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10 burning questions as ball drops on ’17
- Updated: January 1, 2017
The year 2017 will be a time to recognize important anniversaries in Major League Baseball: 90 years since one of the best teams of all-time (1927 Yankees); 70 since Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier; 50 since the “Impossible Dream” in Boston; 40 since “Reggie! Reggie! Reggie!”; 30 since Minnesota fans first tasted a World Series title; and 25 since Canada’s first Fall Classic championship. But looking back is the easy part. Looking ahead is quite another thing.
We know there will be another World Baseball Classic, a 162-game regular season ending with 15 simultaneous games on a Sunday in October and an All-Star Game presented by MasterCard in Miami that has nothing to do with home-field advantage in the 113th World Series. Beyond that, it’s anyone’s guess. Here are at least 10 questions facing baseball as fans impatiently await the arrival of pitchers and catchers:
1. Will the Cubs end MLB’s record drought? Yes, you read that right. Now that they have ended their own epic, 108-year odyssey without a title, it’s time to see if the Cubs can prevent MLB from extending its own record drought to 17 consecutive years without a repeat champion. Something always goes wrong for a reigning champ (same with NHL and NFL), mainly because the modern 10-team postseason is a minefield and rosters change so rapidly. But there are a few reasons why the Cubs would seem better suited to repeat than any club since that last Yankees title run in 1998-2000.
During the current stretch, only the 2009 Yankees won as many games as the ’16 Cubs — 103 in the regular season and 114 overall for both. Chicago’s also loaded with youth, like reigning National League MVP Award winner Kris Bryant and NL Cy Young Award finalist Kyle Hendricks, and Kyle Schwarber is healthy. Aroldis Chapman is out, but Wade Davis is in. And the Cubs will not have to rely on their league winning the All-Star Game to have home-field advantage, should they return to the Fall Classic. That rule, dating back to 2003, is gone via the new Collective Bargaining Agreement, with home-field instead going to the World Series club with the better regular-season record.
2. What will Mike Trout do for his next act? If you go by WAR7 — the sum of the seven-best WAR seasons for a player — the only center fielders ahead of arguably MLB’s best player are these baseball gods: Willie Mays (73.7), Ty Cobb (69.0), Mickey Mantle (64.7), Tris Speaker (62.1), Ken Griffey Jr. (53.9), Joe DiMaggio (51.0) and Duke Snider (50.0). Trout follows them at 48.5, and he has just 5.070 years of service time. In his five full seasons, he has been a top-two American League MVP Award finalist each year, and he won the award for the second time in 2016. His runs, steals, walks and on-base percentage were way up last season; his homers were down from the previous season (41 to 29), but his run production was up (90 to 100 RBIs). What does he do next? And can the Angels help him get back to the postseason for the first time since …
