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 A fan of the Yankees, Red Sox, and large sample sizes. 
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4.28.2004
WALK, DON'T RUN Mark Bellhorn, a favorite of mine, is having a rather strange year statistically. His average is barely above the Mendoza line, but his on-base percentage is on the leader board, and the ol' slugging leaves something to be desired: .214/.430/.357 Bellhorn has 12 hits and 21 walks in 16 games. On most other teams, he wouldn't be playing regularly, but the Red Sox know that a .787 OPS isn't bad, especially when the OBP component is so high. Think about it this way, would people be worried if he was a .357/.430 player, like many many other second basemen? Nope, and with the extrme OBP, Bellhorn's OPS is worth at least .30 extra points on the OPS scale we're traditionally used to dealing with. Since I was on a roll with ASS/Retrosheet, I decided I'd try to find any season between 1999 and 2002 in which a player had more walks than hits (excluding IBB). The biggest difference was John Jaha in 2000 when he had 33 walks versus 17 hits in not much playing time. If you set some sort of minimum playing time (I picked a minimum of 50 hits), the only player with more walks than hits was Jay Buhner in 1999 (69 walks, 59 hits). With a minimum of 100 hits, Barry Bonds had 143 walks and 156 hits in 1999. Tim Salmon 2001, Adam Dunn 2002, Barry Bonds 2002, Jim Thome 1999, John Jaha 1999, Robin Ventura 2001, and Mark McGwire 1999 aren't far behind. For players that managed 200 hits, Bernie Williams had the smallest gap between his walks and hits - 119 and 128 in 1999 and 2002 respectively. Here's hoping Bellhorn keeps that OBP in the .430 range, and can find the 2002 power stroke again. He should get the opporunity to play at least 3-4 games a week the whole year. WHEN HOMERUNS ARE HIT Yesterday, John Lackey pitched a pretty good game, and hadn't surrendered any runs through 6 2/3 innings, at which point he was pulled in favor of Scot Shields after he loaded the bases. No problem, of course, since Brandon Inge was coming to the plate and Inge is one of the worst hitters in the American League (with apologies to Darin Erstad, Willie Harris, and quite a few others, actually). Of course, Inge proceeds to hit a grand slam, slamming Lackey with 3 ER. Still not a bad outing, and much better than Lackey's previous starts this year. Tonight, Mulder hasn't been so hot, surrendering a bunch of hits and walks, before settling down and throwing a couple scoreless innings. He gave up a solo homerun to Jorge Posada, and was lucky Jorge didn't come to bat with men on base, like there had been most of the game. Mulder's outing would have been much worse had the HR come at a different time. That got me thinking, are homeruns more likely to be hit at different game states? Most importantly, do more homeruns get hit without anyone on base? That makes a little sense - pitchers probably pay more attention to preventing homeruns when it will cost them more. Using Retrosheet data and ASS, here's a chart showing the probability of a homerun occuring at the different base states in the years 1972-1992 and 1999-2002: basesit hr n hr/n Here's just 1999-2002 data: basesit hr n hr/n Looks like homeruns get hit more often with the bases empty, and not as much with runners in scoring position. Of course, once the bases get loaded, the rate increases again, probably because the pitcher has to throw strikes, or risk walking in a run. Of course, the reason might also be that the pitchers who allow a lot of baserunners are bad, and bad pitchers also give up homeruns. What about if we consider the number of outs? Does the number of outs alone affect when homeruns get hit? Using 1999-2002 data: outs hr n hr/n Hmm, a small advantage to the hitter with no outs. I don't know why, or if it's significant. I wonder if there are any unique combinations of base/out states that are extreme cases either for or against the hitting of homeruns: outs:basesit hr n hr/n Nothing crazy, but with no outs and the bases empty, homeruns occur at the highest rate. Those are the lead-off plate appearances (or plate appearances following lead-off homeruns), so maybe pitchers are just a little rusty or don't quite have their focus starting an inning. If anyone's got any other explanations, let me know. 4.19.2004
