The Boston Red Sox may not be World Series contenders in 2015, but there are pieces in place for a rebuild.
What moves do they need to make to contend in 2016? Which players will they part ways with?
Watch as Stephen Nelson and Bleacher Report MLB Analyst Scott Miller discuss the Red Sox in the video above.
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The Toronto Blue Jays are the hottest team in baseball, and they’ve used an 11-game winning streak to vault themselves into the role of 4-1 favorites to win the World Series at sportsbooks monitored by Odds Shark.
The Blue Jays have lost only once since acquiring shortstop Troy Tulowitzki from the Colorado Rockies and ace starter David Price in a deal with the Detroit Tigers before the trade deadline, putting them in prime position to qualify for the postseason for the first time since winning the World Series in 1993.
Toronto’s main competition in the American League looks to be the Kansas City Royals, who are 5-1 to win the World Series and won the pennant last year as a Wild Card team.
The Royals have a comfortable lead in the AL Central and were the World Series favorites before the Blue Jays went on their hot run, also picking up a quality starting pitcher when they got Johnny Cueto from the Cincinnati Reds.
Other top contenders in the American League include the New York Yankees and Houston Astros, who are both 12-1 to win the World Series. The Yankees recently gave up the AL East lead to Toronto, while Houston currently sits atop the AL West ahead of the Los Angeles Angels (18-1).
The National League boasts seven quality teams that are poised to compete not only for the pennant but also a World Series title in the Los Angeles Dodgers (8-1), St. Louis Cardinals (8-1), New York Mets (17-2), Washington Nationals (14-1), San Francisco Giants (14-1), Chicago Cubs (14-1) and Pittsburgh Pirates (16-1).
The NL Central alone has three of the four teams with the most wins in the Cardinals, Cubs and Pirates, setting up for all three to make the playoffs this year.
The Dodgers have been big disappointments as favorites the last couple of years, falling to St. Louis in the postseason each time. However, Los Angeles still hopes to outlast the defending World Series champion Giants in the NL West and win the division for the third straight year. San Francisco won the World Series last year as a wild-card team.
In the NL East, the Mets have played extremely well lately to overtake the Nationals for the division lead. New York has arguably the best pitching staff in baseball and figures to battle Washington for a playoff spot until the end of the season.
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Fact: The Toronto Blue Jays are the 1st AL team to have multiple 10-game winning streaks in the same season since the 1977 Kansas City Royals.
Bleacher Report will be bringing sports fans the most interesting and engaging Cold Hard Fact of the day, presented by Coors Light.
Source: MLB Stat of the Day
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The New York Yankees went on a run in July, taking a seven-game lead in the AL East. That was before the Toronto Blue Jays came to town. Now, the Bronx Bombers are down to just a 0.5-game lead in the division, as the Jays ride the wave of a nine-game win streak.
Is Toronto or New York the favorite to win the AL East?
Bleacher Report’s Scott Miller joins Stephen Nelson to break it all down in the video above.
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Boston Red Sox pitcher Koji Uehara will be on the disabled list for the remainder of the 2015 season with a fractured right wrist.
Continue for updates.
The Red Sox announced that Uehara suffered a non-displaced distal radius fracture against the Detroit Tigers this past Friday.
Uehara suffered the injury on a ball hit right back to him by Ian Kinsler in the ninth inning of Friday’s 7-2 win over the Tigers. The 40-year-old closer still tossed the ball to first with his throwing hand to record the last out.
The team also noted that it expects Uehara will fully recover, and it’s sensible for Boston to shelve him at this point anyway. Entering Monday’s games, the Red Sox had the worst winning percentage in the American League, far out of the wild-card race the rest of the AL East is still contending for.
With just one year remaining on his contract, Uehara will want to be as fit as possible for the 2016 campaign, when the Red Sox can hopefully bounce back. He ought to continue a high level of play if this year was any indication, as he converted 25 of 27 save chances with a 2.23 ERA and 0.92 WHIP.
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The New York Yankees were held scoreless by the Toronto Blue Jays pitching staff Saturday and Sunday, marking the first time in an MLB-record 2,665 games that the Bronx Bombers have been shut out in consecutive contests, per MLB Stat of the Day.
Blue Jays pitcher David Price tossed seven scoreless innings during Saturday’s 6-0 victory, then fellow Blue Jays pitcher Marco Estrada pitched 6.1 scoreless innings during Sunday’s 2-0 win.
The Jays also won the first game of the series Friday night, beating the Yankees 2-1 in 10 innings.
The Yankees have now gone 26 innings without scoring, as their only run during the three-game sweep came on first baseman Mark Teixeira’s home run in the second inning of Friday’s game.
