Baseball is back! Here are six things you missed since Dodgers won World Series
It may feel like a lifetime ago when Yoshinobu Yamamoto fired a splitter to Alejandro Kirk, who rolled a ground ball to Mookie Betts with the bases loaded, Betts simply stepping on second and tossing to first and ending a World Series, just like that.
Yet here we are, Opening Day upon us and real baseball, coast-to-coast and nearly around the clock a daily reality. Does the world seem any different since Nov. 1, when the Los Angeles Dodgers and Toronto Blue Jays played one of the greatest Game 7s of all time, to end one of the greatest World Series of all time?
A lot can happen in 145 days. Especially in the baseball industry. With that, USA TODAY Sports gets you back up to speed on what you missed since the Dodgers claimed their second consecutive World Series championship:
The Blue Jays reinvented themselves – for the most part
We’ll start on that Rogers Centre turf, where the disconsolate Blue Jays filed back to a clubhouse where the tears flowed as easily as the champagne in the opposing room a few hundred yards away.
It’s really hard to repeat as champions in baseball, as the Dodgers learned. So wouldn’t it seem equally hard to get back to the Fall Classic after losing Game 7?
(Remember, 145 days can fly by, too).
With that, the Blue Jays took a wise hybrid approach to their offseason – not replicating the roster that fell just short but augmenting and future-proofing it.
Say hello to new starting pitchers Dylan Cease and Cody Ponce, the former a supreme bat-misser and the latter whose spring performance justified his $30 million commitment to arrive from Japan. Kazuma Okamoto is the new third baseman. Bo Bichette is gone.
Yet the guts of the club still remain, even 41-year-old Max Scherzer, looking incredibly spry this spring and probably much healthier than last year. And let’s not forget that Vladimir Guerrero Jr. begins the first of his 14 years of contractual bliss, over which time Toronto will pay him $500 million. He’s already worth it – even moreso if the Jays can win one more game than they did last year.
The Dodgers are only further reviled
Don’t weep for the boys in blue: More than 4 million people flocked through the gates to see them play last year. They get plenty of California love.
Yet they just can’t help themselves when it comes to seismic signings that rock the industry.
Here’s where $60 million man Kyle Tucker comes in (or, $57 million man Kyle Tucker when taking deferrals into account). This wasn’t an epic free agent class this past winter but the vacuum of trade rumors and signings must be filled and Tucker became the Hope Diamond.
Great player. Not quite a franchise player. Yet after he chose the Dodgers’ front-loaded and opt-out friendly deal, manager Dave Roberts will have a hard act to follow.
After all, he relished that the Dodgers “ruined baseball” in the postgame celebration following their NLCS vanquishing of the Brewers. A third straight World Series appearance and the club might be taking the rap for climate change and mayonnaise, too.
ABS system: ‘Robots’ have arrived
Sometimes a colloquialism gets out of control. So it is with “robot umpires.”
The phrase gained steam as pitch-tracking technology got better and more widespread and the average modern fan posited that we’d be better off with robots calling balls and strikes.
And here we are. Kind of.
The ABS Challenge System enables batters, pitchers and catchers to tap their head should they immediately determine they’ve possibly been wronged. They can do it twice a game and then, if they fail, they must live with human error.
It’s a bit of a half-measure to keep the so-called human element fairly alive and well while providing a fairly sturdy guardrail against egregious crimes against the strike zone.
Thank goodness it only takes 30 seconds or so to render a verdict, keeping the game watchable. And perhaps more enjoyable if your team is the one benefiting.
Just don’t call them robot umps. It’s not like they can deliver pizzas or enforce the law.
Bryce Harper donned a ‘Not Elite’ shirt
Just a weird little off-season kerfuffle.
It actually began before the World Series when Philadelphia Phillies president Dave Dombrowski opined in the club’s postseason postmortem that Harper wasn’t an “elite” player anymore.
And so began a Flaccoian winter saga.
It picked up steam when Harper, now a prolific TikToker, donned a shirt he said someone gave him bearing Dombrowski’s damning phrase. Just workout gear, he said.
Silly? Hey, the Narrative Factory never closes, and this is fodder either way, whether Harper falls into a 2-for-30 hole or claims his third MVP award at 33.
Atlanta’s rotation became ‘Spinal Tap drummer’ dangerous
They still have 2024 Cy Young Award winner Chris Sale, and Reynaldo Lopez is kinda nice, and maybe Bryce Elder can recapture his 2023 first half magic that sent him to the All-Star Game.
Other than that? The Atlanta Braves have an entire pitching rotation on the injured list.
It’s no way for a recent power to erase the sting of a fourth-place finish. They lost Spencer Schwellenbach and Hurston Waldrep to bone chip surgery in late February. Joey Wentz to a torn ACL once Grapefruit League play began.
And they couldn’t break camp without Spencer Strider tweaking an oblique. Throw in AJ Smith-Shawver’s Tommy John surgery from last June, and that’s a quintet’s worth of innings lost.
Those that remain hopefully won’t step on any banana peels.
‘Nuclear winter’ drew a little closer
Looking forward to Opening Day, eh? Shame if something happened to it.
Kind of an apt marketing slogan for Major League Baseball, eh? Lest we forget, Opening Day 2027 is far from a given with labor storm clouds forming and commissioner Rob Manfred telegraphing a lockout that will end all baseball business Dec. 1 until a new collective bargaining agreement is struck.
In the meantime, the union is down a man, with executive director Tony Clark’s startling resignation in February coming with just enough time to regroup before negotiations begin. (Yes, talks could have commenced any time in the last year, but that’s just not how they do it).
So enjoy the sunshine and displays of talent and hopefully a nice W for your team of choice. Next year this time could be a lot different.
Then again, plenty can happen from the final pitch of one season to the first one of the next.