NY Post | Dan Martin:DJ LeMahieu got into some games quicker than most expected after arriving to camp late. The Yankees second baseman had to rebound fast from a positive COVID-19 case to be ready for Opening Day, and appeared in the last two exhibition games back in Yankee Stadium. Aaron Boone said that LeMahieu was available off of the bench for the team in their season debut against Washington, but opted to sit him to give him more time to get ready. LeMahieu could possibly start on Saturday, and is going to get at-bats against Jordan Montgomery to keep them both fresh today.
NJ.com | Brendan Kuty: There was a surprise for both teams before the game even started yesterday, as news broke that Nationals outfielder Juan Soto had tested positive for the coronavirus. Soto’s test came back from Tuesday, and there was a bunch of confusion about what would happen. Ultimately the game went on as scheduled, and Boone said that there was “no hesitation” on going forward despite the lack of clarity.
ESPN | William Weinbaum:Masahiro Tanaka is working his way back to the rotation, and he’s made one change already. Tanaka has a hard-shell insert to put into his cap when he pitches, and he worked with it in for the first time yesterday. Tanaka is sitting out with a concussion after a scary comebacker drilled Tanaka in the head, and he plans to keep the insert in for the remainder of the season. If he manages to do so he may be a driving force towards some kind of improvement for pitcher safety, but we’ll have to see if he sticks to it. Plenty of pitchers have attempted to make this adjustment, but if anything is off in Tanaka’s initial appearances, superstition and comfort may win out.
6:58pm: MLB has officially announced the 16-team playoff format and best-of-three Wild Card Series for 2020.
4:36pm: The league’s owners have ratified the agreement, Sherman tweets. Sixteen teams will make the playoffs this season.
3:27pm: ESPN’s Buster Olney reports that the top two teams in each division will qualify for the postseason under this format. The seventh and eighth teams in each league will be chosen based on the best overall records of the remaining teams. The Athletic’s Jayson Stark adds that all three first-round games of a series would be played at the higher seed’s home park, thus eliminating the need for a travel day.
3:00pm: Just hours before the first pitch of the 2020 season, Major League Baseball and the MLB Players Association have reached an agreement on an expanded postseason field. ESPN’s Marly Rivera reports that the union has agreed to the proposal, which now needs only to be ratified by the owners. Joel Sherman of the New York Post suggests that will indeed happen (Twitter link), and USA Today’s Bob Nightengale tweets that there’ll be 16 teams as well as a best-of-three first round series (rather than a sudden-death Wild Card setting). The agreement covers only the 2020 season, per both Rivera and Sherman.
The postseason expansion comes with a $50MM player pool for the players, Nightengale further reports. That’s particularly notable given that in a traditional season, player postseason shares are derived solely from gate revenue and not from television ratings. Previous estimates on additional television revenue in an expanded postseason field suggested between $200-300MM could be generated by expanding to 16 teams, and ownership has agreed to share some of that windfall with the players’ side.
The potential ramifications here are broad reaching. It’s easy to envision this serving as a litmus test of sorts for future postseason expansion. The league has previously sought to push to 14 to 16 teams due to that considerable added revenue — the aforementioned revenue boost referenced only television money — and introducing it as a sort of experiment in an already anomalous season is perhaps a more palatable way of normalizing the change.
From a team vantage point, the impact this has on the trade deadline could be enormous. There have been plenty of questions regarding just how much clubs will be willing to surrender in order to acquire rental players in a 60-game season — particularly if the likeliest postseason scenario included a sudden-death Wild Card game. Now, clubs will at least be assured of a three-game series. Paired with the expanded number of fringe contenders a six-team expansion of the field, that could embolden some teams to be more aggressive buyers.