ESPN.COM: BARRY BONDS If it seems as though I have a man-crush on Barry Bonds, it's because I do. His OPS is now up to 1.903. No, that's a not a typo: 1.903. If you alternated doubles and outs, your OPS would "only" be 1.500. Barry's almost averaging doubles two out of three times he comes to the plate (.666 OBP, 1.333 SLG). Shiite. I know it's early, but what would it do for Barry's image and legacy if he were to win the triple crown this year? I mean, it's really not that good a measure of performance, but it's still really hard to do, and most baseball fans still see it as the Holy Grail. Leading the league in HRs and AVG are strong possibilities for Barry, but the RBIs might be hard considering the San Francisco lineup and number of IBBs he's bound to receive. I mean, do you really pitch to a player with a 1.903 OPS? Perhaps my favorite thing about Barry potentially winning the triple crown is how he would treat it. One, he realizes a 1.300 OPS is more impressive. Two, he wouldn't gloat. Three, he'd pay homage and act humble towards past triple crown winners. And four, he's probably be disappointed because the season was over and he'd have to listen to people praise him instead of being able to play baseball. 1.903 OPS? That's disgusting. 4.17.2004
THE HR/2B CLUBS Ahh, the wonders of the Lahman database. I was able to answer the questions I posed in the previous entry. There have been 348 30 HR/30 2B seasons. Here are the players that have done it more than three times: First Last Total Lou Gehrig 9 Jeff Bagwell 8 Jimmie Foxx 7 Frank Robinson 6 Manny Ramirez 6 Ted Williams 6 Albert Belle 6 Barry Bonds 6 Duke Snider 5 Carlos Delgado 5 Frank Thomas 5 Babe Ruth 5 Willie Mays 5 Juan Gonzalez 5 Rafael Palmeiro 5 Billy Williams 4 Alex Rodriguez 4 Brian Giles 4 Hank Aaron 4 Chuck Klein 4 Vladimir Guerrero 4 Shawn Green 4 Hank Greenberg4 There have been 20 40/40 seasons: First Last Total Todd Helton 2 Lou Gehrig 2 Babe Ruth 2 Albert Belle 2 Carlos Delgado 1 Juan Gonzalez 1 Hank Greenberg1 Shawn Green 1 Rogers Hornsby 1 Larry Walker 1 Chipper Jones 1 Chuck Klein 1 Willie Stargell 1 Frank Thomas 1 Hal Trosky 1 Richard Hidalgo 1 There have been five 45/45 seasons: First Last Total Albert Belle 2 Larry Walker 1 Todd Helton 1 Lou Gehrig 1 The best season ever in this regard was Albert Belle in 1995 where he hit 50 HRs and 52 2Bs. In case you're curious, he also had one triple that year, to go along with 121 runs, 126 RBIs, 73 BBs, 80 SOs, and .317/.401/.690 for a 178 OPS+. His OPS+ was actually higher (190) in 1994, but Albert only played in 106 games. ESPN.COM: BARRY BONDS I was just perusing the Barry Bonds page at ESPN.com after noticing he took Eric Gagne deep last night. So far in 2003 Barry's line looks like .429/590/1.000. He's got 4 HRs, 4 2Bs, 11 BBs, and 3 SOs and only 28 ABs. If you project that out over a full year, it looks like 130 runs, 194 hits in only 454 ABs, 65 2Bs, 65 HRs, 162 RBIS, 178 BBs, and 49 SOs. The thing that strikes me (beyond the 1.590 OPS) is the 65 doubles and homeruns. I wonder what the highest level reached by a player in both the HRs and 2Bs. There's probably been a 30/30 season, and perhaps a 40/40 season, but anything much higher sounds really difficult. Do I really expect Barry to keep this up? No way. Just like I don't expect Jermaine Dye to hit 70 HRs this year, or Josh Becket to have a sub-1.00 ERA. Blah sample size blah. I've actually seen a few of Barry's games this year, and I've seen three of his doubles. They've all been down the third base line with the third basemen playing in the shortstop position. I think it's awesome that Barry has the ability and desire to "settle" for a double when he knows it's available. And of course, it's amazing that he seems to be able to do it whenever he wants. Barry's good. 4.16.2004
