With the Superbowl over, we finally can look forward to baseball season. The MLB season hasn’t started, and with all signs pointing to a inevitable lockout (thanks Dodgers), many baseball fans may be pessimistic. Luckily, Spring Training, Spring Koshien, and best of all, the WBC is coming up, so we’re getting some fun baseball ahead.

Spring Training: Baseball’s back!

With pitchers and catchers reporting as early as February 10th, Spring Training is right ahead of the corner. Most teams have made their FA signings and have a concrete idea of what their team is looking like, so it’ll be interesting to see how things work out. How good is this new signing? Is this kid really the real deal? There are definitely a few interesting storylines going into Spring Training. A few players I’m looking out for as a Jays fan include some of the new signings such as Dylan Cease, Cody Ponce, and Tyler Rodgers, but I’m also interested in Ricky Tiedemann (can he still pitch after elbow surgery?), Arjun Nimmala (our future Bo), and I’m real excited to see what Eloy Jimenez can do. Dude used to rake.

Spring Koshien: There will now be 2 less bunts per game, reducing the amount to 21 bunts per game.

March is approaching, which means Spring Koshien is here! Osaka Toin’s back (Nishitani’s back lmao), so more silly anime songs and having an entire country cheer against a bunch of 17 and 18 year olds. Okiniawa Shogaku’s in it too, after winning last year’s summer Koshien.(kinda controversial apparently.) My Teikyo boys are also back in it, so hopefully they go all the way? Should be a fun tournament. Another thing to note, is that pitchers will no longer hit, and there will be a DH for the first time in Japanese high school ball. Let’s not let this ignore you from the fact that the bats that they use have pop equivalent to a wooden plank.

My early prediction for the final: Yamanashi Gakuin HS (Kanto) beats Osaka Toin (Kinki) in the final. (This prediction will go horribly wrong as both teams will lose in the first round.)

WBC: Please, anyone but the USA.

The WBC is coming up! Will Japan defend their title? Will the DR win with pure swag and pimping homeruns? Or will the US win it (please no) after assembling the baseball equivalent to 92′ US Olympic Basketball Dream Team? I’ll yap about this more in a later article, but I think everyone’s looking forward to this. I feel bad for Puerto Rico, as Lindor and others not being able to play ruins what I was looking forward to to being a fun team. think DR’s rotation isn’t as bad as people think. They have some sneaky good players. And watch out for team Italy. Their rotation is… kind of weak, but they have a fun team. And please, call Taiwan Taiwan. none of this Chinese Taipei bullshit.

Thanks for reading my first article! Let me know what I can improve on! I’m still in school, so pumping out articles that are lengthy is a bit tough, but I’ll do my best!