Welcome to the new year.
Yes, 2021 actually started with last Friday’s exciting screed about Arizona’s retired numbers, but that was a special occasion, a holiday. This is the first full week of the year, a time to take stock of what lies ahead. The perfect opportunity for a planning session, if you will.
Baseball’s Best (and Worst) is in the midst of two series that appear on alternate Fridays. My rundown of the best players of the 21st century (so far) will continue until early March, while my look at the uniforms retired by each franchise has advanced only as far as the Diamondbacks in alphabetical order. It will run until the fall.
And there’s a third series ahead, albeit a much shorter one. I have developed a formula to forecast the results of the 2021 season, based on recent outcomes. I will begin to roll out my predictions next Tuesday, focusing on one division at a time.
You’ll find the relevant schedules below, as well as links to the installments that have already been posted. I also intend to produce dozens of freestanding features in the months to come, but these series will dominate what remains of the 2020-2021 offseason.
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2021 previews
You’ve seen the fine-print warning on every television commercial and print advertisement for a stockbrokerage or a mutual fund: “Past performance is no guarantee of future results.”
It’s something we all know to be true. Yet we’re also aware that stocks with successful records are more likely to do well in the future. They’re not guaranteed to prosper, but the odds are in their favor. Stocks that have struggled, on the other hand, will probably keep struggling.
I have developed a formula that extrapolates past performances to future results. It analyzes the 2018-2020 records of all major-league franchises, then compares them against the three-year marks for every club since the advent of free agency in 1976.
My aim is to identify teams from the past that endured the same three-season arcs being traveled by present-day clubs. I will then use the subsequent records of those old teams to predict the future courses of their 2021 equivalents. I offer no guarantee — there’s that word again — but I think you’ll find the results interesting, if nothing else.
And I promise to come back at the end of the season to match the accuracy of my formula against the predictions made by the experts.
Here’s the division-by-division schedule:
January 12: American League East
January 19: American League Central
January 26: American League West
February 2: National League East
February 9: National League Central
February 16: National League West
Best of the 21st century
I have been issuing my position-by-position rankings of the best players of the 21st century — the first 21 seasons of it, anyway — since mid-October.
If you missed any of the previous installments, here are the links:
October 16: Catchers
October 30: First basemen
November 13: Second basemen
November 27: Shortstops
December 11: Third basemen
December 25: Left fielders
That leaves five positions to be covered, beginning with center fielders this Friday. The series will wrap up just as spring training gets in gear — if, of course, spring training starts on time. Here is what lies ahead:
January 8: Center fielders
January 22: Right fielders
February 5: Designated hitters
February 19: Starting pitchers
March 5: Relief pitchers
Retired numbers
My third and final series is already almost four months old, and it is nowhere near completion. I’m writing about the uniform numbers retired by each franchise, while offering my (modest) suggestions of additional players and managers who deserve similar honors.
I have covered nine of the 30 franchises so far. Here are the links:
September 11: Angels
September 25: Astros
October 9: Athletics
October 23: Blue Jays
November 6: Braves
November 20: Brewers
December 4: Cardinals
December 18: Cubs
January 1: Diamondbacks
I’m proceeding in alphabetical order of team nicknames, as you’ve probably noticed. That means the Los Angeles Dodgers are next up, appearing in the middle of the month. We should be on the cusp of the World Series when the final entry is posted.
This is the remaining schedule:
January 15: Dodgers
January 29: Giants
February 12: Indians
February 26: Mariners
March 12: Marlins
March 26: Mets
April 9: Nationals
April 23: Orioles
May 7: Padres
May 21: Phillies
June 4: Pirates
June 18: Rangers
July 2: Rays
July 16: Red Sox
July 30: Reds
August 13: Rockies
August 27: Royals
September 10: Tigers
September 24: Twins
October 8: White Sox
October 22: Yankees