A new season of Major League Baseball (MLB) is around the corner, with opening day scheduled for March 29.
The free agency has seen a number of big moves, with the likes of J.D. Martinez, Yu Darvish and Jake Arrieta joining new teams, and the race to dethrone the Houston Astros promises to be fascinating to watch.
Newsweek has picked five things to look out for over the next seven months.
1) How will the new signings perform?
There has been no shortages of major players moving teams during the off season. Giancarlo Stanton moved to the New York Yankees to form what on paper is a mouth-watering power pairing alongside Aaron Judge, as the duo hit 59 and 52 home runs last year respectively. Only one team in history—the Yankees in 1961—boasted two players who hit 50 or more home runs in the same season.
The Boston Red Sox, meanwhile, finally landed the heavy hitter they desperately needed after signing J.D. Martinez to a five-year deal worth around $110 million.
Martinez's arrival should provide the Red Sox, who won the AL last year, with the kind of hitting they have missed since David Ortiz retired in 2016.
The Florida native, who spent last season between Detroit and Arizona, registered a career-best .303/.376/.690 batting line last year, which included the highest slugging percentage of any hitter since Barry Bonds.
Other intriguing moves saw Philadelphia add Carlos Santana and Jake Arrieta, while the Cubs replaced the latter with Yu Darvish, signing the Japanese to a six-year deal worth $126 million and the Astros added former number one overall pick Gerrit Cole.
2) New managers on the block
A wave of change has swept through the MLB, with 20 percent of teams in the league hiring new managers during the off-season.
With the exception of Ron Gardenhire at the Detroit Tigers, five of the six franchises that changed managers in the winter have hired skippers without any managerial experience.
Dave Martinez and Gabe Kapler have been appointed in charge of the Washington Nationals and the Philadelphia Phillies respectively, while Alex Cora is the Boston Red Sox's new manager.
In New York, meanwhile, Mickey Callaway and Aaron Boone will take charge of the Mets and the Yankees respectively. The latter is the first manager since Mike Matheny joined the St Louis Cardinals in 2011 to have zero experience in terms of coaching or front office duty.
However, Yankees' general manager Brian Cashman is adamant his team has picked the right man.
"I liken it to NASA and a space shuttle," he said, as reported by NJ.com. "We're building a space shuttle. The manager is a huge piece of the puzzle, but one piece of the puzzle. The manager isn't the whole space program. I think that's the difference now."
3) Will the new rules make a difference?
In a bid to speed up the game, from this year MLB teams will be able to use only six mound visits per game and time limits will be enforced.
However, players and coaches have already warned adjusting to the changes could take a while.
"We will adjust well,'' Yankees manager Aaron Boone was quoted as saying by the New York Post.
"We will be ready. I won't go too far down into specifics on how we will do it . We have to make adjustments and that is what major league athletes have to do all the time […] It's a new way of doing things."
Dallas Keuchel of the Houston Astros, told ESPN: "Some of the stuff that is just second nature to baseball players is now being counted as a mound visit, and it's going to be a weird situation to follow because that's just part of the game.
"When you change part of the game [that's] second nature to guys, it's going to take a while to get used to."
The jury over the new rules will in all likelihood remain out for the duration of the season.
4) Yet another winner?
It has been 18 years since a team won back-to-back World Series, the longest stretch in major league history. The Yankees were the last to accomplish the feat, winning three in a row between 1998 and 2000, and no team has even made two consecutive appearances in the final since the Kansas City Royals lost in 2014 before winning the following year.
So, will the Astros back the hoodoo in 2019?
"We're aware of everything, how hard it is to win back to back," Jose Altuve , last season's AL MVP and the winner of the Babe Ruth Award was quoted as saying by the New York Times. "But it's not impossible. We're going to do the best we can to make it happen."
5) Major milestones
Albert Pujols needs 32 hits to become on the fourth player in history alongside Willie Mays, Hank Aaron and Alex Rodriguez with 600 home runs and 3,000 hits. The Seattle Mariners' Robinson Cano, meanwhile, is 124 hits short of becoming only the 100th player in MLB history with 2,500 hits.
Ichiro Suzuki and Cano are also 15 and 143 bases shorts of becoming respectively the 90th and 91st player with at least 4,000 bases to their names, while the Yankees' C.C. Sabathia needs another 154 strikeouts to become only the 17th player in MLB history to record 3,000 strikeouts.
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
About the writer
Dan Cancian is currently a reporter for Newsweek based in London, England. Prior to joining Newsweek in January 2018, he ... Read more
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