Baseball Predictions – 2012
As the calender turns to March, it is that time of year again when we force ourselves to turn away from the latest U.S. Women’s soccer headlines (“U.S. Starts Algarve Cup By Defeating Denmark!”), and turn, instead, towards the rising sun of Spring Training, and a new baseball season.
Which means it’s time for my 2012 baseball predictions.
You know the drill. I predict, you shake your head sadly, we all forget about it a day later and move on with our lives. So let’s get on with it.
East
1) Tampa Bay
2) Boston
3) New York
4) Toronto
5) Baltimore
This is the year Tampa Bay begins to take charge in the East. The pitching, the youth, the coherent plan emanating out of the front office. It’s a good time to be a Rays fan.
Boston is still a very good team, but I don’t think they’ve gotten last season’s collapse out of their collective heads. They wasted unbelievable seasons by Ellsbury and A-Gone, Beckett is a head-case, Lester let the team down in the end, and Bobby V. is too much of a lightning rod for this to be a smooth year in Boston.
With the retirement of Posada and the jettisoning of Burnett onto Planet Pittsburgh, The Yankees are going through a kind of youth movement by attrition. Pineda was a nice pickup, but with two statues on the left side of the infield, a mediocre defensive outfield, and a team that is being heavily courted by the A.A.R.P, the Yankees have to hit a wall, and my money says it happens this year.
Toronto is like the girl on the fringe of her group that you should hit on because she’s the one most likely to say yes. Not a threat to the others, but just interesting enough to keep your eye on.
Baltimore is the girl whom your best-friends wife insists has a nice personality. Keep moving; nothing to see.
Image via Wikipedia
Central
1) Detroit
2) Cleveland
3) Kansas City
4) Chicago
5) Minnesota
Not so comfortable with my three middle picks, but confident that Detroit and Minnesota will be the bookends. I like where K.C. is headed, but I think Cleveland is, for the time being, a step ahead of them.
Robin Ventura will restore order in the White Sox clubhouse, and they could be better than I suspect, but there are just so many unanswered questions on this team right now that it is almost impossible to predict how they’ll finish. So let me go ahead and foolishly say they’ll win 79 games.
Minnesota, even if Mauer and Morneau are reasonably healthy, is a bad team in a nice park.
West
1) Angels
2) Texas
3) Seattle
4) Oakland
If we’re going ahead this year with two Wild Card teams, and as of this writing it looks like we are, then one of the Wild Card teams will be either the Angels or the Rangers. The other could be either Boston, or even, in a surprise, Cleveland.
Both the Angels and the Rangers have established themselves as the Dreadnoughts of the Western Division. It should be a heavy-weight slug-fest of epic proportions, you know, like the ones we used to get excited about between the Red Sox and the Yankees. I have to give a slight edge to Pujols and the Angels.
The Mariners, with Ichiro batting third, finish third by default because Oakland will basically field a Four-A baseball team (again) this season.
A.L. MVP – Albert Pujols
Cy Young – David Price
Rookie of the Year – Brett Lawrie
National League
Image via Wikipedia
1) Phillies
2) Atlanta
3) Nationals
4) Florida
5) New York
It all begins with the pitching, and I think the Phillies will find a way to score enough runs to support their legendary pitching staff. Their window may not be open for much longer, but they should be able to hold off the competition in their own division.
The Braves have excellent young pitching, but there are some players on that team (Hanson, Jones, Jurrjens, and others) that are good friends with the D.L, and I’m not sure their lineup is sufficient to score enough runs to keep their pitchers from blowing out their arms. Jason Heyward’s performance will go a long way in determining the overall success of this team.
I really like the Nats. I think they are only a year or two away from being serious contenders. I was even tempted to pick them to finish in second place in the N.L. East, but I chose the safe pick instead. Harper will play at some point, and, for the Nats, the earlier the better. Strasburg and the two Zimmerman boys (Jordan and Ryan) along with Harper will offer a plethora of choices for Nats fans to cheer about.
It is much anticipated that the Marlins, with all the changes they’ve made (not the least of which is their brand new stadium) will perhaps challenge for the top of the division this year, and perhaps they will. I think Mike (Giancarlo, please) Stanton will lead the league in home runs. But I also think the rest of their best players are all too injury prone to lead this team out of mediocrity. They’ll win more than they’ll lose, but they won’t see more than 85 wins this year.