The greater number of postseason clubs not only widens the field of potential buyers but also narrows how many teams will be pure sellers. That could serve to up the demand for the trade assets on the few teams who are committed to selling off pieces. And it could lead to some dramatic last-minute decisions for teams that are on the cusp. Today’s brand of methodical, analytical GMs don’t make the emotional and even irrational plunges into transactions that once proliferated deadline season, but there’s a good chance we’ll again see some creative swaps of unexpected players. Complicated three-team trades have become prominent in recent years, and a radical change to the playoff format should only encourage creativity.
And what of the teams with trade candidates who have multiple seasons of club control remaining? At a time when clubs are reluctant to part with high-end talent to acquire 30-some games of a rental, a player controlled into 2021, 2022 or beyond becomes eminently more appealing. Matthew Boyd, Caleb Smith, Jon Gray, Francisco Lindor, Nolan Arenado and other controllable names who’ve been kicked about the rumor circuit in recent years will again be in demand. Depending on the status of those players’ teams at the halfway point of the season, the motivation to make a deal could increase. It’s worth reminding that only players in a team’s 60-man pool can be traded, so there are some clear restrictions in play, but the ripple effect here could be considerable.
I don’t know about all of you, but after last night, I’m all-in again. I recognized the void left by baseball in my life, but I don’t think I really understood it until I watched the Yankees play last night. My wife even looked at me and said, “I missed Yankee games.” Baseball is always on TV in my house in the summer, so I admit that this summer has been made even stranger without it. I bought a new TV for the family room around the holidays at the end of last year, and my primary motivation was to enjoy Yankees baseball. Watching Opening Day was satisfying on so many levels.
No Mailbag this week - don’t by shy, though. Send in your questions to SSTNReadermail@gmail.com by 8:00 PM Thursday night, and I’ll answer them in the Weekly Mailbag each Friday. For this week though, I have a lot of thoughts about Opening Day. In no particular order, here they are below:
Let’s start with the most important development of the evening from a baseball perspective: Gerrit Cole was everything the Yankees wanted him to be, and then some. On a night when I don’t think Cole had his best command, he zoned in and went toe-to-toe with one of the best pitchers in the sport and won. Cole’s fastball was buzzing, and his slider looked almost unhittable when he located it down in the zone. Many of us have wanted to see Cole in pinstripes since 2008. It was worth it.
I said on the Bronx Beat Podcast the other night that I thought Stanton would lead the team in RBIs this season. With 3 RBIs last night, he’s well on his way. Stanton looks really locked in at the plate, more so than I’ve seen him look in a Yankee uniform to-date. Very few players in baseball are capable of putting together the kind of run Stanton can produce when he’s locked in. The 2020 season is the length of some of Stanton’s previous prodigious stretches, so we could be in for a real treat this season. According to Statcast, Stanton’s ball left the yard at 112 MPH. While not Stanton’s best work, it still was a no-doubter into the bleachers in left field. It’s fun to look at Exit Velocity and other advanced stats, but sometimes, all that matters is that the ball clears the fence. I’m glad Stanton got off to this kind of start, and I can’t wait to see what the year will bring.
How about Tyler Wade?!? I’ve been predicting a Tyler Wade breakout for too many years now, so I’ve kept my mouth shut coming into this year as an offering to the Baseball Gods. A drag bunt behind the runner for a base hit may be old school, but if you get on base, that’s all that matters. Sure, he bunted it right at Starlin Castro, who is not exactly the smoothest defender at 2B, but Wade made a judgement based on scouting, and it worked. I generally hate bunts, but bunting for a base hit is a totally different animal. At 1B, Scherzer kept a really close eye on Wade given the base stealing threat he presents. Wade gives the Yankees another dimension, and I love what he brings to the table. DJLM will take Wade’s spot shortly, but Wade will make an impact this year.
How about Judge ripping balls all over the field last night? He may not have put together as loud an appearance as Stanton, but Judge had an equally impressive night. Judge hit the ball as hard as I’d hope all night. Most importantly, he’s healthy. Let’s keep it that way.
