{"id":504079,"date":"2026-01-03T15:04:13","date_gmt":"2026-01-03T15:04:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/504079\/"},"modified":"2026-01-03T15:04:13","modified_gmt":"2026-01-03T15:04:13","slug":"elephant-rumblings-happy-new-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/504079\/","title":{"rendered":"Elephant Rumblings: Happy New Year!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">The Baseball world is quiet today. So instead of \u201ccreating\u201d some news, I\u2019m just going to say that I\u2019m optimistic about the 2026 Athletics season. While management has not brought in many fresh faces, Jeff McNeil, Mark Leiter Jr., and the few minor league contract signings give me hope. The starting rotation, as it appears today, looks promising. The long-term deal for Soderstrom and the discussion of other long-term contracts also give me hope that the team truly is building for the future in Las Vegas. While I\u2019m still not ready to fully accept the move, the idea of long-term stability does give me reason to think that there is a light at the end of the tunnel (and that it isn\u2019t a train barreling down at us). So, with (roughly) thirty-nine days until pitchers and catchers report, New Year\u2019s Day gives us an opportunity to be thankful for how far we\u2019ve come and the anticipation that good things are on the horizon. Happy New Year A\u2019s Nation. Let\u2019s hope 2026 is a year of progress and success!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Baseball world is quiet today. So instead of \u201ccreating\u201d some news, I\u2019m just going to say that&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":493823,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2391],"tags":[44003,537,5,4,3226],"class_list":{"0":"post-504079","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-athletics","8":"tag-as-commentary-and-analysis","9":"tag-athletics","10":"tag-baseball","11":"tag-mlb","12":"tag-mlb-athletics"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/115831785701511051","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504079","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=504079"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504079\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/493823"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=504079"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=504079"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=504079"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}