A lot has happened in the first four days of the MLB’s 2021 season. The Reds and Cardinals had the first bank clearing incident of the season. Cody Bellinger of the Dodgers missed a home run by overtaking Justin Turner in the base race. White Sox debutant hitter Yermin Mercedes set an MLB record by starting the season with strikes in his first eight strokes. Corbin Burnes and Jose Berrios fought a great duel on Saturday night, the first time in modern history, the two starting pitchers did not allow strikes with at least 11 eliminations in six innings. Shohei Ohtani launched the most difficult pitch of the opening weekend (160 km / h) and had the highest exit speed (115.2 km / h). The Mets and Nationals, of course, had their entire series postponed due to an outbreak of COVID-19 within the Washington squad.
Here are some observations from the opening weekend of the action:
1. Astros certainly made a statement with a dominant sweep of four A’s games in Oakland. Facing a chorus of boos and sounds of trash cans hitting Oakland fans, the Astros won 8-1, 9-5, 9-1 and 9-2. They reached 0.320 / 0.398 / 0.565 with eight home runs and 12 doubles, becoming only the fourth team to start a season with at least eight runs in each of the first four games (1978 Brewers, 1995 Red Sox, 2003 Yankees).
Alex Bregman hit 0.500 with two home runs in the four games, and Jose Altuve hit 0.375 – to name two players who saw their numbers plummet in 2020. But the biggest bright spot is the return of the dangerous Yordan Alvarez, who was as good as a rookie in 2019, before surgery on both knees to end his 2020 season. He homered on Saturday and lost another homer with a double off the wall at the opening. If Alvarez is a force in the middle of the lineup, this may still be one of the teams with the best scores in the league, even with the departure of George Springer.
And it doesn’t hurt to send a message to A’s, who scored 7-3 in the regular season against Houston last season, holding Astros with just 25 races in those 10 games. The Astros won the A’s in four games in the division series, so perhaps the message is this: The A’s may be the champions of America’s West League, but Houston may still be the team to beat.
2. The other opening statement came from the Phillies, who swept the Braves in three games, holding off an Atlanta attack that came in second in the majors in races scheduled in 2020 with just three races. With apologies to Burnes and Berrios, the most impressive exit so far has been Zack Wheeler’s performance on Saturday, when he allowed a hit in seven innings without hikes and 10 eliminations (and hit 2 to 3 on the board with two RBIs).
Wheeler had an interesting debut season with the Phillies, going 4-2 with an ERA of 2.92 and allowing only three home runs out of 71 entries, although his elimination rate dropped from 23.6% to 18.4% . The relatively low number of strokes didn’t bother me, as he seemed to become more of a pitcher instead of a pitcher, inducing smooth contact and working efficiently. Against Braves, he showed his fastest location, firing an ATV that reached 99 mph at the top of the zone and then a sinking in excess of 90 in the knees. He shook Marcell Ozuna three times by swinging: first at a 97 mph sinker and inward, then at another 155 mph sinker at a similar location, and then on a boat at 160 km / h in the area. After sniffing the two sinkers, Ozuna had no chance against the high temperature. In the first round, after Ronald Acuna Jr. missed a difficult 2 to 2 slider, Wheeler hit him with a 99.4 mph fastball in the upper corner of the strike zone. Perfect location; unreachable pitch.
3. At the other end of the spectrum are the Red Sox, who were wiped out in three games at Fenway by the supposedly humble Orioles. I watched the first game, and John Means was great on a cold day, keeping Boston off balance with, as Bill James put it on Twitter, “pitching like a Baltimore / 1980s KC pitcher from the 1970s … a skillful southpaw I’ve never heard of talk about a fast high ball. “OK, but Baltimore won 4-2 and 11-3 – behind Matt Harvey, who had an ERA of 7.82 in the past two seasons, and Bruce Zimmermann, a new southpaw doing his second career start.
Look, there are three games, so we can’t overreact here, but this is a strange list of Red Sox. They are trying to follow Rays’ positional flexibility model, so Chaim Bloom hired names like Enrique Hernandez and Marwin Gonzalez, but there are also what I call many players “hope”. You expect JD Martinez to recover. You hope that Hunter Renfroe can make enough contact after hitting 0.216 and 0.156 in the past two seasons. You hope that Franchy Cordero learns the attack zone and that Bobby Dalbec can hit the major leagues. You hope that Garrett Richards will be healthy and effective (he was attacked on Sunday), that Nick Pivetta will be useful and that Alex Cora will be able to discover the bullpen. It seems that a little too much hope is needed for things to work out. But … it’s a long season.
As for the Orioles, “it is a great confidence booster for this team and I think we are going to surprise many people this year,” said Zimmermann. “So this is just the beginning.” Dream while you can, Orioles fans.