And now, to the ugly. Let’s start with the broadcast team. Did anyone else come close to muting the TV last night? Matt Vasgersian isn’t my favorite under normal circumstances, but I also don’t particularly mind him normally. He had a really tough night last night, made so much worse by just how insufferable A-Rod proved to be as the primary color commentator. If ever there was a shill for Major League Baseball right now, A-Rod is it. Frankly, until his bid to buy the Mets ends, his conflict of interest runs too deep to allow him on national broadcasts. His interview with Manfred was disgraceful, and his baseball commentary was shallow and uninformed. I liked A-Rod when he first jumped into the studio a couple of years ago, but Opening Day was a bad spot for this crew.
Speaking of terrible, Angel Hernandez continues to be one of the worst umps in the big leagues. Check out this called strike 3 to Brett Gardner last night:
Image Courtesy of Baseball Savant (Click to Enlarge)
The pitch in question is the one 6 inches off of the outside corner. This is just one pitch, but they were everywhere last night. I shouldn’t be surprised, but it disgusted me all the same. How does Angel Hernandez’s crew pull Opening Day with the premier match-up? I just don’t get it.
Gary Sanchez had a really tough night. Not only did he score the strikeout hat trick, but I was not impressed by his ability to frame high strikes with his new stance behind the plate. I know that the new stance is meant to help him frame balls in the dirt, but he looked jerky at balls up in the zone setting up low. Admittedly, having Angel Hernandez behind the plate didn’t help at all, so it will need to be monitored over the long haul, but Opening Day was not Gary’s best.
Was anyone else annoyed that Hernandez suspended play only after allowing Scherzer to throw the first pitch of Wade’s at-bat. The broadcast showed that it was raining with really dark clouds rolling in. Maybe I’m biased, but that was another really bad umping decision. Wade would have come out of the break in the middle of an at-bat had the game continued, and it was completely unnecessary.
In any event, the Yankees are undefeated after Opening Day, and they looked good doing it. Baseball is back, and I feel like a kid around the holidays. All may not be right with the world, but it looked OK on a baseball diamond last night.
Aaron Judge gets off to strong start in Yankees’ win
Aaron Judge said he’d be ready for Opening Day.
He was right.
Judge started the much-delayed season with a pair of hits in the Yankees’ 4-1 rain-shortened win Thursday over the Nationals.
They were enough to impress one of his new teammates.
“Those were two pure swings on the ball,” Gerrit Cole said of Judge’s work at the plate.
The right fielder was sidelined in March after being diagnosed with a fractured rib and a collapsed lung that Judge likely suffered on a diving play last September.
General manager Brian Cashman said the rib injury would have kept Judge out until the “summer.” When baseball returned following the COVID-19 shutdown that was prolonged by a labor dispute, Judge then dealt with a stiff neck.
But he returned to hit three homers in two exhibition games and stayed hot Thursday against Washington’s Max Scherzer.
He ripped a 108-mph single to left with one out in the top of the first and scored on Giancarlo Stanton’s mammoth homer later in the inning that gave the Yankees and Cole a 2-0 lead.
“In the big picture, this was a chance to see our offense when everybody’s healthy,’’ Judge said. “I’m just trying to get on base for the big hitters behind me. We showed that tonight. We let [Stanton] do his thing.”
Judge came up again in the third with one out after Tyler Wade’s leadoff walk and an Aaron Hicks strikeout.
This time, Judge roped a double to left and the speedy Wade — who started at second base in place of DJ LeMahieu — came around to score to put the Yankees back up by two runs.
Judge had a chance to extend the Yankees’ lead again in the fifth with runners on the corners against Scherzer and one out, but he struck out looking. Stanton picked him up with an RBI single after Gleyber Torres walked to load the bases.
Judge insisted during spring training 2.0 that his neck was not an issue and on Tuesday declared himself “ready to go.”
