How Do You Predict a Farce?
Yeah, I know it's a week into the baseball season and NOW I'm doing predictions. Well, remember my circumstances over the past month and also the fact that a week in, absolutely NOTHING is settled in a sport where the regular season is 162 games long. Especially considering that as I am writing this, all 5 teams in the National League East are right where they started a week ago, all tied, all with the same number of wins as losses (they're all 3-3).
Furthermore, I can be cavalier with making predictions on how this season will end because right now I am still 100% certain that this season WILL NOT have an end. I am just as sure now as I was six months ago when I originally made my prediction that there will not be a World Series. There is no collective bargaining agreement, the players' union will never agree to the one thing that baseball needs in order to keep all of its teams competitive (a salary cap), and the threat of contraction still hangs over the game at the end of the season. The owners' recently pledged that they would not lock the players out this season, a decision immediately ripped by the union as indicating they would try to declare an impasse after the season. Therefore, a players' strike is now inevitable; you won't hear about it until late in the season, just like in '94, when the rhetoric will grow to a fever pitch and Donald Fehr will finally declare that the owners will not keep the players from their ridiculously high salaries. And that will be it. Strike. End of season. No World Series in 2002. Possibly no World Series ever again.
And now, pessimism aside, here's my picks for the 2002 season should I prove to be wrong and we actually carry on to the finish...
NL East: The Mets and Braves spent a lot of money and did a lot of wheeling and dealing trying to perfect their teams. In fact, Steve Phillips is still trying to perfect the team, making a couple of deals in the past week involving unknown relievers in an apparent effort to find the perfect 25th man. He may be the most anal-retentive GM in baseball, and I can say that, cuz I'm a Mets fan. So, the Amazins now have Mo Vaughn and Jeromy Burnitz and Roger Cedeno and everyone is convinced that we will now score more runs. Hate to break it to you, folks, but we don't have any more power than we did last year, the only difference is Todd Zeile and Robin Ventura and Edgardo Alfonzo all had bad years. If that happens to Mo and Jeromy, it's 3rd place again. The Braves now have Maddux on the shelf, and John Smoltz proved the other night that he is not a closer by giving up 9 in the 9th to New York. By June, he's back in the rotation. It all adds up to a tight race in what could be baseball's deepest division talent-wise. The Phillies are all back, the Marlins are young but dangerous, and even the Expos have the ability to surprise their way into a .500 finish, unless you're one of those conspiracy theorists who think that Major League Baseball is going to force the Expos to trade all their best players in order to help the contraction argument. I'll be optimistic here (I have to be, I haven't been at all to this point) and say the Mets win the division, and the Braves, Phillies, and Marlins duke it out for second and a possible wild-card.
NL Central: The Cardinals are the clear favorite here. They are stacked in the lineup and rotation, even without Big Mac. For anyone to think the Astros have a realistic shot at winning the division, they forget that they are turning into the Colorado Rockies. They'll play a good game at home because they are built to outscore the opposition. On the road, they can't do that, and although they have good young pitchers, it's going to take more than that to get to Billy Wagner, and even he isn't as unstoppable as he used to be. The Cubs have a shot at the playoffs if their pitching rounds into shape. They certainly have the pop in the lineup now that they have Moises Alou to complement McGriff and Sosa. The rest of the division is playing for fourth, and the Reds have to have a healthy Ken Griffey, Jr. in order to get that far. The Brewers have to avoid striking out all the time to finish that high, and the Pirates need to finally show some signs of life.
NL West: No change here from last season, it's still the Diamondbacks and Giants battling for the division. The World Champs have everyone back this year; if they have any negatives at all, it's age. If they don't wear down and get injured like they did in 2000, they'll win the division again. However, if they falter at all, Barry Bonds & co. will be right there to catch them. Bonds won't hit 73 home runs again. First week pace aside, he's 39 years old, and just ask Mark McGwire how tough it is to keep up that pace at that age. The Dodgers will never get it right at this rate; they don't even try to build a winner before they blow the team up and start over. They need a few years for a young homegrown team to jell, but they won't allow that to happen. Meanwhile, the Rockies and Padres provide a legitimate challenge for L.A. for 3rd place, and it could be a long season in LaLa Land if they're stumbling around the cellar into the summer.
