Calling my shot

It just occured to me that in taking my big break from blogging over the past couple of weeks, I managed to miss the beginning of the baseball season and my annual predictions. Since I did pretty poorly with last year’s picks (just three out of eight and one of those was only half right), I definitely need to redeem myself this season.

I realize we’ve got nearly two full week in the books already, but I don’t think that’ll make too much of a difference. I’m not yet ready to crown the Marlins and Blue Jays after their unexpected strong starts, but I’ll take a chance on the fish as the NL wild card.

AL East: Boston Red Sox
AL Central: Cleveland Indians
AL West: Los Angeles Angels
AL Wild Card: Tampa Rays

NL East: Philadelphia Phillies
NL Central: Chicago Cubs
NL West: Los Angeles Dodgers
NL Wild Card: Florida Marlins

Last year, I sold the Astros a little short and they came out seven games ahead of where I predicted. Since then, though, they haven’t gotten any better; they’ve just gotten older. I think they’ll have some nice stretches during the season when their offense clicks, but I honestly don’t see them being in any sort of race after the trade deadline. I’ll stick with the same prediction I made last year: 79-83.