It's Opening Day Eve! (You Seattle fans be quiet. Oakland fans don't exist, so I'm not worried about hearing from them). Time for my first real power rankings of the year.
Last year when I started doing these I said I hated putting them in writing because they always look poor in retrospect. But the flip side is that you can also look like a genius. Either way it's fun to look back at them afterwards and see where your analysis went wrong and learn from that.
#1 - Texas - do you realize they were 1 strike away from winning the World Series while having a 2 run lead last year? Twice! Not even the cursed Red Sox ....... oh, never mind.
#2 - Philadelphia - they won't be as good as last year. They won't need to, to be the class of the National League.
#3 - San Francisco - 1 word. Pitching.
#4 - Boston - this isn't a fan being biased - I've done all the analysis here (ok, maybe a bit biased)
#5 - Detroit
#6 - Yankees
#7 - Toronto - there are about 5 divisions in the majors this team could win. Unfortunately the AL East isn't one of them, and the ~60 games against the Yankees, Red Sox and Rays will keep their overall win total down.
#8 - Milwaukee
#9 - St. Louis - barely made playoffs last year and are now defending champions. Will struggle to make playoffs again, but if they get in anything can happen!
#10 - Tampa Bay - See #7.
#11 - Angels - Pujols and CJ Wilson are big additions. They were overachievers last season and ended up with 86 wins. They should be better this year. I predict 86 wins without having to overachieve.
#12 - Atlanta - will battle Cardinals, Dbacks and Rockies for wildcard.
#13 - Arizona - Repeat after me "regression to mean".
#14 - Colorado - May be the benefactors of the extra playoff team.
#15 - Oakland
#16 - Cincinnati
#17 - Washington
#18 - Kansas City - 2nd place in the division!
#19 - Florida - new stadium, new manager, old results
#20 - Pirates - slowly improving
#21 - Minnesota
#22 - Cubs - might not necessarily be the worst MLB team in Chicago
#23 - Dodgers - clearly the worst MLB team in the LA area
#24 - Seattle
#25 - Mets - clearly the worst MLB team in the NY area
#26 - Cleveland - last year's start was a mirage. This year they'll be sellers at the deadline.
#27 - White Sox
#28 - San Diego
#29 - Houston - not worst team in majors this year!
#30 - Baltimore - clearly the worst team in greater DC area
Overall predictions
American League:
Wildcards: New York, Anaheim
National League:
Division winners: Philadelphia, Milwaukee, San Francisco
Wildcards: Atlanta, Colorado
World Series:
Mike Illitch will see an immediate return on his $214 Million investment in Prince Fielder when the Tigers parade on Grand River Avenue after beating the Giants in the 2012 World Series.
No comments:
Post a Comment