FOX GRAPHICS ENHANCEMENTS During the Yankees - Red Sox game tonight, Fox Sports plans to unveil a slew of new graphical enhancements aimed at younger fans. You can read about them in the above article. Some of it will be annoying - sound effects, rainbow colors to show the distance of a player's lead at first, and Tim McCarver (oh, he's not new?) - but some may help the intelligent fan. ESPN has had K-Zone for a while, and has started using a pitch tracker this year to show a pitch's trajectory. Both of these things will be picked up by FOX. The addition that could go either way is the new animated, talking baseball graphic named Scooter. It will pop up on the screen occasionally to explain baseball strategy to viewers. Now, if they go on and on about how the hit and run is fabulous, good teams need clutch hitting, and the intangibles that the Yankee clubhouse always has, I'll barf. But if the talking baseball shows me how to throw Barry Zito's curveball or Mike Mussina's knuckle-curve, or explains why on-base percentage is the most important basic stat and how to calculate it, or pops up in the eighth inning to yell at Dusty Baker for not yet removing Carlos Zambrano after 148 pitches, I'm all for it. However, even the optimist in me thinks FOX will go the first route and make me very angry at their ignorance. But if not, I'll be the first to sing their praises. I'll definitely be watching tonight at 8 pm on FOX, both to see how these new goodies enhance (or de-hance) my viewing experience, and to watch what should be a fun Yankees - Red Sox game. 4.14.2004
DEFENSE INDEPENDENT PITCHING STATISTICS Looks like someone else will be doing the DIPS daily dirty work this year, which means I don't have to. Not that my DIPS updates were anywhere near daily, anyways. I'm going to leave the link at the left active, so that you can use last year's DIPS numbers as a reference this year. Combining them (and 2002 numbers, in theory) with this year's data is the best way to judge pitchers. Kind of the like the Voltron (Power Rangers for you teenie-boppers) of pitcher analysis. In case you're new to DIPS, it's a (pretty accurate) theory which basically says that while pitcher skills includes walk rate, strikout rate, and homerun rate, hit rate on balls in play (singles, doubles, triples) isn't really much of a pitcher skill. Batting average on balls in play (BABIP) is more a measure of team fielding ability, home ballpark, and statistical variance ("luck"). Early in the year, a pitcher may give up more than his fair share of dinky singles, thus raising his ERA when he's shown the same skill as a similar pitcher with better luck. DIPS also takes into account the fact that equal amounts of the raw ingredients of scoring (walks, homeruns, singles, stolen bases, etc) don't always yield the same number of runs. In the short term, flukey things like a walk before a homerun versus a homerun before a walk play games with a pitcher's ERA. Even over a whole year these things don't even out. So, in conclusion, a DIPS ERA (dERA) is the best measure of a pitcher's actual shown ability. It's a better indication of future ERA than actual ERA. When making judgments about pitchers (say, for fantasy baseball) use it instead of ERA. 4.09.2004
MY ANTI-GUYS I have a much easier time coming up with players that won't do as well this year as last. Avoiding the letdowns has always been a strength of mine in fantasy leagues. I do well mostly because players I draft rarely flame out. If none of your players perform much below what you expect, you'll tend to do well. This is a list of overrated baseball players in general, not just fantasy players, however. Bill Mueller Mueller's always been a decent player. He's an above average fielder and had a few good offensive seasons with the Cubs and Giants, but nothing near what he did last year. Sure, Fenway helps, but I think it's much more likely that David Ortiz, Trot Nixon, and Jason Varitek duplicate last year's breakout seasons than Mueller. Jeremie Gonzalez I've mentioned Gonzalez before. His rate stats just don't back up the ERA he posted last year. Even if his skills improve, which is likely for a young pitcher, his ERA is will almost definitely be worse. He's not the pitcher people think he is. Miguel Cabrera He's a good young player that will likely have some All-Star type seasons. But fifteen good playoff games do not guarantee an awesome sophomore season. Counting on a 21 year old to be a stud is not often a good bet. Joe Mauer Joe Mauer's another highly touted prospect that I think will struggle this year, injury aside. His hitting style throughout the minors is a lot like