Today should be a national holiday. Pitchers and catchers reported for Spring Training.

Cue the celebration!

Today is a very exciting day for baseball fans all over. It’s a day of what some would call new beginnings. I can almost smell the fresh-cut grass and the dirt.

But with these beginnings, there’s a little bit of looking back mixed in. Obviously, the Padres didn’t have the greatest ending to their season (do they ever?). There were some positives, but we’re going into this season with a lot of question marks. Who’s going to be in our starting rotation? Who’s going to catch? Are we going to be able to produce offensively? Will the new fences help us out? And of course, the biggest question of all, will we make it to the playoffs?

In October of last year, Bloomberg published an article reporting the odds of MLB teams getting to the World Series. The Detroit Tigers have the closest odds with a 7-1 chance. The Yankees are right behind them with an 8-1 chance. World Series Champion Giants are at 10-1.  What about the Padres you might ask with a grimace on your face because you know it must be pretty bad?

61-1.

Honestly, I’m not too upset about this number for multiple reasons. First, we aren’t the Houston Astros at 150-1. Second, I remember years when the Padres were 100-1. Third, and most importantly, the season hasn’t started. There has not been one game, and whoever came up with these numbers think they can predict how the season is going to go. The entire 162-game, injury-filled, surprise-filled, crazy, crazy season is condensed into those little numbers and called a prediction. I don’t buy this or any other prediction of how the season is going to go because WE DON’T KNOW. We can’t know. We can’t predict every tiny factor that goes into the making or breaking of a season.

So take that 61-1. Maybe the Padres will prove that number wrong. Maybe they won’t. It’s all unknown. And that’s part of the magic of the first day of Spring Training.