Opening Day Trippin'
John Granato: Wake up baseball. Your Opening Day sucks
Mar 8, 2018, 1:21 pm
Justin Verlander vs Clayton Kershaw would be a great way to start the season. Houston Astros/Facebook
Last week I had a little Twitter battle with a guy about Astros Opening Day. I think it’s stupid that the Astros are opening the season on the road against a bad Texas Rangers team. I want the World Series champion Astros to play a good team at home to start the season. He said it was a foolish take. I accidentally called him an idiot. Well, maybe not accidentally.
He’s an idiot.
How great would it be to see Verlander vs Sale or Kershaw in game one? And why not? The model is there. Just look at the most popular league in the country and they’ll show you how to do it.
Here’s how the NFL kicked off the last three seasons:
2015 Pittsburgh at New England
2016 Carolina at Denver (Super Bowl rematch)
2017 Kansas City at New England
The Super Bowl champ AT HOME against a quality opponent four days before the rest of the league kicked off. What a novel concept: give your fans something to get excited about and look forward to the first week of the season.
Here’s how the NBA opened their 2017-18 season:
Boston at Cleveland
Houston at Golden State
Kyrie Irving returning to the city he spurned and the West’s two best teams going at it in the champ’s home city. Well done Adam Silver.
So how is baseball opening its 2018 season?
Houston at Texas
NY Yankees at Toronto
Minnesota at Baltimore
Boston at Tampa Bay
Chicago Cubs at Miami
Washington at Cincinnati
San Francisco at LA Dodgers
Cleveland at Seattle
Colorado at Arizona
The only playoff teams facing off in their opening series are the National League wild cards Colorado and Arizona. Otherwise, every playoff team is playing a team that finished last year with a losing record and all but the Dodgers are on the road.
Houston-Texas is a rivalry as is LA and San Fran and Kershaw vs Bumgarner is a nice matchup to kick off the season but any scheduling positive is purely coincidental.
You see, baseball has no way of knowing who or where their champs should play on Opening Day because their schedule comes out in mid-September, weeks before the previous regular season ends.
I’m sure there’s a good reason for that. There’s a lot of travel involved in baseball. Hotels and airlines have to be set up. I get that. But somehow the other sports manage to schedule all their hotels and planes even though their schedules come out well after their seasons end and they have less time to do it.
MLB schedule released: September 12
First pitch: March 29
198 days to get ready
NFL schedule released: April 17-19
Opening kickoff: Sept. 6
About 140 days to get ready
NBA schedule released: August 14
Opening tip: October 17
63 days to get ready
How in the world does basketball do it? Their schedule comes out just two months before their opening games while baseball needs 6 and half months. Granted they play about half as many games as baseball, but they only play one game per city so they have a lot more travel to set up. The Rockets have to fly to 41 road games while the Astros have 26 city flights so this early schedule release is hard to defend.
Regardless, there really is no excuse for this anyway. On September 12th you know who the best teams are and you can guess who will be the best teams next year. Cincinnati? San Francisco? They won 68 and 64 games respectively last year, and they’re playing the two best teams in the National League on Opening Day.
Come on baseball. Wake up. If you wonder why there’s no excitement for your upcoming season it’s because you’re not creating it.
We’ve seen what the NFL does to start the season. It doesn’t really need to, the game sells itself no matter the date.
Basketball is a much better barometer. It wasn’t that long ago that the NBA was looking up at MLB in the popularity standings. Not anymore. Part of that was an aggressive marketing schedule strategy.
Let’s start with Christmas Day. The NBA sets up its Christmas Day television schedule with its best matchups and then fills in the rest of the schedule around it. It owns Christmas day.
What day does MLB own? You’d have to try to own something to actually obtain it. If the 4th of July falls on a Monday or Thursday, chances are your favorite team will have the day off. To me, that’s just ridiculous.
It should be all hands on deck for holidays and it should be a celebration of baseball.
Here’s how Memorial Day and the 4th of July should look:
Indians-Nationals at 11:00 AM Eastern
Cardinals-Cubs at 2:00
Yankees-Red Sox at 5:00
Astros-Dodgers at 8:00
Diamondbacks-Rockies at 11:00
All on ESPN and/or FOX all day long.
Hot dog deals and Coors Light specials at every park. Fireworks after the night games. You will own the day.
Yeah, Memorial Day and the 4th of July are days America loves to barbeque.
I’m not sure if anyone knows this but Christmas used to be a religious day. Now it’s all about presents and the NBA.
If people want to barbeque let them tailgate. Baseball isn’t a tailgating sport you say? Well, change that. Barbeque and baseball. They just might go together.
