seems i’ve run out of time to predict, so these predictions come without much explaining…

NL west:
1. arizona diamondbacks
2. colorado rockies
3. los angeles dodgers
4. san diego padres
5. san francisco giants

NL central:
1. chicago cubs
2. milwaukee brewers
3. houston astros
4. st. louis cardinals
5. cincinatti reds
6. pittsburgh pirates

NL east:
1. new york mets – kills me, kills me to put them here. the new york mets are the strongest team in the east, even though they have little depth at any one position. here’s to hoping this house of cards colllapses.
2. philadelphia phillies
3. atlanta braves
4. florida marlins
5. washington nationals

NLDS:
philadelphia over chicago (i don’t care what any of you say i am not leaving the phillies out of the playoffs)
arizona over ny mets

NLCS:
arizona over philadelphia, in 5

WORLD SERIES:
detroit over arizona, in 5

NL preview coming soon. in the meantime, enjoy this

only a few days left until the start of the 2008 season… the time for prognostication is at hand.

disclaimer: i haven’t been keeping up regularly with spring training news (i only just found out about kaz matsui’s anal fissures the other day), so if any of my predictions end up wrong, i reserve the right to conveniently divorce myself from them.

AL west:
1. los angeles angels
2. seattle mariners
3. oakland athletics
4. texas rangers

the angels win their division convincingly and finish in the neighborhood of 92 wins, even though they failed to significantly upgrade their lineup (torii hunter is on the wrong side of 30 and still does not know how to draw lots of walks). the mariners improve their short-term situation with bedard, but not enough to overcome the joint effort of their corner infielders to hit for negative batting average. they finish second. the only tough choice here is whether to put the athletics or rangers in the cellar. i’m choosing the rangers for now, but if billy beane auctions off joe blanton and other veterans we may have a photo-finish in the race to the bottom.

AL central:

1. detroit tigers
2. cleveland indians
3. minnesota twins
4. chicago white sox
5. kansas city royals

the race in the central is very, very close. i give the edge to the tigers because their offense is a juggernaut. side prediction: they will lead the majors in scoring. the indians finish second in the division, but only one or two games behind detroit. let’s say detroit wins 96 games, cleveland 94. what to say about the bottom three? the twins don’t have enough pitching or offense to compete with the big two, though francisco liriano puts together an impressive bounceback season. let’s give him 13 wins and a sub-3.50 ERA. as for the white sox, these poor white sox… they actually finish ahead of the royals this year, but with gavin floyd as their third starter, there is no way i am penciling them in for anything better than a fourth place finish. the royals are the royals. as always. fifth.

is this picture really only two-and-a-half years old??

AL east:
1. boston red sox
2. new york yankees
3. toronto blue jays
4. tampa bay rays
5. baltimore orioles

boston is too deep, too strong… 99 wins for them. the yankees post a very good record but finish several games behind boston, due in part to some hank steinbrenner midseason-meddling. i foresee hank forcing cashman to make at least one ill-advised and costly trade this july (he is a steinbrenner, which means he can’t help himself). it’s the same old story for toronto. they have a couple of great pieces, like b.j. ryan and vernon wells (who bounces back from a mediocre 2007), but nowhere near enough depth to compete with the yanks or sox. the devil rays are a club on the rise and could compete for third place, if they only had pitching behind kazmir. the o’s finish last. they are actually worse than last year. what a sad, sad story. i’m having a hard such a hard time deciding whether the o’s or the white sox are the most depressing franchise in baseball right now that i will not weigh in here with a decision.

ALDS:
boston over cleveland
detroit over la angels

ALCS:
detroit over boston, in 6

coming soon… NL and World Series predictions

in case you missed the videos on the 700level or allswings, or the link on plunkchutley, another fantastic phillies blog, check out espn’s endless drama video series at its official site. the first four videos are up and there are more to come.

my esteemed colleague mike pondered what the fallout of the mets’ recent spat of injuries will be. deep down, i hope for the absolute worst – if the baseball gods are listening, how about making santana’s left hand get caught in a meat grinder while we’re at it? – but i think mike gets it right when he guesses these particular injuries will amount to a whole lot of nothing. it’s safe to assume luis castillo will make a full recovery from his knee troubles and produce like the luis castillo of old, i.e. two homeruns and a slugging percentage of -.013. likewise, we can expect brian schneider to hit .240 this year and punch a.j. pierzynski in the face. what’s that you say? michael barrett punched pierzynski in the face? just the .240 clip then – i sometimes confuse my scrappy “game-caller” backstops. by the way, whatever happened to paul lo duca? i really admired his tenacity…

kidding aside, it’s doubtful this round of injuries will seriously hamper the mets’ ability to score runs, or claim primacy in the pitching department (as they are expected to).

so, what injuries would? let’s run down the hypothetical injuries the nl east’s projected champ absolutely cannot afford.

1) anything that sidelines johan santana for a significant portion of the season (meatgrinder included). yes, this is a lot like john madden saying “the team that scores the most points wins,” but the importance of santana cannot be understated. he is absolutely essential to the mets’ playoff push, and an injury that limits him to, say, 100-120 innings of service-time, would effectively negate the mets’ advantage over their rivals in pitching. of course, if pedro martinez is able to even come close to performing at the level he did before 2005, the mets’ advantage solidly returns in spite of an injured santana. here’s to hoping that santana and pedro decide to engage in a friendly game of “toss the live hand grenade” sometime this year.

how bout it, my friends?

