The 2026 MLB Season Begins

The new 2026 Major League Baseball season is now in its first full week.

I was sorry Milwaukee Brewers, which has been in only one World Series, as the American League pennant winners for 1982, did not make it into the 2025 World Series. Since its move to the National League, with expansion in 1998, it has not won any pennants in the NL.

I was bitterly disappointed in the 2025 Detroit Tigers. They won 59 of 93 games (.634) and, after receiving no meaningful Trade Deadline day players upgrades, won 28 of the season’s remaining 69 games (.406) and even blew their AL Central division. They eked out a wild card slot.

I am a lifelong resident of Michigan. I have just one area MLB home team. The American League Detroit Tigers—the World Series winning team in 1935, 1945, 1968, and 1984—are it.

I am not a sports fan, in general, so I have not been following since my childhood. But I would like to see my area National Football League team, Detroit Lions, finally in the Super Bowl. (They are an embarrassment given the franchise was established all the way back in 1930 and is one of just four NFL a teams to have never played in one given Super Bowl. The first Super Bowl, won by Green Bay Packers, was in 1967.) I would like the MLB Detroit Tigers to win a fifth World Series while I am still alive. (I turn 55 in August.)

I don’t think my position is unique. The past World Series champs with the longest drought is Cleveland Indians (I hate their changed name Guardians). That was in 1948. Since 1979 there are teams forty or more years also in a drought: Pittsburgh Pirates (1979), Baltimore Orioles (1983), Detroit Tigers (1984), and New York Mets (1986). I can also extend sympathy to Oakland (currently in Sacramento) Athletics (1989), Cincinnati Reds (1990), and Minnesota Twins (1991). Of all these teams, only Detroit Tigers and New York Mets have played in any Fall Classics since their last World Series championships.

An interesting understanding of the business are with these following videos. In fact: They motivate me to not give too much of my personal time to live-viewing MLB games here in 2026.

The first video is from a radio station in Detroit. Published to YouTube on October 15, 2024, just after that year’s Detroit Tigers were done with their postseason, “The Valenti Show with Rico” co-host Mike Valenti offered up some historic statistics which should not be ignored.

The second video is from “More Perfect Union.” It was published March 25, 2026. It gives focus to how Major League Baseball became changed with the use of, and reliance on, data. (And there is even more to the business model.) This was a change which catapulted the 2004 Boston Red Sox to their first World Series title since 1918.

I will post these videos below.