NORTH PORT, Fla. – It remains one of baseball’s highly-respected traits, even if optimization has rendered it nearly obsolete.
After all, playing 162 games with few breaks in between can’t be sustainable, right? With a bottomless array of hard-throwing pitchers coming at you from every angle, playing the matchup game must occasionally benefit every player, no?
Aren’t loads meant to be managed, sleep tracked scientifically, all of it incongruent with a game scheduled nearly every day for more than half a year?
Matt Olson begs to differ.
“We get paid a lot of money to play this game,” says the Atlanta Braves All-Star first baseman, entering the third year of a $168 million contract.