MLB Season Preview 2023 Part 2

Part 1

This year, I did go out and buy a preseason preview magazine, so you can tell I’m serious about my predictions.  Just like it says above the title, “The Baseball Preview for Smart Fans.”  That’s me.  Well, in an ironic twist, I lent the magazine out to my dad before writing this, but I did read it. 

 

Last years’ preview mags were kind of useless because of the lockout.  This year there was only one choice for previews, the Lindy’s.  There wasn’t an Athlon one like there usually is.  Baseball Digest put one out later, but the articles and even the previews weren’t very interesting-looking.  I’m waiting on the Sports Illustrated one to come out.  I’ll take a look at it.

 

The only out-of-date news in the issue involved Carlos Correa going back to the Twins.  I didn’t have his deal with the Mets finalized when I wrote my Hot Stove article last year.  That was about the only deal, as many of the free agents signed quickly.  I have some quibbles with the team articles.  Parts seemed to be written independently of each other or last second changes weren’t properly edited to harmonize the coverage.

 

The up-front general baseball articles were not that great frankly.  There was an article on the Astros really earning last years’ championship and that the media and fans should let their grudge against them go.  I agree.  The last page commentary was arguing that rich owners overspending was great for the sport.  Sure.  I was surprised from reading it that it was the Player’s Union that wouldn’t allow a minimum payroll for all teams.  They said it would be the start of a salary cap. 

 

Their league picks were (I took some quick notes before I lent out the magazine) the Yankees and the Braves.  They didn’t pick a World Series winner.  (I don’t know why, but that’s the way they’ve done it in previous previews.)  I don’t think the Correa deal would have changed their NL pick (maybe?), certainly not their AL Central pick.  They had the Mets as a Wild Card, but finishing third in the East even with him. 

 

They thought the Rangers would be much improved and would be a Wild Card team.  They’re not high on the Orioles, but do think they’re trending up.  As much as they loved the Yankees, their article on them mostly only listed their potential problems.  They thought that the Dodgers were curiously inactive.  Experts think they’re saving their money to go after Shohei Ohtani next offseason.  They picked the Padres to finish ahead of them.  In their college prospects section, they had LSU with four players in the top 50.  Troubling for my NM State Aggies, they had Jacob Wilson from GCU on their list.

 

I plucked out a few interesting stats from the magazine.  The Dodgers were number one in payroll (Mets #2) and in attendance (Cardinals were #2, #13 in payroll).  The Orioles were #30 in payroll, and the A’s last in attendance.  Payroll and attendance were usually close to one another for teams.  The biggest discrepancy I saw was the White Sox.  They were #19 in attendance, but seventh in payroll.

 

In the AL, the Blue Jays were best in hitting, and the Astros were best in pitching.  For the NL, it was the Mets in hitting, and the Dodgers in pitching.  Unsurprisingly, the Rockies were best in home batting, but worst in overall pitching.  This is as much of a Fantasy Baseball forecast as I’m doing. 

 

As for my picks, I’ll break it down by division.  (Albeit, a little rushed, since this is going way long.)

 

AL East

Do I pick the Yankees every year?  I picked the Blue Jays last year.  That was a disappointment.  I think Aaron Judge will have maybe two good years before he’ll be better known for being injured all the time.  This may be their year, though.  The Jays are good enough to get in with the expanded playoffs.  Is this the year the smoke and mirrors of the Rays finally gets exposed and they end up in the cellar?  Probably not this year, but it’s coming.  I don’t know what the Red Sox are doing.  I think their GM is actually covertly working for the Yankees to sabotage the Sox.  The Orioles are my favorite East Coast team.  They’re in the playoffs.  They nudge out the Rays.   

 

AL Central

This division is so bad I refuse to talk about it. 

 

Oh wait, my contract?  Shoot.  Okay, fine.  The Cleveland baseball team is a continual irritation in my enjoyment of the MLB.  It’s much worse than the Washington football team, because I’ve always hated those guys.  I liked the Indians.  Anyway, I’ll pick Guindians to win here.  (There, I met you guys half way with your new name.)  With the new balanced schedule, it might be with a losing record.  The Royals, Tigers, Twins, and White Sox will be in a fight to the death (of their fans) to stay out of last place.  Okay, the Twins might be better than that.  Carlos Correa is certainly going to go out on the field with something to prove.  If his foot breaks during the season, expect thinly disguised snickering from the Mets and Giants.        

 

AL West

Another year of horrific disappointment for every team not named the Astros.  The Mariners collapse.  (Julio Rodriguez will sophomore slump.)  The Rangers do nothing, except backup another dump truck of money to send down a hole.  The A’s just keep doing whatever they’re doing.  (No change there, though according to the baseball preview magazine, they’re going to be busy packing to move to Las Vegas.)  The Angels?  The owner even botched selling the team, forget about even improving it.  Angel fans, enjoy the Shohei Ohtani Farewell season.    

 

NL East

Bryce Harper is out again for part of the season, but with Trea Turner added, I like the Phillies’ chances to somehow win the division.  Yes, the Mets have better hitting and pitching, as do the Braves, but I can see all three of these teams making the playoffs, regardless of how.  The Nationals, or the Padres East, are going to waiting for a while for their Juan Soto trade prospects to mature.  The Marlins genuinely have talent, surrounded by a bunch of bad players.  They might put it all together in the near future, or trade off their good stuff for nothing.  I’d put money on the latter option. 