Sean Burroughs - good average, but not a lot of power, and decent plate discipline. Expect a .270/.320/.380 year from Mauer. Dontrelle Willis He had a great start yesterday, but his 2003 season was overhyped due to a strong start. If two pitchers end with similar ERAs, their seasons were likely similar quality. But if one pitcher started strong and had his ERA slowly dift upward, his season is often seen as better than a pitcher that started poorly and slowly brought his ERA down. Willis isn't a bad pitcher, but don't expect a sub-4.00 ERA. Brandon Webb, on the other hand is a young pitcher that displayed good talent throughout the entire 2003 season. Carlos Zambrano Another pitcher that overacheived by a little, and got worked like an Iverson crossover dribble. A good pitcher, but he'll disappoint a lot of people this year. The Orioles OF Baltimore has a number of young outfielders who are all media darlings. They won't suck it up, but there's not a star among Luis Matos, Larry Bigbie, and Jay Gibbons. If I had to bet on the next Oriole star, it would be Jack Cust. Of course, he's only been given one AB so far this year. To be Continued... 4.08.2004
MY GUYS Joe Sheehan wrote a Premium article for BPro today about "his guys" - players that he likes this year, for one reason or another. It's a really good, if not spectacularly creative, idea. So, in proper "copying is the highest form of flatter" tradition, here are my guys for 2004: Kelvim Escobar For some reason, he always seemed to pitch better as a starter than a reliever with the Blue Jays. Escobar's one of those guys that's always had a lot of potential, but hasn't lived up to it. I think this is the year he does, with something like a a 3.50 ERA in a lot of innings. The Anaheim park is slightly better for pitchers than Toronto, and the Angel defense is much better. Adam Dunn & Austin Kearns Yeah yeah, I've written about them already. And it's not like people don't expect them to be good players. They were, after all, top prospects just a couple years ago. But I think Dunn and Kearns are going to absolutely explode this year. We're talking Bash Brothers Part Deux for many years to come. Derek Jeter He's fallen off the shortstop radar for some reason. Everyone assumes he's now the fifth best shortstop in the majors behind ARod, Garciaparra, Tejada, and Renteria. Personally, I'd take him third, and second this year considering Nomar's injury. Jeter's not a great fielder, but I foresee a .330/.390/.500 year with 30 SBs. In that Yankee lineup, he'll rack up the counting stats, too. Hideki Matsui His ground ball to flyball ratio last year was way below what he did in Japan. Matsui's what people call a "professional hitter" and can definitely make the adjustment to lift the ball more. He's got the power and contact rate to crush the ball, but just needs a little lift. Expect a 10 HR bump this year. Jeremy Bonderman Some might accuse me of cheating because of his great start yesterday, but I've felt since last year that he's a much better pitcher than he showed. Pitchers often need a year or two of experience before figuring out the major league thang. I expect Bonderman's skills to keep improving, and Comerica Park can cover up some of the mistakes. Mike Cameron Batting average is often overrated, but it's very hard to be any good at all hitting .220. Shea's not a great hitter's park, but Cameron will think it's Coors compared to Safeco. Arthur Rhodes Yeah, it's hard for a closer to be underrated, but if you ignore that fact, then Rhodes is being given the shaft this off-season. He's been one of the best relievers over the last few years, with a hiccup last year. He's a lefty, but dominates batters from both sides. Corey Patterson People seem to forget he was on fire last year before getting hurt. More of a scouts dream than an analyst's, but good fielding, average, and power will make anyone happy. Quick Hits Javier Vazquez will be the Yanks' top pitcher. Mark Bellhorn will be this year's Bill Mueller. Jeff Weaver will love LA. Freddy Garcia will show that a healthy ear is a great thing. Justin Thomson will be the Braves top pitcher in an otherwise ugly season. And finally, to go out on a limb, Barry Bonds will be good. 4.07.2004
