The regular season is about to kick off and all the signs of a new baseball year are here.
- Players continue to get hurt at an alarming rate, including the Blue Jays new closer, Kirby Yates, a closer the Padres and Braves did not want to sign because of Tommy John surgery fears. Those fears have been realized.
- Gary Sanchez is not hitting.
- The National League is holding out hope that the designated hitter will be put in place when real games begin. No rush. It’s not like the season is starting and pitchers, the most injury prone athletes in all of sports, continue to get hurt just swinging the bat, something they never do these days.
- Smart teams showing us how dumb they are in roster construction.
- Betting in every aspect of baseball is being encouraged and promoted and sold across the board, except for the banishment of Pete Rose and Shoeless Joe Jackson. Pick every winner on Opening Day and you are a winner in this new MLB.com betting world, competing to win $200,000, as they say. Remember when Opening Day used to be about, you know, Opening Day?
- Jaw-dropping talents like Bobby Witt Jr. will not be starting the season in the major leagues. Why not give the fans a reason to go to a Royals game? Is it that hard?
- Nerds are running wild in their wacky non-baseball ways.
- The Red Sox have “financial flexibility,’’ not talent flexibility. The Dodgers and Mookie Betts are taking care of the talent flexibility part.
- Trevor Bauer is the MAP, Most Annoying Player in the game, but that’s okay. The role fits him and he plays it up to perfection.
- Domingo German may save the Yankees starting rotation. Imagine that.
- The Mets made it through the rest of spring training without having to fire another GM after the Jared Porter fiasco. The really good news for the Mets is that young Luis Rojas is looking a lot more managerial this spring, after being shoved into the firestorm last spring after the Carlos Beltran fiasco.
Play Ball!
Here at Baseball or Bust every week we promise ourselves that this will be the week to write about all the neat things happening in baseball.
Then MLB starts doing absurd MLB things every week and gears must be shifted from positive to negative. When the games begin there will be a highlight package of good things here, I promise, but I have to be true to my game.
Yes, baseball continues to outdo itself with all kinds of senseless happenings and that is the direct result of non-baseball people making baseball decisions.
As for He Who Should Not Be Named anymore in this space, the commissioner, continues to run baseball in his own unique way. It’s not fair to blame all of baseball’s failures on one person. It isn’t. It takes a full roster to take the game down.
Let’s start on a positive note, see I can do that, Bobby Witt Jr.
Witt needing more minor league seasoning is a fine excuse and some notable people have fallen for that excuse, but I keep things simple.
I like talented players, especially shortstops who have an understanding of the game, to get to the major leagues as quickly as possible. I don’t hold their age against them. It’s a lift for an organization and fans to have those players present. It’s a reward for hard work and success and turning the page to a new era for a struggling team. And you know what, if Witt stumbles badly out of the box, he could always get sent down to the minors and come back, you know that, don’t you Royals. Even Mickey Mantle got sent back down.
I like Dayton Moore, the Royals GM, but this was a bad decision.
1 comment:
I'll focus on one Kevin Kernan point.
He says, "The Yankees are fortunate they play in a division where other teams are practically giving the AL East to them."
- Why don't the Mets EVER find themselves in such a situation? Every year there is an elite challenging team or teams facing them. In 2015, the Nats were elite, but folded.
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