2012 MLB preview

It’s almost Opening Day! Well technically it already happened, in Japan, but that is one of the stupidest things MLB have done recently and that’s saying a lot. The real, proper, season starts this week when the Cardinals visit the ~~Florida~~ Miami Marlins on the fourth (as part of a one game ‘series’, further evidence that the schedule setters were high as a kite this off-season) and by the time the Royals play the Angels on Friday evening the season will be under way for everyone. I’m not going to do a team-by-team preview for all thirty clubs the way I did for the LV=CC, but instead go over each division and give my predictions:
AL West
The division boils down to Rangers, Angels = good; Mariners, A’s = poor. At the bottom of the division will be the Mariners and A’s. They split the pretend opening series in Japan, but it looks on paper that the Mariners are the better team. Their offence doesn’t look much better than last year, though Ichiro could reasonably be expected to improve and their pitching should still be passable. The A’s have brought in Manny Ramirez, which reeks of desperation. At the top, the Rangers lost CJ Wilson, but gained Yu Darvish. The Angels very publicly gained Albert Pujols and… CJ Wilson. That might hurt Texas. The notion for them is that Darvish will be enough to both fill in for CJ Wilson and negate the fact that the Angels acquired him. We don’t know if the very large sum the Rangers paid out to Darvish will be worth it, but the Rangers have to worry that he will be to them what Fenando Torres is for Chelsea and there seems little chance that he will fully justify the nine digit figure that the Rangers had to pay out. Ultimately if the Rangers win some sort of title it will, rather frustratingly, be deemed enough. My prediction for the final standings:
Angels
Rangers (wc2)
Mariners
A’s
AL Central
The Tigers are favourites to win by a distance; they have Justin Verlander and have acquired Prince Fielder in the off-season. There really is no team in the division that look like they can challenge them. The Indians have a good looking lineup, but the pitching looks dodgy and they never made their success last year look like anything but a fluke. The Twins were desperately unlucky to finish as low as they did last year, but they have lost a few players in the off-season. It’s hard to ever write them off, but they seem less likely than usual to make the division close. The White Sox have lost their manager and best pitcher in the off-season. Last year was not good for them, they finished below .500, and I expect this one will be worse. I will go into more detail on the Royals later, but I think we will play well without pushing for the division title. Standings (and note that the Tigers will have a large lead):
Tigers
Twins
Royals
Indians
White Sox
AL East
A division that contains one sixth of the teams in the major leagues and yet gets at least half of the media attention. The Yankees and Red Sox will play each other 19 times again this year and every one of them will be treated as the most important game of the year. They will all be impossibly dull five hour affairs. As part of my effort to offset this, I will simply skip straight to my prediction:
Yankees
Rays (wc1)
Red Sox
Blue Jays
Orioles
NL West
Of the five teams in the NL West, the Padres are the only ones who have not made the playoffs at least once in the past five years and they were a hairsbreadth from doing so in 2007 and only a game away in 2010. A different team has won the division in each of the last three years and last year Arizona went from being terrible in 2010 to winning outright. This is all a roundabout way of saying that it’s hard to predict what will happen. Arizona look like they can carry last year’s form into this one though, and the Giants always look pretty good. The Rockies would need some luck, but they could compete too. The only teams that really look out are the Dodgers and Padres. Prediction:
Giants
Diamondbacks (wc2)
Rockies
Dodgers
Padres
NL Central
Last year the Cardinals won the wild card on the last day of the season, partially by winning their last game against the 56-106 Astros. They, and the other teams in the NL Central, will have one more year in which to make the most of that advantage before the Astros leave for the AL West. The composition of the teams is rather different from last year, but a lot of the dynamics seem the same. The Brewers should be good with the Cardinals and Reds both competing. The Pirates will hope to continue toward a winning season whilst the Cubs would be last in any other division, but this time are saved by the Astros, who look like they’ll do well to avoid another hundred loss season. More specifically:
Brewers
Cardinals
Reds
Pirates
Cubs
Astros
(In other words, exactly the same as last year.)
NL East
The Florida Marlins are no more. Now they’re the Miami Marlins with a new stadium a new (terrible) logo and new (terrible) uniforms. They’ve also spent some money to bring in some big name free agents and look like they will be competitive. The Phillies still have the best rotation in baseball, but now their best hitters are all injured and they look unlikely to recreate their 102 win season from last year. The Braves finished last year by choking hilariously and missing the playoffs by a game to St Louis. They seem to have written it off as a fluke and made very few changes in the offseason. I think that will backfire, however, and that they’ll be a lot more than a game off the mark. The Nats probably will not compete for the top spot, but they are well placed to reap the rewards of their young talent and should be above .500. The Mets look like a team in disarray and will be hoping everything goes disastrously wrong for one of their opponents. Prediction:
Marlins
Phillies (wc1)
Nationals
Braves
Mets