Per ESPN Stats & Info, the Bombers previously hadn’t been shut out in consecutive games since May 1999, though they did go on to win 98 games and the World Series that season.
This weekend’s showing was far more harmful to the franchise, as the Blue Jays pulled within 1.5 games of the Yankees at the top of the American League East standings.
While the Blue Jays are clearly the primary threat, the Baltimore Orioles and Tampa Bay Rays are also within striking range at five and six games back, respectively.
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If they aren’t mashing the panic button in New York, they’re at least tapping it forcefully.
Yes, the New York Yankees enter play Monday as the first-place team in the American League East, a position they’ve held since July 3. But after a disheartening sweep at the hands of the hard-charging Toronto Blue Jays, the Bronx Bombers’ division hold feels tenuous at best.
Granted, everyone is losing to the Jays these days.
Toronto netted All-Star shortstop Troy Tulowitzki and ace left-hander David Price at the trade deadline, and since the first trade July 28, the Blue Jays have gone 11-1, grabbing the top wild-card spot.
Now, after their dominant three-game showing at Yankee Stadium, Toronto sits 1.5 games behind New York. That breath the Yankees are feeling on the back of their neck? It smells like maple syrup.
The Yankees actually held Toronto’s vaunted offense in check over the weekend, limiting the Blue Jays to 10 runs in three games, and twice holding them to two runs.
But the Yanks’ bats, which have propelled them for much of the season, went ice-cold. New York plated just a single run Friday before getting shut out by Price and the Toronto bullpen Saturday.
In Sunday’s series closer, behind ace Masahiro Tanaka, the Yankees again put up a zero, managing just three singles against Jays starter Marco Estrada and a trio of relievers.
Tanaka pitched well enough, surrendering only a pair of solo homers to Josh Donaldson and Jose Bautista. But that was all it took for Toronto, which lately seems to be finding every conceivable way to win.
There’s still plenty of baseball left. It’s almost impossible to believe the Jays can stay this hot—loaded lineup and deadline cavalry notwithstanding.
That was skipper Joe Girardi‘s line after Saturday’s loss.
“You could make a lot of these two games and obviously, I said this was an important series going in,” Girardi said, per Dan Martin of the New York Post. “But really, what’s going to determine the division is you’ve got two months to go.”
Well, now it’s three games, but the point is taken. The Yankees, however, need to regroup in a hurry.
Beginning Tuesday, they embark on a six-game road trip that begins with a three-game series against the Cleveland Indians and concludes with a trio of contests north of the border against these same Blue Jays.
If Toronto sweeps, or even wins, that series, it’s probable we’ll have a new leader in the AL East. And the two clubs will meet for four more in New York beginning Sept. 10.
Any Yankees turnaround will begin with the offense, which ranks second in MLB in runs scored (yes, they trail Toronto).
But the starting rotation, which owns an ERA of 4.31, needs to pick up the slack. To that end, how huge would it have been for New York to grab Price from the Detroit Tigers at the deadline, adding him to its arsenal and keeping the stud southpaw away from Toronto?
That’s not merely idle speculation. General manager Brian Cashman was interested in Price, according to Bill Madden of the New York Daily News, but Jays GM Alex Anthopoulos was quicker on the trigger, wowing the Tigers with a package of blue-chip talent.
The Yankees did not match the Blue Jays’ offer. As Madden noted, Cashman was unwilling to part with top prospects Luis Severino, Aaron Judge or Greg Bird.
Now, of course, it’s a moot point. The Yankees stood pat, Price is a Blue Jay and, as Madden put it, “that tremor being felt in the AL East” is emanating from Canada.
The question now is whether the Bombers can take their finger off the panic button and answer back with a little shaking of their own.
All statistics and standings current as of Aug. 9 and courtesy of MLB.com unless otherwise noted.
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The Boston Red Sox designated pitcher Justin Masterson for assignment Sunday, according to Pete Abraham of the Boston Globe.
Much like the Red Sox as a whole, Masterson has turned in a disappointing 2015 campaign. He sports a 4-2 record but an ugly 5.55 ERA, and manager John Farrell commented on the move, per Tom Caron of NESN:
Boston signed the former Cleveland Indians ace to a one-year deal this offseason worth $9.5 million, per Spotrac.com, in the hopes of adding pitching depth after the departure of Jon Lester. Masterson was an All-Star in 2013 with the Indians but struggled through a knee injury in 2014 and has never replicated that success.
Masterson actually came up in the Boston system and was part of the trade that brought the Red Sox catcher Victor Martinez.
