The Los Angeles Dodgers are the best team in baseball in the opening month of the season.
No surprise there.
The Toronto Blue Jays, meanwhile, are one of the worst teams, which almost no one could’ve predicted after last year’s epic World Series.
Sure, it’s early, but the season is starting to take shape and it’s been an interesting one to watch, whether it’s ABS strategy or the New York Mets’ skid or the proliferation of long-term contracts given to highly-touted young players who’ve barely had a cup of coffee in the majors.
Looking for trends after 20-something games is a fool’s errand, of course. But since the press box at Wrigley Field was open and a Chicago Cubs-Mets game was on the schedule, I figured I might as well give it a shot.
Fishing for a compliment
Going just by the standings, parity has been the name of the game so far.
Entering Sunday, only a handful of teams had gotten off to a hot start of five or more games over .500 — the Dodgers, San Diego Padres, Atlanta Braves, Arizona Diamondbacks and Cincinnati Reds. Conversely, only a half-dozen teams had gotten off to an awful start of five or more games under .500 — the Blue Jays, Mets, Chicago White Sox, Kansas City Royals, Houston Astros and Colorado Rockies.
That leaves the other 19 teams somewhere in the middle. That might be good for baseball, but it’s meh for fans who spent February and most of March hearing about how much improved their teams were in spring training.
I asked Cubs manager Craig Counsell before Sunday’s 2-1 win over the Mets whether he thought there was more parity than usual early on.
Counsell seemed to be taken aback by the question, or perhaps by my showing up to ask him a question.
“Is there a compliment in there?” he asked.
A compliment?
“I thought I sniffed out a compliment of the Cubs,” he said. “And that’s rare.”
Uh, no, just a general question about the state of baseball.
Counsell’s sniffing senses were off. Maybe it was seasonal allergies. I didn’t bother to investigate.
Either way, Counsell eventually answered by pointing out the season was only 20 games old, which was not enough time to make any judgments.
“Sometimes we get a little confused by how good a record like 11-9 is or 11-8 is over the course of a season,” he said. “Eleven and nine is like, what, 88 or 89 wins? It’s kind of right on (that pace). I don’t know what you’re expecting. This is the nature of baseball. This is a baseball season.”
It was good to know that it was indeed a baseball season, and that Counsell was already in midseason form. His Cubs were trending upward with five straight wins entering Monday, and with theoretical ace Cade Horton out for the season after Tommy John surgery and closer Daniel Palencia on the IL with a left oblique strain, Counsell is going to have to earn every bit of his $8 million salary to keep things going smoothly.
Sunday aside, the offense has been clicking lately without big contributions from Alex Bregman, Michael Busch, Dansby Swanson or Pete Crow-Armstrong, so it should go on cruise control once they come around.
Wait. Was that a compliment?
Central casting
Perhaps the biggest surprise of the season, other than the Mets being so awful, was that the National League Central teams were all over .500 on Sunday, including the St. Louis Cardinals.
What’s up with that?
“Not a lot of in-division games,” Counsell said. “I mean, it’s not a great sign, but …”
As the division’s biggest spenders by far, the Cubs should be able to separate themselves from the pack eventually. The Cardinals are in rebuild mode and figure to fall off in due time. But the Pittsburgh Pirates ranked third in pitching Sunday with a 3.23 ERA and the Reds were sixth at 3.46, suggesting both might have staying power.
As for Milwaukee, the Brewers are the Brewers, and can’t be discounted for that reason alone, even with Christian Yelich out, their ballpark leaking during rainstorms and the “Curse of the L flag” in play.
Futures market
Six years ago, White Sox general manager Rick Hahn said the organization “put our money where our mouth is in terms of our level of excitement about this player,” referring to center-field prospect Luis Robert Jr. On that January day, Robert signed a six-year, $50 million deal with two options that increased it to a potential $88 million, all before his first game.
Robert could not stay healthy enough to make that investment worthwhile, and was dealt to the Mets last winter by Hahn’s successor, Chris Getz, in what was widely considered a salary dump.
Hahn wasn’t the first general manager to take a big gamble on a prospect based on projected numbers, but he was certainly an early adopter. Now it seems like executives are handing out big deals to budding prospects like giving M&Ms to a 6-year-old.
Detroit Tigers shortstop Kevin McGonigle on Wednesday signed an eight-year, $150 million contract through 2034, after playing only 17 major league games. On April 3, Pirates shortstop Konnor Griffin signed a nine-year, $140 million deal a week into his career. Brewers shortstop prospect Cooper Pratt signed an eight-year, $50.75 million deal and Seattle Mariners shortstop prospect Colt Emerson inked an eight-year, $95 million deal.
Is there an end in sight?
Probably not. With the price of superstars going up, it will always make economic sense for teams to seek cost certainty for potential stars and postpone their free agency for a couple of years or more.
Instead of serving as a precautionary tale, Robert is basically considered an outlier.
