With Major League Baseball starting in less than 24 hours, I've covered ground in five of the six Major League divisions, having worked my way from the east coast all the way out west now.
And so, let's tackle the NL West and conclude the series. Happy Opening Day, and good luck to your team!
I know technically, the Major League season started last week when the Mariners and A's played a couple games over in Japan. But two games out of 162 isn't enough for me to have justified running this feature early.
In what has become an annual tradition, one of the ones where I make an idiot out of myself, I run through all six MLB divisions and make my predictions for the season. Last year I condensed the posts to a span of three days, but I continued the pattern of going across the country and alternating leagues, ending with the defending champion's division.
With that in mind, we'll kick things off out west in the National League.
The first one happened in Denver yesterday afternoon. There's been some craziness in the series between the host Rockies and the San Diego Padres. Padre outfield Manuel Margot is out after getting one in the ribs, and early in the game yesterday Trevor Story of the Rockies and Hunter Renfroe of the Padres were both hit, though I believe unintentionally.
And of course, because the neanderthals are still in charge, this happened when Nolan Arenado stepped to the plate in the third.
Not to be outdone, when the Yankees and Red Sox renewed their rivalry last night, tempers got so heated the benches cleared twice.
I kind of get the anger from the Red Sox' perspective. Going in with your spikes is dangerous, but other than using his spikes, the Yankees' Tyler Austin did nothing wrong: he slid directly into second base, albeit ending up past the bag (though by the rule, you only have to be able to remain on the bag after completing the slide and since the force was already completed, the fact that he was off isn't an issue). That's why I don't take issue with the benches clearing in the aftermath of that play.
Still image from Fox Sports
But in both of these games, we see the old school unwritten rules in full force. You hit one or more of our guys, we're hitting yours. You spike our second baseman, the runner who slid is getting thrown at his next time up. It's the way that baseball has been played for years so it's in no way a surprise.
But here's the rub. It's 2018, and we're still acting like thugs about things. I'm not saying you can't or shouldn't defend your guys, because in team sports you have to know that your teammates have your back. But there has to be a better way than by assaulting an opponent with a deadly weapon. That's what this is. Don't give me the "he hit him in the back, or on the rear, it's okay," bullcrap. Fastball velocity is... fast, and that can do some serious damage. And if it happens to get away and you end up hitting a guy in the head? We're talking potential life or death territory here.
I love a good donnybrook as much as the next guy, but this crap that precipitates these scrums needs to stop. One of these days, a guy is going to get seriously hurt by an intentional beaning... or worse. There's no place for assault with a deadly weapon in the game anymore. We should be beyond it. The league needs to start stepping in, though like I said last year, I don't see Rob Manfred doing anything about it.
If it were me, it's getting to the point where I'd start getting draconian on incidents like this. I'm talking month-long suspensions for the assaulting pitcher and multigame suspensions for the manager to hammer the point home. Suspensions for the fights resulting from beanings can stay where they are now, but players need to find a better way to police themselves.
It's an extreme example, but one day, someone is going to get killed by one of these retaliatory beanballs. What happens then? I'd rather get this removed from the game before something like that happens.
Opening Day is tomorrow! Excitement is in the air, everyone is a contender (...well, except for the Marlins) and hopefully the weather will warm up so taking a trip to the ballpark will be a little more pleasant.
I've condensed my process down to three days' worth of posting instead of six, so we're down to just two divisions to preview. We're back to the National League one more time with one Wild Card berth still up for grabs.
We've narrowed the field down from 30 teams at the beginning of April to eight as we begin the Division Series in the Tournament of Champions!
Each series is getting its own post because I want to make sure that they all get their own attention, and this way I can do short writeups for each individual game of the postseason.
Calendar-wise, the two series in this round that don't feature Wild Card teams are getting a one-day head start on the series that do feature the Wild Cards, in an effort to allow for travel and a little bit of rest. That doesn't impact this series over in the National League, however.
On one side, we have the 2007 Colorado Rockies. Colorado was in the mix in the NL West for pretty much the entire regular season, with a short time just outside that spot, but they were ticketed for the postseason from the get-go. Their rotation didn't seem otherworldly, at least looking at their actual stats from 2007, but their offense was lethal, and it propelled them to 52 wins.
They will go up against the 1995 Atlanta Braves. Atlanta was in the mix from the get-go as well, despite a problem with the schedule that forced them to play on 34 straight days, something that Major League Baseball's collective bargaining agreement prohibits. But the Braves didn't let it bother them as they took home the league's longest winning streak at either 14 or 15 games from May into June, which allowed them to overtake the 1986 New York Mets and win the NL East going away.
These two teams will play a best of five series, with the Braves getting home field advantage in a 2-2-1 format thanks to their better regular season record, which is good because the two teams split their regular season series with three wins apiece. I am also keeping stats for the postseason, which you can view here. All simulations are provided by WhatIfSports.com. Let's get the Division Series underway!
We're halfway through our baseball predictions for the upcoming year, and just a few days from the start of the season. We're also only a few days from the start of my latest ambitious project in the MLB Tournament of Champions, which you can find out more about here.
On Day 4, we're swapping leagues again while staying on the coast. as we move to the National League West.
I've taken a few weeks off from writing in the aftermath of the end of basketball season, just to get a little more free time in. With baseball season nearly upon us though, I find myself having to scramble a little bit.
I'm excited for the season to get underway, as after a few dismal years on the north side of Chicago, there's an elite team playing at Clark and Addison. I'll have more on them in a few days.
As is my tradition, I will do a division a day, alternating leagues and ending with the division containing the defending champion. This year, with the champions coming out of the Central, I have to start on one coast or the other, and this year I'm opting for the west coast. Let's take a look at the NL West.
Over the past five days, I've taken a look at the entirety of Major League Baseball save the NL West. Today, we finish off with them since they house the defending World Series Champions.
To a degree, I goofed with these guys last year, but it also housed my biggest prediction success since predicting the score of Super Bowl XLIII. If you want to look at last year's predictions, you can view them here.
It's been a long, brutal winter. Spring officially began last Thursday, but it hasn't really seemed like it yet. We're (hopefully) past all that polar vortex subzero nonsense, though Sunday saw some lake effect snow in Chicago. It's hard to believe that on Sunday, Major League Baseball officially gets underway here in the States as opposed to that Australian pair of games this past weekend.
So like I did last year, I'm going to do a runthrough of all 30 MLB teams even though I've only kind of followed what's gone on during the offseason. I think I can do enough to at least reasonably guess at what will happen. Bear in mind though, this is a guy who picked the world champs to finish last in their division last year. I was wrong then, so take these picks for what you will.
Another fun side note: I totally threw out random records last season for my projections, and my dad put the numbers together only to find that I gave, on average, about a win too many to all the teams last year. I'm actually looking at numbers this time.
Since I want to do the division with the defending champ last, I'm starting in the opposite league on the opposite coast. As such, here's how I'm picking the NL West to shape up.
