The 3 incontrovertible truths we learned on Opening Day

The baseball season is 0.6-percent over. The Dodgers and Red Sox could still go winless. Corey Kluber is on pace for an 0-32 record. Which is all to say that we’ve learned absolutely nothing. We go through this every year. One day of baseball can’t tell us anything.

OR CAN IT? I would like to posit a theory that Thursday’s slate of action can tell us all sorts of things. Incontrovertible truths, really, that will not be proven false by the next 161 games. We have enough information, and some of these notes will qualify as spoilers. Be warned.

Here are the incontrovertible truths we learned on Opening Day.

I still maintain Stanton is the most marketable player in the game. It might be Aaron Judge one day, but Stanton isn’t much older, and he’s been doing this for a lot longer. He does the one baseball thing that otherwise indifferent baseball fans care about: he hit baseball big far. It’s an important skill for a baseball player to have if he wants to be popular.

If you wanted to go into YouTube conspiracy territory, here’s a thought: There’s no better place for Stanton to be, if you’re Major League Baseball, than the New York Yankees. He’ll get the most eyeballs. He’ll be compared and contrasted with the greatest of the all-time greats. This is what Rob Manfred wanted, even if he can never admit it.

Stanton hit two dingers on Opening Day, of course:

It comes complete with a stilted John Sterling call that’s in Italian for some reason. Because when I want to celebrate somebody of Irish, Puerto Rican, and African-American heritage, I go straight for the ol’ Italian, like Kevin Kline in A Fish Called Wanda.

Anyway, I would like to point out this incontrovertible truth: This will not stop. I didn’t catch the MLB Network recap, but I’m assuming it went like this:

GREG AMSINGER: Stanton Stanton Stanton Stanton Stanton Stanton Stanton Stanton Stanton Stanton Stanton Stanton

ERIC BYRNES: STANTON STANTON STANTON STANTON

MARK DEROSA: [is wearing a bandleader’s outfit, complete with tall, feathered hat, and making marching band sounds as he walks around the studio] prrb prrrrrb psssshhht pssshht Stanton! prrrrpbbt brrrb a pshht pssht phsst Stanton!

That is not a criticism! It’s what I would tune in to see. I’m leading off this article with Stanton Stanton Stanton. I would just like to point out that it’s only going to get worse.

Imagine when he hits a home run in the same inning as Judge.

Imagine if it’s the ninth inning.

This isn’t going to get better, so just let it wash over you. Stanton is sure on the Yankees now. We thought we were prepared, but we really weren’t.

Gabe Kapler used to have a blog. Let me share the opening sentence from one of his posts:

If you want to be your strongest, get some sun on your boys. And by boys, I mean your testicles.

There was a study from 1939 that suggested that beans produced more testosterone when exposed to UV radiation. That’s all Kapler needed to know, and now he has shifted his priorities around to make this happen.

This comes up now because if a manager is going to be convinced by a study from 1939, when it was illegal to leave the house without a hat, he’s definitely going to be hip to the new sabermetric orthodoxy that suggests that it’s perilous for a starting pitcher to take a third turn through the starting lineup. And on Opening Day, Aaron Nola was removed from a brilliant start in the sixth inning. He had allowed four baserunners to that point, and he had thrown just 68 pitches.

To be fair, the move came after a double and a Freddie Freeman home run, so it’s not like it was entirely unexpected.

Edit: It wasn’t Nola who gave up the homer. Which makes it ~~weirder~~!

Considering the score, it wasn’t unreasonable for a manager to think the bullpen was the better bet for the rest of the way. It’s just not a move most managers would make, even today.

What makes the move entirely strange, though, was the Phillies aren’t exactly going with Andrew Miller, Kenley Jansen, and Tommy Kahnle out of the bullpen. Setting this precedent on Opening Day is a message the Phillies are going to lean hard on their bullpen, and I’m not sure if it’s the kind of bullpen that’s worth leaning on.

Weird doesn’t have to be bad, of course. It’s possible the Phillies are weird all year, and they win because of it. There really is science about pitchers facing the hitters three times, just like there’s science about ... sunlight. It’s great when it works, but when you get burned, oh, man, does it ever sting.

I mean, technically, Felix Hernandez wasn’t at his sharpest on Thursday. Of his 83 pitches, just 49 were strikes, which meant he was nibbling, nibbling, nibbling, trying to navigate his way around the new reality where he doesn’t have Hall-of-Fame stuff and has to win with his Hall-of-Fame command. It didn’t work last year. It doesn’t have to work this year. And if you’re looking at the raw numbers, two walks and four strikeouts in 5⅓ innings isn’t exactly dominant. Yovani Gallardo can do that.

On the other hand, I’m gonna need you to listen real carefully here: FELIX BACK.

The Mariners had the bullpen experience the Phillies would have killed for, bending but not breaking, and unlike the decision to remove Nola, it wasn’t very confusing when Hernandez left. He was grinding, grinding, grinding, and you want to push a veteran pitcher only so hard on Opening Day.

Still, I’m looking for optimism, and I’ll choose to find it wherever I can with Hernandez. I’m not a Mariners fan(he says, chuckling with the earned arrogance of someone who has tasted actual happiness), but I’m entirely invested in his success for a very specific reason: I fear change. And death. Mostly death.

Hernandez not being one of the most watchable pitchers in baseball is a reminder that nothing stays the same, that entropy rules us all. It’s a reminder that the handsomest person alive will melt into the soil in 100 years, that everyone you’ve ever known will leave you one day. It’s a reminder that even Willie Mays, the greatest athlete many people ever saw play the game, will have trouble getting up a flight of stairs. And there’s nothing we can do about it.

Well, there’s one thing. We can root for delays. I’m all about this delay, and the best part is that it can last six years. More, if we’re using Bartolo Colon or Randy Johnson as a template. So I’m rooting for that, which means that when Felix looks like he’s back, I’m proud to yell FELIX BACK, even if there’s always a chance I’ll yell it for the last time.

He looked pretty danged good. He’s going to have a great year.

FELIX BACK.