The playoffs now have the one game ‘play-in’ for the wild card. Even if I could be really confident of the teams even contesting the match, there is no way to accurately predict the results of those matches this far in advance. But it’s pretty unlikely that any of the other predictions will be accurate either so I’ll go ahead and have the Rangers beat the Rays and the Diamondbacks beat the Phillies. Division series: Tigers v Rangers, Yankees v Angels, Brewers v Diamondbacks, Giants v Marlins. Championship series: Tigers v Angels, Brewers v Giants. World Series Tigers v Giants, Tigers to win in five games.

My specific prediction for the Royals is an 85-77 finish. It won’t be near enough to compete and as mentioned above I think it will only be enough for third, though some fortune might see us in second. The offence still looks good. Even if Hosmer falls off a bit there is a lot of talent there as evidenced by the fact that the .250 hitting Alcides Escobar is amongst the worst hitters in the lineup. The question is still the starting pitching. Chen will take Opening Day, with Hochevar going on the seventh. That was a surprise when announced, but regardless of the order in which they pitch a rotation of Chen, Hochevar, Sanchez, Mendoza and Duffy does not look all that intimidating. The hope will be that Mendoza and Duffy have breakout seasons and Lancashire have shown that young talent can come through quickly. There’s a reason it was so surprising when Lancs won the title last year though. Off the field, Rex Hudler promises to reach Tony Greig levels of annoyance in the commentary box. I don’t think he’s quite at the level of Ravi Shastri, but he has 140 games in which to try. I’m sure I’ll have more to say on him later in the year.

This post also appears on The Armchair Selector.

Ten best sporting moments of 2011

I know the sporting year isn’t over yet. I actually had a conversation on Twitter about whether I ought to write a ‘year end’ style post or save it for after the Test. I decided to save my full year in review post for later, but at the same time I would be very surprised if anything happened that warranted an inclusion on this list. If I’m wrong I can always write a revision as well, so with that in mind here are my top ten sporting moments of 2011:

10 – New Zealand winning the Hobart Test
I know my Aussie readers won’t like this, but it was a pretty important moment. New Zealanders probably care more about winning the Rugby World Cup, but they had not won a Test in Australia for 26 years before this. Doug Bracewell may be a great find for the Kiwis and the conclusion of the match was one of the most thrilling you will see.

9 – Tigers winning Game 5 of the ALDS
I love watching the Yankees lose. I love watching the Yankees lose deciding games in the playoffs even more. But most of all I love watching Alex Rodriguez strike out to lose a deciding game in the playoffs in front of a very put out Yankee Stadium crowd.

8 – Royals winning a three game series in New York
The Royals spent most of the month of April this year in or near first place. (It’s true, look it up.) Whilst losing six in a row to the Rangers and Indians at the end of April basically put an end to any notion of contending, there were still bright spots after that. In the second week of May the Royals travelled to New York and won two out of three against the Yankees. The deciding game of the series saw the Royals score six runs in the second inning, including Eric Hosmer’s second major league home run and some terrible defensive mistakes by the Yankees. It was the Royals first series win in New York since 1999.

7 – Manchester United 1-6 Manchester City
It was the match that that caused the media to accept City as genuine title contenders. More importantly it was the match that made United supporters very cross and thus made Liverpool supporters like myself very happy.

6 – Australia reduced to 21-9 at Cape Town
With apologies to my Australian readers. Though as much as I enjoyed this I was more astonished to watch the innings unfold. On no fewer than three occasions I thought there must surely be a recovery, surely they couldn’t lose another wicket. I was wrong on all three occasions, as by the time the recovery did come I had stopped expecting it. Almost as amazing as the innings itself was the shot selection of Brad Haddin and the fact that he wasn’t immediately dropped because of it. Both defy belief.

5 – England winning the Cardiff Test
I already used this in my best moments in English cricket this year, so there isn’t a lot more to say. Nonetheless, it was incredible watching England go from just wanting a few wickets to Sri Lanka not even coming close to saving the Test and certainly belongs on this list as well.