2) anything that sidelines david wright for a significant period of the season, including his ongoing bout with illiteracy. also obvious, but just imagine how much worse the mets’ collapse last september would have been if wright had rolled over and died like the rest of his team – he batted .352 in the final month of last season. though i cannot respect his views on perpetuating his own illiteracy and the illiteracy of those around him (oliver perez), i admire the hell out of his drive, so much so that i believe a month and a half on the DL for eating out of a jar labeled “rat poison” because he didn’t know better would keep the braves and phils in the thick of the race.

“listen, david, 88-74 is actually less then 89-73. let’s just go ahead and sign you up for a math class too.”

3) torn ACL, jose reyes. when reyes’ production fell off towards the end of last year, he was put under the microscope by many sportswriters who’d previously showered him with praise, who’d called him the second coming of rickey henderson and such. these writers seemed shocked to discover that for every four bags reyes stole, he was caught trying to steal a fifth. fellas, when it comes to stolen-base efficiency, we can’t all be jimmy rollins. besides, as you correctly pointed out in the first place, reyes’ real value on the basepaths is his knack for throwing off the rhythm of the opposing pitcher and creating opportunities for the bats in the lineup after him – i honestly believe this. plus, if reyes improves his discipline at the plate and on the basepaths, both of which were on an upward trajectory before his skid in the last few months of 2007, he will be that much more indispensable to the mets’ success. so, here is to hoping for a blown-out ACL. or even better, a missing right leg.

two-dimensional illusion or korean war casualty? you be the judge.

that about does it for the mets. quickly, let’s run through the potentially disastrous injuries for the other nl east contenders…

phillies: a midseason flare-up in brad lidge’s right knee/brad lidge immitating himself after the pooholes bomb. i’d say the odds of the latter are extremely high. god. kill me now. back troubles for cole hamels. also likely. a “day the music died” type plane crash involving rollins, utley and howard. anything short of that and the phillies will score 900 runs. count it.

braves: chipper jones, another well-regarded member of baseball’s illiterati, suffers total kidney failure after raiding buddy david wright’s medicine cabinet. i swear, you would not believe me if told you just how many MLBers cannot read. john smoltz’s slider realizing that its delivery system is 40 years old and finally crapping out. has not happened yet, doubt it will happen this year. rafael soriano’s elbow condition worsens to the point that it requires surgery. a little more likely than the scenarios i laid out above. and yes, i am rooting for it. i think the braves are being greatly underestimated going into this season. but that’s for another blog another time…

the official chase utley site got a makeover. looks good. damned good.

once upon a time, craig biggio was bill james’ favorite player.

now forty years old, jonah keri commemorates bob gibson’s 1.12 ERA season. my favorite anecdote: It was just so hard to beat him,” recalled Cubs slugger and fellow Hall of Famer Billy Williams. “One year, Roberto Clemente hit a line drive that hit him right in the shin. He pitched another five, six innings to finish the game, then it turned out he had a broken leg.” wow.

phillies beatwriter todd zolecki recently invited his blog-readers to submit questions for his sitdown Q&A with chase utley. yours truly submitted a question. not only did zolecki choose my question, it was his favorite…

Question: There are two cages over a pit of lava and both are descending. In one cage there are blueprints for revolutionary emissions-free technology. In the other is Shane Victorino. You can only save one. Which one do you save? – Greg G., Washington, DC.
Answer: OK … I’m going to have to save my centerfielder. I’m saving my centerfielder, yes. I have his back. Hopefully he’d do the same for me.

The look on Utley’s face when I asked that question was priceless. If he thought I was crazy before, he certainly thinks so today. But give the guy credit, he rolled with the punches and answered the questions well.

the full transcript of the Q&A is here. audio is here.

seems that zolecki and utley both got a kick out of the question. makes me wonder if i should have sent them my follow-ups:

in all seriousness, i have victorino tied up in my basement. what are you prepared to do to get him back?

also, why won’t your sister accept my facebook friend requests?

i think i made the right decision.

***

note: this post also appears on allswingsconsidered, another baseball blog i do jointly with a few friends of mine.

moneyball’s bad-bodied catcher announced his retirement over the weekend.

also in the news: henry waxman’s not sure last week’s steroids hearing was all that necessary. if you didn’t think it was necessary, you shouldn’t have convened it. when you’re the chairman, that decision rests with you, not with clemens’ PR team.

also also in the news: carlos beltran thinks the mets are the team to beat in 2008. more to come on this prediction, the aptly dubbed “weekend at bernie’s II” boast.

a friend passed this along this morning. words simply do not do justice.

staff salary expenditures for the house government reform committee (the committee holding the roger clemens hearings) totaled $6.39 million through the first three quarters of 2007, which puts the year’s total at about $8.5 million. that sets the base day-to-day operating cost of the government reform committee at $23,000 and change. add in another $165,000 for each of the forty-one members of congress sitting on the committee and that bumps the cost up to $42,000.

wednesday, the american people paid $42,000 to find out that roger clemens’ wife tried HGH five years ago. henry waxman and the rest of the government reform committee can and should find better ways to spend our money. for starters, how about looking into their colleagues in the senate and why they’ve so eagerly piggy-backed onto the white house’s plan to extend the protect america act? the house stood tall on protect america today and deserve a pat on the back for that. now if they’d only call an end to the roger clemens dog-and-pony show…

resources:
+write chairman waxman and let him know you’d prefer stricter oversight of the executive branch, not-as-strict oversight of roger clemens’ wife’s stomach
+check up on who’s giving money to government reform committee members, courtesy of opensecrets.org
+unrelated shoutout to uno the beagle. as a beagle owner i must give props.