Happy Opening Day, BSL Readers! It’s truly a special day, and in light of the past year, today becomes all that more important and meaningful. Opening Day has always been an important day for me. I remember listening to Jon Miller call the Orioles on Opening Day while walking home from school sometime in the 80’s. It was a long walk, but with baseball back and Miller piped into my ears by my ancient walkman radio and silly-sized headphones, I didn’t want it to end. I got to go to Opening Day at old Memorial Stadium in 1989. The first President George Bush threw out the first pitch and the Orioles behind Dave Schmidt and with Steve Finley’s insane catch in center field beat Roger Clemens and the Red Sox in extra innings. We left with Memorial Stadium rocking like this kid had never seen before. If that game had taken place two days later I wouldn’t remember it, but it was Opening Day and so it has stayed with me through the decades since.
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This year baseball opens up in the shadow of the great pandemic, but at a time when the world can begin to see the light at the end of the tunnel. It is Opening Day of the baseball season but it also feels like opening day of our lives again. With the vaccinations continuing, for the first time there is real hope, just as opening day always provides to baseball fans everywhere, that our lives may once again return to normal sometime in the near future.
Opening Day may be a cliche, but it’s one of the most beautiful cliches. It really is about the beginning of something, about the start of a journey, about spring time, the end of winter, about growth and the beginning of life. It’s all there and perhaps it’s too much to digest, but today, it all feels so apropos.
If you’re an Orioles fan you may come at this with a bit of a heavy heart. The team is still rebuilding, still growing, still putting down roots, still looking towards the future. Often times though it’s that hope that is the real thing, what drives you forward and makes you quicken your step. Because in the end, it’s the journey not the destination that is really important, that sticks with you and makes the end result meaningful. No complaints about a parade down by the Inner Harbor of course, but this building, bit by bit, brick by brick, is why the parade means so much. There is no celebration if this is easy. It’s not. It takes time and intelligence and perseverance and a whole lot of other words to get to the end point, and this organization is on that path. They look to have those things. They appear to be moving forward for the first time in a long time. This season you get to watch them take steps along that path, to get closer to that goal, to improve bit by little bit. It may not be the ultimate fulfillment yet, it may not be what you want, what you’re waiting for, but there is deep beauty in incremental improvement.
For the rest of baseball, the Dodgers and Padres are the main event. The Padres traded for an entire rotation in Joe Musgrove, Blake Snell and Yu Darvish, signed Ha-Seong Kim and then, for funsies, signed Fernando Tatis to a 14 year contract. And even with all of that, the Dodgers are still better. Most teams would’ve just plugged Josiah Gray into an already great rotation and called it a day, but the Dodgers signed the best starter on the free agent market in Trevor Bauer and they’ll just use Gray, a top 50 prospect in baseball, as a backup plan, thank you very much. The Dodgers lineup isn’t any worse than their rotation. The weak link is AJ Pollock, but he’ll be splitting time, so he’s not that much of a weak link anyway. Speaking of splitting time, Chris Taylor will be platooning with everyone on the field, the bench, and in the stands, should they allow that. Also, a lineup of Mookie Betts, Cody Bellinger, Justin Turner, Max Muncy, and Corey Seager doesn’t look too shabby.
In the AL, the Yankees and Rays will reprise their interdivisional contention from last season, while the White Sox figure to challenge the Twins in the Central. Will this be the year the Twins do anything in the playoffs? Will it be the first time the Yankees have made a World Series since 2009? Or will the even more spectacular happen, namely the Angels making the playoffs at all? Mike Trout has played in exactly three playoff games in his career, losing all of them. There may not be a bigger larceny perpetrated by a pro sports franchise than the ongoing theft of Mike Trout’s prime by the LA Angels of Anaheim. With the Astros stepping back a bit after the loss of Justin Verlander, George Springer, and Framber Valdez, that opens up a hole for the Angels to step through. Let’s see if they don’t trip over their own feet coming through the doorway.
There’s no good way to predict the MLB playoffs. The best teams are decided over 162 games, not seven or five or one, so when picking I always adhere to the rule of picking the best teams. It sure doesn’t matter much when they lose though, which happens a lot. If I had to guess right now, the Dodgers are head and shoulders above every other team in baseball, both in the rotation and the lineup. Another team could absolutely win the World Series this year, be it the Padres, the Yankees, the Astros, the White Sox or Twins, or even the Angels. Mike Trout in a World Series seems like too much to ask this world for at this point, but wouldn’t that be glorious?
2021 should see the Orioles begin to graduate prospects, getting set to make a good showing of things in 2022. The Yankees run of futility will confound their fans for another season. Mike Trout will see the playoffs, but not for long as his Angels get bounced in the Division Series. The Padres, for all their off-season bluster will have to fight though a one game Wild Card playoff after the Dodgers leave them and the rest of the National League in the dust. Then, in the World Series, the Twins will arrive as the Dodgers designated punching bag, and they will not confound those expectations, losing to Los Angeles in five games.
But whether all of that happens or not doesn’t really matter. The end of the baseball season should see fans who watched major league games safely from the stands next to other fans who did the same. We should have major league playoff games attended safely and in person by fans, and fans who celebrated a World Series winner by attending an actual parade with other fans, all in relative safety. If we get that far, it’ll be enough for me.
Orioles Analyst
Matthew Kory is a Orioles / MLB Analyst for BSL. He has covered baseball professionally for The Athletic, Vice Sports, Sports On Earth, FanGraphs, and Baseball Prospectus. He lives in Portland, Oregon with his wife, two boys, and his cats, Mini Squeaks and The President. Co-Host of The Warehouse.