New scorecards!

As promised yesterday! Most people know that I love keeping score. I score almost every game I attend in person and some I watch on TV. (This is part of my love of stats.) For some time I have used scorecards of my own design and last week I completed a re-design of the scorecards for this season. This post isn’t just pointless narcissism though; I produce these scorecards using Python code and this year I have put the code on GitHub for anyone to use.
The code can produce a blank scorecard, but it can also read in a text file to populate the teams and lineups. For example, my completed scorecard from today’s game is below. The Royals didn’t announce their lineup before I had to run it off the printer, so I filled that out manually, whereas the Twins side is done by the code. The default colour is red because it’s easiest to see red against both the white background and dark grey pencil marks. (It’s the same reason that red pens are used for editing.)

This is not my best code right now. I’m hoping to make further improvements to the code, including improving the documentation, making it more user-friendly and easier to tweak some parameters like size and colour, and if there’s an appetite for it, maybe making it easier for people to tailor it to their own scoring styles.

2023 MLB Predictions

Some people know this, but a few years ago I was given a full set of miniature MLB team helmets and a board to display them in the order of the standings. The board wore out quite quickly, but I replaced it with a couple of little cases from Amazon, and I usually update it about once a week during the season. (Less often in early April, since the standings are so volatile that time of year.) Before the season though, I set them in the order of my predictions for that year, and I usually write some breakdown of why.

This year, I strongly considered building a full ‘objective’ model to make the predictions for me, but objective in the sense that MLB Network’s Top 10 Right Now lists are advertised as being objective and unbiased. Yes, they came out of a computer, but there’s subjectivity and bias in what goes into the model. Brian Kenny’s abject inability to understand this and many other things will be a post at some point. Unfortunately, I had this idea at about eleven o’clock this morning and even if I didn’t have to work, that really isn’t enough time to build even a satirical model. That said, I did find a couple of interesting things that factor into these predictions and might go into future models:

Teams average eleven fewer wins the season after having a player hit sixty or more home runs without gratuitously cheating. Did I look this up just because I wanted an ‘objective’ way to lower the Yankees in the model? Yes. Admittedly, it’s not unreasonable to think there might actually be a connection there, as the team’s win total was probably boosted by a performance that is unlikely to be repeated, but also it’s only happened twice and both times the team really had nowhere to go but down the following year. (Which is why I looked this up in the first place.)
According to this paper, teams who change managers have a boost in winning percentage equal to about five wins over the course of a season. The teams with new managers this year are Miami, Texas, Kansas City, and Chicago (AL). I didn’t see anything for the effects of a new GM or pitching coach, but either way there’s something of a boost for the Royals.

Anyway, these predictions were all done by a neural net that has been trained inconsistently for more than thirty years and hates the Yankees. If they’re right, the neural net will be given positive feedback in the from of smugness and beer and if they’re wrong the neural net will get negative feedback in the form of annoyance… tempered by beer.

American League

AL East

Toronto (95-67)
Tampa Bay (90-72)
New York (85-77)
Baltimore (82-80)
Boston (80-82)

I didn’t want to put the Blue Jays in first. I really didn’t. Maybe it’s a lingering resentment for how ungraciously they took losing the 2015 ALCS, or maybe it’s how much they’ve been hyped for over three years without really doing anything to earn it, but they annoy me. However, John Schneider did seem to take them from a quasi-functional group of individuals with decent talent to an actual team that can win games. (Win games in the regular season, anyway.) So fine, they get first. The Rays should make it a race, as they usually do. I thought about putting them in first, but it really would have been one of those ‘thy wish was father to that thought’ placements and I try to limit myself to only applying that to teams I really like or hate. The Rays, by their standards, struggled a bit last year. I would not bet against that being an anomaly, but they did lose some of their coaching staff this offseason and are swimming against the tide of the new CBA. Between the Yankees‘ 99 wins last year already being an overperformance for a team that looked hapless for a lot of the season and the aforementioned eleven game penalty for the year after a sixty home run season, they get third and can thank me for it. The Orioles and Red Sox could really go in either order. They’ll both probably be at least decent, but both are fairly uncertain. Baltimore have the issue that teams which took as big a step as they did last year usually need a year to at best consolidate while they react to other teams adjusting. Boston spend the first part of the winter trying to tank, then remembering they were the Red Sox and having an okay winter in the end. I don’t think it’s enough to really compete though, and I think the Orioles have a better chance.