The Mets won’t compete until around 2014, but I do like their G.M. and his associates, and Terry Collins was a good boy in Year #1. Reyes was more exciting than he was highly productive, and I think they’ll be able to replace the runs they lost when he booked town, bogus batting title in tow. But their pitching is probably the worst in the division, and until a couple of their young pitching prospects develop, and until current ownership is towed out to sea and buried in a lead-lined container, the immediate future looks bleak.
Central
1) Brewers
2) Reds
3) Cardinals
4) Cubs
5) Pirates
6) Astros
I had a hard time picking the winner here, but I like the Brewers starting pitching, and Braun will be back for a full year after-all, so I think they have enough to keep the wolves at bay for 2012. The Reds are just too enigmatic to predict (though Votto is great) and, yes, the Cardinals have been weakened by the losses of Pujols, LaRussa and Duncan. Even with the return of Wainwright, I just don’t see enough pitching there to grab the division.
The Cubs, Astros and Pirates are each in various stages of rebuilding (or, in the Pirates case, re-re-re-rebuilding.) The Cubs seem to be in the best position to turn things around the quickest of this group, but not this year.
West
1) Diamondbacks
2) Giants
3) Rockies
4) Dodgers
5) Padres
The Diamondbacks are for real, and no other team in this division has enough balance to challenge them this year. Justin Upton could win the MVP award this season. They are not a GREAT team, but they are perfectly capable of repeating in this mediocre division.
I considered picking the Rockies to finish third, but Tulowitzki is due to carry this team into the playoffs (and, with a second Wild Card, he still might.)
I love the Giants top three pitchers: Lincecum, Cain, and Bumgarner, but this team reminds me a little of the Mets in the early-to-mid ’70’s, excellent starting pitching with a well-below average offense. They should win 80-something ballgames, but until they locate another serious bat, their fans will be treated to a lot of 3-2 pitching duels.
Even the magic of Kemp and Kershaw couldn’t lift the Dodgers out of mediocrity last year, and I don’t expect things to change much this year. Another proud franchise undermined by horrid ownership.
The Padres play in lovely San Diego, so even if they suck, their fans will enjoy the day at the park.
N.L. MVP – Joey Votto
Cy Young – Yovani Gallardo
Rookie of the Year – Bryce Harper
Related articles
- Yankees Enter 2012 as an Under the Radar Team, but Still the Most Complete Squad (bleacherreport.com)
- We’re No. 5! MLB’s Near-Miss Kings (blogs.wsj.com)
- Bobby V Didn’t Wait Long to Spice Up the Yankees-Red Sox Rivalry (newsfeed.time.com)
- MLB Spring Training 2012: Intriguing Teams to Follow Leading Up to Opening Day (bleacherreport.com)
Baseball 2012: Oddities and Conclusions, and Odd Conclusions
It’s never too early to draw specious conclusions from incomplete data. Politicians do it all the time. Therefore, not holding myself to a higher standard than those fine fellows, here’s what we’ve learned from this year’s baseball statistics thus far in 2012:
1) Albert Pujols is actually 44-years old, and should be put out to pasture. Seriously, I think it would be a bit premature to predict that Sir Albert will win this year’s A.L. MVP trophy. Through nine games he has 40 plate appearances, no home runs, and 12 total bases. It may take him the better part of a full year to adjust to the A.L., and even when he does, he still won’t automatically be the best player in the league.
2) Break up the Mets! They are off to a 6-3 start, including a pair of wins against the Phillies this past weekend. Now just 0.5 games back of the Nats for first place in the N.L. East, and with baseball expanding to two Wild Card teams this year, it’s time to start printing up playoff tickets, isn’t it?
Well, no, it’s not. The Mets Run Differential stands at exactly 0, meaning that this is essentially a .500 team, which is the best most of us Mets fans could hope for at the beginning of the year.
3) The Pirates have the best pitching staff since the Braves when Maddux, Glavine, Smoltz and Neagle were hanging around. The Pirates four primary starting pitchers: Correia, Bedard, Karstens, and McDonald all have ERA’s under 4.00, and the Pirates have given up fewer runs (22) than any other team in the N.L.
