Way back in April you may recall I made my preseason predictions. Some have been fairly close while most have been horribly inaccurate. Here's a look back at where I went wrong.
NL East
1. Atlanta Braves (93-69)
2. Florida Marlins (92-70)
3. New York Mets (89-73)
4. Philadelphia Phillies (82-80)
5. Washington Nationals (75-87)
Revised:
1. Atlanta Braves
2. Washington Nationals
3. New York Mets
4. Florida Marlins
5. Philadelphia Phillies
So far I look to be pretty accurate on the Braves and Phillies, but the Nationals are making me look like a fool. They will end up above .500 while the Marlins may not. Overall, not too bad. (Believe me, it gets worse.)
NL Central
1. Chicago Cubs (92-70)
2. St. Louis Cardinals (90-72)
3. Milwaukee Brewers (81-81)
4. Cincinnati Reds (80-82)
5. Houston Astro (77-85)
6. Pittsburgh Pirates (73-89)
Revised:
1. St Louis Cardinals
2. Chicago Cubs
3. Houston Astros
4. Milwaukee Brewers
5. Pittsburgh Pirates
6. Cincinnati Reds
Pittsburgh has played far better than I thought they would, the Reds far worse, the Cubs have been too banged up and have underachieved. The Cardinals pick looks good, except for standing, and the Brewers pick is almost right on. The Houston Astros continue to make me look like a fool.
A lot of people have the Reds as a darkhorse in this division, but I don't see it. Griffey won't stay healthy, Rich Aruilla's best days are behind him, same with Joe Randa, and they still don't have good enough pitching. Don't tell me Eric Milton, he can't carry a staff.
Wow, what happened to the Astros. Berkman is hurt, Kent and Beltran are gone, and Biggio and Bagwell are in the twilight of thier careers. Roger Clemens will wonder why he came back. Before the All-Star break.
Not bad, the paragraph is pretty dead-on in terms of how the Reds season has gone (sans the Griffey Jr comment.) The Astros comment is also 100% accurate but yet they are still winning.
Overall, not that bad, Brewers should be around .500, Reds and Pirates will be towards the bottom, but the Cubs won't win this divison and the Astros may come in second.
NL West
1. San Diego Padres (88-74)
2. San Francisco Giants (84-78)
3. Arizona Diamondbacks (82-80)
4. Los Angeles Dodgers (74-88)
5. Colorado Rockies (70-92)
Revised:
1. San Diego Padres
2. Arizona Diamondbacks
3. San Francisco Giants
4. Los Angeles Dodgers
5. Colorado Rockies
The Padres win this division by default. They are a good team, but not good enough to win a division, not even good enough to win a wild card. They still have a good bullpen and rotation and now add a dimension of speed with Dave Roberts. Was Brian Giles really worth Jason Bay and Oliver Perez?
The Giants should win this division, but they're too old and we don't know how many games Bonds will play in this year, if he even plays at all. This is the last season you will see this Giants team, its time to rebuild.
Arizona could sneek up on some people. I love Brandon Webb, he is a guy who's been victimized by Ben Sheets' disease throughout his career. He pitches great, but gets no run support. Toss in Javier Vazquez, Russ Ortiz and Shawn Estes and you have yourself a good rotation. The offense has some bopers, but Craig Counsell and Royce Clayton are your first two hitters in your lineup? Looks like a lot of solo home runs.
The Dodgers...What is Paul DePodesta doing? Can we stop this whole "Moneyball" Thing. The A's are winning because they have good players, not some formula. I read the book, I heard the lunacies, but the bottom line is Eric Chavez, Barry Zito, Mark Mulder, Tim Hudson, Durazo, Damon, Giambi, those guys were all good players. The things the Dodgers are doing here, and I know what it is, eliminating speed and steals for on base percentage and big hitters, it's just dumb. They went from a great defensive team to a bad one, and even worse they brought in sinker ball pitchers. So you want pitchers who will get ground balls when you have a bad defense?
The Rockies are bad. Just bad. Here's a thought, trade Todd Helton for some young pitching. You won't get sucess out of any free agent pitchers, because pitching in Coors is a mental thing now. You need a youngster who doesn't know anybetter and can be tought to use off speed pitches. Plus, you haven't won with Helton, so you might as well lose without him.
You can't argue with they way I picked this division. If Barry Bonds would have played this year, the Giants would be in 2nd or 3rd in that division. Overall, pretty good.
Wildcard: Florida Marlins
Playoffs:
Marlins over Braves
Cubs over Padres
NLCS: Marlins over Cubs
World Series: Yankees over Marlins
MVP: Nomar Garciaparra
Cy Young: Ben Sheets
ROY: JJ Hardy (would have picked Garret Atkins but he's already starting the season on the DL)
First palyer traded: Willy Mo Pena
First Manager Fired: Jim Tracy
Don't be surprised if: The people in Florida remember they have a baseball team.