AL Central

Cleveland (92-70)
Chicago (90-72)
Kansas City (80-82)
Minnesota (72-90)
Detroit (57-105)

The AL Central is, as has been the case for several years now, a pretty weak division that really just needs one team to play well to finish first. Last year that was the Guardians and I don’t see any real reason why it shouldn’t be again. They were a young, pretty balanced, team that should be at least at the same level this year. They do have the same issue I mentioned with Baltimore that it tends to be hard to take another big step after the one they took last year, but unlike Baltimore, they don’t need to do much more than consolidate the gains they made already. The White Sox could put some pressure on them though. The White Sox have spent years acquiring individually talented players who played as individuals, completely skipped the fundamentals, and could be relied upon to underperform. That might change under Pedro Grifol. He’s not a miracle worker, obviously, but he has an attention to detail that has been very lacking in Chicago. I could see him doing with the White Sox what Schneider did with the Blue Jays and if that happens the Guardians might actually have to take another step this year. I could write a whole section for the Royals, but they also should benefit from a managerial change and I really think the boost from getting rid of bad leadership both in the coaching staff and in the form of toxic players is underrated. The Twins are hard to call. They arguably had a better year last year than their record makes it look; they were in the race late until a horrific collapse down the stretch. But at the same time, the Twins have seemed to defy gravity for years. I’m not convinced that the collapse was the anomaly. They don’t look like a substantially improved team from last year, though they’ve been proactive about shoring up some possible weak spots. I’m just very, very unconvinced by them and that’s without even factoring in the possibility that Carlos Correa has a season-ending injury at some point. I’m not that kind of doctor, but given how skittish his medical report made teams, I wouldn’t want to rely on him to carry the team. And then there’s the Tigers. I was tempted to leave it at ‘The Tigers also play in this division’, but I want to mention how completely baffled I am by their approach. They seemed to be really going in on a rebuild centred around some decent prospects. And then they also went and spend big money on the most over-rated player in the league, Javy Baez. I know I call a lot of players over-rated, because players in big markets do tend to be more highly rated, but no one really compares to Javy Baez. His season last year should not have been a shock. What was a shock was that the Tigers seemed to abandon their rebuild to give him over $20 million per annum. Now they’re stuck with that and prospects who might still develop, but who are at least a year away still.

AL West

Houston (104-58)
Seattle (93-69)
Texas (74-88)
Los Angeles (70-92)
Oakland (48-114)

Just after the All Star Break in 2009, the Royals had a stretch of six games—all at home—in which they took a lead into the eighth inning four times and lost all of those games. There was a grim inevitability about the bullpen in those days. I mention this because it’s the same grim inevitability about the Astros winning the AL West. I don’t want it to happen, no one outside the Houston area wants it to happen. But although the Astros have weaknesses, they’re all the sort of weaknesses that might be a problem in a short playoff series, not a problem getting there in the first place. The race for second place is fairly open. The Mariners have been playing well for a few years and they finally turned that into a playoff berth last year. The system they built looks sustainable for a while, so they’re probably favourites for that runner-up spot just by default, but also I don’t see the other three teams as having improved enough to close the gap. The Rangers spent big in the offseason after having a miserable couple of years. They look like they’re really trying to test the extent to which a team can just buy their way into contention under the new CBA. I don’t think they spent particularly wisely though, and in any case they’d have to actually spend as much as the Mets to go from 68 wins to contention. Changing managers might help, but I’m also not sold on bringing someone out of retirement. I think they’ll be better than last year, but I’m not really predicting them moving into third place as much as I am predicting the Angels moving out of first place. The Angels have a couple of really good players you’ve probably heard of, the problem is the other 24 are average at best. More importantly, the Angels front office looks all at sea, though they’re hamstrung by the uncertainty around the ownership. Either way, I just don’t see them improving from last year, and probably sinking further. And then there are the A’s. I don’t even know where to begin with the A’s, partly because I don’t actually know without looking it up who is still on their team. I feel sorry for their fans and pretty furious at their owner, John Fisher, who is damaging the whole structure of major league baseball. The whole thing is a mess.