Jen McCaffrey of MassLive.com provided a hint at what is to come following this decision:
It shouldn’t come as much of a surprise for Boston fans that the team wants to add a bullpen arm for Masterson. As of Sunday, the Red Sox were 24th in the league in bullpen ERA and have struggled to close out games throughout the season.
While Boston sits in last place in the American League East and is a long-shot at best in the wild-card race, it still needs to find a way to finish games with the bullpen. Adding more depth in place of Masterson could help it do just that.
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It has only been a week since the Toronto Blue Jays traded for Troy Tulowitzki, only a week since my colleague and close friend Scott Miller graced this very space with a column headlined, “Troy Tulowitzki Blockbuster Does Nothing to Change AL Playoff Picture.”
Oh, really?
Only a week, but Tulowitzki has started eight games in Toronto, and the Blue Jays have won all eight. Only a week, but the Blue Jays’ league-leading offense is averaging nearly a run a game more with Tulowitzki in the lineup than without him. Only a week, but the Jays have already leapfrogged the Minnesota Twins into the second wild-card spot in the American League, with the New York Yankees and the AL East lead now firmly in sight.
Small sample size, sure, but if you could declare the Tulowitzki acquisition meaningless after no games played, I sure as heck can declare it game-changing now that we’re one week in.
I know, your point was that Alex Anthopoulos needed to acquire a starting pitcher, an assignment he aced when he traded for David Price two days later. And it’s true, the Blue Jays are undefeated in games Price starts.
He’s 1-0. Tulowitzki is 8-0.
In eight games, seven of them against playoff contenders Kansas City and Minnesota, the new fearsome foursome atop the Blue Jays batting order (Tulowitzki, Josh Donaldson, Jose Bautista and Edwin Encarnacion) have combined to score 29 runs and drive in 30.
Just look at what Twins outfielder Torii Hunter said after Thursday’s sweep-completing 9-3 Blue Jays win, via Mike Berardino of the St. Paul Pioneer Press:
Oh, and just look at this from Hunter:
The Blue Jays got the heck out of Toronto Thursday night, too, headed for Yankee Stadium and an AL East race that looks more exciting than ever. The Yankees still lead the Jays by 4.5 games, but the Blue Jays can take care of that in the 13 remaining games between the two teams.
That’s right, 13.
The Blue Jays have 52 games left on their schedule, and 13 of them are against the Yankees. One out of every four games the Jays play between now and the end of the season is against New York.
The Blue Jays arranged their rotation to make sure Price starts four of those games. You can figure that John Gibbons will design his lineup to make sure Tulowitzki starts all 13.
The Tulowitzki trade could still turn into a long-term disaster for the Jays. He hasn’t played 130 games in a season since 2011 (although he could this year), he’s signed through 2020 for big money (with an option for 2021), and now that he’s 30 years old he’s going to play more than half his games on turf.
Anthopoulos gave up big-time prospects to get him, and to get Price. We all said he went all-in, and we all know what happens if you go all-in and lose.
But we also know what has happened every season since 1993, which is the last time the Blue Jays played in the postseason. They’ve been double-digit games out of first place at the start of September each of the last 14 years, until now.
They found Bautista, and nothing changed. They traded for Jose Reyes, and nothing changed.
Then Alex Anthopoulos traded for Troy Tulowitzki and, as ESPN’s Dan Shulman noted, this happened:
I know, it’s only been a week. I know, the Jays spent that week at home in the Rogers Centre, where they had a 28-20 record and were averaging 5.5 runs a game even before the Tulowitzki trade.
Now they’ve got to go on the road, where they’re 22-31 and lost five of their last six series. They have to go to Yankee Stadium, where the Yankees are 32-18 (including 9-2 over the last month).
And it’s the Yankees, not the Blue Jays, who have been baseball’s highest-scoring team since the All-Star break.
You know what, Scott, maybe you were right.
But I doubt it.
Danny Knobler covers Major League Baseball as a national columnist for Bleacher Report.
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Down 9-3 with two outs and a runner on first in the top of the eighth inning Thursday night, the Minnesota Twins‘ Miguel Sano hit a deep line drive to center for what would have been a clean extra-base hit…had it not been for Kevin Pillar.
The Toronto Blue Jays outfielder sprinted to make a diving catch at the Rogers Centre’s warning track that was so incredible it looked as though he almost hovered in midair.
Toronto pitcher Bo Schultz sure looked relieved.
The Blue Jays held on to win 9-3, wrapping up a four-game sweep of the Twins before heading to New York for a three-game series against the Yankees, which begins Friday.
[Major League Baseball]
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