Opening Weekend always does the same thing. It convinces you baseball is back in the most aggressive way possible, and it makes you feel like you need to keep a diary because there’s no chance you’ll remember half of it by Thursday.
So naturally, Eric starts this episode the most Eric way imaginable: driving back from the woods, listening to the Blue Jays on the radio, sounding like a man who has been personally wronged by the concept of optimism. The Jays have an epic weekend, the vibes are high, and Eric’s immediate response is to remind us the pitching staff is depleted. Fair. But also, mate, try happiness for ten minutes.
That conversation walks us directly into the moment of the weekend, at least from a comedy standpoint: Chris Bassett producing one of the most unathletic plays any of us have seen in a major league game. It was the kind of sequence that makes you realise baseball is the only sport where a professional athlete can look like a bloke who has never thrown anything heavier than a TV remote. Spoon then breaks down Bassett’s throwing form to home plate like he’s doing a mechanics session for a child. Which is harsh, but not entirely undeserved.
From there we got to the new toy everyone’s obsessed with, the ABS review system, and the simple truth is this: it’s already providing content. There was a game where C.B. Bucknor got overturned six times, which is not a sentence you expect to say in April, but here we are. The early lesson is pretty clear. Everyone is still learning how to use challenges properly, and some teams are treating them like infinite cheat codes. They are not. That learning curve is going to stay hilarious for at least a month.
Then we hit the rookie madness. A couple of kids show up, do something loud, and the Rookie of the Year market immediately behaves the way the internet always behaves. Total overreaction, full panic, prices flying all over the shop. Spoon lays out what that actually means if you’re trying to bet these markets sensibly. Basically: yes, the rookies matter, but also it’s one weekend and nobody should be doing victory laps in March.
We kept rolling into the bigger awards markets too, because Opening Weekend does this every year. It doesn’t just give you results, it gives you storylines. We looked at early movement around Cy Young and MVP, and we had to say the quiet part out loud. Mike Trout just reminded everyone that he’s still Mike Trout. One of the best players on the planet. Still. If you had “Trout vintage weekend” on your bingo card, congrats, you’re allowed to be annoying about it.
And then the Murakami conversation. Munetaka Murakami’s start in Chicago is already causing the exact chaos you’d expect, because when a guy like that hits and the deal is team-friendly, you can’t help but start asking the question early. Is he going to be on the trade block later, or is he basically on it now? Is the contract structured in a way that quietly screams “asset”? If he keeps mashing and he can fill a DH spot for a contender, there are going to be a lot of very serious teams making very quiet phone calls. Eric also gives the context you actually want, which is how Tokyo Swallows fans are feeling about it, and how the US reaction can look from the Japanese side.
We wrapped by coming back down to earth with Spoon’s picks for the Tuesday slate in North America, which is Wednesday for us in Australia, because time zones exist to punish baseball fans. Then Spoon tells the story of an all-time heater he had on Australian sport on Monday. The kind of day punters talk about like it’s a myth. He’s been itching for that day for basically his entire betting life, and it was genuinely fun to follow along. We’ll have a proper article up to break that run down, but he gives you the gist and then drops two plays for the Wednesday slate in Australia.
Baseball’s back. The markets are already unhinged. The ABS era is already chaotic. And Eric is still somehow driving out of the woods listening to the radio like it’s 1993 (the last time something interesting happened in Toronto).
Perfect.
