Baseball is upon us and every year at this time I make some just-for-fun predictions on the upcoming Major Leagues season with the fallacy of assumed player health. So, let’s get started.
1-Major Leaguers will continue to jog rather than run hard to first base.
Mets fans can now fantasize about who would win in a jogging race between Robinson Cano and Yoenis Cespedes. Would the winner be the one who finished faster or slower?
2-Major Leaguers will continue their Me-First celebrations.
Bat flips, admiring potential homeruns (many of which become off-the-wall singles), fist pumping after strikeouts, semi rehearsed “walk-off” celebrations are all here to stay. BTW-go look at some clips of teams in the 1950s celebrating championships and compare the reaction to today’s mid-June “walk-off”. If you didn’t know better you would likely guess wrong who just won the bigger game.
Which is sillier? The excessive celebration or the hero of the game pretending to be surprised when he gets the obligatory Gatorade dunk/pie in the face?
3-Strikeouts will continue to surpass hits lowering batting averages.
As analytics continue to lie to us that strikeouts are not so terrible we will see more of the best players money can buy doing the exact opposite of what you would teach your sons. The stars of today will continue to swing out of their shoes at 0-2 pitches down three runs in the 9th with nobody on base. The logic: I’m paid to hit the ball out of the park (as opposed to win games).
4-Players will continue to sit out for dubiously long stretches with minor injuries.
Unlike the gladiators on the college wrestling mats last weekend who WRESTLE with injuries requiring surgery, these guys will continue to sit out with “fatigue”, I guess from mostly standing around for 3-4 hours per day at age 27. Do they leave it all in the weight room?
5-Broadcasters will continue to lie to us.
When the opposition doesn’t hustle they MAY speak up a tad, but when the home team does the same…nothing to see here kids. We will also here about guys “turning on the jets” which is CNN for lollygagging it out of the box staring at the ball you just hit before suddenly running hard when there is an unexpected outcome.
And if your team loses, don’t worry. You can take solice in the fact that you still rank highly in launch angles and exit velocity off the bat. Then you can stay tuned for the postgame to see your network’s token floozy ask hard-hitting journalistic questions of that day’s starting pitcher like: how important was it for you to throw strikes today? As opposed to his last or next starts?
6-Commissioner Rob Manfred will continue Bud Selig’s tradition of sticking it to east coast fans by playing Sunday games sometimes in temperatures hovering around freezing rather than sunny afternoons for ESPN (pedo-mouse company) dollars.
Oh, you bought 4 tickets advertised as family day at 1:05 PM? How naïve!
7- MLB will continue it’s crusade to attract younger fans.
How? By playing World Series games (even on Sundays) after 8:00 PM EST sure to end around midnight.
8-Curt Shilling will continue to be kept out of the National Baseball Hall of Fame while inferior pitchers (Mike Mussina) waltz right in.
But keep in mind, off the field conduct counts. What did Schilling do you may ask? Bet on baseball? Test positive for PEDs? Worse! He’s an outspoken CONSERVATIVE. Someone better call the KGB!
Well, these are my 2019 MLB predictions. Feel free to hold me accountable if they don’t play out.
Buh…buh…but you didn’t even pick a World Series winner. Okay Skippy, it will be the team with the most talent who best manages to mitigate predictions 1-4.
Other than that I don’t really give a sh*t. Yes, I will miss the game at times.
It’s the soundtrack of Summer to me. But everything I mentioned here frustrates me more and more every year.
What kind of recreation is that? Combine that with my team joining the virtue signaling to special interest groups while they kick sh*t in my face as a Christian, and my involvement will now be limited to sports radio for noise on my way home from the gym.
To be honest, outside of the Yankees I’ve become too removed to make an educated prediction on a winner. It will be interesting to see how it feels to me if the Yanks go all the way this year and I don’t watch.
Anyhow, time to play ball! If you can still call it that…talk soon.
-Marksman
PS: Good news to Democrats. The start of baseball means the start of Spring. This means warm weather is coming just in time for you to walk off all those “Nothing Burgers” with extra Russian dressing that MSM has been feeding you for the last 2 years.