Judge was limited to 102 games a year ago in part due to a left oblique strain and played just 112 games in 2018 because of a right wrist fracture.
In this abbreviated season, a similar extended absence would be especially damaging to Judge and the Yankees — and he proved why he’s so important to their lineup again on Thursday.
Aaron Boone said he was pleased with what he saw from both Judge and Stanton in the middle of the lineup.
“One of the things I felt really good about was this team was ready to go and those guys are leading the way, in a sense,’’ Boone said of the two sluggers. “They had really quality at-bats to confirm the work we’ve been seeing. Judge had a couple really good at-bats.”
But Judge also admitted there was something strange about the setting.
“It was good to have some real baseball back, but it was definitely odd,’’ Judge said of the empty stadium. “It was strange with a team celebrating a World Series championship and none of their fans were there to celebrate with them.”
Judge, Stanton power Yankees to Opening Day victory over Nationals
Gerrit Cole was sharp and the Yankees’ big boppers did their damage in a rain-shortened victory.
The rain held off long enough in the nation’s capital for the Yankees’ Opening Day to end with success. The Yankees brought the thunder at the batter’s box and on the mound, with Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton driving in all four runs and Gerrit Cole thriving in his debut in a 4-1 Yankees win.
The Yankees didn’t waste any time ringing in the new baseball year. Judge singled with one out, collecting the first hit of the 2020 season, and advanced to second on a Gleyber Torres ground ball. Giancarlo Stanton came to the plate next, and absolutely pummeled a 1-1 cutter, sending the pitch 459 feet away into the left-center field cheap seats. For Stanton, it’s his third straight Yankees Opening Day where he’s hit a home run. With one swing of the bat, the Yankees were back like they’d never left.
By the time Cole took the mound for his heavily-anticipated Yankees debut, he was pitching with a 2-0 lead. However, it didn’t stay that way for long. Adam Eaton pounced on a 2-2 heater, the seventh pitch of the at-bat, and jumped the yard on Cole with a solo shot to right. Cole recovered to get out of the inning with the lead intact, but neither team’s ace was able to escape their first inning scoreless.
After a second inning where Scherzer struck out the side, the Yankees struck back in the third. Tyler Wade worked a walk, and then motored around the bases on a deep Judge double, scoring all the way from first. Wade’s aggressive baserunning, opportunistic against a great pitcher like Scherzer, proved vital when the next two batters failed to hit the ball out of the infield. After three innings, the Yankees held a 3-1 lead.
Meanwhile, Cole settled down after the dinger in the first. He retired 14 of the next 16 Nationals, striking out five. Neither of the two men who reached base did so with a hit either, giving Cole a final line of five innings, one hit, one run, one walk, and five strikeouts. Although he gave up the long ball early, Cole rebounded and turned in a strong performance in his rain-shortened Yankees debut.
The Yankees were able to get to Scherzer again in the fifth inning. Gio Urshela walked and Wade bunted for a hit, and although the next two batters went down, Giancarlo Stanton smacked a line drive single, scoring Urshela and extending the lead to 4-1. Brett Gardner struck out next, leaving the bases loaded, but it was a pleasant surprise plating four runs off of Scherzer in five innings, and a path to victory for the Yankees.
The Yankees were poised for even more in the sixth, but then the heavens opened up and lightning touched down near Nationals Park. Luke Voit walked and Urshela singled him to third, but right when Scherzer was on the ropes, the game was delayed amidst heavy rain and storms.
The teams waited in the clubhouse during an almost-two-hour rain delay, but the game was ultimately called after a little over five innings, with the Yankees winning 4-1. For the Yankees, it’s their third straight Opening Day victory, which has snapped a nasty streak where the team lost eight of nine Opening Days from 2009-2017.
