NEW YORK, NY – The mostly empty stadiums and games cancelled due to snow must mean that it’s early April and baseball is back again. The Mets and Yankees have battled the elements to start off the season strongly. The Amazin’s strong starting pitching and big bats have powered them to a 5-1 start. Cespedes, Bruce, and the returning Conforto homered yesterday against the Nationals to give Jacob deGrom his second win of the season. The commanding win against Stephen Strasburg and the Nationals yesterday is a great statement of intent. But it’s a long season (too long – more on that later). The key for the Mets will be to stay healthy. Getting Conforto back helps in that regard. They have a formidable lineup to complement their stellar starting rotation.
On the other side of town, the Yankees have gotten off to a solid start of their own. After getting booed out of the park in the Yankees’ home opener, Giancarlo Stanton went deep along with Judge and Sanchez on Wednesday, as the Pinstripers rolled. Yesterday the bats went cold again and the Yankees dropped to the Orioles at the stadium 5-2. It looks like it’s going to be that kind of year for the Bombers. They’ll live and die by the bats of Judge, Stanton, and Sanchez. The slumps will come, but the Yankees will be fine as long as they’re not all slumping at the same time. It is, after all, a long season. And that should change.
It’s time to shorten the season. It’s too long as it is. I love watching baseball but I have no interest in going to games before June. People shouldn’t be cold at baseball games. Between the April games that nobody wants to go to and the September games with bloated rosters that nobody wants to go, I figure MLB can stand to cut a bunch of games from the regular season, expand the playoffs, and still be done before the cold weather hits in mid October.
Shorten the regular season to 144 games. Start two weeks later. Finish two weeks earlier. Get the playoffs done by mid-October. This season started in March and Game 7 of the World Series is slated for Halloween. We’ve already had the typical rain delays and postponements due to those April Showers, both rain and snow. And we saw a nearly empty Yankee Stadium on their rescheduled opening day game.
Opening Day should be about baseball, not about weather. The Yankees played their home opener a day late and in the rain anyway. MLB should push the start of the season back to mid-April when the temperatures are a bit warmer and the weather is a bit more stable.
And did you think you’d get a post from me that doesn’t mention hockey?
This is the last weekend of the regular season and the Stanley Cup Playoffs start next week. The Rangers and Islanders will not be taking part but the New Jersey Devils made the dance for the first time in a handful of years. As things stand, they’ll meet the Capitals in the first round. I’m thinking it will be a Lighning-Predators final (really going out on a limb with this one) for the cup. It should be a good playoffs with teams like the Las Vegas Golden Knights and Winnipeg Jets making the dance. And for the first time in awhile, I can watch the playoffs stress-free and with no skin in the game. I’m looking forward to it.
That’s it for now, come back tomorrow for a guy that wants the Winnipeg J-E-T-S to draft a QB, @JunoirBlaber. And you can find us on Twitter, @Different_Matt, @Matt_McCarthy00 & @MeetTheMatts, Instagram @MeetTheMatts and like our Facebook page, Meet The Matts.
