By Josh:
I know it has been all of two days since the World Series ended but all that means to me is that I’ve gone two days without checking scores for games and watching highlights, and I wont be able to do this again for like four months.
It’s sad and depressing I know.
Now baseball fans are stuck pretending like we care about the NBA, which no one actually cares about. Our nights are consumed with watching cable TV shows because there aren’t any games on to watch. Now I know some of you may say there is football but other than Saturdays and Sundays the rest of the week either has no game or a single game on in the evening. Nothing like the awesomeness of having 15 games every day.
The one good thing about the end of the baseball season is the start of the Hot Stove season. Every team is 0-0 and has a real shot at being a playoff contender next season, well except for the Phillies and Astros.
We now get to watch and see where prize free agents like Max Scherzer, Jon Lester, Pablo Sandoval, and Hanley Ramirez go.
We get to sit back and watch GM’s begin to work their magic to make a trade that will boost their 2015 season or build towards the future.
Here are some keys for the off season that we should all keep track of.
1) Now that it appears Maddon is with the Cubs do they make room for their young talent to come up and show what they can do or do they keep them down and fill gaps with mediocre veterans.
2) What happens in the AL West. Do the Mariners continue to build around their core group to be a playoff team, do the Rangers rebound after their tumble to last place, are the A’s able to keep enough talent to compete again and what do the Angels do to keep control of the West?
3) What direction do the Dodgers go now? They have the money, they have the talent but yet they can’t get to the World Series.
4) With a few solid pitchers on the free agent market it is going to be interesting to see who starts the domino effect. Does Lester return to Boston, did James Shields hurt his value this post season, and who is going to be the sleeper this year on the pitching market?
5) What in the world are the Yankees going to do. Jeter is done, ARod is coming back and are their any free agents really excited to go to New York?