Mike Trout is still the Game’s Greatest, and other Opening Day Scribbles

Mike Trout is the best player on the planet, and he’s doing everything in his power to prove that he’s maybe the best of my lifetime. I made sure I didn’t miss his first at-bat of the season against Felix Hernandez, remembering well what he did one year ago to him on Opening Day.

Trout didn’t disappoint. He had an absolutely incredible at-bat which seemed to leave Felix appearing flustered while the Kings Court in Seattle cheered for the putaway pitch Hernandez simply didn’t have in his arsenal.

And then Trout finally subdued and forced the American league’s best pitcher into a ‘mistake’ that got hit over the center field wall and gave the Angels a 1-0 lead. I couldn’t believe it, and then yes I could. It’s Mike Trout. He’s not human. He’s once in a lifetime.

Before that homer Trout was a career .367 hitter with a 1.022 OPS in 54 plate appearances against King Felix. He owns the man. Felix checks under his bed at night for Mike Trout boogeymen.

By the time Trout took away a home run from Logan Morrison later in the game, it was just a footnote due to his own unbelievable feat. Even in a loss, Mike Trout continues to show the world he’s the best pound for pound baseball player in the world at age 23.

Other take-home notes:

• The Marlins sure did squander a chance to win and will have a hard time reaching the 106-win season the MLB The Show predicted them to have if they play often like they did today. They also had a rain delay despite having a retractable roof. Jeffrey Loria hasn’t figured out how to operate his billion dollar toy yet.
• Really well played game in Houston tonight, and it went by quickly. The Astros got themselves a nice 2-0 win and slipped by a lights-out Corey Kluber because Dallas Kuechel was equally dominant.
• It seems like every April, the Rockies show up and beat the Cowboy Hell out of their opponents. For those of you that chose to roster Kyle Lohse in fantasy baseball, no amount of my sorrow can fix your ratios. That shit is going to take months.
• I just have a feeling that this could be Evan Longoria’s best year – he started off alright with a home run in a 6-2 Rays loss to those pesky but good Orioles.
• If you had JD Martinez in the ‘first player to homer in the 2015 season’ pool, you are a damn Nostradamus. The Tigers got things kicked off today with a 4-0 win in which David Price made the Twins look just as hapless as they will be against southpaws.

My seasonal fantasy teams started off on the right foot – I think Sonny Gray is firing me a no hitter as we speak. I got destroyed on DraftKings Daily Fantasy, just as I expected. Not that any of this matters to you.

Any time you can spend a solid twelve hours watching baseball with just your dog, it’s a damn good day of living. And the best part of Opening Day is there are six-plus more months of this stuff to come. We don’t have to even worry about any of that ‘the season is really flying by’ talk for quite a while.