Keeping Up With the AL East: April 24 to May 7

Things are finally getting back to normal in Baltimore — or some facsimile thereof — and early season spate of divisional play is nearly coming to a close. Here are the standings through Friday morning:

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Last place still doesn’t mean all that much at the moment. Baltimore is lagging behind the rest of the division in games played thanks to the two postponements against the White Sox; they’ll be made up in a doubleheader on May 28th, part of a brutal last week of May for the Orioles. We’re not there yet, however.

New York: You can tell it’s still early in the season because the best record in baseball over the past two weeks belongs to the Houston Astros, but at 9-4 the Yankees have made it close. The big story out of New York, as any Baltimore fans not paying attention became familiar with last night, has been Alex Rodriguez’s tying and passing of Willie Mays’s career homerun total. Delmon Young briefly kept him from breaking the mark Thursday night, but Rodriguez’s next home run off the unfortunate Chris Tillman cleared the wall with ease. The even-bigger story, however, might be emerging Yankees starter Michael Pineda: after a bit of a mediocre start to the year — including a 6.1 IP, 5 ER outing against the Orioles — Pineda’s last three starts have seen him throw 21.1 innings of 1.27 ERA baseball. He looks every bit as good as his current season ERA of 2.97 implies; at the moment, he looks even better. With continuing questions surrounding the elbow health of Masahiro Tanaka, having a second ace in the rotation not only makes New York deadly — it leaves them with a top-line starter in case Tanaka is unable to return effectively from the disabled list.

Tampa Bay: The big story surrounding Tampa Bay right now also involves pitching and elbow injuries: ace Alex Cobb suffered a setback in his rehab and is now hoping that a platelet-rich plasma injection will allow him to continue pitching in 2015 — otherwise he will have to undergo Tommy John surgery, missing the rest of the year. Conventional wisdom holds that if Cobb must miss a year, this should be the one he sacrifices; the Rays aren’t built to do much in 2015. That said, they’re still in second place and have a bunch of young guys already making great contributions at the major league level. Either way, the right call medically is always that surgery is a last resort — regardless of what else is going on with the major league club. More likely than not, Cobb will go under the knife later this year. That’s unfortunate, considering how dominant Chris Archer, Jake Odorizzi, and Drew Smyly have been for the Rays so far; with a full season of Alex Cobb at their helm, the Rays would be an even greater dark horse for a Wild Card spot.

Toronto: The Jays sit where they were two weeks ago: in third place, flirting with .500, hoping to avoid any more injuries to a roster full of fragile veterans. The current worry is RF Jose Bautista, who has recovered from his shoulder injury well enough to swing now, but is still not healthy enough to go back out into the field. Of course, the Jays have a good offense even without him: their 5.34 runs per game leads the American League. The problem is, their 4.83 team ERA is second-worst in the AL, and with Drew Hutchison foundering, Aaron Sanchez less-than-impressive and Daniel Norris already sent down, the Jays have run out of good, young starter arms to plug into their rotation. The relief arm they’ve plugged into Norris’s rotation spot — veteran Marco Estrada — performed well in his one start on the year, but history shows he’s a swingman at best. Meanwhile, Jeff Francis — yes, that Jeff Francis — lurks in the team’s bullpen, ready to possibly slot in as the replacement for the next ineffective starter in the bunch. With the Jays essentially out of realistic trade chips that can be flipped for top-flight pitching help, Toronto’s season will sink or swim on how soon their young arms can figure it out at the major league level — if they can at all.

Boston: But as bad as the pitching situation in Toronto, it’s worse in Boston. With an AL-worst 4.86 team ERA and a rotation that has delivered 6 innings and 3 ER or fewer in just over a third of the team’s games so far, Boston is a team in pitching crisis. They acknowledged this late this week by firing pitching coach Juan Nieves, which does nothing to change the fact that the Red Sox are attempting to make a push this season with a rotation composed entirely of backend starters. Clay Buchholz, perhaps the least consistent pitcher in baseball on a year-to-year basis, is bucking the trend to Sox’ fans dismay; he’s faring much better in 2015 than he did in 2014. The rest of the rotation — Rick Porcello, Joe Kelly, Wade Miley, and Justin Masterson — is a collection of arms that should be a team’s fifth starter (Porcello), swingman (Miley), in the bullpen (Kelly) or in the minors (Masterson). Their hideous performance to start the year wasn’t set in stone — and few expected all five pitchers to be so putrid at once — but none of the individual outcomes are surprising in the least, especially considering the home park in Miley’s case and the generally mediocre-to-poor team defense in Porcello’s. Boston’s hitters have been so good that the team’s been able to tread water so far this year, but if things don’t change they’ll be a hideously unbalanced, longshot Wild Card contender that should be easy pickings for any team able to throw its best pitcher in a short series or a one-game playoff.

The Week Ahead

NYY: vs BAL, 5/8-10; @ TBR, 5/11-14; @ KCR, 5/15-17

After concluding their series with Baltimore, the Yankees go on a tough road trip, giving their fans an extended opportunity to mock the Rays’ attendance woes on Twitter before traveling to KC to face a team that will outright win the AL Central if it continues to hit, pitch, and field at this level.

TBR: vs TEX, 5/7-10; vs NYY, 5/11-14; @ MIN, 5/15-17

Two four game series against a doomed Rangers squad and a surprisingly resurgent Yankees team, before heading to Minnesota to face a Twins team that’s been very hot at the plate as of late.

TOR: vs BOS, 5/8-10; @ BAL, 5/11-13; @ HOU, 5/14-17

They host the Red Sox for a quick three game series before returning to Baltimore in a game that’s probably going to have its fair share of drama, regardless of how much Jose Bautista plays. Then they get four games against the Astros, who are still trying to establish how legit they are.

BOS: @ TOR, 5/8-10; @ OAK, 5/11-13; @ SEA, 5/14-17

Boston has the easiest week upcoming on paper by far, though offset a bit by it being a Canada/West Coast roadtrip. The pitching for all three clubs they’ll face is worse than league average, and outside of a couple key hitters on each club neither Oakland (Reddick, Vogt) nor Seattle (Cruz, Cano) has the top-to-bottom lineup strength that Boston does.

Jonathan Bernhardt

Jonathan is a contributing writer for VICE Sports. His work has previously appeared in Sports on Earth, Baseball Prospectus, The Classical, and ESPN’s SweetSpot Network. Born in central Maryland, Bernhardt currently lives in the New York metropolitan area.

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