National League

NL East

New York (104-58)
Atlanta (102-60)
Philadelphia (87-75)
Miami (75-87)
Washington (54-108)

Oh, while we’re on the topic of terrible owners making the sport worse, we have the Mets‘ Steve Cohen. Just because he’s going about it the other way doesn’t make it any less damaging. Much as I hope his attempt to go full Monty Burns fails, it probably won’t. The Braves should also be very good again. I’m not convinced that they’re a better team than last year, but they also won 101 games last year, so basically carrying that forward would normally be enough. Then there are the Phillies. The Phillies are hard for me to judge. They’re the defending NL Champions, but they’re also coming off an 87-win, third-place regular season and only made the expanded playoffs on the last weekend of the season. On the one hand, I want to give them credit, and say that the grand strategy of buying every DH to slug their way into an expanded postseason did actually work. On the other hand, it’s really hard to know if that will work consistently. (And also, I hate that being a viable strategy.) They added even more hitting over the winter, but I don’t know how much that moved the needle. It doesn’t really matter in their division. They’re not finishing above third unless one of the teams above them collapses and they’re not finishing below third unless one of the teams below them makes a miracle run. But the divisions don’t really matter in MLB now, and a few games here and there might make all the difference in the wild card race. The Marlins always feel kinda irrelevant (which has been fair a lot) but I think they’ll be a little better than last year and better than the lack of attention would indicate. They still have the reigning NL Cy Young award winner and made some other minor upgrades over the winter. But they’re also going to be outclassed by the division and league. The Nationals should play a full 162 games and continue their tribute to the old ‘first in war, first in peace, last in the American League’ Washington Senators.

NL Central

St Louis (91-71)
Chicago (84-78)
Milwaukee (80-82)
Pittsburgh (63-99)
Cincinnati (61-101)

There are five teams in this division. Five! It seems like a lot, given that none of them really seem like a division winner to me. I’m going with the Cardinals; they still have some good players and anyway they just seem to always find a way to win the division, no matter how annoying it is. But they also feel like the shell of a good team. I’m going with the Cubs to make a big leap and move into second place in the division. I’m not super comfortable with making that prediction, but it’s partly a reflection of the other teams in the division. The Cubs did improve though, and having a solid defensive shortstop I think will really help them. The Brewers are an extremely frustrating team. They’re talented and they’re not that far removed from being a game away from winning the NL pennant. But they just seem uninterested in winning. I can’t understand their front office at all and that disfunction seems to bleed down to the team itself. The Pirates and Reds will prop up the table again; they finished tied last year and they seem very similar again this year. I think Pittsburgh have a bit more talent in the end, but they also have some leadership issues—Ke’Bryan Hayes taking his glove off to eat sunflower seeds whilst watching a play unfold around him is the prime example—so they might cancel out again.

NL West

Los Angeles (98-64)
San Diego (92-70)
Arizona (80-82)
San Francisco (77-85)
Colorado (64-98)

Almost done! The Dodgers are not the team they were a year ago, but also the team they were a year ago won one hundred and eleven games. They won the division by twenty-two games. They don’t have to be the same team they were a year ago, at least in the regular season. The Padres are also basically the same team as last year and not really that different to the team they were the last few years. They won 89 games last year and haven’t won more than ninety games in a year since 1998. Even if they’re a little better than last year and even if the Dodgers are reasonably worse, it’s hard to think that San Diego aren’t playing for a wild card spot again. But there are a lot of those, so maybe it’ll work again. I actually put the Diamondbacks in third place. Partly because it felt too much like phoning in the last division to just set everything the same as last year, but they also really do have some decent young players. What I saw of them last year looked like a better team than the 74 wins they actually got. The Giants by contrast, looked like a worse team than 81 wins last year. I do think they improved in the offseason more than the big near-misses made it seem, but there’s only so much their pitching staff can do. And then I had to put the Rockies in last. I wish I could just quote some of the Rockies fans I’ve talked to over the last few months here, because they tore apart their front office more thoroughly than I could.

