What you should know for the 2021 Major League Baseball season

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Opening day is almost here

The 2021 Major League Baseball season begins Thursday. All 30 teams are in action, starting with the Blue Jays visiting the Yankees at 1:05 p.m. ET. Here are some big-picture things to know for the new season:

Things are getting back to normal (mostly).

Last year, the regular season didn't start until late July, teams played only 60 games and long-distance travel was cut out. Now it's back to the standard 162 games against the customary range of opponents. After a season played mostly in empty ballparks, every team is allowing at least some fans into its stadium right away. Between 20-30 per cent of capacity is the most common, but the Texas Rangers are permitting a sell-out crowd of 40,518 for their home opener April 5 vs. Toronto.

The Blue Jays are allowing 1,275 fans (15 per cent of capacity) at their spring-training stadium in Dunedin, Fla., where they'll play their home games for the foreseeable future. If Canada's travel restrictions soften, the Jays could return to Toronto. If not, they may relocate to Buffalo in a couple of months when it gets too hot and humid in Florida.

The post-season format is still not set in stone. It will likely revert back to the pre-2020 system that sees five teams qualify in each league — the three division winners, plus two wild cards who square off in a one-game playoff to decide who joins them. MLB is still hoping to strike a deal with the players' union for an expanded post-season — perhaps as big as last year's 16-team field — but time is running out.

The universal designated hitter is gone (for now) after one year, so pitchers will be forced to hit in National League parks. Other 2020 rule changes are staying, though: teams start with a runner on second base in extra innings, pitchers must face a minimum of three batters or pitch to the end of the half inning, and doubleheaders will feature seven-inning games.

The Dodgers are still the team to beat.

Now that their painful championship drought is over, we can unequivocally celebrate them as the best franchise in baseball at the moment. L.A. has won eight straight NL West titles, three of the last four NL pennants and, of course, last year's World Series, when they beat Tampa Bay to end a 32-year wait. The Dodgers won 71.7 per cent of their regular-season games in 2020 — among the best rates of all time.

Even scarier for the rest of baseball, the Dodgers seem very determined to win the first back-to-back championships in franchise history. They dropped $102 million US over three years on Trevor Bauer, adding the reigning NL Cy Young winner to a deep pitching rotation that already featured a hall-of-fame-calibre ace in Clayton Kershaw. L.A.'s batting lineup is terrifying too: outfielders Mookie Betts and Cody Bellinger are recent league MVPs, shortstop Corey Seager is a threat to join them after winning the World Series MVP, and they're surrounded by talented hitters up and down the order.

L.A.'s biggest threat is only a couple of hours down the interstate.

After five consecutive years of finishing no better than fourth in the NL West, San Diego posted the third-best record in all of baseball in 2020 and made the playoffs for the first time since 2006. The trip ended with a sweep by the Dodgers in the second round, but the Padres could give their division rivals a run for their money this season.

Like L.A. with the Bauer signing, San Diego went all-in by trading for a pair of ace-calibre pitchers in Yu Darvish (the NL Cy Young runner-up last year with the Cubs) and Blake Snell (the 2018 AL Cy Young winner with Tampa Bay). The Padres' offence is anchored by two of the most exciting players in baseball: 28-year-old third baseman Manny Machado and 22-year-old shortstop Fernando Tatis Jr. The finished third and fourth in NL MVP voting last year, respectively.

The other really interesting team in the NL is the New York Mets. They tied for last in the East in 2020, but the bungling Wilpon family finally sold the team to billionaire hedge-fund guy Steve Cohen. The richest owner in baseball (by a lot) showed right away that he's capable of unlocking the Mets' big-market potential, green-lighting a blockbuster trade with Cleveland that brought star shortstop Francisco Lindor and high-end pitcher Carlos Carrasco to New York. Add them to two-time Cy Young winner Jacob deGrom and a solid everyday lineup, and the Mets are suddenly co-favourites with Atlanta to win the division.

There will probably be a new AL pennant winner.

