2021 Season Ends Earlier Than it Should Have

I originally started writing something to mark the end of the regular season, but I never completed it.

I then was going to write something about the postseason, which was a rather strange one, but then that got away from me, too.

In any case, this is what I started writing on October 5, 2021

I don't know how to start talking about this season, and not just due to the fact that I didn't write very much about baseball this year. It was also just an odd season.

It was a season of such high standards and then also such lows that and such frustrations that I don't even know how to contextualize it.

Before the season, most analysts and fans probably assumed that 91 wins would be easily enough to get into the playoffs.

The Blue Jays got the 91 wins, the theoretical magic number to October baseball, but was actually only good enough for fourth place in the AL East. Yes, Tampa Bay, Boston, New York, and Toronto finished with over 90 wins.

The remnants of COVID-19 hung over the season, the Red Sox and their COVID-denying, vaccine refusing players; the Blue Jays spending a portion of their season in Dunedin and Buffalo.

Looking at this season, I'm thinking often of the 2015 season which was obviously the biggest, most dazzling season of my blogging career. And I find it really interesting that that was a season that had 91 wins, and an MVP candidate (actual winner Josh Donaldson) and a top finisher for the Cy Young (David Price), and this one had two potential MVP candidates in Vlad Jr. and Marcus Semien, and a top finisher (and likely winner) for Cy Young in Robbie Ray.

This season was a lot of fun. Vladimir Guerrero Jr. put up MVP numbers; Marcus Semien and Robbie Ray had a career years; George Springer, when healthy, was exactly as advertised; Teoscar Hernandez mashed; Alek Manoah and Bo Bichette were dazzling.

I just can’t shake the feeling that this was a lost season.