Marty’s musings: CPBL is the only game in town

Professional baseball started a world away.

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Welcome to ‘Marty’s Musings’, my weekly column of numbers summarizing the happenings in the baseball world. I am your guide for taking an analytic look at the news and notes throughout the game, and highlighting this week’s key pitching matchups.

This week we continue to speculate on when games will resume, but the reality is we do not know anything about the timeline for certain. Following last weeks’ service-time announcement, MLB cleared up details surrounding year-long suspensions, and the White Sox mourn a long-time broadcaster.

News & Notes

1 - Inning it took for professional baseball’s first home run of 2020. Kai-Wen Cheng of the CPBL Uni-Lions cracked the dinger among empty stands in the CPBL opener. In any case, the robot fans seemed to enjoy themselves.

8 - Teams that veteran journeyman Mark Reynolds played for in his 12-year career in MLB. Reynolds announced his retirement over the weekend. In sabermetric circles, Reynolds may be best-known for this Sam Miller 2013 Baseball Prospectus post.

30 - Teams that may end up with a designated hitter in a potential 2020 season. With a proposal out there that MLB is considering radical alignment changes for a shortened season, the DH spot would be for all teams, and divisions and leagues would be removed for one season.

4 - Percent increase in value for all MLB teams that Forbes announced in it’s annual team valuations report. Unsurprisingly, the Yankees lead the pack, at an estimated $5 billion valuation. The graph points out a staggering figure of return for the Steinbrenner family, which paid $8 million to purchase the team from CBS in 1973.

??? - Days until Opening Day.