Red Sox - I saw Dice-K in the WBC and he looked phenominal. I think he gets 18 wins this year. This might be the most loaded team in baseball top to bottom, with the possible exception of…
Yankees - Although if they get Clemens, I might swap them with Boston. One thing I don’t get about this whole A-Rod flap: I see people criticize him for saying it is up to the yankees and the fans if he is going to remain a yankee, because he is the one with the contract option and is in control of his destiny (Buster Olney for one made this argument). What I don’t get is this: if you worked for a company that didn’t like you and everyone in the city wanted you to leave, would you still want to work there? Either way, I don’t see any way they are missing the playoffs. No question in my mind the wild card comes from the East this year.
Blue Jays - The Frank Thomas signing might give these guys the edge over the Giants for the slowest team in baseball. They should score runs, but can their starting pitching hold up all season?
Orioles - In any other division, this would be my sleeper pick of the year. Bedard is a solid pitcher, and I think Cabrera finally emerges as a frontline starter this year. (ya ya, Ive been saying that for 2 years now, but this time I MEAN it!) I see them having a year similar to 2k5, where they start on fire and give their fans a glimmer of hope before fading in July/August. Which is too bad. I like this team.
Tampa Bay - And yet another year of the Carl Crawford era is wasted.
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Nailed the order exactly, and got the wildcard, but then again who didn’t? DiceK wasn’t nearly as good as I thought. I called out Bedard who was almost a cy-young caliber pitcher this year, but completely whiffed on Cabrera for the last time. Thats it I am done with him. He stinks. I finally accept that. Grade: A
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AL Central:
Twins - The loss of Liriano hurts, but they have a lot of good young pitching prospects so I think they will be able to cope. Their lineup should be able to hold its own.
Tigers - Adding Sheffield was the most underrated signing this off-season. The guy can flat out rake, which was the one thing they were missing last year. Their offense was productive but I couldn’t help but think it was all smoke & mirrors, and I think the WS exposed that. This might be the tightest division race in baseball.
Indians - Still one year and a couple quality starters away.
White Sox - Did nothing to improve from last year.
Royals - [bill simmons]I wish I could buy stock in things like “The Royals regret giving Gil Meche $55 million.”[/bill simmons] Shouldn’t they force GMs to take breathylizers before they sign people? This might be the worst run organization in all of professional sports.
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I got spots 2,4,& 5 right. Didn’t count on the twins basically waving the white flag in June, causing Santana to essentially give up and have a career high ERA as a starter. This did not come close to the tightest division race in baseball, and Gil Meche actually turned out not to be as bad as I expected. Grade: B-
Complete whiff, although I did detail all the reasons the A’s would (& did) fail. Matthews was not a complete bust but not a $10 mil player, but it turns out Ichiro stayed after all. Grade: F
Well Hamels was a top 15 pitcher, which I say qualifies him as an ‘ace’ allowing me to weasel my phillies prediction and pretend I correctly picked the top 2 and avoid another total whiff. The nats weren’t nearly as bad as I thought, although it almost looked like teams were trying to help them out by handing them people like Wily Mo Pena for free. Grade: D
Got the cubs, red, and pirates. I smelled the disaster for the cards in the wind, and I did say the brewers would be competetive, even if tho it wasn’t because Sheets was healthy (he wasn’t). Grade: C+
Got the Diamondbacks, which I think is pretty impressive since they werent a favorite. The rest of the division… Not so good. Grade: D+
You can see for yourself from my pre-season predictions here from earlier this year.
I have the analysis back home, so I’m not entirely accurate–and I’m at work and don’t have time to look too closely–but I think I had 8 teams +/-3 of their win totals (pretty good), 6 teams where I was +/-10 or more (bad), and the rest fell somewhere in between (+/-4 to 9). Decent, but not super impressive. I picked 4 of the eight playoff teams, though only Philly and LA Angels as division winners (figured the Yankees for AL East champs and Cleveland for the wild card).
I think I could have done better if I’d had access to career stats when I made the predictions; then I could have gotten a better handle on everyone’s pitching staffs. (I only got broadband at home during this summer; didn’t have info at my fingertips in April.)
Overall, meh. Won’t stop me from trying again next year though.