Getting Ready
I’ve been reading Baseball Obscura 2025, a collection of essays by David Fleming that aims to emulate what Bill James did with his Prospectuses back when we thought that Wins and Batting Average were critical statistics. They’re not bad essays at all, but Fleming is no James, and I think he might have been better served by trying less self-consciously to emulate those famous essays.
Similarly, I am no Mac Thomason. So what you’re going to get, for worse, is me. I hope to make up for my many deficits by bringing you a World’s Championship in 2025. It is a matter of continuing sadness for me that I have no actual ability to do so, but as a trained social scientist, I know that causality is really tricky. So maybe it actually is all about me. If it is, 162-0 followed by a quick undefeated trip to the craps table and a parade is a mere 6 months away.
Opening Day
The reigning Cy Young against a guy who in his last outing against the Braves completely dominated. But those Braves had no Austin Riley or Drake Baldwin, and Jurickson Profar was in the other dugout.
King walked nobody in his last start against the Braves. The start was auspicious as Profar singled and advanced to second on a passed ball wild pitch. Two more walks loaded the bases for Ozzie, who got an RBI on an overturned double play call. That’s ABCD baseball: Get ‘em on’, Move ‘em over, Win a Challenge, Get ‘Em In.
It didn’t last. Sale gave up 2 in the bottom of the first on a tip-your-hat single by Jackson Merrill. This better not be a hat-tipping year.
Drake Baldwin became MLB’s 23,380th or so (the official number comes in later today) player and struck out in his initial appearance. Welcome! (I hear Howie Kendrick doesn’t like him for some reason, but I can’t follow all this social media stuff.) He walked in the third to chase King, who had given up the lead with a two-run homer by Ozzie earlier in the inning. With all the focus on Opening Day and Aces and such, you forget how just about every Opening Day outing is really going to come down to bullpens because no one is willing to let starters go that long on Opening Day any more. Merrill knocked another in on a groundout and after three innings it was Ozzie 3, Merrill 3.
Riley broke the tie on a homer to left. In the bottom of the fifth, Aces gonna Ace. After Tatis singled on a near-homer (yeah, a little styling going on — but we’re supposed to let the young guys do their thing, right?) advanced to second on a sacrifice and third on a steal, Sale proceeded to strikeout Machado and Bogaerts to keep the lead at one. That is the difference between Aces and Guys Who Pitch.
But like I said, Opening Days belong to the bullpens in the modern game. After an uneventful 6th from Dylan Lee, Hector Neris gave up a tying homer to pinch hitter Gavin Sheets. A single ws followed by a perfect hit-and-run to chase Neris with the dreaded infinite ERA. Aaron Bummer came on and gave up the sac fly to Arraez to break the tie. Machado doubled to raise the margin yo two runs. One more sac fly completed a disastrous bottom of the 7th.
As always, though, the Braves do their best to give you a finish. Both Ozuna and Albies represented the tying run with one out in the 9th.
In conclusion, only one player really stunk up the joint today. But you’re only as good as your weakest link. That 162-0 season will have to wait. Get ’em tomorrow.
MLB.TV
Apparently, MLB.TV had some sort of nationwide problem. it’s not their fault, of course, since there’s no way they could have known the schedule was going to start today. That said, my feed was fine, except every once in a while a few extraneous closed caption words would show up, even though I have closed caption off. “Plummer” appeared several times, as did “RUN RUN RUN RUN RUN RUN RUN RUN RUN” Apparently it cleared up once it dawned on someone that the season had started.
