2021 MLB Opening Weekend!!

[Number1ChanseyFan]

The first weekend of the MLB season has come and gone... well, except for the West Coast games, and The Mets and Nationals are still waiting to play their first games of the season thanks to coronavirus issues... it's also been eventful in that the Atlanta Braves had the All-Star game taken away from them this year, no word on where the game is going to be held at this point... the Indians finally got their first win today against Detroit when the bats woke up, scoring 8 times in the final 4 innings. Tomorrow is going to be our home opener... And while I'm not going to be there, I am definitely excited that there is going to be fans back at the stadium... of course, I am still concerned about the big picture, hoping that the worst of the pandemic is behind us, and realizing that disaster could be right around the corner, especially if people get careless, especially as the weather is getting warmer.... but it is going to be huge, seeing real people at the game, real noise being made, and not a bunch of cardboard cutouts.

So what is everybody thinking about the season? Is it going to survive without major covid issues? Who do you think is going to win it all this year? Who do you want to win?

Of course I would love for this to be the Indians year... but realistically it's probably going to be difficult... Minnesota and Chicago are looking pretty threatening, and even Kansas City and Detroit are likely a little bit improved from last year... we have traded a lot of talent the last few seasons... but our bullpen certainly has some young, talented, and exciting arms... the offense is probably going to struggle, but may actually be a little better than last year... not a ton of power, but it looks like maybe we will have a little more speed, contact, and athleticism than we have had in recent years. The rotation should be decent, although likely not to be the dominant presence that it has been the last several seasons...

The NL West definitely looks to be an exciting race between the Dodgers and the Padres... wouldn't be at all surprised to see them in the NLCS, and potentially winning it all when all is said and done... In the AL, Chicago looks like they may finally be ready to put it all together, they definitely look like they are going to be legitimate competition for us... along with Minnesota. Toronto looks like another exciting, young team...

So, I'm gonna go out on a limb... and make my wildly inaccurate prediction that will probably look downright silly by the end of October... but I think the Padres are going to win the World Series this year... there has been a trend of teams breaking their curses (well, except for a certain unlucky team from Northeast Ohio...) ever since the Red Sox took care of their's, and I think the trend will continue this year... they will be a wild card, finishing a couple games behind the Dodgers, but they will still upset them in the playoffs, and then beating the White Sox in the World Series.

[Drago]

Fact 1: Shotei Ohtani is a BAMF

Fact 2: the Toronto Blue Jays are 2-1 against the vaunted Yankees, and therefore, the favourite to win the World Series.

[Number1ChanseyFan]

Fact 1: Shotei Ohtani is a BAMF

Fact 2: the Toronto Blue Jays are 2-1 against the vaunted Yankees, and therefore, the favourite to win the World Series.

Toronto has an exciting young team... cool how they have so many 2nd generation MLBers on the team... they are going to be interesting to watch... our old front office who is running the show in Toronto knows how to build a team in a small market environment, so there is no reason that they won't be able to build a winner now that they have more money to play around with in Toronto...

And yeah, I just hope Ohtani can stay healthy and stay on the field... an incredible talent... power, speed, and a 100 MPH fastball... not only a two way player, but an elite talent at virtually every aspect of the game.

[Drago]

tbh I thought the old Cleveland front office had absolutely botched the Jays rebuild, whereas now it appears as though it was a lot of necessary teething after Anthopolous went all-in to chase a ring.

I still don't blame him for it, but damn those rentals look bad in hindsight.

[Number1ChanseyFan]

tbh I thought the old Cleveland front office had absolutely botched the Jays rebuild, whereas now it appears as though it was a lot of necessary teething after Anthopolous went all-in to chase a ring.

I still don't blame him for it, but damn those rentals look bad in hindsight.

Yeah, I totally understand that... I wasn’t crazy about our front office at first either!! The perfect storm of events in the mid 90’s allowed the Indians teams that I grew up with to temporarily function like a big market team... so when that was what I was used to, when it went away I was VERY upset... but just like the Blue Jays, our GM, John Hart, completes depletes our farm system to supplement the major league team... And then it just collapsed... our players got old and/or expensive at the same time, and we had nothing in the minors to help us... it was a rather painful rebuild when it came with the realization that we were really a small market team...

Actually, the branch of our front office that went to Toronto seems like it is doing a little bit better at identifying hitters than they did in Cleveland... we have become quite adept at developing starting pitching, but have really struggled developing hitting... we do best trading for hitters that are stuck in the minors in other organizations... and yeah, probably our greatest area of weakness is free agent signings... we don’t do big contracts often, and when we do, they almost never work out. We do great at grabbing injured players or former stars coming off a down year and helping to resurrect their careers, but multi year deals rarely work out for us...

Overall, Toronto has really done an admirable job turning around the organization so quickly, especially in the difficult AL East division, definitely an exciting young team with lots of room to grow in the near future. Hard to believe that our 2 teams are already completely unrecognizable from the last time they met in the playoffs in 2016.

[Number1ChanseyFan]

Two Game sweep of the Cubs, including a walk-off on Wednesday afternoon... Nothing will ever truly make up for 2016, but it still felt really, REALLY good to win those 2 games. 10th inning walk off hit would serve as a nice alternate ending to Game 7

[Number1ChanseyFan]

Well, tonight we get our first look at Ohtani the pitcher... good luck to us. Hope we do better against him than we do against Ohtani the hitter... he has really torn us up the few times we have played him... of course we still have to deal with him at the plate now that Anaheim lets him hit while he is pitching... should be interesting.