4 – Virender Sehwag making a king pair at Edgbaton/Stuart Broad’s Trent Bridge hat trick
I’ve included these together for their similarity, not only because they both involve Indian wickets falling cheaply. Broad’s hat trick marked the end of the last time India would have an advantage in the series, but I think Sehwag’s king pair marked the last time India had any real hope. It was also a moment of personal pleasure, because Sehwag is massively overrated. He has a good record on the flat pitches of the subcontinent and that is it; his aggression is not suited for English conditions or anywhere the ball does a bit. After the second Test I read about and saw Indians claiming that he would save the series for them and I rather enjoyed being vindicated.

3 – Cardinals winning Game 6 of the World Series
I’m a Royals fan, but years of living amongst Cardinals fans in Kirksville made me rather sympathetic to them. (Though I always hated when they would gripe about ‘barely being .500’ or some such.) Add that to the fact that I hate the Texas Rangers and I was definitely cheering for the Cardinals in the last World Series. Even if I hadn’t, however, I think their multiple comebacks in Game 6 would have had to rank high on a list of best sporting moments, as it was absolutely astonishing.

2 & 1 – Lancashire winning the County Championship and England winning the Ashes
How could I not copy these from my first list? England winning the Ashes in Australia is the only thing that could possibly trump Lancashire winning the title outright. Neither had ever happened before in my lifetime and for them both to happen this year is almost an embarrassment of riches. I have little doubt they will be on a list of best moments in the decade should I make one in 2020.

Edited to add: The Guardian have produced their list of cricketing moments, but there is a lot of World Cup stuff at the expense of Lancs.

It’s such a beautiful night

Tonight was a good night. Tigers 3-2 Yankees. Since the Royals have not made it to the postseason in my lifetime, my biggest October desire is to see the Yankees lose. I despise the Yankees, to an extent not normally seen outside top tier football leagues. (Look at my tweets during game five if you doubt me.) I also despise several Yankees individually. Derek Jeter, Alex Rodriguez and Nick Swisher are the three that spring most readily to mind, and the fact that two of them struck out with the bases loaded in the seventh gives me a warm fuzzy feeling inside. I won’t say that I despise all Yankee fans, but I have hated every one of them with which I have ever come in contact. The amount of schadenfreude gained from watching 50,000 of them with their heads in their hands is almost incomparable.

Wankers

Season’s over, assholes

The game could hardly have gone better. A blowout would have been fun, but the air of crushing disappointment when Fuck-Rod struck out to end the game was palpable even watching on TV and it was wonderful. A blowout would have been much more gradual, and a lot of the ‘fans’ in attendance would have gone home early, as they did in game seven of the 2004 ALCS. It’s fun, but it’s not as fun. Also a blowout would not have involved Fuck-Rod striking out with the tying run on second in the seventh inning, and you can’t put a price on that sort of thing. (In fact, Fuck-Rod struck out three times to finish his ALDS 2-18. It’s those sort of numbers that give me faith in humanity.)

Fuck-Rod

There isn’t a cloud in the sky here. The moon is out and it’s quite warm in spite of the lateness of the hour and the month. And the New York Yankees and their fans will have six months of drinking their own tears.

Don’t let me down

I’m very disappointed that the Yankees forced a game five. I really didn’t think they would, but not so much due to the immediate stats. Whilst AJ Burnett had an ERA above five in the regular season, and 6.99 in his last ten starts, he got enough run support to go 3-2 in that stretch. Porcello, meantime, had an ERA in his last ten starts of 5.28, so I didn’t expect either pitcher to last long (Burnett was very lucky to only give up one run).

Why I really expected the Yankees to fail was because of their decidedly ordinary record recently in the ALDS. In the 21st century they have a record of 22-18. It’s not bad, mind, but it’s not great. If you throw out their record against the Twins, however, it drops to just 10-16. (As an aside: Both losses against the Twins were in New York. In Minnesota in the ALDS the Yankees are 7-0.) When facing elimination in game four the Yankees had lost three out of their previous four (lost to the Angels in 2002, beat the Angels in 2005, lost to the Tigers in 2006 and lost to the Indians in 2007).

So the Yankees have done well to force a game five, and now it’s a rematch of game one (sort of). They have home field advantage, but I think the Tigers will win. (I really, really hope I’m right this time.) Doug Fister is, I am convinced, a better pitcher than Ivan Nova (game one notwithstanding). I don’t think Nova will succumb to the pressure of the occasion, but I do think that he will be outpitched. Alex Rodriguez, on the other hand, will succumb to the pressure or whatever it is that causes him to play like he’s too busy copulating with himself to remember how to use a bat in the month of October. (The simplest explanation is often the best, and I suspect the reason he plays like that is because he’s too busy copulating with himself in the dugout to remember how to use a bat.)

I hope I’m right though, because I really f*cking hate the Yankees.