AL East: The Yankee$ own this division until I get proof otherwise. The Yankee$ are everything that is wrong with baseball right now. Steinbrenner now has unlimited cash reserves and can buy anyone he wants to keep his team on top. This will not change. Boston's best hope is for a wild-card, which they can get if Pedro Martinez is fully recovered from his injury woes of last year. The new owners may well try a little spending frenzy of their own to match the Yankees, but that may not be the best way to go. Toronto is young, they need a couple of years to put it together; hopefully management will have patience and not look at the empty seats at SkyDome and panic. Tampa Bay's youngsters are finally looking like they could win a few games, and at any rate, they're better than Baltimore. The Orioles will finish dead last, possibly with the worst record in baseball, and Peter Angelos will threaten to sue Bud Selig and Major League Baseball if they try to move a team to Washington. This is what happens when you have lawyers owning baseball teams...
AL Central: This is the Twins year. They surprised everyone last year, but they fell off in the second half. This year, they are expected to contend, but the experiences of last year may be what Minnesota needs to learn how to put together a division winner. Cleveland and Chicago will provide some competition, but the Indians will be lost without Roberto Alomar and the White Sox don't have enough quality starters to match Cleveland and Minnesota down the stretch. Detroit and Kansas City have to deal with the fact that nobody thinks they can win, including their own fans, and try to make something out of nothing.
AL West: It's all about Seattle and Oakland. The Angels and Rangers aren't even close. The Mariners will not win 116 games again, but they may need to win at least 100 to hold off the A's. Oakland loses Jason Isringhausen, they get Billy Koch; they lose Jason Giambi, they bring up Carlos Pena, and all is right with the world. Makes you wonder how many more years they can do this. With Seattle, there are too many players who may have had fluke years last season to think they will run away with the division again, but they can probably beat out Boston or Cleveland for the wild-card if Oakland ends up in first. A Seattle-Oakland ALCS would be a dream matchup like it almost was last year before the Yankees stunned the A's in the first round. Texas and Anaheim have the problem of having to play the Mariners and A's 18 times each. That alone dooms them to .500 at best; the other thing that hurts them is their lack of quality starting pitching.
So there ya have it, and when you think about it, it's pretty much status quo in the bigs this year; the same teams contending. No threat of a team coming out of nowhere like the Twins did last year (except maybe Florida), unlike the NFL where you always have a St. Louis or a Baltimore or a Chicago turn it around in one year. This is why baseball is losing in popularity to football. Do you really think NFL fans would be as into their sport if it was always the same six teams contending? The answer, of course, is no. I hope that the players' union will finally figure this out and accept a salary cap. The outlook, however, is bleak.
Furthermore, I can be cavalier with making predictions on how this season will end because right now I am still 100% certain that this season WILL NOT have an end. I am just as sure now as I was six months ago when I originally made my prediction that there will not be a World Series. There is no collective bargaining agreement, the players' union will never agree to the one thing that baseball needs in order to keep all of its teams competitive (a salary cap), and the threat of contraction still hangs over the game at the end of the season. The owners' recently pledged that they would not lock the players out this season, a decision immediately ripped by the union as indicating they would try to declare an impasse after the season. Therefore, a players' strike is now inevitable; you won't hear about it until late in the season, just like in '94, when the rhetoric will grow to a fever pitch and Donald Fehr will finally declare that the owners will not keep the players from their ridiculously high salaries. And that will be it. Strike. End of season. No World Series in 2002. Possibly no World Series ever again.
And now, pessimism aside, here's my picks for the 2002 season should I prove to be wrong and we actually carry on to the finish...
NL East: The Mets and Braves spent a lot of money and did a lot of wheeling and dealing trying to perfect their teams. In fact, Steve Phillips is still trying to perfect the team, making a couple of deals in the past week involving unknown relievers in an apparent effort to find the perfect 25th man. He may be the most anal-retentive GM in baseball, and I can say that, cuz I'm a Mets fan. So, the Amazins now have Mo Vaughn and Jeromy Burnitz and Roger Cedeno and everyone is convinced that we will now score more runs. Hate to break it to you, folks, but we don't have any more power than we did last year, the only difference is Todd Zeile and Robin Ventura and Edgardo Alfonzo all had bad years. If that happens to Mo and Jeromy, it's 3rd place again. The Braves now have Maddux on the shelf, and John Smoltz proved the other night that he is not a closer by giving up 9 in the 9th to New York. By June, he's back in the rotation. It all adds up to a tight race in what could be baseball's deepest division talent-wise. The Phillies are all back, the Marlins are young but dangerous, and even the Expos have the ability to surprise their way into a .500 finish, unless you're one of those conspiracy theorists who think that Major League Baseball is going to force the Expos to trade all their best players in order to help the contraction argument. I'll be optimistic here (I have to be, I haven't been at all to this point) and say the Mets win the division, and the Braves, Phillies, and Marlins duke it out for second and a possible wild-card.
