I'm going to second the Red Sox-Yankees brawl with McCann as a focal point. Pierzynski busts McCann right in the mouth, knocking out a tooth. Pierzynski gets a 10 game suspension.
I also foresee a lot of injuries to high profile pitchers this season.
David Price struggles all season and puts up a 9-14 record with a 4.59 ERA. Matt Moore has a terrific April, but winds up getting shutdown and on June 12th it's announced he needs Tommy John surgery. The Rays float around .500 for most of the year as Joe Maddon tries desperately to right the ship, but it eventually fall apart in mid-August, and the Rays wind up winning 75 games.
The Yankees once again struggle with injuries to Sabathia, who misses three months with a leg injury, Jeter, Teixeira and Ellsbury, who deals with nagging Achilles problems all season. Brett Gardner turns into a pumpkin, and Robertson has a nightmare season. The Yankee bullpen winds up being the worst in the American League.
Baltimore finishes with an 83-79 record, good enough for second place, but they're basically out of the playoff picture on September 1st.
Clayton Kershaw misses most of the season with a shoulder injury, and winds up needing rotator cuff surgery. He's never the same again.
Carl Crawford, despite being uninjured all season, puts up a .244/.299/.367/.666 season. He only steals 4 bases, and is caught stealing 7 times. On September 17th, he hits home run #3 of the season, a walk off, and puts on quite the display rounding the bases. Cause for celebration? The Dodger keeps their playoff hope alive, until they are eliminated the next day. Once the Dodgers are eliminated, Adrian Gonzalez lauds the LA fans for being cool with it. "The Boston fans would never tolerate a $220 million team missing the playoffs."
The Red Sox, Royals, Nationals and Giants all win their division by 7 games or more.
The city of Miami sues the Marlins for some sort of fraud that comes out about the stadium deal.
A sinkhole causes irreparable damage to the visiting clubhouse at the Oakland Colosseum. No one is hurt. After several games in which teams share the same clubhouse, the A's and Giants reach an agreement to share AT&T Ballpark until the A's can find a new home.
Seven games across MLB are postponed due to snow in April.
Every SoSH game thread in which Jerry Remy is on NESN, has at least three posts referencing something Remy said that just seemed horribly awkward. Such as "can I take a stab at it?" referring to the Aflac trivia question... or mentioning the joys of fatherhood after a player's wife gives birth. And so on...
MLB sees it's first openly gay player. There are two results: (1) the player who comes out is lauded for his courage, and (2) a bunch of jokes about "does this pave the way for A-Rod?" appear on Twitter, etc... A-Rod responds in a South Park/Kayne West-esque fashion, and makes some borderline homophobic denials, adding the words "bigot" and "homophobe" to a resume that's already tarnished with words like "cheater", "liar" and "drug user". The Yankees, unable to void his contract, just say "screw it" and release him outright.
At some point during the season, either John Lackey or Jake Peavy strikes out Brian McCann to get out of a bases loaded jam and preserve a 3-2 lead. As the pitcher walks from the mound with a fist pump and a "FUCK YEAH", Brian McCann takes exception, and follows the pitcher halfway back to the Red Sox dugout, barking at him. This, shockingly, isn't even the aforementioned brawl game. After the game, Giradi says "that's not the way we handle ourselves, and I think Brian knows that too".
The Yankees sign Stephen Drew the day after the draft, avoiding draft compensation for the Red Sox. Larry Lucchino hints at filing a grievance, saying it's clear the deal was agreed upon before the deadline, and the Yankees intentionally circumvented the CBA. All sorts of speculation over what sort of compensation the Red Sox might get, but they never actually pursue anything.
As the season winds down, several "Drew-esque" players let it leak they'd "absolutely" accept a qualifying offer from their current team. This is a ploy to get teams to not offer them a qualifying offer.
