MLB Season Preview 2023 Part 1

That’s it!  The World Baseball Classic must be stopped!  Players are getting injured.  It’s a catastrophe!  The MLB cannot keep sending its players into this meat grinder.  These are completely meaningless games!  For that matter, why the hell are we playing the All-Star Game!  That has to go, too.  You know, Spring Training is also where players get hurt all the time.  Let’s replace it with Spring Warmup.  The guys will only do light exercises for a couple of weeks to get into shape, like Tai Chi and stuff.  Don’t get me started on the Pitch Clock!  “Arm-Destroying Clock” is more like it!  Every tick will be shaving years off Major Leaguers’ careers!  The MLB is killing all their players!

 

Baseball commentators may have outlived their usefulness.  The commentary I’ve heard lately has made me feel like a genius.  (Then again, so does everybody.)  In a fit of sheer futility, these professionals have been railing against the WBC and the upcoming rules changes.  I don’t know what motivates these people other than a paycheck.  It’s definitely not a love of the game.

 

First, the primary rationale against the WBC is that MLB players shouldn’t be in it.  It’s a senseless endangerment of highly-paid professionals in an exhibition.  Their moment of vindication came when Mets’ closer, Edwin Diaz, was injured . . . while celebrating after a win like an idiot.  It was further pounded in as Jose Altuve was hit on hand by a pitch and will be out for weeks. 

 

Please. 

 

I’m sorry you’re a Mets fan and that you’re worried that the championship your owner tried to purchase this season might not happen.  Oh dear, the Astros will suddenly have to rely on a backup player for their stacked team.  But look, did you watch any of these WBC games?  Did you see how much the players were enjoying playing?  Did you see all those enthusiastic fans?  They were filling stadiums and cheering out of their minds for an “exhibition.”  (Admittedly, I’m not sure the US team ever really got a home game.  They could play the Mexican team on the moon and American fans would be outnumbered.) 

 

I, at least, got to watch a couple of great games.  I followed along with some others.  (I don’t know why FOX didn’t broadcast more games and instead put them on FS1, never to be seen by anyone.)  In storybook fashion, we all got to see the dream faceoff between Shohei Ohtani and Mike Trout in a one-run game with two outs in the ninth in the championship game.  (Okay, kind of sucked that Shohei struck out Trout to win it for Japan over the US, but still, it was awesome.)    

 

Players get injured in Spring Training in games that don’t count every season.  At least here, it was a worthwhile endeavor.  The fans and players loved it.  Case closed.  Further, anyone complaining that the US team choked with an All-Star lineup, shut up.  It was an All-Star batting lineup, not an All-Star pitching rotation.  Apparently, a bunch of great American pitchers listened to the commentators and focused on getting ready for the season instead of representing their country.  Meanwhile, Japan had no trouble recruiting two of their best pitchers out of the Major Leagues.  The result speaks for itself. 

 

In any case, these were the last pro games played under the old rules.  After only a couple Spring Training games, a consensus of news and podcasters had all the evidence they needed against this abomination called: the pitch clock.  A game ended on an automatic strike.  Oh, the humanity!  A new rules change at the beginning of training had a predictable result; players getting dinged for not abiding by them.  Big deal.  It’ll probably happen during the regular season, too.  I’ve seen a balk win a game.  Stuff happens.     

 

“It’s going to cause all the pitchers’ arms to fall off!” the experts screamed.  It’s as if they haven’t been using pitch clock in Triple-A since 2015.  “You’re messing with the tradition of the game!  You’re modernizing it into something unrecognizable as baseball!”  I got news for you junior, that’s the game today.  This pitch clock rule is putting the game back to where it was.  Oh, and about injuries, like that doesn’t happen all the time as is.  How could you possibly tell the difference?     

 

No, baseball games were not always three-and-half to four hours.  Last season, when Triple-A fully implemented pace of play rules, it knocked a half hour off the games.    Were they less enjoyable?  Heck, no!  Were there still high-scoring games and low-scoring games?  Yeah.  It was baseball as usual.  The only thing missing was all of the posturing, posing, and adjusting by the players.  Who knew this was the reason why all of the non-fans kept saying, “Baseball is boring.”  The rules change has apparently done the same in College Baseball and Spring Training games this season.   

 

Some pitchers did start off training trying to screw with the pitch clock for an advantage.  I assure you, the first guy to break the system will get it changed to something restrictive for the all pitchers.  I’d suggest you guys knock it off and focus on pitching, especially since there’s going to be a ban on infield shifts.  No more dudes sitting in the “lagoon” in right field waiting for lefty batters.  I’ll predict this will have the biggest effect on play.  Once again, this is only putting the game back to the way it was.   

 

One other issue that I can’t find updated information on, but may be super important, is the broadcast of MLB games on their regional networks.  Some of these cable networks have gone bankrupt.  (Too bad MLB ran off national cable networks doing team broadcasts, like WGN and TBS, and that showing games over-the-air is apparently a non-starter.)  MLB.TV has offered to step in to start producing these broadcasts and make them streaming-only.  This might even eliminate all of the local blackouts that are currently plaguing their streams.  Again, I don’t know how this plays out to this point.    

 

Enough bitching.  Next, I’ll make some predictions.

Part 2