Outside The Confines: Enter 2022

Happy new year, one and all! 2022 is here and with it a whole 365 days of opportunities. That’s 12 months of new baseball stories, a full (we hope) season of any single team being able to take home a championship. A new year for heroes and highlights.

The tension between MLB and MLBPA continues, though now that the holidays are over we may begin to hear more rumors, see some more discussion between the two sides. As January progresses we can hope to see a little more movement, and perhaps by February we can start to look forward to the possibility of spring training.

But right now, anything and everything is possible. We’re not making resolutions here at Outside The Confines, but if you’re a resolution fan, we’d love to hear yours.

Most writers are still in the lovely lull of the holidays, but we rounded out this first post of the new year with some great content from throughout 2021.

• Jay Horwitz spotlights the original Mr. Met, Dan Reilly, who has passed away at the age of 83.
• Andy McCullough offers one resolution for every team in 2022. (The Athletic subscription required.)
• In some very cool news for women in baseball...

• Jay Jaffe shares his 2022 Hall of Fame ballot and explains his choices.
• The SI staff make some roundtable MLB resolutions for the 2022 season.
• Michael Guzman looks at some of the teams you might have forgotten HoF nominated players were on.
• This just in, the Yankees hate fun.

Since it’s a fairly quiet week for content, I put out a call on Twitter to see what my fellow baseball writers considered to be the best pieces they wrote and read in 2021, and these were the responses I got.

• Daniel R. Epstein wrote about what the lockout and public education have in common. (Baseball Prospectus subscription required.)
• Brandon Day shared his explainer on seam-shifted wake, which went wild when it originally posted.
• Evan Lang spotlighted Nolan Arenado’s exit from the Rockies and his debut with the Cardinals.
• Ian Malinowski looks at the Tampa Bay Rays and their place in the story of modern baseball.
• Jay Markle reviewed Spencer Torkelson’s sluggish start and how he’ll still rise to expectation.
• Peter Kwasniak attended the Tigers weekend to welcome back fans and found the experience underwhelming.
• Ivan the Great at Talking Chop did some league-wide assessments of wRC+ and FIP.
• Roger Castilli spotlighted the career of Willie Hernández.
• Renee Dechert looked at the infield performance of Ryan McMahon in 2021.
• Eric Garfield took a hopeful glimpse into the future of the Orioles and what their next winning lineup could look like.
• Amanda Lane looked into the history books for her feature on Lanny Moss, the first female GM in minor league baseball.
• Skyler Timmins recalled the way Larry Walker made Rockies fans cry with his Hall of Fame induction.

And tomorrow will be a better day than today, Buster. Make it so.