I’m not going to try to predict the postseason, because those short series especially are very unpredictable even when they start. But even in the extremely unlikely scenario that these are actually the playoff teams, there’s really no way to know what the rosters will be by October. That and it’s late and I’m tired and I want to work on my scorecard. (To be revealed tomorrow!)

The new schedule is easier for the Royals, but MLB still somehow scored an own goal

This started as part of the post on the rule changes, but then I realised it was really its own category. As part of the new CBA, MLB released what I keep hearing described as ‘the new balanced schedule’ late last year, with expanded interleague play and less intra-division games. The first thing to note about it is that it isn’t actually balanced, it’s just less unbalanced than the schedule that’s been used since 2013. Teams still play their own division more than anyone else, for example the Royals play 13 games against Detroit next year and 15 games total against the entire NL West. The fact that this seems to continually escape the notice of analysts is kind of baffling to me. The other day on MLB Network they were talking about how it would be harder for the Royals next year, playing fewer games against the AL Central and more against the big teams in the National League. I get why, on the face of it, one would think that, if the schedule were actually balanced. But it’s not. Yes, we play the Tigers six fewer times, but we also play Cleveland six fewer times and the games against big teams like Los Angeles and San Diego are balanced out by games against Pittsburgh and Cincinnati.

Of course, we can quantify this instead of just vaguely saying there are good teams and bad teams. This is a bit of a digression, but I like numbers and analysis, so if you want to skip the next couple of paragraphs I don’t blame you. Under the old schedule the Royals would be playing the NL East in interleague play, plus four games against St Louis, our ‘natural rival’. (Much more on this later, because it’s surprisingly important.) We’re still playing the NL East, and also playing three games each against the five teams in the NL West and the other four teams beside St Louis in the NL Central. Those extra 27 games mostly come from playing six fewer games against the other four teams in the AL Central, though we actually also play one fewer game against the NL East than we would have under the old schedule. That leaves two games unaccounted for, as far as I can tell they come from playing one fewer game against each of the AL East and West. There’s always a random element to which of those teams we played six or seven times, so there’s no way to know exactly which teams we would have played one extra time. That makes for a bit of uncertainty, but uncertainty always exists and it is important to acknowledge it and ideally quantify it, not just ignore it.

The standard way to judge strength of schedule is to just aggregate the winning percentage of the opponents weighted by number of games and compare before and after. This has the advantage of being simple, but it doesn’t really work because it blurs the distinction between how good (or bad) a team is and how many times you play that team. For example, The Los Angeles Dodgers were 111-51 last year. The two teams at the bottom of the NL West, Colorado and Arizona, were 68-94 and 74-88, respectively. The combined winning percentage is above .500, specifically .521, but if you played each team the same number of times—as the Royals do next year—that’s twice as many games against teams below .500 than above! Clearly averaging winning percentage doesn’t work. Instead you have to classify opponents (which you can kind of see in that above example—teams were classified into above and below .500) and see how the number of games against different classes changes. I’m going to use 70 wins as that’s decently close to the Royals win total last year. The only important thing is that a game against Cleveland or Detroit counts the same as a game against Los Angeles or San Diego. Of the 27 games lost from the old schedule, the Royals had at least six against teams with fewer than 70 wins last year, the six against Detroit. There might also have been two more, depending on which teams in the AL West and NL East we would have played one more time. (The AL East had no teams with fewer than 70 wins, so it doesn’t matter.) Of the 27 games gained under the new schedule, we actually have nine such games, against the Reds, Pirates and Rockies. It’s a pretty small difference, but the schedule is actually slightly easier for the Royals next year. Again, that 70 win number is an arbitrary one. But the answer actually doesn’t change even as you move the threshold around: The more balanced schedule is at worst the same and at best slightly easier for the Royals in 2023.

