Friday, July 13, 2012

Five "Bold" Predictions for the 2nd half

Late last night while perusing the major league standings and poring over the many envelopes that arrived in the mail (5 of them yesterday...I still wish I had taken a picture of the mailbox), I thought I'd make a few "bold" predictions and see just how little I know about baseball.

Come October I'll revisit this post and see just how badly I fared.

1.  Albert Pujols will be hitting .300 at the end of the season.  (Currently Albert is 88/328 .268)  How crazy is this?  Well let's see, there's 77 games left in the season, and assuming 4 ABs a game that's 308 more ABs this season.  That would project out to 636 ABs total.  That means Albert would need 191 hits to reach the .300 average.  Albert has 88 hits so far, so the rest of the way he would have to hit .334 (103/308). 


Yeah, I think he will get there.

2.  80 wins will be good for LAST in the AL East.  This is the team that will be sitting there come season's end:


With their starting staff an injury depleted mess, I'm hoping for 80 wins.  (They're at 43 now).

3.  The Pirates will finally break their 20 year streak of being an under .500 team by finishing with:

84 wins.

They also will not make the playoffs.   This 6 week run of amazing offense is going to come to an end, especially when they hit teams like the Reds (9 more games), the Cards (6 more games) and the Brewers (12 times, including a series that starts tonight).  The Pirates still have holes to fill at 1st, short and two outfield spots (1 if Presley is able to return quickly from concussion symptoms).



The only saving grace is that they still have 20 games against Houston (7) and Chicago (13). 

4,   MLB will only have one 20-game winner this year.



Gio Gonzalez. 

5.   Playoff teams and WS winner:

American League

Division Winners:  New York, Chicago and Texas (easy enough)
Wild Card:  Los Angeles and Detroit
WS Representative:  Texas

National League

Division Winners:  Atlanta, St. Louis and Los Angeles (NL West is also my pick for best race to finish the season, 3 games LA vs. the Giants to finish will be a classic series)
Wild Card:  Washington and Cincinnati
WS Representative:  Atlanta (just a gut feeling on this one)

World Series Winner:

Texas....3rd time is the charm.
WS MVP:  Adrian Beltre


Thoughts?

Thanks for reading, Robert

3 comments:

  1. Those are all realistic predictions.
    I am not sure about Pittsburgh though. A little voice in me that says they're going to be like Cinderella story this year.
    And thanks for calculating out what Pujols needs to do to hit .300. I actually was sitting the other day looking at his stats and wondering if he was capable of it this year, and just too lazy to bother with the math!

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  2. RA Dickey will win 20. The Mets will choke (not exactly going out on a limb).

    The Pirates will win the NL Central.

    Pujols won't come near .300 this year.

    The Sox will finish last in the AL East. With 82 wins.

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  3. Totally believe you on Gio Gonzalez hitting 20 wins, but I think Lance Lynn and R.A. Dickey can do it too.

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