Conclusion: Although the Pirates offense is awful, their pitching is good enough to finish somewhere in the middle of the pack in the N.L. this year, ensuring many low-scoring (especially at home) but competitive ball games.
4) You can have your Verlander, Kershaw, Lee, Hamels, King Felix, etc., but for my money, the one pitcher who continues to be completely unreal (and a future Hall of Famer) is the Phillies Roy Halladay. At 2-0, and having given up just one earned run in 15 innings this year, Halladay has a real chance to reach 200 career wins before he loses his 100th ball game. His career record currently stands at 190-92, and he just seems to keep getting better with age.
Did you know that Halladay has increased his strikeout totals for each of the past seven years? That he has walked over 40 batters in a season just once in the past nine years? That he has never lost more than 11 games in any of his 13 full seasons? He’s as good as they come, folks, so enjoy him while you can.
5) Matt Kemp is staking his claim as the best player in the National League. He should have won the N.L. MVP award last season, leading the league in home runs, RBI, runs scored, OPS+, total bases, and WAR. He also stole 40 bases in 51 attempts, and plays above average defense in center field. This year, with the Dodgers off to a 9-1 start, thanks in large part to Kemp’s torrid start, there’s every reason to believe he’ll win his first MVP award.
6) The A.L. East is the most mediocre division in baseball. No team currently has more than five wins, nor fewer than four. Only 1.5 games separates last place Boston from first place Yankees, Orioles, and Blue Jays. Realistically, it is possible that no one in this division will win more than 95 games, and it is conceivable that four of these five teams might still be separated by as little as 1.5 games going into the final week of the season.
A look at the current run differentials in this division, where Toronto’s +12 is currently the best, suggests that there are no great teams in this division, just several good ones.
7) David Wright will be the first player in baseball history to hit .500 this year, while posting an OPS+ well in excess of a KaZillion. On his way to cementing his status as the best position player in Mets history (if you overlook a little thing called defense), Wright appears to enjoy the newly reconfigured Citi Field dimensions. Most encouragingly, Wright has struck out just twice in his first 26 plate appearances this year. Yup, he’s Ted Williams, Babe Ruth, Paul McCartney and Brad Pitt, all rolled up in one perfect guy. Let’s Go Mets!
8) In the apparent pre-season bet between Bobby Valentine and Ozzie Guillen to see which of them could throw their managerial job away first, Bobby V. appears to have the inside edge so far. Yes, Guillen committed the worst possible sin in Miami by lauding Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, but, hey, he gets language confused, you know? What he MEANT was the Castro was a brain-eating zombie who devours small children on whats left of the playgrounds in Havana. It was the MEDIA who got him all confused, see? ANYONE could have made that mistake, right?
Meanwhile, Bobby V. today managed to insult Kevin Youkilis in what was an apparent effort to “fire him up.” Oh. And then he apologized to Youk for saying what he said to fire him up. Look, it is readily apparent that Boston, as a franchise, is still suffering from what they used to call shell-shock from last September. Putting Bobby V. at the helm of a franchise suffering collectively from P.T.S.D. is like putting serial killer Ted Bundy in a rape-hotline call center (oh wait, he really did have that job.)
Prediction: Both managers are fired before the season ends, Bobby V. getting thrown overboard first.
9) Tommy Hanson will never pitch a complete game shutout in his career. I’m not saying he’s not a good enough pitcher to do so. Hanson’s a very good pitcher, but he is one of the least efficient pitchers in baseball, regularly going to 2-2 counts on virtually every batter he faces. That’s not how you pitch deep into ball games. In fact, Hanson has completed just one of his 79 career starts. Maybe he’ll eventually learn to pitch to contact more frequently, but until he does so, he’ll always be a fine six-inning pitcher.
10) Brett Lawrie will be an All-Star for the next twenty years. Yes, he only has 211 career plate appearances, but here’s his 162 game average so far: 31 home runs, 100 RBI, 93 runs scored, 25 steals, a .911 OPS, and an OPS+ of 142 (the same as Mike Piazza.) Waive the ten-years of MLB service requirement rule and put the kid in Cooperstown right now so he can enjoy the honor while he’s still young.
I’m sure you’ve drawn lots of early season conclusions of your own. So please feel free to share them with me, and I’ll publish the best ones in my next post.