It’s also important to note that the Royals would normally play the NL East next year, which had two 100-win teams and an 87-win team, so the comparison might be different in 2024. But it’s useful to demonstrate two things. One is how superficially a lot of the analysts are approaching the new schedule, which bugs me. The other is how small the actual difference in strength actually is. It doesn’t really matter, and that’s without even getting into the fact that even a lopsided matchup in a single baseball game is a lot more even than most other sports.

Anyway, I’m not nearly as annoyed about the change itself as I am with the discussion about it. I have nothing against playing all 29 teams in a year. I’m enough of a traditionalist that I don’t really like interleague play and now that the DH is universal (grumble) there’s no extra appeal to playing in an NL city. But at the same time, I remember when I was a kid and how excited I was to see teams and players that I had never seen before come to the K. I always insisted we go to the game when there was an NL team in town. And I still like seeing new teams come to town. I have a goal of seeing every team play in person, which I’ll be able to achieve a lot quicker now. So I’m fine with that.

But.

MLB did not do a good job of actually implementing this change. To be fair, it is hard to build a good schedule for all thirty teams, especially without changing the total number of games, which at this point is probably a non-starter*. But this year the Royals have back-to-back off days at the end of May/start of June and a Sunday off day in August. Back-to-back off days are annoying, but not really an issue. The issue is a Sunday off day. I know that way back when there were Sunday off days and Monday double headers, but that’s not what’s happening here. This is just a Sunday afternoon in August with no baseball, which ought to be illegal. (And I don’t mean against MLB rules, I mean there should be a federal law against this, along with the Constitutional amendment banning Astroturf and the designated hitter.)

*I say this because 162 feels like one of the game’s sacred numbers now, but emphasis on now. For almost sixty years the season was 154 games long, and it was only changed to 162 because of the change in the schedule necessitated by expansion to ten-team leagues—it was a balanced schedule of 18 games against each of the other nine teams. But when the leagues continued to expand the length stayed at 162 games. It’s probably not going to change again, but it might make things easier.

This is particularly frustrating because as difficult as schedule creating is in general, this one actually has a pretty easy solution. Both of those weird off days come about because of a two-game series against St Louis being put into a slot for a three-game series. But it would be very easy to make both into a three-game series! First off, both are mutual off days; the Cardinals could play us without them having to move another game. That would make for a 164-game schedule, which we don’t want, so we have to take away two games from elsewhere. Luckily, as mentioned previously, we have some ‘extra’ games against AL East and AL West opponents. Of those ten opponents, we play six of them six times (two three-game series) and four of them seven times (a three-game series and a four-game series). There is no reason we could not make two of those four-game series into three-game series, preserving both the 162-game schedule and the conventions of playing every Sunday and not having back-to-back off days. Hopefully the front offices complain about the lost revenue from weekend attendance and this gets fixed next year, because it is very easy.

2013 MLB preview and predictions

After an elongated Spring Training the 2013 regular season is upon us. The official first game is tonight between the Texas Rangers and Houston Astros. (Although I very much like the Sunday Night opener, it loses a bit when it does not feature the defending World Champion as used to be the case.) This year will be the first one with the Astros in the American League and the new schedule format that sees interleague play throughout the year. As with last year my preview is written division-by-division.

AL West
Although the division has been one of the stronger ones in baseball for the last few years, but I think this year it will actually be the weakest in the American League. None of the teams look particularly convincing on paper. The A’s won last year on the last day of the season with a very young pitching staff providing the impetus down the stretch. They beat the Rangers on the last day of the season to avoid playing in the Wild Card Game. The Rangers played instead and lost at home. The Angels were expected to do much more than limp to third place as they ultimately did and the Mariners respectably for much of the season, but had a mountain to climb and finished last. But this year the Rangers are weaker and the Angels have marginally improved on paper, but there’s reason to think it might not pan out.