Wildcard: Astros or Cubs
NLCS: Cardinals over who ever else shows up.
MVP: Derek Lee (right team, wrong guy)
Cy Young: Chris Carpenter
ROY: Rickie Weeks (again right team, wrong guy)
I believe Placido Polanco was the first to be traded, and no one in Florida cares about baseball, still.
Tuesday, July 26, 2005
Daily Brew 7/26
Alright lets start with the obvious here, what the hell is Ned Yost doing calling for a squeeze play with one out and his pitcher at the plate? You're in the 4th so you've gotta assume you'll have more scoring opportunities in this game, there's already one out, Brady Clark (who already had two hits at that point) is on deck, there are two strikes, and possibly the worst hitting pitcher in baseball is at the plate. Why? How many times has Ned managed his team out of scoring opportunities this year? Once again though, Yost will catch a free pass on this one because his team bailed him (and for once Ben Sheets) out and won. If the Brewers honestly expect to contend for the wild card in the next year or two, this can't happen. Maybe Yost is not the manager to lead this team to the playoffs. Just because you managed under Bobby Cox doesn't mean you learned anything from him, and I think that's what we're seeing here.
Ricky Williams answered questions from the media yesterday, and I was very impressed. He sounded well spoken, articulate and intelligate and basically admitted he was returning for the money. Listen, if Ricky would have retired in February the whole marijuana thing wouldn't have been an issue, but because he did it so late people made him out to be a "pot head" who quit to get high all the time. I have no problem with what he did, if you don't love the game then don't steal a check, get out. He did, he just did it too late into the offseason.
Phil Nevin killed his potential trade to the Orioles last night, despite the fact that the Padres pleaded him not to and essentially told him if he does kill the deal they won't play him and are going to start Xavier Nady over him. Who is walking into a more awkard situation in their clubhouse today, Nevin or Sidney Ponson? I mean Ponson had no control over this, so that situation has to be really wierd. "Hey Sidney, glad you're still here buddy, sorry about that whole trade thing."
In other baseball news last night, the Cubs got another impressive late inning win over the Giants. Did you see this game? How many pitchers did Felipe Alou use, I swear some of those guys were summoned from AAA. The Curt Schilling experiment took another step backward as the Devil Rays got to him in the 10th and picked up a win, and my team on the west coast picked up another win. It goes without saying but seriously folks, Billy Beane knows what he's doing and he is the smartest man in baseball. Oh yeah, and now there's talk of him making a deal to acquire Adam Dunn.
Alex Smith inked a 6 year $49.5 million deal with the niners and the 32nd pick Logan Mankins also signed with the Patriots meaning the first and last picks of the draft have signed. Is this not the longest we've gone before a pick from the draft has signed?
Larry Brown and Herb Williams are meeting over dinner to "discuss" the Knicks job. Why is Larry meeting with Herb? To tell him he's sorry for stealing his job, and that he has no room for him on his staff?
Raise your hand if you watched Monday Night Golf last night. Okay keep em up, one, two, three, four, fi....oh you were scratching. Four people.
Kerry Wood was placed on the DL again and the Cubs announced when he returns it will be out of the bullpen. I agree with Gaddis on this, just because a guy throws hard doesn't mean he'd be a good bullpen guy. Wood is too erratic and walks too many guys for late innings bullpen appearances.
One more Yost note, did you happen to see who was behind the plate last night? It was Damian Miller, not Sheet's personal catcher Chad Moeller. When asked why Yost said he didn't want to give Miller two consecutive days off, and he noticed his team didn't score that many runs for Sheets so he wanted his better offensive catcher in. Wow, he finally realized what we all did three months ago, but it took you to mid July to do this?
Ricky Williams answered questions from the media yesterday, and I was very impressed. He sounded well spoken, articulate and intelligate and basically admitted he was returning for the money. Listen, if Ricky would have retired in February the whole marijuana thing wouldn't have been an issue, but because he did it so late people made him out to be a "pot head" who quit to get high all the time. I have no problem with what he did, if you don't love the game then don't steal a check, get out. He did, he just did it too late into the offseason.
Phil Nevin killed his potential trade to the Orioles last night, despite the fact that the Padres pleaded him not to and essentially told him if he does kill the deal they won't play him and are going to start Xavier Nady over him. Who is walking into a more awkard situation in their clubhouse today, Nevin or Sidney Ponson? I mean Ponson had no control over this, so that situation has to be really wierd. "Hey Sidney, glad you're still here buddy, sorry about that whole trade thing."
In other baseball news last night, the Cubs got another impressive late inning win over the Giants. Did you see this game? How many pitchers did Felipe Alou use, I swear some of those guys were summoned from AAA. The Curt Schilling experiment took another step backward as the Devil Rays got to him in the 10th and picked up a win, and my team on the west coast picked up another win. It goes without saying but seriously folks, Billy Beane knows what he's doing and he is the smartest man in baseball. Oh yeah, and now there's talk of him making a deal to acquire Adam Dunn.