PEORIA STRAT LEAGUE UPDATE It's been a while since I've written about the Schuykill Kings in the Perioa Strat-o-Matic League - mostly because nothing much has happened recently. The draft ended about a month ago, with my final 15 picks being pure "prospect" picks. They aren't actual prospects (as in minor leaguers), because only players with 30 ABs or 30 IP in 2003 are eligible for the draft. We're more talking the Cliff Lee/Orlando Hudson/Ken Griffey Jr variety. Players with poor recent years and the potential to take it to the next level this year. Note that it's not a snake draft. 2004 Draft: TR Adam Kennedy 2. Luis Matos 3. Jeremi Gonzalez 4. Kyle Farnsworth 4. Francisco Rodriguez 5. Jose Valentin 5. Craig Wilson 6. Jose Reyes 7. Randy Johnson 9. Victor Martinez 10 Scott Sullivan 11 Derek Lowe 12 Tony Armas Jr 13 Junior Spivey 14 Eric Dubose 15 Brett Myers 16 Adam Dunn 17 Jeff Weaver 18 Grant Balfour 19 Arthur Rhodes 20 Tomo Ohka 21 John Lackey 22 Darrin Erstad [AJ Burnett] I traded my first round pick (11th out of 12) for Adam Kennedy and a 4th and 5th round pick, which turned into Francisco Rodriguez and Craig Wilson. Kennedy was the last of the playable 2Bs for a twelve team league, and I like his chance to improve. Had I kept the pick, I would have drafted Matos, who I grabbed in the second round anyways. He hits righties pretty well for a CF and is a 2 fielder with a good arm. I don't really think he'll improve next year, but he's great his year. The same goes for Jeremi Gonzalez. DIPS says his skills represent an ERA about one full run higher than his 3.92 ERA last year . Oh well, maybe lightning will strike twice. The rash of relievers taken was due to my lack of starting pitching. The plan is to limit all starters to 6 IP per start and fill in with mucho innings from relievers. Borowski, Guardado, Mota, Farnsworth, Rodriguez, and Sullivan should shut teams down the last three innings. If I'm still in the hunt after a couple months, I'll make a strong push to trade for a quality starter or two. I'm really excited about my pitching prospects for next year. I should be able to pull a quality five from Millwood, Clemens, Beckett, Randy, Lowe, Myers, Weaver, Balfour, and Lackey. Plus, you can always get at least one more quality arm from the draft. The hitting prospects don't intrigue me quite as much, but I foresee some big years down the road from Dunn, Reyes, and Martinez. The latter two should be more valuable a couple years from now. In general, hitting prospects are better bets than pitching prospects. But I tend to keep many hitters year to year due to this fact (BGiles, Guerrero, Blalock, DLee should be studs for a while), and thus I need to take chances on fewer hitters. Plus, other teams in my league don't seem to understand the value of platoons, so I'm able to draft lots of one-sided players, especially righties that can only hit righties. Anyways, we just got the results for... Month One The Kings finished Month One a game under .500. We swept three games against the the worst team in the division, and then were four games under against the top two teams. Not a bad start, and I'm only a couple games out of first. In a month or two some teams will have given up, and the pitching acquisitions should begin. I love baseball. ONE BUCK MINIMUM Perhaps you all realize this already, and I'm just behind the eight ball, but I've been thinking a lot about the $1 minimum bid and how it affects valuation. You have to spend at least $1 on everyone you buy. Thus, that $1 doesn't really represent $1 worth of value, just the cost of aquiring a player. We've all noticed this phenomenon at the end of an auction. If you've got $6 left for four positions, you can't bid all $6 on one player. You can bid up to $3 on one player, leaving you with exactly $1 for the last three. If we gave every team $23 less dollars to spend on 23 players and allowed minimum bids of $0, the auctions would run exactly the same. Players would be nominated at $0 instead of $1, and we'd decide whether to up the bidding or drop out. Every team is spending $23 of their $260 the same way - in order to get 23 players. It's really the money spent above the minimum that has any value. So in reality, we should ignore $23 of each team's budget when assigning value to players. Go through the