By Spezzal Teams Playa
The past four weeks since we launched this year's baseball league have been the longest, but now it's finally time to play ball.
As I've done for the past few hockey seasons, today I'll attempt to predict which baseball teams will still be playing in October. It was seven months ago that Hockey Guru and I made our last set of picks, and at that time Guru introduced what I like to call, The Patented Guru's Give'er 800% Prediction Method.
Basically how it works is, you accept the certainty that 8 teams will make the playoffs, then you re-assign the probabilities for each of those eight certainties, or 8 X 100%, to the league as a whole. So you have 800 percentage points to work with and since anyone might pull off a Tampa Bay Rays and go all the way, you disperse those 800 points among the 30 teams. Here's an example of how it works.
With the season opener set for this weekend, I encourage each of you to make your own picks in the Comments section. Here are mine:
New York Yankees - 75%
Boston Red Sox - 70%
Philadelphia Phillies - 66%
St.Louis Cardinals - 65%
Los Angeles Dodgers - 60%
Atlanta Braves - 55%
Chicago White Sox - 50%
Los Angeles Angels - 40%
Tampa Bay Rays - 38%
Chicago Cubs - 35%
Colorado Rockies - 33%
New York Mets - 30%
Detroit Tigers - 25%
Minnesota Twins - 20%
Texas Rangers - 18%
San Francisco Giants - 15%
Florida Marlins - 14%
Seattle Mariners - 13%
Milwaukee Brewers - 12%
Cincinnati Reds - 11%
Arizona Diamondbacks - 10%
Toronto Blue Jays - 9%
San Diego Padres - 8%
Houston Astros - 7%
Baltimore Orioles - 6%
Oakland Athletics - 5%
Kansas City Royals - 4%
Pittsburgh Pirates - 3%
Washington Nationals - 2%
Cleveland Indians - 1%
In other words, had the Yankees been absolutely guaranteed a bye into the playoffs, they would have been assigned 100%. As is stands, they are merely expected to make the playoffs by 3 out of 4 dentists.
Now that I have correctly predicted all eight of the playoff participants, let me fast-forward to the World Series and say that the Yankees will beat the Cardinals. Yeah. We'll go with that.
A thoroughly thorough analysis, to be sure. The Yankess are possibly too top heavy again this year, and I wouldn't be surpised to see them out of the picture in October like in 2008. That could just be the Twins fan in me hoping that they fall since we can hardly ever beat them in the regualr season, much less the postseason.
ReplyDeleteAs I cannot hope to compete with the creativity or detail of the esteemed webmaster/blogmaster of this site, I will simply post my own crystal ball visions of the MLB season.
Boston 78
Minnesota 68
St Louis 61
Tampa Bay 53
NY Mets 52
LA Dodgers 51
NY Yankees 44
Chi White Sox 42
Philadelphia 39
Florida 38
LA Angels 37
Detroit 34
Chicago Cubs 23
Colorado 23
Toronto 23
Atlanta 19
Seattle 18
Texas 14
Cleveland 12
Arizona 10
Baltimore 10
San Fran 9
Cincinnati 8
Milwaukee 7
San Diego 7
Houston 6
Oakland 5
Kansas City 4
Pittsburgh 3
Washington 2
Although I am 100% confident that the Twins closer by committe solution to Joe Nathan's absence will work, and that it will be widely adopted by all baseball managers from little league all the way through senior slow pitch softball leagues, I somehow don't think they will make it to the World Series. The cruel irony of that is that I cannot specify why. Too many past precedents have been set around this town the past 19 years for me to believe any one of them will make it to the championship level in any major sport.
World Series: St Louis over Tampa.
I wish I could take credit for this system, but the only thing I am responsible for is naming it The Patented Guru's Give'er 800% Prediction Method.
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