And good lord baseball when the best teams in the league are playing, schedule them on the weekends. The Astros and Yankees will play seven times this year and not once on a Friday, Saturday or Sunday. Those games should be on FOX on Saturday and ESPN’s Sunday night game of the week.
Come on baseball. We want to consume your product. It’s not that hard.
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Astros keep doing this, and it’s getting hard to ignore
Jun 25, 2025, 10:01 pm
While the rolling Astros have a week of possible World Series preview matchups against the Phillies and Cubs, it’s the Rockets who made the biggest local sports headline with their acquisition of Kevin Durant. What a move! Of course there is risk involved in trading for a guy soon to turn 37 years old and who carries an injury history, but balancing risk vs. reward is a part of the game. This is a fabulous move for the Rockets. It’s understood that there are dissenters to this view. Everyone is entitled to an opinion, including people with the wrong opinion! Let’s dig in.
The Rockets had a wonderful season in winning 52 games before their disappointing first-round playoff loss to the Warriors, but like everyone else in the Western Conference, they were nowhere close to Oklahoma City’s caliber. While they finished second in the West, the Rockets only finished four games ahead of the play-in. That letting the stew simmer with further growth among their young players would yield true championship contention was no given for 2025-26 or beyond.
Kevin Durant is one of the 10 greatest offensive players the NBA has ever seen. Among his current contemporaries only Stephen Curry and Nikola Jokic make that list. For instance, Durant offensively has clearly been better than the late and legendary Kobe Bryant. To view it from a Houston perspective, Durant has been an indisputably greater offensive force than the amazing Hakeem Olajuwon. But this is not a nostalgia trip in which the Rockets are trading for a guy based on what he used to be. While Durant could hit the wall at any point, living in fear that it’s about to happen is no way to live because KD, approaching his 18th NBA season, is still an elite offensive player.
As to the durability concern, Durant played more games (62) this past season than did Fred VanVleet, Jabari Smith, and Tari Eason. The season before he played more games (75) than did VanVleet, Dillon Brooks, and Alperen Sengun. In each of the last two seasons Durant averaged more minutes per game (36.9) than any Rocket. That was stupid and/or desperate of the Suns, the Rockets will be smarter. Not that the workload eroded Durant’s production or efficiency. Over the two seasons he averaged almost 27 points per game while shooting 52 percent from the floor, 42 percent from behind the three-point line, and 85 percent from the free throw line. Awesomeness. The Rockets made the leap to being a very good team despite a frankly crummy half-court offense. The Rockets ranked 21st among the 30 NBA teams in three-point percentage, and dead last in free throw percentage. Amen Thompson has an array of skills and looks poised to be a unique star. Alas, Thompson has no credible jump shot. VanVleet is not a creator, Smith has limited handle. Adding Durant directly addresses the Rockets’ most glaring weakness.
The price the Rockets paid was in the big picture, minimal, unless you think Jalen Green is going to become a bonafide star. Green is still just 23 years old and spectacular athletically, but nothing he has done over four pro seasons suggests he’s on the cusp of greatness. In no season has Green even shot the league average from the floor or from three. His defense has never been as good as it should be given his athleticism. Compared to some other two-guards who made the NBA move one year removed from high school, four seasons into his career Green is waaaaaay behind where Shae Gilgeous-Alexander, Anthony Edwards, and Devin Booker were four seasons in, and now well behind his draft classmate Cade Cunningham. Dillon Brooks was a solid pro in two seasons here and shot a career-best from three in 2024-2025, but he’s being replaced by Kevin Durant! In terms of the draft pick capital sent to Phoenix, five second round picks are essentially meaningless. The Rockets have multiple extra first round picks in the coming years. As for the sole first-rounder dealt away, whichever player the Rockets would have taken 10th Wednesday night would have been rather unlikely to crack the playing rotation.
VanVleet signs extension
Re-signing Fred VanVleet to a two-year, 50 million dollar guarantee is sensible. In a vacuum, VanVleet was substantially overpaid at the over 40 mil he made per season the last two. He’s a middle-of-the-pack starting point guard. But his professionalism and headiness brought major value to the Rockets’ kiddie corps while their payroll was otherwise very low. Ideally, Reed Sheppard makes a leap to look like an NBA lead guard in his second season, after a pretty much zippo of a rookie campaign. Sheppard is supposed to be a lights-out shooter. For the Rockets to max out, they need two sharpshooters on the court to balance Thompson’s presence.
For Astro-centric conversation, join Brandon Strange, Josh Jordan, and me for the Stone Cold ‘Stros podcast which drops each Monday afternoon, with an additional episode now on Thursday. Click here to catch!
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