What do robins and spring break have in common? Nope, not spring—baseball season! Yes, it’s finally here. Opening week of baseball is in the books, and obviously some interesting things occurred like Machado and Harper’s debuts with their new respective teams, Christian Yelich continuing on from his 2018 MVP season and the perennial AL powerhouses in the Astros, Red Sox and Yankees all laying eggs in their first respective series.
Manny Machado and Bryce Harper both went hitless in their debuts and Yelich won NL Player of the Week unsurprisingly after hitting a home run in four straight games—cue the MVP chants already. The Astros dropped three games out of four to the Tampa Bay Rays, the Sox dropped three out of four to the Seattle Mariners accompanied by the surprising abysmal Chris Sale Opening Day start, and the Yankees also dropped two out of three to the worst team in baseball in the Baltimore Orioles.
The Yankees also received a slew of bad news in opening week—they lead baseball not in home runs or bullpen strikeouts [yet], but in number of players on the disabled list.
CC Sabathia, Dellin Betances, Didi Gregorius, Giancarlo Stanton, Miguel Andujar, Aaron Hicks, rising star pitcher Jordan Montgomery and Gold Glove fielder and speedster Jacoby Ellsbury are all on the DL.
You may not know all of these players, but for perspective’s sake, if they were healthy, they would ALL be starting. So it is significant.
Chris Sale started opening day for the Red Sox and gave up seven earned runs (that’s a lot) in only 3 innings pitched while surrendering two bombs to Mariners’ shortstop Tim Beckham, who ended up winning the AL Player of the Week.
Sale has a history of arm problems, albeit in the latter part of the season typically, so Sox fans have some concern about their ace’s performance.
I don’t foresee that type of performance being a consistent occurrence, neither should anyone else, so we’ll see how he straightens out the kinks. We have an exciting and long season ahead of us, so stay tuned for the biggest headlines!