In 2013 the American League Central sent two teams to the playoffs as the Detroit Tigers won the division, again beat the Oakland Athletics in five games and the Cleveland Indians won ten straight games to win the top Wild Card spot only to lose to the Tampa Bay Rays. It’s a new season, and that brings new opportunities and higher expectations. The Indians want to go back to the playoffs, the Royals want to end the playoff drought, the Twins and White Sox want to improve, and of course, the Detroit Tigers want to finally make the next step to winning the World Series. Now each of these teams has their pros and cons, and their very own early season storylines.
Minnesota Twins
The Twins spent $49 million for Ricky Nolasco and $24 million for Phil Hughes to anchor a pitching staff that had the second worst team ERA in the league in 2013. In addition to those two and their large contracts, the Twins brought in Mike Pelfrey on a two year $11 million contract leaving only Kevin Correia and youngster Kyle Gibson, who only started 10 games in 2013, as the only returning members of the starting rotation. The storyline of the offseason was did the Twins spend their money wisely.
It is obvious to any baseball fan that they needed pitching, but of the three pitchers the Twins went out and spent money on Nolasco is the closest thing to a front of the rotation starter and he would still be number three in most rotations in the league.
On paper it looked like a good idea. Sign a bunch of pitchers to pitch in a big park and hope the ERA goes down, but it hasn’t, and that makes this the early season storyline for the Twins as they currently sit in dead last in ERA at 6.31. It’s only been nine games, but it doesn’t look good when a team goes out and spends $84 million on starting pitching and the team actually looks worse.
Chicago White Sox
The story of the White Sox early in the season will more than likely be the same story all season, Jose Abreu. The Cuban slugger is proving that the White Sox knew what they were doing when they went out and made a splash on the international market secure his services even though the team still had Adam Dunn and were bringing back Paul Konerko who both play the same position as Abreu.
After starting out a little slow in the power department Abreu has begun to swing for the fences hitting four home runs, two two home run games, this week. On top of the recent power surge he is batting an even .300 after ten games and has driven in a MLB leading 14 runs for his team. Even with the hot start people are going to wonder when he is going to start to struggle as both of the recent Cuban stars, Yoenis Cespedes and Yasiel Puig, eventually did in their rookie seasons. For now the story will remain to be what he is doing in the batter’s box, because it is downright amazing.
Kansas City Royals
It is still only seven games into the season for the Royals, but third baseman Mike Moustakas is batting a horrendous .038 after 26 plate appearances. Even only seven games in, that’s not good, and everyone seems to know it. He’s not the only problem, though, as his primary backup, Danny Valencia isn’t doing much better with a batting average of .125.
That’s a combined two hits in 32 plate appearances from the Royals third basemen, a position that is normally a power position. Now, this isn’t the first time Moustakas has underperformed as he failed to produce in 2013 anything close to his promising first full season of 2012 where he hit 20 home runs and drove in 73 runs. This lack of production is going to be a real problem for the Royals if Moustakas cannot turn it around as top prospect at the position, Hunter Dozier, is still a year or two away from making an impact at the major league level. If neither Moustakas nor Valencia can improve, this team will be in serious trouble of improving on their breakout season of 2013.
Cleveland Indians
Carlos Santana and the third base experiment might not only be the biggest early season storyline of the Indians season, but of the MLB’s as well. Santana was one of the league’s best catchers, but the rise of Yan Gomes pushed him out of his position and into a new one at first base. The 2014 offseason brought about more change as the Indians signed David Murphy and that signing forced Nick Swisher permanently to first base again leaving Santana without a position.
Now Santana is playing his second new position in the last calendar year and so far it has had mixed results. He only has one error, but he has looked uncomfortable at times in the new position. This will continue to be a storyline all season as he learns the position while still acting as the primary backup to Gomes at the catcher position.
Detroit Tigers
The biggest storyline for the Tigers has been the unfortunate injury to their young shortstop Jose Iglesias. Early in spring training Iglesias went down with stress fractures to both legs and left the Tigers in a bind as they didn’t quality replacement on the roster. That led them to make a trade for Alex Gonzalez to be the primary shortstop along with Andrew Romine. Gonzalez hasn’t played a full season since 2011 and Romine is a career backup that has bounced back and forth between the minors and majors. Now, Iglesias was not known for what he does with the bat, but the team is trying to replace one of the best defensive shortstops in the league and that will be an ongoing saga for the rest of the season.