Prediction Thread

Well, this is it - we're finally here, the last Friday without real baseball for 7 months or so. It's an exciting time with Opening Day only two full days away. It's been a long off-season, but a fun one (in some ways, at least). The CC and Teixeira sweepstakes, the Dunn-Burrell-Abreu all-hit/no-field contract hunt, the Peavy non-sweepstakes, the Maddux-Moose-Schilling retirements, the Manny saga... it's all made for a rather interesting 6 months.

And then of course I started this blog back in December, which has certainly changed the way I read and talk about baseball (for the better, of course). It's been a lot of fun these last few months, and I can only imagine how much more fun it will be when there's baseball to write about every day of the week. I'm looking forward to it.

Anyhow, now that we're only one weekend away from Opening Day, it's time to make predictions for the year ahead. I have to be honest here - I'm terrible about this prediction thing. The first time I remember making an "official" prediction for the upcoming year was in 2004. It was the winter after Kansas City's surprise winning season, and I was sold on them as an up-and-coming team. So I predicted them to go all the way to the World Series. Of course they went on to lose 104 games the next year. Last year, I predicted the Tigers to be in the Series; they finished the season 14 games under .500. So I'm terrible at this, and I'm very aware of that.

Still, it's fun to do and my buddies and I do it every year. And since I have this blog to post on, I figure I might as well make my predictions public for all to see. But to make it even more exciting, I've decided to invite some others to give their predictions too. My brother was ingenious enough to set-up a spreadsheet using Google Docs that can record a bunch of predictions, and I've invited all my friends and fellow bloggers (that I could remember at the time) to use that spreadsheet to record their predictions. Hopefully, a few of them will, and we'll be able to compare the various predictions side-by-side. Feel free to view the predictions here, and if you want to be involved, drop me an email.

With all that said, here are my predictions. And, please remember, I'm an idiot when it comes to these things (I feel bad for Mets and Red Sox fans).

AL East............W...L......NL East............W...L
Boston............93..69......New York..........95..67
Tampa Bay.........91..71......Philadelphia......90..72
New York..........88..74......Florida...........84..78
Toronto...........80..82......Atlanta...........75..87
Baltimore.........73..89......Washington........65..97

AL Central....................NL Central
Minnesota.........89..73......Chicago...........94..68
Cleveland.........86..76......Milwaukee.........91..71
Chicago...........79..83......St Louis..........84..78
Kansas City.......77..85......Cincinnati........83..79
Detroit...........67..95......Houston...........74..88
..............................Pittsburgh........68..94

AL West.......................NL West
Anaheim...........89..73......Los Angeles.......89..73
Oakland...........82..80......Arizona...........87..75
Texas.............79..83......San Francisco.....82..80
Seattle...........61..101.....Colorado..........76..86
..............................San Diego.........59..103
Playoffs
Boston over Minnesota & Tampa Bay over Anaheim
New York Mets over Milwaukee & Los Angeles over Chicago

Boston over Tampa Bay
New York Mets over Los Angeles

New York Mets over Boston

Awards
MVP: Evan Longoria & Manny Ramirez
Cy Young: Francisco Liriano & Johan Santana
Rookie of the Year: Matt Wieters & Colby Rasmus

A few notes:

• I kind of fudged the numbers to get the Brewers in there. I think they'll battle with the Phillies for the Wild Card all year, but I'm not sure who'll end up winning more games. Since I'm a Brewers fan, and since these predictions mean nothing, I might as well make them look like something I'm rooting for.
• I'm not positive how Manny will react to being in LA for the full year, but I can easily see the writers voting him the MVP if he puts up a pretty strong year. With the excitement that he'll cause in Los Angeles if he really is playing well, and if the Dodgers do win 89 games, I think the writers will have a hard time not giving in to the excitement. It'll be David Wright otherwise.
  
• I can't really think of a good MVP or Cy Young candidate in the AL. I'd like to say Halladay for Cy, but I'm not sure the Jays will support him enough. And if Longoria does win the MVP, he'll be the third player this decade to win ROY and MVP in back-to-back years, after only happening once or twice before (I know Cal did it in '82 & '83, but I can't remember if anyone else I had done it).

Don't forget to check out the "community" spreadsheet, and drop me a line if you want in.