OPENING DAY IS HERE
The AL East has never been better
Buckle up for what looks to be one of the craziest baseball seasons in recent memory. Finally, Opening Day is here, as 14 teams will begin their quest for The Commissioner’s Trophy on Thursday, with the other 16 teams, including the Yankees and Red Sox, ready to begin their seasons on Friday.
With a new season comes some new rules, a revised playoff format, evolving expectations and the likelihood that there could be more parity in 2022 than we’ve seen in years.
The revised playoff format, which will now include three Wild Card teams and create first-round byes for the top two division winners, has clearly had an effect on roster-building. Even some midlevel (Tigers, Twins and Mariners) and lower-tier teams (Rockies and Rangers) made some unexpected acquisitions in an attempt to put themselves in the playoff hunt.
But as often is the case, the most intriguing division in baseball is the American League East, where the Blue Jays open up as betting favorites while the Rays, Red Sox and Yankees shouldn’t be far behind.
“There are other teams that are really, really good outside of our division, too,” Sox manager Alex Cora told reporters in
Fort Myers as spring training came to a close this week. “Obviously, the rules of the tournament are different now. But you’ve got to shoot to win the division. That’s the most important thing. I know those off-days are gold in October. So we’ll do our best to win the division. But it’s a tough one. It’s a tough one. We know that.”
The Blue Jays have perhaps the best young core in baseball, with a pair of top-five MVP vote-getters last year in Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Bo Bichette, who combined to score 244 runs with 77 homers and 213 RBI. The Jays lost Marcus Semien and Robbie Ray, but replaced them with Matt Chapman and Kevin Gausman. A rotation with Gausman, José Berríos, Alek Menoah and a handful of talented young arms should make them the class of the division.
The Rays remain a threat, despite reshaping their roster and making a last-minute trade to ship Austin Meadows, their most potent lefthanded hitter behind Brandon Lowe, to the Tigers, who could make a sneaky run in the AL Central. As always, the Rays seem to have an endless supply of pitching depth and one of the game’s best outfield defenses with Kevin Kiermaier, Manuel Margot and Randy Arozarena. Superstar Wander Franco could be the best hitter in baseball in the not-so-distant future.
The Yankees have taken an unusually mild approach to an otherwise chaotic offseason, failing to land any of the game’s top
free agents while shuffling their roster with some trades. They’ve replaced Gio Urshela with Josh Donaldson, Gary Sanchez with Kyle Higashioka and are relying on a strong bounce-back season from Luis Severino to get them through. The Red Sox made a handful of moves to clean up the edges of their roster and made a lastsecond signing of Trevor Story to improve their infield defense, while Jackie Bradley Jr. returns to improve defense in the outfield, which was subpar last year. All four AL East teams could be playing in October thanks to the new playoff format. “On paper, it looks that way, right?” Cora said. “But at the end of the day, nobody thought the Giants were gonna be the team that they were last year. They dominated the division that the Dodgers were in. So every season is different. We just have to be ready, understanding that every game counts. We lived it last year and we’re not going to forget about that. I will not turn the page for that one.”
Cora said he thinks the new playoff format is great, but added, “I have other ideas about alignment. You might as well go American League, National League, and the top seven make it. Forget divisions. What’s the point? The top eight in the National League, American League, don’t split us up, I guess. But that’s another topic.”
On the field, teams will have some adjustments to make. ESPN reported that MLB approved the usage of PitchCom technology, which will allow catchers to call pitches through a wrist pad that will transfer the call into an earpiece of the pitcher, a design that could change the game drastically after sign-stealing has been a crucial component for as long as baseball has been played. The designated hitter is now universal, and it is expected to be the last year with defensive shifts, as MLB is planning to ban shifts in 2023, when they’ll require two infielders on each side of second base and only three men allowed in the outfield before every pitch. The ghost runner in extra innings has returned. Meanwhile, a pitch clock and robot umpires behind the plate are also being experimented with in the minors and expected to be added to the big leagues next year.
A month ago, we were uncertain if we’d have a baseball season. Now we have new rules, reformed leagues and another Opening Day to celebrate.