Alex Smith inked a 6 year $49.5 million deal with the niners and the 32nd pick Logan Mankins also signed with the Patriots meaning the first and last picks of the draft have signed. Is this not the longest we've gone before a pick from the draft has signed?
Larry Brown and Herb Williams are meeting over dinner to "discuss" the Knicks job. Why is Larry meeting with Herb? To tell him he's sorry for stealing his job, and that he has no room for him on his staff?
Raise your hand if you watched Monday Night Golf last night. Okay keep em up, one, two, three, four, fi....oh you were scratching. Four people.
Kerry Wood was placed on the DL again and the Cubs announced when he returns it will be out of the bullpen. I agree with Gaddis on this, just because a guy throws hard doesn't mean he'd be a good bullpen guy. Wood is too erratic and walks too many guys for late innings bullpen appearances.
One more Yost note, did you happen to see who was behind the plate last night? It was Damian Miller, not Sheet's personal catcher Chad Moeller. When asked why Yost said he didn't want to give Miller two consecutive days off, and he noticed his team didn't score that many runs for Sheets so he wanted his better offensive catcher in. Wow, he finally realized what we all did three months ago, but it took you to mid July to do this?
Monday, July 25, 2005
Daily Brew 7/25
Ned Yost strikes again. You remember when Ned said he "needed" to see more from de la Rosa and others so he "didn't have" to overuse guys like Wise, Botallico and Santana? de la Rosa, Dana Eveland and at times even Justin Lehr have all looked very impressive lately, so what does Ned do yesterday? He goes with Julio Santana, the same Santana who has pitched in 6 of the last 9 games, but Ned doesn't want to overuse him. End result, walk off home run by Adam Dunn.
Lance Armstrong won the Tour De France for the 7th time yesterday. Does anyone really care? The first win after the comeback from cancer was great, moving and truely heroic, but I stopped caring exactly six years ago.
More news in the "Like I Care Category," the Cubs got a big win last night over the Cardinals. Another bullpend mishap only to find Nefi Perez bail them out with a grand slam. F'ing Cubs.
John Heder (Napolean Dynamite) is appearing in another movie. I saw the trailer for it before Wedding Crashers, and the introduced him as "Napolean Dynamite's John Heder." When they have to remind people who you played or what movie you were in, you career is officially almost over.
The MLB does not test for Human Growth Hormones, but they do test for steriods. Jason Giambi meanwhile has been on a tear. I hope I'm wrong, but hmmm...
The A's have now won six in a row, and are only 5 1/2 back of the Angels. The Angels are officially crapping thier pants.
This time in the "Like Anybody Cares" category, Ben Crane won the US Bank Championship yesterday. How much longer until the PGA Championship returns to Whistling Straits? Yeah, wake me up in 2011.
Too bad Penny Hardaway's career went into the toilet, because it meant no more Lil Penny.
Andrew Bogut's summer league stats: 13.2 ppg, 10.0 rgp, 1.4 bpg.
Marvin Williams summer league stats: 7.8 ppg, 3.8 rpg, 28% shooting percentage.
Again, if Andrew Bogut wasn't white, this pick wouldn't even have been a debate.
Lance Armstrong won the Tour De France for the 7th time yesterday. Does anyone really care? The first win after the comeback from cancer was great, moving and truely heroic, but I stopped caring exactly six years ago.
More news in the "Like I Care Category," the Cubs got a big win last night over the Cardinals. Another bullpend mishap only to find Nefi Perez bail them out with a grand slam. F'ing Cubs.
John Heder (Napolean Dynamite) is appearing in another movie. I saw the trailer for it before Wedding Crashers, and the introduced him as "Napolean Dynamite's John Heder." When they have to remind people who you played or what movie you were in, you career is officially almost over.
The MLB does not test for Human Growth Hormones, but they do test for steriods. Jason Giambi meanwhile has been on a tear. I hope I'm wrong, but hmmm...
The A's have now won six in a row, and are only 5 1/2 back of the Angels. The Angels are officially crapping thier pants.
This time in the "Like Anybody Cares" category, Ben Crane won the US Bank Championship yesterday. How much longer until the PGA Championship returns to Whistling Straits? Yeah, wake me up in 2011.
Too bad Penny Hardaway's career went into the toilet, because it meant no more Lil Penny.
Andrew Bogut's summer league stats: 13.2 ppg, 10.0 rgp, 1.4 bpg.
Marvin Williams summer league stats: 7.8 ppg, 3.8 rpg, 28% shooting percentage.
Again, if Andrew Bogut wasn't white, this pick wouldn't even have been a debate.
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