Super Bowl Sunday is nearly here, and I couldn’t possibly be any more excited!
Not because of the game, or the halftime show, or even the commercials. Even though, last time I checked, Katy Perry looked pretty good, and an ice cold Bud Light was rather refreshing. I feel like I can recognize a Patriot when I see or talk to one, but what’s a Seahawk, anyway?
No, I’m excited about the big game being over, and subsequently, the NFL season. It’s the second checkpoint in my baseball offseason calendar benchmark system, falling right after “Holiday season” (one “L”), and right before March Madness. Once those three hurdles are cleared, it’s time to play ball!
The 2015 season is one that I expect to be one of transitions for the Cardinals, but on a larger scale, for the NL Central, and for all of baseball, really. The Cardinals will be transitioning towards the end of the Holliday contract (most underrated Cardinal of the past 5 years?), and presumably transitioning into the beginning of a Heyward extension. They’ll transition away from what many thought would be “the norm” by 2015–seeing the name Shelby Miller on the lineup card every fifth day (and Garcia a few times a year?), and continue transitioning towards a youth movement with guys like Matt Carpenter and Kolten Wong.
The central division will undergo a transition or two of its own in 2015, as the Reds will have to decide what they’re going to do about a Cueto offer, which could largely determine the course that franchise heads over the next couple of seasons. The friendly confines have been getting a major face lift, with a lot of construction over the past few months (uninterrupted by any of that “October baseball” nonsense, I might add), particularly in the outfield. The 2015 Brewers continue to transition towards becoming the 2010 Pirates, and vice versa, for that matter.
Perhaps the biggest transition, however, is all across baseball, as 2015 introduces us to Major League Baseball’s 10th commissioner. Rob Manfred has taken the helm from Allan H., and his first week has been as quiet and mundane as that guy who’s “just here so he doesn’t get fined”. In other words, not at all.
Open to the idea of putting a ban on defensive shifts? Interested in “helping offense”? I don’t know about you, but those words sound like what I imagine the Anti-Christ would say, once in a position to curtail such strategic, thinking aspects of the game. More in-depth thoughts and opinions are for another post, but I don’t like either idea. At all.