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2025 Baseball Predictions (2025)

The Dodgers finally did it last season. They beat the Yankees and won the World Series. Along the way the world forgot Shohei Ohtani was EVER an Angel(really – he played there for 6 seasons and won 2 MVP Awards!) and that Freddie Freeman was once a beloved Atlanta Brave where he won an MVP and a World Series. This will likely come up in 12 years or so when his son Charlie gets drafted by the…

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The Two Teams Thing

Today the Atlanta Braves – my longtime favorite team – made the playoffs for the 7th straight season. For the first time in that span, they had to utilize the wild card. They are in after winning Game 2 of a doubleheader with the New York Mets. It was exciting. It felt like a consolation prize after losing an absolute classic of a baseball game in Game 1. That made me want to bring back the…

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2024 MLB Season Predictions (Daryll)

MLB Predictions 2024 2023 was a very strange baseball season. The Braves steamrolled the entire league all season long. Set all of kinds of records, had great and healthy starting pitching…then lost in the Division Series to the Phillies(again). The Dodgers had a great record all year and won their division with ease, then also lost in the Division Series. The Orioles were really good all season…

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Baseball Predictions 2023 (Daryll)

It’s been a while since I’ve dusted off the keyboard for DoubleDay Double Talk. I know that in part because my login email address is from an employer I haven’t worked for 2 years. I’ve also adopted my daughter and finished an MBA, which could have played another part. Giuseppe is in college now at my alma mater UC San Diego – which apparently has a Target on campus now and a Costco Club whose…

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2022 MLB Season Predictions (Daryll)

2022 MLB Season Predictions (Daryll)

The Braves are World Champions. That sounds nice, doesn’t it? As a lifelong Braves fan, it certainly does to me. I was fortunate enough to GO to Game 4 of the World Series last year, a good one that the Braves came out on top thanks to back-to-back home runs by Dansby Swanson and Jorge Soler, followed the next frame with a leaping grab by Eddie Rosario. Then came the off-season. A series of big…

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The 2021 Braves: How Blue Chips and Cast-Offs Came Together to Win the NL East

The 2021 Braves: How Blue Chips and Cast-Offs Came Together to Win the NL East

After their third consecutive NL East Title In 2020, the Atlanta Braves came within 1 win of making it to the World Series. Certainly, getting to a 3-1 advantage over the vaunted Dodgers was a bit of a surprise, but they were there. Then, they weren’t. On April 1st of 2021, the New York Mets had an 82% chance to make the playoffs and 60% chance to win the NL East. The Braves were at 60% and 28%…

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Sean Kazmar Jr: Professional Baseball Player

Sean Kazmar Jr: Professional Baseball Player

WEST PALM BEACH, FL – MARCH 13: Sean Kazmar Jr. #78 of the Atlanta Braves in action against the Washington Nationals during a spring training baseball game at Fitteam Ballpark of the Palm Beaches on March 13, 2019 in West Palm Beach, Florida. The Nationals defeated the Braves 8-4. (Photo by Rich Schultz/Getty Images) “The best 48 days of my life.” – Sean Kazmar, Jr Nearing the end of his 5th…

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The Rise of MVFree! (Daryll - obviously)

The Rise of MVFree! (Daryll – obviously)

In many ways the career of Atlanta Braves first baseman Freddie Freeman is one of patience, trust, and a belief in himself and those he surrounds himself with.

Freddie went to high school in Southern California and it was clear he was very good at baseball. Perfectgame.org had this to say about the tall first baseman “Freeman is one of the top pure hitters in the ’07 high school class and was…

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Padres Trade Deadline A Long Time Coming

Padres Trade Deadline A Long Time Coming

There isn’t much about 2020 that means what it would mean any other year. Where birthday’s normally might be when you have a large BBQ in the backyard, now you drive to a handful of different friends houses and hang out in the driveway. Graduation ceremony? Out. Big wedding with dancing and a large cake? Nope. We did eventually get a baseball season, albeit just 60 games or 37% of a normal season…

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BLM-MLB (Daryll)

As 2020 continues to be one of the more externally challenging years in recent memory, it has also brought about a moment for our society to take a step back in activity and ask questions fundamental to our society’s past, present, and future. I wanted to address the issue of race through the language I do know best: baseball.

I am a white, able-bodied, cis-gendered, heterosexual dual-parented…

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If 2020 Was a Baseball Game...(Daryll)

If 2020 Was a Baseball Game…(Daryll)

If 2020 was a baseball game, we would be in the middle of a big fat rain delay.

Not the fun kind of rain delay either. Sometimes during rain delays where it’s light and some players decide to slide across the tarp. Or when jousting tournaments start up amongst teammates.

No, 2020 is more like the rain delay where it’s in the top of the 5th inning with 2 outs and the home team is down 11-1. The…

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If 2020 is a Lost Season, the Team That Benefits the Most is...(Daryll)

If 2020 is a Lost Season, the Team That Benefits the Most is…(Daryll)

The world at large and the sporting world continues to understand what constitutes the new normal in the midst of a completely unknown crisis with the Coronavirus pandemic.

At this point, it seems likely that the baseball season will be severely disrupted if not altogether canceled. At the very lease it could be the most games lost in MLB history as right now June is being talked about as the…

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MLB Suspends Operations (Daryll)

Note: Opinions expressed do not reflect the collective thoughts and opinions of DoubleDay Double Talk.

March 13th, 2020

These are strange times. The Coronavirus/COVID-19, which has been spreading throughout the world since late last year has now come to the US and having major effects in our everyday lives. Many of us didn’t know what to make of it as news began trickling in and were dismissing…

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The Impact of Cheating (Daryll)

The Impact of Cheating (Daryll)

Sport at it’s purest is a reflection of humanity in a way that makes it easier to digest our own lives. In our minds, we often equate this idea of “purity” to mean best. We cheer for the underdog story, the player who overcame tremendous adversity, and the great guy you can’t help but cheer for. Yet sport does not discriminate the traits it chooses to represent and a pure representation of…

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Baseball on the Brain (Daryll)

Baseball on the Brain (Daryll)

We have just a little over 74 daysuntil Opening Day 2020. It has been a pretty good off-season for baseball, with the biggest names going quick unlike last winter, when last year we had to wait until February 21st and February 28th respectively to see Manny Machado and Bryce Harper sign with new teams. Already this season we’ve seen Gerrit Cole head to the Yankees, Anthony Rendon head to Anaheim,…

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Winning At All Costs: The Houston Astros Story (Daryll)

Winning At All Costs: The Houston Astros Story (Daryll)

The path to good people doing very bad things is rarely a straight downward line. At one point or another they start slowly eroding their sense of morality by making one step here, another step there, slightly off course.

On television a few years back we saw this journey in Walter White in the show Breaking Bad. He started as a high school science teacher diagnosed with cancer and needing…

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What Drive and Driveline Sports Have In Common (Daryll)

What Drive and Driveline Sports Have In Common (Daryll)

Over this past week of travel for work, I finished up two books that at first glance are in the exact opposite veins: Drive by Daniel Pink, and The MVP Machine by Travis Sawchik and Ben Lindbergh. Yet both of these books hit on an essence of life that I feel is summed up well by this quote from Pink:

“Human beings have an innate inner drive to be autonomous, self-determined, and connected to one…