SFist is Talking Baseball
With the start of the upcoming baseball season less than a week away, SFist's sports desk will try and break the new season down for y'all, round-table, free-form, discussion style. In the next few days, we'll debate the winners, the losers, and all the in-betweens. This discussion could be great, it could be lame, it could be meh. We guess we'll find out::
SFist Jackson: I'm predicting Oakland and New York in the ALCS this year, and am looking for the Phillies to take on the Cardinals in the NLCS. Oakland looks really strong this year, and you can't keep Steinbrenner down for long (the rat bastard). The Phils have been pouring money into their team for a few years now, and along with the Cards have the most pop in the National League.
The two teams I'll be watching closest both look to have a long season ahead of them, and for entirely different reasons. Ichiro proved he's still the most exciting player in baseball at the WBC, but with chumps like Raul Ibanez and Carl Everett clogging the lineup and mucking around the outfield, a once solid pitching-and-defense small ball team is now a schizophrenic mess. The Giants, on the other hand, are going to be the Barry Bonds show, and not at all in the good way. As one of my old teammates joked when the coach reminded us there's no 'I' in team: "But there is a 'me.'" Plus their pitching, save for Schmidt, blows and the heart of the lineup is once again brought to you by the AARP.
Seriously, I'm looking at the A's to dominate the AL West assuming they can get off to a good start, and have a feeling that Milton Bradley is going to have a career year with the likes of Frank Thomas in the clubhouse, who I imagine was eating a lot of humble pie in the dugout during the World Series. Plus their pitching is the class of the league again, assuming Barry Zito can keep his head straight (and his curveball down). The only negative I see would be that if they did get to the playoffs, I wouldn't have a lot of confidence in Ken Macha's ability as a field general
SFist Jon: Okay, here's who I got: the Tribe in six beating the Mets. Why the Indians? Two reasons. First one is the Sox (Red) won in aught-four and the Sox (White) won in aught-five so the Indians should be up next in the list of perpetually doomed teams finding redemption. Everyone thinks it'll be the Cubs' turn, but the Cubs winning would upset the universe too much. Plus, the Indians were, excluding a huge choke job in the last weekend of the season, the hottest team in baseball at the end of last year. The team has been loaded with young talent for years and this should be the year they put it together.
As for the Mets, I picked them mainly because I couldn't think of anyone else to pick. The NL is like the NFC, a bunch of mainly average teams competing to see whose more better than average. Both the Braves and the Cardinals have slipped, the Cubs still have too many injury prone players, and the NL West is still a mess. So why not the Mets? They got good pitching, good role players, and in Beltran and Delgado, good stars.
Anyways, here's how I have it breaking down:
NL East: Braves
NL Central: Cubs
NL West: Padres
Wild Card: Mets
Al East: Yankees
AL Central: Indians
AL West: A's
Wild Card: White Sox
Side notes: I have the A's and Braves losing in the first round because that's what they do, the Cubs losing in heart breaking style in the League Championship series because that's what they do, and the Tribe beating the Yanks in the Championship series because hungry young kids beat aging, overly-paid, tightly wound veterans every time. As for why I have the White Sox not repeating is that while they have a great pitching staff, they won way too many games last year by a one-run margin. I'm not a stat-head, but I do know that stat-heads will say that teams that win a lot of one run games one season usually don't win them the following season. Luck balances out.