 

NL Central

It’s gonna be the Cardinals.  The Brewers’ heroic efforts to remain relevant aren’t going to materialize this season.  The Cubs made some moves, loser moves.  Management is attempting to look like they’re trying to win, but they aren’t.  The Reds and Pirates are still hopeless.

 

NL West

This is the Padres’ year.  They win the division this year.  The Dodgers will have to settle for beating them during the season and possibly the postseason, but they won’t take the division from them.  I’m told the Diamondbacks are an up-and-coming team.  I’ll believe it when I see it.  The Giants will try again to figure out how they won all those games two years ago (hint: it was Buster Posey) and will fail.  The only high Rockies fans will get this season will be from their local weed dispensary.  (They really should just put one of those in Coors Field to distract their fans from what’s going on on the field.)

 

Oh, that was fun.  Now, how will the playoffs play out?  Errr . . . Hold on.  Mumble, mumble.  Carry the two.  Okay, here it is. 

 

I don’t see any reason why it won’t be the Yankees and Astros in the AL again.  If either team has significant injuries (Jose Altuve has already had one in the WBC and, no, that doesn’t mean he shouldn’t have played), the Blue Jays could be an alternate for either.  If the Guindians trade for some hitting, they could also be there.  Otherwise, the Yankees out-muscle the Astros in pitching and hitting.

 

In the NL, assuming the Dodgers are in striking distance of winning the West before the trade deadline, look for them to make a splashy move.  That may or may not be the difference in them moving on in the playoffs, as they may holding their powder to get Shohei in the offseason.  The Padres will counter.  As good as the Mets are, I think injuries will take them out.  I don’t think the Braves have the heart (Freddie Freeman).  The Phillies, riding on Bryce Harper’s back, get to the league championship again.  If the Padres stay healthy, they win.  If not, the Phillies beat the Dodgers.

 

The Yankees will beat the Padres in the World Series . . . on paper.  In reality, Gerrit Cole comes up small again in the playoffs and drags down the whole Yankee pitching staff with him.  Aaron Judge’s back breaks from carrying their offense (figuratively, perhaps literally).  The Padres aren’t prefect and almost certainly will have their own major injuries and poor performances (expect a big trade deadline move), but I think they’ve got enough players who will play big on the big stage (namely Juan Soto and Fernando Tatis Jr. on a redemption tour) to finally deliver a championship to San Diego.                 

 

As much as I’ve spoiled the upcoming season for you, you might want to watch anyway, just in case of the unlikely event that something I didn’t foresee happens. 

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 

Sketch Dump: Ilya 2, Drop 23

Actress Xochitl Gomez from the second Doctor Strange movie.  This sketch is even worse than the movie.

Another bad sketch of Xochitl.  Her outfit is from the red carpet premiere of the movie.  The red-head is an Ilya Kuvshinov sketch.

 

The next three pages are all Ilya sketches from his Momentary book.  Three of the sketches are pretty good.

Sketch Dump: Ilya 2, Drop 22

A couple of Twitch girls: Addie from Halocene and Galadrix.

Another quick art page.  Top left going down: Twitch streamers Susu and  Frivvy Fox, and a piece of Internet art.  Down the right side are Ilya Kuvshinov sketches.  The man likes drawing girls with bangs.

   

Here's a full page of Susu.  I probably undersized her best known assets.  (I get embarrassed.)  

Yet another bad sketch of Audrey Hepburn in a series of bad drawings.  

Lastly, it's a sketch of Spider-Gwen . . . err . . . Ghost-Spider.  She's not a real character, she's just a pinup.

Sketch Dump: Ilya 2, Drop 21

A somewhat salacious Indycar model from an ad on the left.  An Ilya Kuvshinov drawing that I apparently rushed badly.

  

Twitch streamer, Galadrix.  She recently came back to streaming after being away for a couple of months.  Normally very confident, she said she got so nervous before coming back on that she almost didn't do it.  It was so cute.  Gala was swarmed by viewers (including myself) when she came back.

Brazilian actress, Isis Valverde.  I had to look at the note to see who it was.  Bad.

This is some Internet art.  Very bad.

Here's my favorite Twitch streamer, Dizzykitten.  This one is really bad,too.  I must have contemplated quitting art after drawing this.  Apparently, it was drawn from a piece done by her friend, Nabi.    

Sketch Dump: Ilya 2, Drop 20

I'm going to say it; this is probably my best quick-sketch-day page ever.  What did I do different?  I drew with the sketchbook in portrait?  I don't know.  Starting at the top left and going clockwise, an Ilya Kuvshinov sketch, a sketch from a Crossgen comic, and two Internet art sketches.

A couple of Twitch streamers: Nemo and Frivvy.  

And two more of them.  I wish I could have Nemo's waist to do over again.

A full-page sketch of Fathom.  It's an anatomical mess, but it does look like the original drawing and has a sense of underwater weightlessness.  

  

Lastly, there's poor sketch of Wonder Woman and a slightly better pencil drawing of Cassie Wonder Girl.

Sketch Dump: Ilya 2, Drop 19

On the left, opera singer, Patricia Janeckova, and that's some Internet art on the right.

 

This is a terrible drawing of the most beautiful girl on Twitch, Dizzykitten.

That's an Ilya Kuvshinov sketch on the left and Mexican newscaster, Lucero Alvarado.

The caption says that's Twitch singer, Jordan Laine.  I don't see the resemblance.  The attempt at drawing fingers there is truly incredible.  That's an Ilya drawing on the right.  

At least I kind of like the Cassie Wonder Girl sketch on the left, but the Lucero Alvarado sketch is more crap.