The Yankees have the day off Friday, and will next be in action on Saturday night, when the forecast looks much better. James Paxton will take the ball for the Yankees, and he’ll be opposed by the Nationals’ Stephen Strasburg. Saturday will be Strasburg’s first game against the Yankees, providing an interesting storyline. The Yankees’ 2020 season may have taken awhile to begin, but it’s off and running with a solid start.
Abad, 34, has a career 3.67 ERA over nine major-league seasons. He spent 2019 with the Giants, making 21 major-league appearances with a 4.15 ERA over 13 innings. He was with the Red Sox for part of 2016 and all of 2017. Abad pitched three seasons for Houston.
The Nationals had signed him to a minor-league deal in the offseason but they cut him on July 17.
In 2018, Abad was suspended 80 games for testing positive for the steroid Stanozolol while in the minors with the Mets.
It’s unclear whether Abad will report to the Yankees, who beat the Nationals on Thursday night, or to PNC Field in Moosic, Pa., the team’s alternate training site and the home of their Triple-A affiliate the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Railriders. The latter seems more likely.
innings for the A’s.
From the Yankees:
PUTTING THE ‘NEW’ IN ‘NEW YORK’: Of the 30 players on the Yankees’ 2020 Opening Day active roster, 14 were not on the club’s 2019 Opening Day active roster — P (6): LHP Luis Avilan, RHPs Gerrit Cole, David Hale, Ben Heller, Michael King, Jonathan Loaisiga; C (2): Kyle Higashioka, Chris Iannetta; INF (4): Thairo Estrada, Mike Ford, Gio Urshela, Tyler Wade; OF (2): Clint Frazier, Aaron Hicks.
INF Thairo Estrada, INF Mike Ford, OF Clint Frazier, RHP Ben Heller, C Kyle Higashioka, RHP Michael King, RHP Jonathan Loaisiga and INF Gio Urshela are the eight players making their first career Opening Day active roster.
The Blue Jays will play their home games for the 2020 season at their Triple-A site in Buffalo, reports Dan Connolly of The Athletic (Twitter link). The Jays have been searching for a home site since government regulations in Canada ruled out Toronto’s Rogers Centre. They thought they’d reached a deal with the Pirates to utilize Pittsburgh’s PNC Park, but the Pennsylvania Department of Health quashed that plan. The Blue Jays also explored the possibility of playing at Camden Yards in Baltimore, which the Orioles reportedly approved, but that arrangement was also pending government approval in Maryland.
All the while, the Jays have reportedly been working to upgrade their facilities at Buffalo’s Sahen Field, bringing the clubhouses lighting up to par with MLB standards (or at least as close as possible). The organization’s strong preference has been to play its home games at a Major League facility, but it seems they’ll instead settle in a familiar setting for many of the club’s young players.
The Jays have since officially confirmed the report, issuing a statement which indicates they’ll stage the “majority” of its 2020 home games in Buffalo. Said president and CEO Mark Shapiro within the release:
“This process has no doubt tested our team’s resilience, but our players and staff refuse to make excuses – we are determined to take the field on Opening Day today, and for the coming months, with the same intensity and competitiveness that our fans expect.”
Jerry asks: What is the best-case scenario that the Yankees could get from Gerrit Cole this season?
Cole is expected to lead the way for the pitching staff this season, and he got off to a good start on Opening Day yesterday by throwing a complete game (with an assist from the rain).
In reality, Cole’s debut was a decent indicator of what the Yankees could expect from him. He was clearly not on his A-game, but he had the Nationals off-balance all game and only allowed one hit, which happened to be a mistake to Adam Eaton that got punished. Pushing through and getting a strong result when you don’t have your best stuff is exactly what you expect from an ace, and Cole is undoubtedly one of the best aces in baseball.
Shaking off the rust in your first start during a season where you’re expecting somewhere around 34 starts is fine, but most projections expect Cole to get either 12 or 13 starts in this shortened year. That’s not a lot of opportunities to produce the elite performance the Yankees were expecting when they signed Cole, so how impactful could he be if he’s at his peak for the remainder of his starts?
