The new campaign brings as a novelty some changes to speed up the games by establishing time for pitchers between pitches and not letting batters leave the batter’s box more than once between pitches (now they could do it as many times as they wanted).
The defending champions Houston Astros, with their stars Alex Bergman, the Venezuelan José Altuve and the Cuban Yordan Alvarez, will face some White Sox, who also have good Latin American stars such as the Cuban catcher Yasmani Grandal, the Venezuelan second baseman Elvis Andrus , also Cubans Yoan Moncada (3B) and Luis Robert (outfielder), as well as Dominican Eloy Jiménez.
The White Sox will use starter Dylan Cease (14-8 and 2.20), while the champions will depend on Dominican Framber Valdez (17-6 and 2.82). The Astros are trying to reach a seventh straight AL Final and become the first team since the 1998-2000 Yankees to win back-to-back World Series crowns.
Another match that generates expectations will be that of the legendary New York Yankees against the San Francisco Giants, in which the ninth New Yorker will be able to show off their star slugger Aaron Judge, the man with the record last year with 62 home runs and whom they convinced to stay with them for nine years and $340 million.
The Yankees will depend on their star Gerritt Cole (13-8 and 3.50), while the ninth Californian will rely on Logan Webb, who finished last season with a record of 15-9 and a 3.48 ERA.
Another attractive meeting will be the one between the Phillies and the Rangers with Aaron Nola (11-13 and 3.25) and the new Jacob deGrom (5-4 and 2.52 ERA), respectively. The deGrom pitcher surprised everyone with his departure from the New York Mets.
On the other hand, the Mets, very reinforced, will send the stellar Max Scherzer (11-5 and 2.29), winner of three Cy Young pitching awards, while the Marlins will use the Dominican Sandy Alcántara (14-9 and 2.28), the recent Cy Young winner last year in the National League.
Another team that starts with the favorite tag is the San Diego Padres, who added Xander Bogaerts from Curaçao and maintains the star trio of Dominicans Fernando Tatis, Juan Soto and Manny Machado, the latter considered by many to be the best third baseman in the industry.