In the Uptons’ case, MLB.com reported that it was the 27th time in major league history that brothers hit home runs in the same game – all right, nothing historic for the Uptons there – but it was “only the second time they went deep in consecutive at-bats.” Lloyd and Paul Waner did it in 1938.
When the Waners did it, it was the first time so it was historic. The Uptons were only an addendum to history.
Deciding that I wouldn’t judge the use of historic on my own, I raised the matter with a long-time friend, whose knowledge of the language I have always felt is second to none.
“It’s overused,” he said. “It’s not particularly applicable to the situations. It verges on the extravagant. A grammarian would say it’s overused and inaccurate. It’s an easy adjective to use and it’s clearly overused and usually inaccurate.”