The Oakland A’s have a similar team this year, but actually replicating what they achieved last year will be difficult. They probably aver-achieved last year and although they certainly still have a talented team, there are very few who can replicate the kind of form from year to year. They’re well-placed for the future, but I expect they will be in the mid-to-high eighties in terms of wins this year. The Texas Rangers have added AJ Pierzynski behind the plate and Joakim Soria in the bullpen, but overall look a weaker team than they did last year. The loss of Josh Hamilton will hurt. They have enough though that I think they will finish the year at the top of the division. The Los Angeles Angels are the favourite of many after adding Josh Hamilton over the winter, but they lost Zack Greinke and after their rotation never really clicked last year I don’t think they have the pitching to back up their big-name bats and that is even if Hamilton and Albert Pujols live up to their billing. I’m not at all convinced that they will, however, as Pujols already looks past his best and Hamilton’s numbers will no longer be skewed by playing in a thimble in Arlington. Failures in the Angles batting will open the door for the Seattle Mariners. They had a good finish to the season last year and played respectably overall, but they did not do enough to even get out of last place. They still have ‘King Felix’ this year and some good if not dazzling players and should vie with the Angels for third place. It would be a surprise if they did more, but they are well placed to pull off a surprise. The Houston Astros are the newcomers to the division and they arrive after losing more than a hundred games in back-to-back years. It’s hard to see how they’ll have much an improvement this year and I would be shocked if they avoided last place. Division prediction:

Rangers
A’s
Mariners
Angels
Astros

AL Central
Last year the Tigers were supposed to romp to victory, but instead left it to quite late and were fairly fortunate that the White Sox collapsed flat in the last fortnight of the season. None of the other teams mounted a coherent challenge. The Royals finished third after a season marred by injury and losing streaks, the Indians went into free fall in the second half for a fourth place finish and the Twins had another nightmare season and could not quite catch the Indians at the death. This year the Tigers are strong favourites again, but all of the other teams have fairly significant unknowns and could realistically finish in almost any order.

The Detroit Tigers have actually improved from last year with the return of Victor Martinez and the addition of Torii Hunter to boost the hitting and defence and they still have a terrifyingly strong rotation. If they perform as they should (no guarantee, as we saw last year) they will be very, very hard to catch. Meantime, the Chicago White Sox are relying on much the same team from last year to deliver much the same results. But they were a surprise team last year and for decent reason; although they have a solid team it does not look like one which should be contending. In effect, the White Sox are gambling a season on last year not having some element of fluke to it. I think this gamble will fail for the most part and although they will play okay they will find themselves overtaken. More on the Kansas City Royals below, but they finally have all the pieces to win a spot in the top half of the table. Whether they can put them together this year remains to be seen. The Cleveland Indians changed their team quite extensively in the close season and appear to have boosted their lineup and defence. But their pitching rotation still contains few demons and although it may not take much to push them back toward the top of the division, they were there for the first half of last year after all, they don’t look like they have the pitching to do it. They might have enough to jump to third place. The Minnesota Twins still have many of the players that kept them at or near the top of the division for much of the noughties, but there is no suggestion that they will be able to put together a substantially better season this year than they did last year. Given the improvement to most of the other teams, I think it will be very difficult for the Twins to avoid last place. Division prediction:

Tigers
Royals
Indians
White Sox
Twins

AL East
Last year the Orioles were one of the surprise teams in baseball as they so nearly knocked the Yankees off the top of the division and then had a go at knocking them out of the ALDS too. Both efforts sadly failed. The Rays hung around until the end of the season, but never made a real push whilst the Blue Jays played well without being threatening. The real shock was the Red Sox, who collapsed utterly both on and off the field and an ugly sacking of their manager. This year the division looks wide open with five teams who have at least something to their credit. Perhaps more interesting is whoever will come last out of the bunch.

