NEW DECADE BRINGS NEW CHALLENGES
JOE SHEEHAN
@JOE_SHEEHAN
At the start of the 2010s, the Astros were terrible, the Cubs hadn’t won a pennant since World War II, the Yankees hadn’t gone a decade without winning one since the 1910s. The game’s biggest controversies were about which players had used sports drugs, with Barry Bonds’ career just ended, Mark McGwire lolling about the lower reaches of the Hall of Fame ballot, and Manny Ramirez coming off a 50-game suspension. “Tanking” was an NBA problem, not a Major League Baseball one, and “shifts” were something you saw at hockey games.
In the last 10 years, baseball changed more than it did in
