Back in March, I, like so many others, boldly made my predictions for the 2021 baseball season.
More than six months later, you're probably wondering: How did I do?
Well, me too.
But in preparing for this end-of-season column, I had difficulty finding most of my predictions. Not sure what happened. I'm guessing some sort of technical glitch. Must speak to Greg about that.
But I did stumble upon this one: Shohei Ohtani was my American League MVP. I took some grief for that one, as many pointed out that there was no way Ohtani would be the Angels' MVP, not with Mike Trout as his teammate, You all stand corrected, thank you very much.
Now that I think of it, I'm pretty sure most of my other picks were equally accurate. I mean, if I could nail such an unorthodox pick as Ohtani, against all odds, it's pretty reasonable that I got most -- if not all -- of the other ones dead-on, too, right?
Right?
No need to check. Take my word for it.
Now that I've had the luxury of watching the first 160 games, however, it's time for a second crack at the major awards:
AL MVP - Shohei Ohtani.
Ordinarily, I like my MVPs to come from contending teams -- hence the "valuable'' part of the award. I've long advocated that the BBWAA change the award to Player of the Year and simply recognize a great individual performance. Alas, that call has mostly fallen on deaf ears.
But come on -- what Ohtani is doing is literally historic. We throw that word around a lot, but it actually applies here. As a hitter, Ohtani is among the league leaders in homers, triple, OPS, slugging percentage, total bases and countless other categories. And then, in his spare time, Ohtani has pitched well enough to be a No. 1 starter for most teams (9-2, 3.18 in 23 starts with a 1,080 WHIP and averaging 10.8 strikeouts per nine innings).
Vladimir Guerrero Jr. has had a spectacular season for the Jays. But while it's been excellent, it hasn't been without precedent. It hasn't been jaw-dropping. It hasn't been once-in-a-century. In fact, a decent case could be made that one of Guerrero's own teammates has been as valuable.
HONORABLE MENTION: Guerrero; Marcus Semien.
Guerrero nearly won a Triple Crown, but Semien set a record for homers by a second baseman, upgraded his team's infield defense and filled a leadership void on a team with a long of young players.
AL CY YOUNG AWARD - Incomplete.
I'm voting for this award and in accordance with BBWAA requests, I'll keep my ballot private until the voting is conducted and the results are released.
AL ROOKIE OF THE YEAR: Randy Arozarena
In keeping with the historic nature of this year's awards, we may well have a player win the A.L. Rookie of the Year after he was chosen as the ALCS MVP. Arozarena was a pretty-much everyday player on a division-winning team and compiled an .809 OPS while playing solid outfield defense. (It's also true that his teammate Wander Franco may well have won the award had been called up sooner. But games played and contributions count, so....)
HONORABLE MENTION: Luis Garcia; Ryan Mountcastle.
Garcia took a regular turn (28 starts) and helped make up for some injuries that hit the Houston staff. Mountcastle blossomed into a feared power hitter for the otherwise unwatchable Orioles.
AL MANAGER OF THE YEAR: Kevin Cash
Yup, he won it last year. But Cash won a division handily against three other teams whose payrolls dwarfed his own. He won a division after losing his three best starters from a year ago (Blake Snell, Charlie Morton and Tyler Glasnow) either left or were injured for most of the year, requiring him to have rookies start 40 percent of his team's games this season. And he did it with more than 140 different lineups.
HONORABLE MENTION: Dusty Baker; Alex Cora
Baker continues to be a marvel at his age, under trying circumstances. Cora's return was a huge factor in the Red Sox' surprising renaissance.
NL MVP: Bryce Harper
No, the Phillies aren't going to the playoffs. But Harper did everything imaginable to get them there, including a second-half performance in which he posted an OPS of nearly 1.200. The rest of the Phillies' everyday players mostly underachieved, so it was on Harper to carry them, which he did, until the final week of the season.
HONORABLE MENTION: Fernando Tatis Jr.; Brandon Crawford
NL CY YOUNG: Zack Wheeler.
It took a while, but Wheeler finally stayed healthy and made good on his enormous talent for an entire season. He was a workhorse and compiled a 2,78 ERA despite pitching in a hitter-friendly ballpark for half his starts.
HONORABLE MENTION: Max Scherzer; Corbin Burnes.
Scherzer also would win the "Best Trade Deadline Acquisition'' if such an award existed. Burnes was the best pitcher on the team nobody knows.