This year the New York Yankees will continue to furnish evidence that there is no god by not going the 0-162 that they so richly deserve. But they are starting to come apart at the seams a bit and I think they will fail to defend their crown and that mid-table mediocrity beckons. Unlike some other teams, I think the Baltimore Orioles do have a chance to reprise their success. Whilst they were a surprise in 2012, they weren’t a shock; they showed flashes of what they all the way back in 2010 and they have quite a strong roster still. I expect to see them back in contention and very possibly topping the table. The Tampa Bay Rays have not done much in the way of improvement for the immediate future, though they picked up some very good talent from the Royals over the winter that should help them in the long term. They are a good enough side that they should not unduly struggle, n the present, but the strength of the division means they may find themselves in the bottom half. The Toronto Blue Jays are the team who have really set down a marker. They were already a decent side and after a blockbuster trade with the Marlins and the signing of RA Dickey they look like an excellent one. At least on paper. If they don’t at least contend it will be a disappointment for them, but it might take some time for the team to really get going as a unit. I think second place may be the safest bet. The Boston Red Sox are hoping that last year was just a fluke and that with a new manager they can climb back up the table. I don’t think it will be that simple, however, and although they are now well behind the pack and may still finish at the bottom. Division prediction:

Orioles
Blue Jays
Yankees
Rays
Red Sox

NL West
Last year the NL West race was the focal point of a fair amount of controversy after Melky Cabrera was caught using steroids halfway through the season. Fortunately for the sport, the Giants showed for the rest of the season that they were not a one-man team and comfortably outplayed the Dodgers even without Cabrera. The Diamondbacks made a vague push, but ended up well out of the race and with only a .500 finish. The Padres scuffled along to a fourth-place finish, whilst the Rockies made headlines by completely revamping their pitching staff to essentially an all-reliever staff halfway through the year. They still ended the year in last place and barely avoided a hundred losses. This year looks like it will be the Giants and Dodgers again battling it out.

The San Francisco Giants have made precious few adjustments to the team that won the World Series last year and it is pretty easy to see why. They were a strong all-round team then and they remain so now. The only question mark is the depth of their pitching; the back end of the rotation did unexpectedly well for them last year and they need that to happen again. The Los Angeles Dodgers already had the National League Cy Young Award winner in Clayton Kershaw and they’ve added a former AL winner in Zack Greinke. It’s a formidable top two and there is a bit there to back them up too. They should not have to worry too much about their offensive production either and it should be a very close fight for the division. The Arizona Diamondbacks still give off the impression of a .500 team, which is exactly what they managed last year. The addition of Martin Prado will be a boost, but there is nothing really spectacular about the side. The San Diego Padres biggest asset is still their manager, Bud Black. They have a tiny payroll, the smallest in the majors last year, and performed at a level above that last year. But they will need that to continue, because they have made no major improvements over the winter. The Colorado Rockies need to sort out their pitching before they will be able to do much, but they can do that they do have some strong hitting. I think they will improve, but the Padres will have to play worse for the Rockies to have a shot at fourth place. Division prediction:

Dodgers
Giants
Diamondbacks
Padres
Rockies

NL Central
Last year the Reds ran away with the NL Central, winning with nine games to spare over the Cardinals. The Brewers could not mount a coherent challenge to the second spot and the Pirates stayed in the running until very late in the season before suffering another spectacular collapse. At the foot of the table both the Cubs and Astros lost a hundred games. This year the Astros are gone, having been shifted to the AL West, but apart from that it looks like the same set of teams challenging for the title.

The Cincinnati Reds were comfortably the best team in the NL Central last year and there is no reason to suspect they will not be again. They still have the same group of players who took them to within one game of the NLCS last year and they have added Shin-Soo Choo to still further bolster their offence. They will take some catching on their own merits and at the same time the St Louis Cardinals have lost some of the pitching that made them so threatening in the last two years. They are still a good side, but it’s taken some last ditch efforts to get them into the postseason twice, they may not have enough now. Some of the Cardinals’ pitching has actually gone to the Milwaukee Brewers in the form of Kyle Lohse. That was the main close season move for Milwaukee, although they also inexplicably brought Yuniesky Betancourt back. The Brewers also lost some pitching over the winter though and I expect they will be in a battle for second place. If the Pittsburgh Pirates can avoid another great collapse they may push for a playoff spot, but in each of the last two years they have failed to maintain their success over an entire year. They’ve added a bit of experience with Russell Martin behind the plate and with the rest of the team also another year older and more experienced they might be able to keep it together this year. I don’t think they will challenge for the top of the division, but there is definitely an opening for them to knock off one or both of the Cardinals or Brewers. I expect it will be very close between those three teams. The Chicago Cubs look like they are probably destined for a last place finish now that they no longer have the cushion of the Astros beneath them. There are some good players on the team, but they have not been able to turn that into wins in either of the past two years and the division is not an easy one. Divsion prediction:

