I love Opening Day. Even this year, with all the new faces and the realities hanging over us, it's still a brand new season and a fresh start. I'm going to discuss my thoughts about the game, the season, and a few other things too.
OVERVIEW
We'll start with the season at large. I'm an optimist, but I'm also a realist. I don't see us making the post season. They could surprise me, but I don't see that as a realistic expectation. However, I don't think we're going to be as bad as everyone thinks. I see no reason why we can't have a winning season. One thing that I think sportwriters and others view as a downside is our young, fairly inexperienced players (though that's what they've been wanting for years). People say that they are too much of an unknown.
Exactly.
They might blow up or they might blow us away. It's 50/50 and I'm going to lean on the side of them surprising us.
THE GAME
We won Opening Day. It won't say that in the record books, but it's like Galarraga's perfect game. Everyone knows it happened. We'll talk about the win/loss in a minute. But first, there was a lot of encouraging things in that emotional rollercoaster of a baseball game.
Jordan Zimmermann - I'm not a Zimmermann fan. He's here and it is what it is, and I get that he's been hurt. I was pleased that he did so well yesterday. Hopefully, he'll be a decent pitcher for us (finally) this year. It was a positive performance that he can build upon.
Baserunning - The Tigers new baserunning strategy started already. I'm sure we'll make mistakes, as this is something we haven't done a lot of before, but each time an extra base is taken successfully, confidence grows that, hey, maybe we can do this.
Defense - We made some errors, but we also made some terrific plays! Ian Kinsler will be deeply missed, but I think Iglesias and Machado will be able to hold down the fort. McCann threw out his first two basestealers of the season.
A disappointing outcome, but we battled. We missed some opportunities and made some mistakes, but we fought and scrapped and that's encouraging to me.
INSTANT REPLAY
I'm reeeaaalllyyy hoping replay improves this year, but this was not a good start. I was excited for it when they introduced the system, but it's gone downhill each year since the first one. I'm not sure about this, but is there a way to let New York know what you want them to review? Like, to say, "we want you to look at whether Cervelli tagged Castellanos, rather than seeing where the runner's foot was?" If you can't do that, it needs remedied NOW. And, I'm sorry, but when both teams know the runner was safe, when the radio and TV guys, who know their stuff; all these people said Nick was safe. They can't all be wrong. Instant replay needs fixed or it's doing more harm than good.
MAKE YOUR VOICE HEARD
In case you missed the post, I have a petition to the Commissioner about his pace of play initiatives. Please read it and if you agree, sign and pass it along to others who you know would care about this.
https://www.change.org/p/the-office-of-the-commissioner-of-baseball-tell-mlb-commissioner-no-pace-of-play-rules
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