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.
The postseason of the MLB Tournament of Champions is in full swing as we wrap up the Wild Card Round of the Elimination Stage!
This
round is taking a little longer to determine than it would in the
actual Major League Baseball postseason because this is a tournament to
try to find the greatest team of all time... or at least since 1965. As
such, I made this round a best of three instead of a winner take all
game. I want to minimize the factor that luck has in determining the
winner.
We move over in the National League, where the 1975 Cincinnati Reds, a team I didn't think would really play too much of a factor in this tournament, find themselves as the top Wild Card. They were in the mix all through April and by May had pretty much cemented themselves in second place in the Central division, but were pretty much constantly within striking distance of the division title for the next two months until the 2016 Cubs pulled away. But the Reds locked up a Wild Card fairly quickly after the division was lost, and they have home field advantage in this round.
They'll take on the 1998 San Diego Padres, who struggled for a significant chunk of April before finding their way. San Diego even spent a little time in first place in the West, but wasn't much of a threat for a Wild Card until near the end of the regular season when the 1986 Mets were collapsing, and the Padres swept their final regular season series to grab that second spot. During the regular season, the teams split their six games, with the road team winning every matchup.
So these teams will now play a best-of-three series, with the Reds getting home field advantage due to a better record. That home field advantage will play out in a 1-2 format, with the first game in San Diego and Game 2 (and 3 if necessary) being played in Cincy. I gave all the teams a few days between the end of the regular season and the postseason to allow for some time to set up their starting rotations, which is the only pitching-related issue I can control.
I will also be keeping stats during postseason play with the intent of naming an All Tournament Team when it's all said and done. You can keep track of those stats, both by series and in aggregate, here. All simulations are provided by WhatIfSports.com. Let's get the playoffs started!
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.