Reds
Pirates
Cardinals
Brewers
Cubs

NL East
Last year the division belonged entirely to the Nationals who brought playoff baseball back to Washington DC and with time to spare. The Braves had quite a good season, right up until they lost the Wild Card Game whilst the Phillies failed to make a late run. The Mets had some standout pitching performances, but little else and the Marlins never really showed up. This year it looks like it will be the Nationals, Braves and Phillies competing again, though the Nats are probably favourites to repeat.

The Washington Nationals still have a lot of very good young players. Whilst they may not be able to perform the way they did last year, the Nats built up to their recent success and nothing about it looked like a fluke. They go into 2013 still with a good lineup and a good pitching rotation. The Atlanta Braves, in their quest to overcome a Cardinal shaped stumbling block, have added another Upton to the outfield to go along with Jason Heyward. They may find themselves a bit over-reliant on Kris Medlen in the rotation, however. Tim Hudson is starting to get a bit shaky and they need someone solid to support him. If Medlen pitches the way he did to end 2012 it won’t be a problem, but otherwise they look short on pitching. It was something of a surprise when the Philadelphia Phillies did so poorly last year. They still have a very powerful lineup and decent pitching to go with it. I think they can manage second place, especially if the Braves slip up, but no more. But they never really put anything together. I expect they will do better this year, but it may not be enough to get back to firm contention. The New York Mets will be hosting the All-Star Game this year, but that may be the high point of their season. They lost RA Dickey in the close season and don’t really have any replacement. Theirs is a fairly weak side, but they should be saved from the cellar by the Miami Marlins. The Marlins struck their colours months before the season even started; they sold the players they had bought just a year before, abandoning with unseemly haste their attempt at contention. However one feels about the logic of this move, it means that they will do very well to avoid last place this year. Division prediction:

Nationals
Phillies
Braves
Mets
Marlins

The Wild Cards are hard to predict as they don’t necessarily go to the two best divisions in each league. It’s one of the great flaws of the unbalanced schedule that Wild Card teams are measured against teams from other divisions whilst still competing with teams from their own. Some will end up with a much easier schedule than others and the balance of the divisions is as important as the strength of the team overall.

In the American League, the most likely divisions to produce the Wild Card are probably once again the West and the East. Even if the West is not terribly strong, it looks top-heavy and the second place team might be able to take a lot of wins off the Astros. The East does look like a strong division and even if it will be harder to win games in the division, it will probably not be harder than in the Central (which is also fairly evenly matched and probably a bit bottom-heavy) and the team in the East will have a better chance in games outside the division.

In the National League, I expect one of the Wild Cards to come from the West. It looks like a close battle with the Giants and Dodgers miles ahead of the pack, which would almost certainly mean the loser was a Wild Card. The other I think will come from the East where even if it is more of a three-team battle looks like it will have a couple of weak teams giving wins to the top of the division. The Central looks a more open battle, especially for second place, and if the wins will likely be too spread around for a Wild Card berth.

Were all that to happen, the Division Series would then be something like: Tigers v A’s/Blue Jays, Orioles v Rangers, Dodgers v Giants/Phillies, Nationals v Reds. From that, I divine Orioles v Blue Jays and Dodgers v Nationals in the Championship Series and then Orioles v Dodgers in the World Series. Dodgers to win in five. But that, even more than the rest, is guesswork.

For the Royals specifically, they made a concerted effort in the close season to at least get into the top half of the table this year. They have a much stronger rotation now than they did at this time last year and actually a stronger lineup too with Salvador Perez getting to play a full season. The trick will probably to get the fairly inexperienced lineup to fire consistently. Although the Royals are unlikely to actually compete for the title even if all goes well, a .500 record is probably the minimum expectation after all the investment of the close season. I think they will finish 86-76, which will probably be good enough for second place, maybe third if one of the Indians or White Sox do particularly well.