Underestimate the Rays at your own risk. They seem to overachieve every year because their front office is the sharpest in the game and it's always finding some new edge to exploit. They also have 2020 playoff sensation Randy Arozarena for a full year, and Brandon Lowe is a rising star at second base. Plus, knowing the Rays, they'll probably unearth some more great players you've never heard of. But losing Snell hurts, and some of the big projection models have Tampa in a dogfight with Toronto (and even Boston) for second in the AL East — well behind New York.

The Yankees are favoured to reach the World Series for the first time in 12 years, but that could depend on the health of massive sluggers Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton, who always seem to be hurt. New York also has the 2020 MLB leaders in batting average (DJ LeMahieu) and home runs (Luke Voit), and a bona fide ace in Gerrit Cole.

The Blue Jays are a trendy pick to contend.

They have at least three ingredients of a classic sleeper: surprise playoff appearance last year, promising young core, splashy off-season moves. Specifically, the Jays signed slugging centre-fielder George Springer to the richest contract in team history and added 2019 MVP candidate Marcus Semien as their new second baseman. If Bo Bichette, Cavan Biggio and, especially, Vladimir Guerrero Jr., can take another step forward, Toronto has a good chance to return to the playoffs. A division title seems like a stretch, so the Jays will probably have to battle for a wild card. We'll have a more detailed look at the team in tomorrow's newsletter.

Quickly...

Bianca Andreescu got her biggest win since her U.S. Open title. Last night's three-set victory over Garbine Muguruza to reach the quarter-finals at the Miami Open was a major milestone in Andreescu's comeback from the long absence triggered by her knee injury in October 2019. Miami is a WTA 1000 event. The last time Andreescu made it this far at a tournament of this calibre or better was the 2019 China Open — a few weeks after her historic U.S. Open title. She had nothing to prove in China, where she lost to Naomi Osaka in the quarters. This time, Andreescu was playing in just her third tournament in 17 months and the betting odds implied she had just a 1 in 3 chance of beating Muguruza, who's ranked 13th in the world. Andreescu's next opponent is 58th-ranked Sara Sorribes Tormo of Spain, who she's favoured to defeat.

The Canadian men's soccer team has a long way to go. After pounding the overmatched Cayman Islands 11-0 last night, Canada sits at 2-0-0 with a 16-1 aggregate score in the first round of regional qualifying for the 2022 World Cup. Good stuff, but remember that Canada still has to play at least 18 more matches to make it to Qatar. Also remember that Canada is ranked 73rd in the world and so far has faced the No. 193 team (Cayman Islands) and the No. 169 (Bermuda). The final two matches of this round (in early June) are against two more minnows — No. 200 Aruba and No. 141 Suriname. Canada will probably dispatch them to win the group and advance to the next round. That's when the real tests should begin. Canada's likely second-round opponent is Haiti, ranked 84th. The winner of that home-and-home matchup moves on to a final group that will include Mexico, the United States, Costa Rica, Jamaica and Honduras — the top five teams in the region.

The NFL is moving to a 17-game season. Owners officially approved the one-game expansion, which was agreed to by the players in the latest collective bargaining agreement. The pre-season will be cut from four games to three. The regular season still begins the Thursday after Labour Day, but it will end a week later than before. That pushes the Super Bowl back a week, to Feb. 13. Teams still have one bye week, and the conferences will alternate annually between eight and nine home games.

And finally...

The Sabres hit a new new low. Every game seems to bring a fresh humiliation for the NHL's worst team. Last night, it seemed like Buffalo might get its first win in five weeks when it took a 3-0 lead into the third period vs. Philly. But the Sabres blew it and lost in OT, suffering their 18th straight defeat. This should have broken the all-time record for consecutive losses in a single season, but the voodoo-math NHL counts it as a "winless" streak because three of the games went to either overtime or a shootout and thus earned the Sabres one point — equivalent to a tie in previous eras. The longest winless streak in one season is 30, by the 1980-81 Winnipeg Jets.

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