Over the course of this weekend, almost every team in baseball will have played 54 games of the 2014 schedule. With one-third of the season nearly complete, it’s a perfect time to assess the season thus far.
Since a season-opening tilt between the Dodgers and Diamondbacks in Australia, baseball has been back, offering new narratives and breakout performances on a weekly basis. Since the second week of play, Bleacher Report has been providing weekly analysis, with a combination of short-term reaction and long-term perspective.
When this column series began seven weeks ago, rises from the Milwaukee Brewers, Masahiro Tanaka and Jose Abreu dominated the early-season takeaways. Before long, pitching dominance in Atlanta and Albert Pujols’ return to form headlined the week.
One month ago, Pujols’ 500th homer, Troy Tulowitzki’s special talent and Cliff Lee’s path to Cooperstown took center stage. Four weeks ago, it was time for an appreciation of Oakland’s AL West dominance, Francisco Rodriguez’s revival and Jayson Werth’s value.
Finally, the last few weeks highlighted Detroit’s road to October, the red-hot Giants, Jose Bautista’s talent, the parity evident around the sport and Edwin Encarnacion’s power surge.
Now, with roughly 66 percent of the season to go, it’s time to dissect and chew on two full months of the 2014 season.
Here are the biggest takeaways from the first two months of the 2014 MLB season.