Opening Day starts with a bang after 1st pitch of 2018 results in a home run
Fifty years ago, in 1968, Major League Baseball fans suffered through the “Year of the Pitcher” in which Denny McLain won 30 games and Bob Gibson posted a National League record 1.12 ERA.
Baseball scores looked more like soccer scores all season long.
To celebrate the 50th anniversary of those dark days, Miami Marlins pitcher Jose Urena stepped to the mound in front of the home fans, faced down Cubs leadoff hitter Ian Happ, and delivered a mighty throw for the first pitch of the 2018 season.
Happ smashed it over the fence.
It HAPPened so fast. #OpeningDay pic.twitter.com/cbzQfL1IJh
— MLB (@MLB) March 29, 2018
If 1968 was soccer, 2018 is looking more like arena football so far. The Cubs scored a total of three runs off Urena in the top of the first inning.
Put another way, the Cubs just scored as many runs in the first inning of the season as the average major league team scored in an entire game 50 years ago.
Happ drew a bit of criticism for his ability to get on base from the leadoff spot; during his rookie season in 2017, he had just a paltry .328 on-base percentage.
Speaking to that, Cubs manager Joe Maddon said, “If you got a 35 percent on getting on base [rate] a lot, that can set it up for the rest of the group. With him, this is new territory.”
Maddon added, “He had a nice camp. We’re going to keep an open mind, season in progress. I’m not going to move him out of there. When he plays, you’ll see him in that spot.”
Well, his OPS just improved in one at-bat from .842 to 5.000.
Chicago, which won the 2016 World Series, went 92-70 last season, winning the NL Central but falling to the Los Angeles Dodgers in the NLCS.
Happ took Albert Almora’s position as the everyday center fielder this year; last year, Almora hit .298 with an OPS of .782. The Cubs hope the 50-point rise in OPS at the center field position helps turbo-charge their offense for another championship run.
Jon Lester was pitching for Chicago on Thursday. It’s his seventh career Opening Day start and his third in a Cubs uniform.
Lester gave up one run in the bottom of the first inning, so his ERA is triple the “Year of the Pitcher” average with one inning in the books at 9.00.
Miami, which was roundly criticized for gutting the team in the offseason under Derek Jeter’s front office brain trust, is projected to come up far short of its 77-win total in 2017.
Jeter, a Yankee for life, shipped home run bomber Giancarlo Stanton to New York for next to nothing over the winter.
The Marlins shipped out 20.3 wins above replacement from that 77-win team.
Unless the Triple-A minor league squad the Marlins throw out there vastly overperforms, their 57-105 projected record by that logic would be seven wins below the Tigers and Giants, who at 64-98 tied for the worst record in baseball in 2017.
Miami struggled to draw fans last year, drawing only 20,395 fans per game.
If they’re as bad as projected this year then fans, furious at the ownership group, might stay away in droves to the point where the team flirts with their all-time worst attendance of just 10,038 per game in 2002.
Ian Happ and the Cubs, however? They’re off to a flying start.
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