5 ridiculous, irresponsible overreactions to Opening Day
One day of baseball has no predictive value. Absolutely none. Zero.
Well, except for Opening Day, of course. Those results mean something. Everybody knows that.
As such, I've jotted down some reactions to Thursday's season-opening slate that my editors have dubbed "ridiculous and irresponsible," even going so far as to call them "blatant overreactions." But you'll see, reader, that they're actually well-reasoned and incisive. Take a look.
Yanks' Stanton will win AL MVP
Yesterday, I predicted Giancarlo Stanton wouldn't hit 40 home runs this year, expecting the big lug to be felled by some semi-serious injury. Barely 24 hours into the season, I'm prepared to admit I was wrong. Embarrassingly wrong. He's going to hit 60 home runs by June, and will likely surpass Barry Bonds' single-season record of 73 just before the All-Star break. (Unless, of course, teams just start intentionally walking him every time, which may actually be the right strategy, all due respect to Gary Sanchez and run-expectancy realities.) I mean, did you see that first-inning dong he hit off J.A. Happ? The guy hit a two-seamer on the inner half out to right-center with an exit velocity of 117.3 miles per hour - the hardest-hit opposite-field homer in the Statcast era. Then, a few hours later (after smoking a double in his third at-bat), Stanton bookended his Yankees debut by launching a lousy backdoor changeup from Tyler Clippard into the Rogers Centre beer garden in straightaway center, an estimated 434 feet away. (That one exploded off his bat, too, with an exit velocity of 109.4 mph.) Conservatively, I'm thinking he finishes with 94 homers and joins Frank Robinson as the only players in history to be named MVP in both leagues.
Kershaw's Cy Young drought will extend another year
Remember Clayton Kershaw's prime, that glorious stretch wherein he won three Cy Young awards in a four-year span? Well, sadly, it's time to admit it's over. Kershaw, after all, hasn't won one since 2014 - due to multiple back injuries, he's only been runner-up once in the last three seasons - and it's increasingly clear following Thursday's performance that his best days are behind him. Making his eighth straight Opening Day start, Kershaw was outdueled by Ty Blach (a real person, to be sure) in his own backyard, allowing an entire run over six innings against the revamped San Francisco Giants and ultimately taking the loss in a 1-0 defeat. Consequently, for the first time since 2015, Kershaw has a losing record, and it was painfully evident that he's not the same guy anymore when he served up a solo homer to Joe Panik, who came into Thursday's opener with two career home runs against left-handed pitching. Sad.
A-Rod will soon take over as MLB commissioner
Rob Manfred's new pace of play measures clearly didn't work - on average, yesterday's games lasted an unbearably long three hours, 14 minutes - so it's fair to presume his days as commissioner are numbered. (If a commissioner can't shave 30 seconds off a three-hour broadcast, what good is he, you know?) To that effect, it's hard to imagine a more qualified successor than Alex Rodriguez, the superstar-turned-pariah-turned-heartwarming-comeback-story-turned-broadcaster currently basking in the glow of a wildly successful image rehabilitation campaign. Don't pretend you didn't get all warm and fuzzy when he gave his girlfriend, the lovely and talented Jennifer Lopez, a quick smooch in the ESPN broadcast booth during Thursday's game. He's really the ideal commissioner, if you think about it - empathetic to both the players, having spent 22 years in the big leagues himself, and the owners, being obscenely rich. The gig is clearly on his radar, too, as the 42-year-old just bought a new $15.3-million apartment at 432 Park Avenue in Manhattan, which happens to be about a 10-minute walk up that street from the commissioner's office at 245 Park Ave.
Trout will endure his worst season yet
The best player of his generation made some dubious personal history in Thursday's extra-innings loss in Oakland, stumbling through the first 0-for-6 performance of his remarkable career. Slotted into his customary No. 2 spot in the refurbished Angels lineup, Mike Trout hit only one ball hard in his six trips to the plate and struck out in his highest-leverage at-bat, fanning with two outs and the go-ahead run on second with the game knotted at 5-5 in the top of the 11th inning. For his efforts, Trout accrued -0.1 WAR, meaning that through 0.6 percent of the season, the two-time MVP has been a liability to the Angels. Will his struggles persist? Well, it's difficult to say, but ... yes, they will. Of the three Angels players to record 0-for-6 last year, after all, two are no longer with the team - Danny Espinosa was cut midway through the season, and C.J Cron was traded this winter - and the other is unanimously regarded as the worst active three-time MVP in the big leagues. Trout probably won't end up costing the Angels 16.2 marginal wins with his shoddy play, of course, but his .000/.000/.000 slash line - and career-worst -100 wRC+ - doesn't augur well at all.
Astros will go 162-0
Frankly, a 162-win season from the reigning World Series champs wouldn't be that far off what the projections models foresaw - FanGraphs, for instance, had Houston winning 100 games - but it's clear now these empirical models can't accurately prognosticate for a team this good. I mean, the Astros barely hit at all Thursday in Arlington - they tallied just six hits against their intrastate rival, finishing the day with a collective .200 batting average - and still had a 59-percent chance of winning, like, 30 seconds into the game thanks to George Springer's leadoff homer. After the third inning, the Astros' win expectancy didn't dip below 68.2 percent, and it's difficult to envision them ever being in a position, really, in which a deficit (assuming they trail at some point this year) seems insurmountable. On a given day, the Astros are either going to get a masterful pitching performance (like on Opening Day, with Justin Verlander hucking six shutout innings), or their offense - which, it bears repeating, was the best since the Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig-led 1931 Yankees - is going to explode. In fact, if they lose a single game in 2018, the Astros should be banned from the postseason.