We’re only just over a week through the 2018 season, and there is so much that’s going to happen between now and the start of the postseason that no rational person would get too carried away with any early trend just yet. Or, normally that would be the case. It’s already clear what the story of this season is going to be. It’s not going to be Bryce Harper even though the star has already slugged six home runs and is getting ready to be courted in one of the most anticipated free agencies of all time. It’s also not going to be the Red Sox despite them winning eight in a row and being one bullpen meltdown away from a 9-0 record right off the bat. Those are great stories, and any other year they’d be what we’re talking about today. This isn’t any other year, though. This is the year of Shohei Ohtani.
The 2018 season is all about Shohei Ohtani, and that’s good for baseball
Monday morning’s Say Hey, Baseball includes the latest chapter in the story of Shohei Ohtani, another win for the Red Sox and Mets, and Mike Moustakas’ dad bod.
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What the man known as the Japanese Babe Ruth has done to start his major-league career has been nothing short of incredible, and he’s taking not only the baseball world but the sports world in general by storm. On Sunday, he gave a nice little reminder that, for as exciting as the home runs have been at the plate, it’s the pitching that teams have always been most excited about. He was facing an A’s team that obviously isn’t great, but I don’t care if he was facing a college team. His stuff was incredible, the results were undeniable, and he just generally set the world on fire in this game. Every day it’s something new, and it’s starting to become clear that there’s nothing he can’t do. Oh, and he’s only 23 years old, which often gets lost in all of this.
Really, this is the best thing that could have happened to Major League Baseball as they look to get back in the casual sports fan’s conscience. The “baseball is dying” takes have always been somewhat overblown, but there’s no denying that the sport is lagging behind sports like football and basketball on the national landscape right now. Ohtani is trying to change that, and he’s becoming the kind of player that everyone feels the need to check on every morning when they wake up. The game has always had great players -- hell, his teammate is on a track that could make him the best of all time -- but there hasn’t been this kind of buzz since Barry Bonds was in his prime. Baseball was looking for its next transcendent talent, and they found it in Ohtani.
- Rhys Hoskins is a large, extremely strong man, but he needed some help from the bat boy to get the donut off his bat.
- It’s been a couple years since the Rangers and Blue Jays had their intense ALDS and then their big fight the next year, but Rougned Odor is still petty as hell.
- The Red Sox can’t seem to lose right now and their latest win included a wild two-out rally in the eighth, but it also included a potentially big injury to Xander Bogaerts.
- The Mets are also feeling themselves a bit, having run their record to 7-1 with a win on Sunday to complete a sweep over the Nationals.
- It wasn’t an Ohtani-like effort, but Jameson Taillon tossed a one-hit shutout on Sunday. Even better, it didn’t include a late-game bunt. You see that Orioles?!
- The Brewers suffered a blow to their lineup over the weekend, having toplace Christian Yelich on the disabled list.
- Ichiro failed to make a couple of relatively easy catches against the Twins, but if you really think about it it’s not too difficult to figure out why.
- Bryan Holaday is a bench player on the Marlins, which is not a great place to be in your career, but he showed off his versatility against the Phillies.
- Most of the talk around Aaron Judge is about the dingers, and for good reason. He hits lots of big dingers. Don’t sleep on his work with the glove, though.
- It still doesn’t really make sense that Mike Moustakas had to settle for such a small contract, but apparently his case of Dad Bod had something to do with it.
