Yesterday was the 94th birthday for the best baseball player I have ever seen, Mr. Willie Mays. It was the first one he hasn’t been present for, as Willie died last June. The Boston ivy on the brick walls at Wrigley Field in Chicago has finally shown its green leaves so the new season is truly under way. Mays’ old team, the Giants, celebrated with nine runs in the eleventh inning to beat the Cubs, 14-5. It was a wacky game in what has been a rather wacky start to the 2025 season.

Questions abound after the first few weeks of the season. For instance, the American League has only nine hitters batting over .300 and the National League has but eight. That’s one thing, but what about all those batters who are batting under .200? Checking the box scores of the games played May 3, 28 teams had a total of 57 regular players under what has been called the Mendoza line (.200). St. Louis and the New York Mets did not play that day so I added their records from the next day that made it all 30 teams combined for 58 sub .200 hitters. The Cleveland Guardians led the majors with six. Colorado and San Francisco each had four. Three teams, San Diego, Atlanta and Sacrovegas had no starters batting under .200. These statistics lead to two questions. First, while 35 games or so does represent a small sample size of around 125 at bats for most of these players, what the hell is making it so hard to attain even a lousy percentage of success? Second, how do we explain Aaron Judge and his .414 average after 35 games? Is he super human?

For perspective, consider that my research shows a total of 11 batters in the major leagues in 2024 who made at least 300 plate appearances had batting averages under .200. The aforementioned Mendoza line has been anecdotally attributed to Reggie Jackson referring to Mario Mendoza, who played infield for nine seasons for the Pirates, Mariners, and Rangers and had a career batting average of .215, which was, of course, higher than the Mendoza line. I’m certain that someone will let me know if I got that wrong.

Another question is, would Major League Baseball ever consider relegation for teams like Colorado (6-28) or the Chicago White Sox (10-25). The English Premiere League of futbol has a system that relegates bottom finishing teams to what we would call minor leagues and replace them with teams that did the best in the “lower” leagues. This would provide incentive for team owners to perhaps put forth better efforts to give their followers some expectation that competitive effort would be forthcoming. A yearly flush might be a little too demanding and confusing, but maybe a five year plan would work.

With difficult economic times likely on the way all over North and South Trumptesla Land, it may be that the use of minor league parks, as currently done in Sacramento and Tampa Bay, will become the wave of the future. Attendance capacities of 10 to 15 thousand would scale everything down risk wise for owners and make television income even more important. Robot umpiring with AI assistance could also help the bottom line and expensive announcing crews might eventually be replaced by AI sound effects. Who knows what lies ahead?

Here is hoping that some of the early features of the 2025 season can persist:, the The bright , shiny, new Cubs with Pete Crow-Armstrong, Kyle Tucker, and Michael Busch making life interesting for their fans, the surging New York Mets and Detroit Tigers looking strong, the suddenly dangerous San Francisco Giants and–can it be?–the first place Seattle Mariners. It’s being a bit wacky, but wacky can be fun.