Predictions about Baseball’s FUTURE

Some predictions need neither timelines or explanations. These are those predictions:

• A catcher’s defensive UZR will be 80% composed of pitch-framing abilities.

• Pitchers will have to wear small, hard helmets to protect themselves from line drives.

• The MLB league office, tired of the Tampa Bay Rays pitching two no-hitters per week while averaging 10 called strikeouts per game, will install robot umpires, effectively outlawing pitch framing. Human umpires will be allowed to and then eventually required to tweet about the game whenever the bases are empty. #umptweets

• Both leagues will have a DH. Sports writers will complain at first about the soiled sanctity of baseball, until they are informed of the segregation, drug abuse (both steroids and its predecessors), gambling, cheating, and sexism that composes the sport’s history, and they will eventually be told to shut up.

• Official scorers will replace the error’s shorthand, “E,” with a more universal “LOL.”

• A Mr. J. West will be elected League Commissioner for Life and then will promptly eject his advisers as he becomes ever increasingly paranoid and power-corrupted.

• Squeeze bunting will become one of the most common and important facets of the game.

• Each team will have their own television network, and fans can pay a discounted online-only subscription fee to watch every non-ESPN/FOX game online.

• Pitchers will average 100 mph on their fastballs. Color analysts will diatribe about how only a few hitters could pitch at those speeds “back in [their] day.”

• FOX executives will wonder for years why baseball fans hate them, and they will never get it. Eventually, they will pretend they get it and try to laugh it off with the fans, making loud jokes like, “Hey, don’t mess with me or I will force you to watch the Yankees and Red Sox play even though you’re a Braves fan! HAHAHA!”

• MLB salaries will increase to the point that the NFL is forced to restructure their salary cap in order to allow larger contracts and guaranteed salaries.

• There will be an international draft, and the subsequent vortex of international talent will destroy every major baseball league outside of the MLB and NPB.

• Mark McGuire will enter the Hall of Fame.

• Sammy Sosa will not.

• The term “twirl” will make a massive comeback, almost entirely replacing the term “pitch.”

• The first MLB player to later become the President of the United States will be a starting pitcher — but not a Hall of Fame quality pitcher. His one term in office will be troublesome, but public perception of him will remain strong despite it.

• The MLB Robot Umpires will revolt, but in a more litigious way than was widely anticipated.

• Tobacco will be universally banned from all levels and functions of the MLB. The ban will be lifted when tobacco is discovered to cure a future disease known commonly as Future Disease.

• Fans will eventually generate Japanese-style or soccer-style fan sections, complete with singing, chanting, and organized dance type stuff, such as this:

• Pitchers who walk batters on four straight pitches will be subject to a breathalyzer test on the mound.

• Every stadium except Fenway Park, Wrigley Field, and Yankee Stadium VII will be a convertible dome. Fans will learn to hate those three stadiums as summer temperatures begin to average 120 degrees.