By Jack McLoone

Ronald Acuna has been lighting up spring training and bringing attention and hype upon himself (Courtesy of Twitter).

Spring training is mostly a farce, a lamb in fully-grown sheep’s clothing. It’s an exercise in confirmation bias, mostly. Oh, Ronald Acuna is hitting the ball a mile? Well, that makes sense considering he’s the next Mike Trout. Oh, Amed Rosario has some mysterious knee or maybe groin injury? Of course he does, he’s on the Mets.

Spring training baseball has more in common with Little League than it does Major League Baseball. Not even your local travel team that you were never good enough to play on, but true recreation Little League, where everyone got at-bats, games usually ended when it got dark and no one was particularly any good. And, most importantly, the games don’t actually matter.

But just because it’s only kind of baseball doesn’t mean it’s the ugly stepchild of the baseball world. By running more parallel to the regular season as opposed to being a part of it, spring training is more like the Tobey Maguire Spider-Man to Tom Holland’s: objectively worse, but still enjoyable and also featuring some classic moments.

Think about what we’ve seen in spring training this year. Shoehi Ohtani, the Japanese Babe Ruth without (supposedly) the beer-and-hot-dog gut has… well, okay, he’s been underwhelming, to the point that he might start the season in Triple-A. Maybe that’s a bad example.

But Dee Gordon, that’s a fun one! Seattle’s free-wheeling GM Jerry DiPoto traded for Gordon not for him to usual second base, but center field instead. The last time he played center was in nine games over the 2013-14 season in a winter league in the Dominican Republic. DiPoto’s bet on “this fast guy can naturally play well in center” looks to be a winning one, especially when you add in Gordon’s arm strength, as he’s already unleashed it a couple times this spring.

Or what about getting to watch Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton on the field together for the first time? While that’s maybe the worst thing to ever happen for some people (jury is still out for me), two Large Baseball Boys slugging it out is fun, even if the home runs don’t count.

Speaking of the Yankees, they literally traded for Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson, continuing his annual week-long publicity stunt and cross-sport synergy. He actually got into a game this time, pinch-hitting for Judge. He struck out rather meekly, which I’m sure was fun for every 49ers, Packers and fans of actual-science who saw it (never forget, Wilson promotes a water that claims to help with concussions).

Is your favorite pitcher struggling? Don’t worry, they are just “working on a new grip,” “experimenting with their arm slot” or “toying with a florpball, a new pitch they invented.” There’s nothing real to worry about, because, like “Whose Line Is It Anyway?” the pitches are made up, the earned runs don’t matter and we’re just here for the jokes.

Do you hate stats? Well then, spring training is perfect for you, too! The Mariners’ Daniel Vogelbach is your current spring training leader in OPS, so you can point and laugh at everyone for thinking that is significant because Dan Vogelbach is very much just okay.

But if you love stats (and we’re whispering now, so the luddites don’t hear us), Ronald Acuna is third in OPS and I’m telling you he looks like the real deal.

“WELL, FRANCHY CORDERO IS FOURTH!” Well, I guess the anti-stats crew heard us.

As a facsimile of true baseball, spring training eases us into the slow march towards death that is the baseball season. Unless someone gets hurt – pour one out for Brent Honeywell’s elbow and maybe Zack Grienke’s fastball – then you can watch the game with as little or as much gravity as you desire. No one is going to make you care about a batter with just a number in the late 80s on his jersey facing a team’s 12th-best failed starter-turned-reliever prospect, but you can if you want! I won’t stop you, truly.

Spring training also lets you see things you wouldn’t during the regular season, like an entirely empty left side against Jay Bruce, or Victor Martinez looking maybe three years younger or Adam Wainwright looking four years younger or Michael Kopech looking three years older. Will any of those things happen during the regular season? The only one I’d be willing to bank on is Kopech.

Also, Gordon has made a habit of picking up balls after failed pickoff attempts at first, which is honestly so endearing that I’m afraid he’s breaking some kind of unwritten rule.

But since none of this matters, we can watch (mostly) without agita. Sure, we’d like to see our guys play better and the prospects start to pan out, but if they were, we would just write it off as only spring training anyway. It’s a win-win.

While the players are all in the best shapes of their lives, baseball isn’t here quite yet. And that’s okay with me, because I’m not in my best baseball-watching shape either (read: I haven’t figured out how to pay for MLB.tv yet).