Hope Springs Eternal

In a few hours, the baseball season will officially be underway and with it brings the hopes of fans and fantasy baseball players everywhere. I know this is true of other sports but baseball has the added bonus of starting in the spring as the country transitions out of winter and comes back to life. So maybe the pull of hope is stronger. Plus, it is a long season and there is always time for things to turn around until there isn’t time.

I would hate to be someone who has to write up outlooks for the various teams at the start of the season. I mean nobody wants to read that their team is going to suck this year. It is true that we don’t know how things are going to play out and we do get a surprise from time to time but you can generally figure out who’s going to be near the top and who’s going to be near the bottom.

You can usually judge a bad team by how many “ifs” appear in any type of rundown. “If player A stays healthy all year.” “If player B can round back into the form they had two years ago.” “If player C can continue to develop and cut down on the strikeouts.” And so on. Certainly all those things could come to pass but the odds would be against it. And the more of those you have to string together to see the likelihood of a good season, the less likely it is for it to happen. Still, a lot of fans would cling to that hope.

This time of year now seems to feature what I would call “seat warmers”. Players who you know aren’t going to be any good but they just take up space until enough time has passed so the team can call up the rookie we all know is going to be better. I know there are reasons for this but, in a way, it is a team signalling that they don’t think they can win. So they aren’t putting the best team on the field right away.

I’ll give you an example. Take the case of Miguel Sano. In 2019, he hit 34 homers which is good although he didn’t hit much else. He did hit 30 in 2021 but with a much lower batting average and more strikeouts. In 2022, he hit .083 in 20 games and was cut. Came back last fall to play in the Dominican Winter League where he only hit .225 with 2 homers in 89 at bats. Not exactly a stunning comeback.

But it was apparently enough for the Angles to bring him to spring training where he hit .204 with 4 homers in 54 at bats. Again, not really impressive numbers. And yet, they have put him on the roster for opening day and he’ll be in the starting lineup. This is where you start to think that you could be a better GM than most of the ones that are in the league. But “If he can rediscover what he did in 2019 ….”

Unfortunately, a lot of what people feel around opening day is false hope. If you back a long suffering losing team, maybe that is better than being honest and accepting that there is really no hope.