NL Central: The Cardinals are the clear favorite here. They are stacked in the lineup and rotation, even without Big Mac. For anyone to think the Astros have a realistic shot at winning the division, they forget that they are turning into the Colorado Rockies. They'll play a good game at home because they are built to outscore the opposition. On the road, they can't do that, and although they have good young pitchers, it's going to take more than that to get to Billy Wagner, and even he isn't as unstoppable as he used to be. The Cubs have a shot at the playoffs if their pitching rounds into shape. They certainly have the pop in the lineup now that they have Moises Alou to complement McGriff and Sosa. The rest of the division is playing for fourth, and the Reds have to have a healthy Ken Griffey, Jr. in order to get that far. The Brewers have to avoid striking out all the time to finish that high, and the Pirates need to finally show some signs of life.
NL West: No change here from last season, it's still the Diamondbacks and Giants battling for the division. The World Champs have everyone back this year; if they have any negatives at all, it's age. If they don't wear down and get injured like they did in 2000, they'll win the division again. However, if they falter at all, Barry Bonds & co. will be right there to catch them. Bonds won't hit 73 home runs again. First week pace aside, he's 39 years old, and just ask Mark McGwire how tough it is to keep up that pace at that age. The Dodgers will never get it right at this rate; they don't even try to build a winner before they blow the team up and start over. They need a few years for a young homegrown team to jell, but they won't allow that to happen. Meanwhile, the Rockies and Padres provide a legitimate challenge for L.A. for 3rd place, and it could be a long season in LaLa Land if they're stumbling around the cellar into the summer.
AL East: The Yankee$ own this division until I get proof otherwise. The Yankee$ are everything that is wrong with baseball right now. Steinbrenner now has unlimited cash reserves and can buy anyone he wants to keep his team on top. This will not change. Boston's best hope is for a wild-card, which they can get if Pedro Martinez is fully recovered from his injury woes of last year. The new owners may well try a little spending frenzy of their own to match the Yankees, but that may not be the best way to go. Toronto is young, they need a couple of years to put it together; hopefully management will have patience and not look at the empty seats at SkyDome and panic. Tampa Bay's youngsters are finally looking like they could win a few games, and at any rate, they're better than Baltimore. The Orioles will finish dead last, possibly with the worst record in baseball, and Peter Angelos will threaten to sue Bud Selig and Major League Baseball if they try to move a team to Washington. This is what happens when you have lawyers owning baseball teams...
AL Central: This is the Twins year. They surprised everyone last year, but they fell off in the second half. This year, they are expected to contend, but the experiences of last year may be what Minnesota needs to learn how to put together a division winner. Cleveland and Chicago will provide some competition, but the Indians will be lost without Roberto Alomar and the White Sox don't have enough quality starters to match Cleveland and Minnesota down the stretch. Detroit and Kansas City have to deal with the fact that nobody thinks they can win, including their own fans, and try to make something out of nothing.
AL West: It's all about Seattle and Oakland. The Angels and Rangers aren't even close. The Mariners will not win 116 games again, but they may need to win at least 100 to hold off the A's. Oakland loses Jason Isringhausen, they get Billy Koch; they lose Jason Giambi, they bring up Carlos Pena, and all is right with the world. Makes you wonder how many more years they can do this. With Seattle, there are too many players who may have had fluke years last season to think they will run away with the division again, but they can probably beat out Boston or Cleveland for the wild-card if Oakland ends up in first. A Seattle-Oakland ALCS would be a dream matchup like it almost was last year before the Yankees stunned the A's in the first round. Texas and Anaheim have the problem of having to play the Mariners and A's 18 times each. That alone dooms them to .500 at best; the other thing that hurts them is their lack of quality starting pitching.
So there ya have it, and when you think about it, it's pretty much status quo in the bigs this year; the same teams contending. No threat of a team coming out of nowhere like the Twins did last year (except maybe Florida), unlike the NFL where you always have a St. Louis or a Baltimore or a Chicago turn it around in one year. This is why baseball is losing in popularity to football. Do you really think NFL fans would be as into their sport if it was always the same six teams contending? The answer, of course, is no. I hope that the players' union will finally figure this out and accept a salary cap. The outlook, however, is bleak.
Labels: baseball
posted by Dave | 4:08 PM
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