4. So, who is Yermin Mercedes? He is a 28-year-old rookie who played mostly as a catcher for minors, got a hitting streak in the championships in 2020 and then scored 5 out of 5 on his first career start on Friday and scored hits in the top three in bats. on Saturday. Mercedes is taking a chance due to Eloy Jimenez’s injury, as the projected DH Andrew Vaughn started on the left field both games with Mercedes at DH. The thing is this: despite having a somewhat vague career – he originally signed with Washington, then went to Baltimore and the White Sox caught him in the draft of Rule 5 of 2017 – Mercedes can get it right. He is a .302 hitter in the smallest, and hit .317 / .388 / .581 with 23 home runs in 95 games in 2019 between Double-A and Triple-A. It will be interesting to see how Tony La Russa will solve this, as Vaughn is not really a left-field player. Once Adam Engel is healthy from his hamstring sprain, he can fit better in the left field with his speed, and Vaughn can conceivably end up as a minor if the White Sox believes in the Mercedes club.
5. The Blue Jays may have found a closer one to replace the injured Kirby Yates in 29-year-old debutant Julian Merryweather, who has shot only 19 entries since joining the Cleveland organization in 2017. Merryweather ended the Yankees Opening Day 3-2 and 10-game winning streak by hitting the sideline in 11 shots with the race tied on second base. He also closed Sunday’s 3-1 win, eliminating two of the three hitters he faced and needing only 11 shots.
Purchased from Cleveland as a replacement by Josh Donaldson’s rental company in 2018, Merryweather lost the entire year 2018 and shot six tickets in 2019 and 13 tickets for the Blue Jays in 2020, although it was closed at the end of the season with elbow tendonitis. He’s in the early ’90s with his fastball, hitting 160 km / h on Sunday in a field for Gary Sanchez, while mixing on a slider and switching. It’s a knockout thing closer.
6. Watch out for Corbin Burnes. While he ended up losing that game to Berrios and the twins when Byron Buxton broke his non-hitter with a home run, Burnes’ dominant performance is an early indicator of his 2020 numbers (2.11 ERA, 59.2 IP, 37 H, 2 HR, 24 BB, 88 SO) were not a fluke. Burnes played 42 mowers against the twins, using that pitch as his primary fastball offer, and he averaged 96 mph. The hitters hit just 0.162 in 2020 without a home run, and although Buxton’s home run came out of a cutter, it is the shot that marked Burnes’ improvement last season. Burnes’ departure only reinforced my belief that he and Brandon Woodruff could be one of the best 1-2 combos in the majors.
7. Julio Urias ended the Dodgers’ World Series last year, but it’s back to rotation, and many in the game believe this is the year it’s finally going to pop: no innings restricted, no COVID-19, just go out and launch. He won the Rockies on Sunday at Coors Field, allowing for three strokes and a run over seven entries. The best part: he only launched 79 shots. Not bad for your No. 4 starter.
0:37
Julio Urias hits six while allowing only three hits on seven solid starts.
8. The Fathers took three out of four of the Diamondbacks, but there is an initial concern: the defense of Fernando Tatis Jr .. He made five mistakes in four games, including pitch and field errors on Sunday. That was after making just three mistakes in 57 games in 2020, when his reach metrics were at the top of the charts. Remember, after his debut season in 2019, there were rumors that his erratic game on the shortstop could mean he would end up in the center of the field, but he erased those thoughts with his great defense last season. The error problems could be related to the left shoulder injury he had at the end of spring training or perhaps just some nervousness at the beginning of the season. It is worth watching, however.
9. I didn’t care about the extra runner-on-second rule last season. I think we were all so happy to have baseball that we lived with special rules. One thing that surprised me is that most managers didn’t seem to care – or even liked it. Here’s what Joe Girardi of the Phillies said about it during the off-season: “I was probably a little suspicious of the extra innings strategy, but it kind of worked out, and I like that. I think it’s a good rule. Also often, you have to make a lot of changes to your list because you get into a very long game and it upsets your list for the next 10 days. So, I’m really in favor of this one. “
However … after watching four games on Opening Day, I decided thanks to the runner rule in the second, I don’t know. It didn’t seem right. I understand what Girardi is alluding to, and you can argue that the rule rewards the team that can figure out how to scrape in a race or rewards the depth of the bullpen. At the very least, I would prefer to wait at least until the 11th or 12th shift before you start.
10. One of the stories to monitor throughout the season is the new ball, which is supposed to travel a few meters shorter in a typical 375 foot fly ball. How much difference will that make? The anticipated, anticipated and anticipated returns (going to Sunday night’s game) compared to the last two opening weekends of the season:
2021: 0.237 / 0.319 / 0.395, one HR per 30.7 AB
2020: .231 / .314 / .392, one HR per 28.8 AB
2019: 0.235 / 0.315 / 0.403, one HR per 26.9 AB
Again, it’s early. April generally has lower offensive numbers. The fourth and fifth starters have not yet started the season, and the friction of pitchers will cause more low-quality pitchers to be called up. The initial call: home runs will decrease slightly. Stay tuned.