MLB: Four Unexpected Things that we should Expect in 2017
By Jason Reed
The game of baseball is a true art form in many ways. With so much history it could be inferred that everything baseball has to offer has happened. Yet year after year, the MLB surprises us in ways we couldn’t imagine.
Us baseball fans think we know it all, don’t we? Year after year, season and season all of us tend to make predictions. Whether is be predicting the layout of the postseason, or which team will land a coveted free agent, baseball analysis leads to guesses and quirky predictions. With so much history to draw example from you would think that we would be able to anticipate anything that baseball has to offer. However, seemingly every year spectacular things will happen, and catch the entire baseball world by storm.
Sometimes, these surprises are teams being very underwhelming, like this season’s Pittsburgh Pirates. Other times players will break out from seemingly nowhere, or fall off the face of the planet. I’m sure not many people predicted that the Pirates would fare so poorly, or that Andrew McCutchen would have the worst year of his professional career. Sometimes these events occur from bad luck, other times in good luck, and other times they are just things nobody saw coming. I am certain that before 2016 nobody expected Gary Sanchez to put together one of the most historic stretches in MLB history.
Next season there will undoubtedly be more unexpected moments that shy from the normal. This list will be an attempt to prepare the baseball community for events that we otherwise didn’t see coming. While these certainly won’t be the only surprises occurring this season, these four are ones we should expect. With that being said, let’s dive into the 2017 season and take a look at seemingly unexpected things that we should expect for next season.