We’ve seen a recent stretch from Cole’s career where he did just that, back in June and July last season with the Astros. In 11 starts, Cole collected 100 strikeouts while issuing just 19 walks, allowing 50 hits and just 15 runs in 72 innings of work. That’s a sub-2 ERA period of dominance, and it turned his 2019 season around from above-average performance to Cy Young contention. If he can reach that form in 2020, the Yankees won’t need much else to win whenever he takes the mound.
Steve D asks: Any thoughts on whether the 2021 draft order will be based upon the 2020 final standings or that the draft order determination might get tweaked a bit due to playing only 60 games or less?
I don’t think there should be a problem with using the 2020 standings to determine the draft order. It will still be a limited amount of rounds compared to normal drafts, as they’re planning on halving the number to 20 rounds. There really isn’t much else you could go by, although it admittedly has a chance of giving better picks to teams that may not actually be that bad but simply under-performed for a stretch.
My concern is less with the fact that there’s only 60 games this year, and more with the unbalanced schedules from only playing regionally this year. There are plenty of teams that could get different results than were expected of them at the beginning of the year, because they’re only playing the teams geographically close to them. Perhaps MLB finds a way of compensating for that, but I don’t really see what you could do about it. Some things just have to be accepted, and it’d be a relatively minor concern if it meant that they were able to get through the season in the first place. If the season gets canceled midway, then there’s a real scramble to figure out what should be done.
Peter Russo asks:What do you think of having cardboard cutouts occupying the seats behind home plate representing the Yankees honored in Monument Park? Would be kind of cool to see them when watching TV and also inspirational for the players.
I think this could be a cool idea. I’m honestly not the biggest fan of the cutouts, mainly because it’s jarring for me to see some of them be full-body cutouts and then some be an entire body for a selfie. The teams choosing to offer the cutouts can’t really coordinate what the fans send in to them, so it gets to be a bit of a mess. Also, I personally find the empty stands to be a surreal sight, and one we hopefully won’t see beyond this year.
The Yankees are all about tradition, and they’ve covered the walls of New Yankee Stadium with the memories of their former greats. It would be fitting to have some franchise icons show up in the stands as well while the area is open, and I’m sure the team could easily set it up since it wouldn’t be like producing an entire crowd’s worth of people in cardboard. I’d also like to see some recently retired Yankees like CC Sabathia included if they went this route. Sign me up for this.
6:58pm: MLB has officially announced the 16-team playoff format and best-of-three Wild Card Series for 2020.
4:36pm: The league’s owners have ratified the agreement, Sherman tweets. Sixteen teams will make the playoffs this season.
3:27pm: ESPN’s Buster Olney reports that the top two teams in each division will qualify for the postseason under this format. The seventh and eighth teams in each league will be chosen based on the best overall records of the remaining teams. The Athletic’s Jayson Stark adds that all three first-round games of a series would be played at the higher seed’s home park, thus eliminating the need for a travel day.
3:00pm: Just hours before the first pitch of the 2020 season, Major League Baseball and the MLB Players Association have reached an agreement on an expanded postseason field. ESPN’s Marly Rivera reports that the union has agreed to the proposal, which now needs only to be ratified by the owners. Joel Sherman of the New York Post suggests that will indeed happen (Twitter link), and USA Today’s Bob Nightengale tweets that there’ll be 16 teams as well as a best-of-three first round series (rather than a sudden-death Wild Card setting). The agreement covers only the 2020 season, per both Rivera and Sherman.
The postseason expansion comes with a $50MM player pool for the players, Nightengale further reports. That’s particularly notable given that in a traditional season, player postseason shares are derived solely from gate revenue and not from television ratings. Previous estimates on additional television revenue in an expanded postseason field suggested between $200-300MM could be generated by expanding to 16 teams, and ownership has agreed to share some of that windfall with the players’ side.