whole valuation process - find replacement, add up stats above replacement, compute $$/stat, and assign value - but only use $237 of each team's budget to value players. Then, add $1 back into everyone's price to represent the $1 minimum bid. The draftable pool will still add up to the actual total budgets, but value will be assigneed correctly - as value above $1 instead of value above $0. I just adjusted my dollar values using this approach and it bumps down the top players about $3. Nothing extremely significant, but the fewer irregularities in values and projections, the better off you are. It can all add up and cause some prices to be way off. 4.06.2004
ELTON JOHN NIGHT Ok, I'll admit it. I watch American Idol. I don't watch much TV - sports, HBO stuff, and the occasional reality TV show - but my roommates are into the Idol and I'm right behind. Add in a little Elton John and tonight's hour should have been the perfect show. It wasn't. I feel sorry for Sir Elton, as many of his great songs were abused like Koch and Marte. Jennifer Hudson tore it up, a couple others put in quality performances, but it was a weak night overall. My favorite performer still remaining after Amy Adams was wrongly evicted last week (if anyone has her number, let me know) is John the Red. Sure, he doesn't show much personality, and he doesn't exactly have the pop-star voice, attitude, confidence, body, looks, wit, stage presence or anything else. But there's just something about him that intrigues me. Although there were a number of mistakes in tonight's performance, I really liked it. However, if I were John the Red's personal advisor, I would have forced him to sing I Guess That's Why They Call It The Blues. Great song, and it has a great feel for a Rat Pack wannabe. If he survives this week, John's newfound personality just might carry him the rest of the way (if his voice comes back). Anyways, to summarize... JPL's annoying, the Hawaii sisters are annoying, I wouldn't mind seeing George Huff win, I hope John the Red finds himself and saves America from whiney pop-stars, and if you wouldn't mind putting Amy Adams in touch with me, I'll send you a prize. 4.05.2004
ARTICLE HALL OF FAME I'm going to start a new section over on the sidebar. Any articles out on the web that are truly outstanding will enter my personal Article Hall of Fame. These will be pieces of baseball analysis that are truly original, thoughtful, well-written, and not linked to by every other baseball blogger. These will be pieces that are really worth reading over and over again, and worth sending out to your friends. I'm proud to announce that the inaugural recipient of this extremely prestigious (I'm holding back the giggles) honor is the Zumsteg Revenue Sharing article discussed and linked to below. Additional members to follow whenever the hell I feel like adding them. A TRIP TO THE MARKET SIZE The local sports talk guys were discussing market size on my drive home today. I've always been amazed at how willy-nilly the terms "large market" and "small market" get thrown around. They're always used as antonyms, but the meanings change more often than an Oakland closer. Sometimes it's "successful" versus "unsuccessful". Sometimes it's "high-payroll" versus "low payroll". Sometimes it's "holy" versus "evil". And sometimes it's "open-pocket owner" versus "spend-thrift owner". But rarely do people use the terms to describe what they should - the fact that some teams have a large population of local people to support their teams and some have a small population off which to feed. As Derek Zumsteg points out in this fine article, there are other factors (like general interest in baseball and per capita income) that affect how much money can be gleaned from a metropolitan area, but in general, it's the population that matters. (Another great series of articles to check out are Doug Pappas' Behind the Numbers pieces. Here's a link to the seventh article, which has links to the six previous articles. There's supposed to be an eighth, but I can't seem to find it on Google.) Following is a table from the Zumsteg article (which you really should read), resorted in decreasing order by adjusted population. (Adjusted population divides the LA, NY, and SF markets in half for each team.)