NL MANAGER OF THE YEAR: Gabe Kapler
Kapler's reputation took a big hit with two less-than-inspiring seasons managing in Philadelphia. But like so many others in the dugout -- Terry Francona among them -- he's shown himself to be a far better manager on his second chance. Cerebral, instinctive, and quirky, he'd led the Giants to the best record in baseball.
HONORABLE MENTION: Brian Snitker; Mike Shildt
Snitker lost a key starter and his best player and still won his fourth straight division title; Shildt oversaw a September for the ages as the Cards came from way behind to win the second wild card spot.
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It's still uncertain where the rest of October will take the Red Sox. They could be finished with their season Monday night, Tuesday night, the week after or, conceivably, not until the first weekend of November.
But whenever their season concludes -- this week or next month -- the Red Sox will, like every other team, have a lot of offseason decisions quickly facing them. Among them: determining whether to extend qualifying offers to any of their free agents (Eduardo Rodriguez, Adam Ottavino), whether to pick up club options (Christian Vazquez, Martin Perez, Garrett Richards). Additionally, the Sox will see if J.D. Martinez opts out of the last year of his deal, a call he must make within five days of the completion of the World Series.
After that? It's a yawning chasm of uncertainty.
The current collective bargaining agreement expires Dec. 1, and little -- if any -- progress has been made toward a new one. That's not particularly surprising at this stage, as the dynamic of collective bargaining often results in a deal being struck up against a pressing deadline.
But this time, for the first time in better than 25 years, there's real fear an agreement won't be struck by Dec. 1, and that a lockout by the owners is all but inevitable.
That would, in turn, result in a complete cessation of activity: no trades, no free agent signings, no nothin'. (Way to build interest in the game during ticket-selling season. Then again, where labor disagreements in pro sports enters the equation, logic often goes out the window).
That, in turn, has led to some speculation that, faced with the prospect of a freeze on transactions on Dec. 1, teams might use the month of November -- historically, a slow, feeling-out period -- to speed-build their rosters ahead of the impending lockout. It could potentially result in a frenzied bit of activity, with teams racing against the clock.
Putting together most of the roster so early in the offseason, would be highly unusual. But for some executives, it could beat the alternative: scrambling to team-build in late January following a new labor agreement, forged late in the winter and just before spring training camps are set to open.
There would be risk to such a scramble. Teams would be forging ahead, unsure of what the new agreement would look like. Would GMs -- or their equivalent -- commit to big, multi-year free-agent deals without knowing, for instance, what changes are going to be made to the CBT (competitive balance tax) and accompanying payroll thresholds?
For that matter, how aggressive would teams be, uncertain as to whether, as speculated, there will be an expanded playoff format in place? (MLB is known to favor going to 12 teams from the current 10-team set-up, in order to offer more postseason inventory to its TV partners). Would such a prospect make teams more aggressive or less so. It's easy to imagine some teams seeing an expanded playoff format as the impetus for more spending. It's also equally plausible that some may react to the other extreme, figuring that an expanded playoff field requires less improvement.
Finally, there's the uncertainty of the DH in the National League. While it's been widely assumed that, regardless of how the new CBA shakes out from an economic standpoint, the DH will become a permanent part of the N.L. landscape. MLB wants more offense, and wishes to avoid the injuries that inevitably happen to pitchers while running the bases. The Players Association also takes a positive stance on the DH becoming universal, since that likely translates into more opportunities for aging sluggers, many of whom command significant salaries (Nelson Cruz, J.D. Martinez, etc).
Then again, it was expected that the two sides would come to an agreement last winter to have the DH in the NL for 2021 (it existed temporarily in the shortened 2020 campaign due to the pandemic), and that didn't happen. So, who knows?
In that sense, it's not just front office executives who would be making decisions without having all the information at hand. Would Martinez, for instance, op-out without knowing, with complete certainty, that his list of potential bidders had doubled from 15 (A.L. clubs) to all 30 teams? Hard to say.
Another question to ponder: would owners encourage their Baseball Operations staff to make player transactions prior to Dec. 1, to encourage offseason ticket sales and generate fan interest before the game disappears into a nuclear winter with the two sides at odds, fans alienated and football, basketball and hockey commanding all the attention?
The 2020 season featured almost no fans in attendance. The 2021 season began with limited fans for the first month or so, before gradually, every franchise but Toronto had full-capacity capability. Still, without the ability to market to groups last winter, attendance is down across the game. Do MLB owners really want a third straight season in which they don't have a normal selling season leading up to games?
These and other questions will get answered soon enough. But thanks to the labor uncertainty that hangs over the sport, it's clear the baseball is still a ways off from achieving normalcy from a business and marketing standpoint.