The potential ramifications here are broad reaching. It’s easy to envision this serving as a litmus test of sorts for future postseason expansion. The league has previously sought to push to 14 to 16 teams due to that considerable added revenue — the aforementioned revenue boost referenced only television money — and introducing it as a sort of experiment in an already anomalous season is perhaps a more palatable way of normalizing the change.
From a team vantage point, the impact this has on the trade deadline could be enormous. There have been plenty of questions regarding just how much clubs will be willing to surrender in order to acquire rental players in a 60-game season — particularly if the likeliest postseason scenario included a sudden-death Wild Card game. Now, clubs will at least be assured of a three-game series. Paired with the expanded number of fringe contenders a six-team expansion of the field, that could embolden some teams to be more aggressive buyers.
The greater number of postseason clubs not only widens the field of potential buyers but also narrows how many teams will be pure sellers. That could serve to up the demand for the trade assets on the few teams who are committed to selling off pieces. And it could lead to some dramatic last-minute decisions for teams that are on the cusp. Today’s brand of methodical, analytical GMs don’t make the emotional and even irrational plunges into transactions that once proliferated deadline season, but there’s a good chance we’ll again see some creative swaps of unexpected players. Complicated three-team trades have become prominent in recent years, and a radical change to the playoff format should only encourage creativity.
And what of the teams with trade candidates who have multiple seasons of club control remaining? At a time when clubs are reluctant to part with high-end talent to acquire 30-some games of a rental, a player controlled into 2021, 2022 or beyond becomes eminently more appealing. Matthew Boyd, Caleb Smith, Jon Gray, Francisco Lindor, Nolan Arenado and other controllable names who’ve been kicked about the rumor circuit in recent years will again be in demand. Depending on the status of those players’ teams at the halfway point of the season, the motivation to make a deal could increase. It’s worth reminding that only players in a team’s 60-man pool can be traded, so there are some clear restrictions in play, but the ripple effect here could be considerable.
While it's nice having more playoff teams, so more fan interest, I dislike the way seedings will be done. According to what Manfred said on MLB Network, the league's #1 seed will play the #8 seed.
Conceivably, the Yankees could go 41-19, and finish as the top seed in the AL. Then they would play the lowest seed, which very well may be a sub-.500 team. The only "advantage" the Yanks get is those 3 games at home. It is quite possible to lose 2 of 3 at home even to a mediocre team, especially if they have a good #1 starter.
Due to possibly playing a losing record team, the scenario isn't a whole lot better than the 1 game WC playoff, which is usually against a good team.
The NBA and NHL do the #1 vs#8 seedings, but upsets in those leagues of 1 vs 8 are rare, because the series are best of 7, not 3.
Imo, they should have consideed giving a top team a bye for the first round. That would be a real reward.
MLB Trade Rumors | Steve Adams: Looking for some bullpen depth with Aroldis Chapman still out, the Yanks reportedly signed lefty reliever Fernando Abad. The southpaw was originally in camp with the Nationals, then tested positive for coronavirus and was recently cut loose. Abad will likely head to Scranton and be used as a depth arm this season.
Yahoo! Sports: Chris Cwik: Thursday night’s season opener for the Yanks marked the long-awaited return of baseball, and viewers reflected that anticipation with an average audience of 4 million people tuning in to the ESPN broadcast. That number set the record for the largest audience for a season opener, and the most for any regular season game since 2011.
NJ.com | Brendan Kuty:Gerrit Cole didn’t have his typical elite stuff on Thursday night, but he still shoved in his Yankee debut, making just one mistake to Adam Eaton in the rain-shortened victory. Cole, making his long-awaited first start for his childhood team, said the moment didn’t hit him until he walked through the clubhouse prior to the game and saw his teammates putting on the Yankee road grays. Safe to say he didn’t let the moment get the best of him.
Greg Bird’s downfall continues as he fails to make Rangers roster
