We can hope for at least one Opening Day this decade like Texas just had: celebrate your World Series championship, then start your title defense with a walkoff win.
Thought about making a new thread for this, but decided to bump this one.
The O's were the most popular AL East winner, AL pennant winner, and AL World Series winner in the Fangraphs writers poll. They were the only AL team that all 25 voters picked to make the playoffs. Some of the Fangraphs models may hate the O's but it doesn't seem like their human writers do.
https://blogs.fangraphs.com/fangraphs-2024-staff-predictions/
What sounded like a mistaken hot mic at the end was a (maybe also mistaken?) roll of the beginning of this video. It definitely ended abruptly... almost seemed like they were supposed to play this video and then do more, but that someone panicked and ended the show.
Rubenstein gets to experience the "needs improvement" part of MASN right away!
I think you’ll see occasions that Mateo, Urias, and Westburg are all 3 in the lineup vs a lefty and one of them is DH.
I hope they give Cowser some chances vs lefties as well, moving Santander to DH in those games.
If Jackson had an extension, he’d probably be on the club. It may or may not be in Jackson’s best interest or preference to do so. Both those things are true and I’m sure Matt understands that, so I don’t see anything disingenuous there.
Urias trade has been mentioned a few times in this thread. With Kemp's IF/OF flexibility, and the public statements about Gunnar playing SS full-time, I wonder if a Mateo trade is a more likely follow-up here.
Not sure, but I know Will Smith (the reliever) has currently earned three straight WS rings with three different teams. Though he didn't actually appear in the Series for Houston in '22.
I believe they would have if they were still around. Hall for sure, and Ortiz probably.
But whether it was Ortiz/Hall or not, I don't think we were ever going to reach Opening Day without shipping out a couple guys for a SP.
I think they started this last-Thursday-in-March model a few years back, though it had a couple disruptions with covid and the lockout.
I assume mainly to prevent the World Series from extending too late, but without reducing off-days.