This analysis has been presented many many times by many many people. But it's even a good kick in my pants each time I see it. The order of this list is not what most people would guess off the tops of their heads. We should not be penalizing teams for spending lots of money. Revenue sharing should be based on market size. If you're in a big market and spending lots of money, good for you. Just share some of it. If you're in a small market and spending next to nothing, you shouldn't be rewarded for having a crappy team. It's the small-to-mid markets who are spending money and succeeding on the field that should get the most money from revenue sharing. MLB should reward the teams that are doing everything they can to win, and not the owners that spend nothing and just pocket the revenue sharing money coming their way. 4.04.2004
SCORE BARD'S PERIODIC TABLE OF BLOGS This blog, as of March 28, is a member the Transitoid Series of Score Bard's Periodic Table of Blogs. I'm Yb (Ytterbium - a naturally occuring element first discovered in Sweden and available commercially for $875 per kilogram), way over at the right. The Score Bard has always had my respect over at Baseball Primer - his ideas are intelligent, original and concise, and his writing seems to softly stroll along. I'm no writer, but I think he does it right. His website, humbug.com, is one of the few websites I link to over on the left sidebar. The first blog in the Transitoid Series is the Mark Cuban weblog, which I find pretty amusing. He writes some pretty analytical stuff about NBA refs, and philosophical entries about basketball and sports in general. Cuban's obviously a really smart guy with a passion for life. Oh, and the reality show where he'll give away a million bucks to whoever amuses him most will be great. PREDICTIONS I feel compelled to predict some stuff that will happen during MLB 2004. That way, I bring up the predictions that turn out, forget the ones that didn't, and come off looking like a genius. Ok, everyone reading this is probably too smart to fall for that, but even Baseball Prospectus takes credit for individual forecasting successes. The Standings These are on a hunch. I could take some projections from different sources (PECTOA, ZiPS, Diamond Mind, Marcel the Monkey, etc), which would be the smart thing to do, but I'm going to do this subjectively off the top of my head. I have, however, looked at all these projections at some point this spring. AL East New York Yankees Boston Red Sox Toronto Blue Jays Baltimore Orioles Tampa Bay Devil Rays It's funny, picking the Yankees is actually somewhat against the norm this year. The Sox are good, but injuries will cause them to fall behind the Yankees pace. Things might be different come playoff time, though. AL Central Chicago White Sox Minnesota Twins Cleveland Indians Kansas City Royals Detroit Tigers I think the young Indians players will surprise people this year. The Royals greatly overacheived last year, and even though they appear to have gotten better, they're going to make Rob and Rany wish they hadn't started up again. AL West Anaheim Angels Oakland Athletics Seattle Mariners Texas Rangers I don't like the A's offense, the Big Three are showing weaknesses, and the Angels are solid all around. Angel pitching is especially poised to break out this year, led by Kelvim Escobar and John Lackey. The Mariners will finish closer to the bottom of the division than the top. NL East Philadelphia Phillies Montreal Expos New York Mets Atlanta Braves Florida Marlins Yup, that's right, the Florida Marlins will go from first to worst. That offense is ugly. One of Penny/Beckett/Pavano will have a phenomenal year, but it's unlikely that all three go crazy. Benitez will solid, but he's only a closer. The Braves offense will come crashing down, and they don't have the pitching to keep it afloat. The Mets in third? Yes, I'm crazy, but I also think they're making smarter moves this year. NL Central St. Louis Cardinals Houston Astros Chicago Cubs Cincinnati Reds Milwaukee Brewers Pittsburgh Pirates The Cardinals still have great fielders and solid bats. They've added a few quality starters this year which should push them over the top. I don't like the Cubs pitchers to repeat last year's performance, and the offense isn't really all that good. The Reds offense (i.e. Dunn and Kearns) will go crazy, but untill they can find people to pitch, they'll be in the bottom third. NL West San Francisco Giants San Diego Padres Arizona Diamondbacks Los Angeles Dodgers Colorado Rockies I like the Padres, as do many other people, but with all their improvement, they weren't a very good club last year. The Giants managed to throw together just enough to complement Bonds. The Dodgers will get better, but it'll be next year at the earliest that all of DePodesta's moves (and gifts from Bean/Ricciardi) start paying off significantly. The Rockies should challenge the Pirates and Brewers for worst NL team. Playoffs The Red Sox and Astros will make it into the playoffs as Wild Card teams, and the Red Sox will make it to the Series, led by Pedro, Schilling, and Kim. In the NL, the Cardinals squeak out the pennant, but fall short against the Red Sox. Of course, since I'm picking the Red Sox, there's no way they'll go anywhere. 4.03.2004
PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT - FREE MLB ALL ACCESS In case you missed the blog entry over at USS Mariner, MSN and MLB are offering a ridiculously great deal on MLB All Access. Basically, you can buy MLB.tv for $80 for the whole season to watch tons of games over the internet. Or, you can pay $110 for MLB All Access, which includes the MLB.tv live games plus condensed games, radio, and highlights. Or (and this is the best option in case you couldn't figure it out) you can pay $30 for MLB All Access by signing up for MSN Premium. It's $10 per month, and you get the first three months for free. I've signed up for the third option (duh), will enjoy my three months for nothin', and then spend the $30 for the rest of the season if I find it worthwhile. |
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