Merrill Park Superstar

Now that I have the regular season predictions out of the way, it only makes sense that I at least give some brief thoughts on what I think things might look like in October in Major League Baseball.

To recap, here are the teams I think will win their respective divisions (as well as the wild card):

National League East: New York Mets
National League Central: Milwaukee Brewers
National League West: Los Angeles Dodgers
National League Wild Card: Arizona Diamondbacks

American League East: Boston Red Sox
American League Central: Detroit Tigers
American League West: Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim
American League Wild Card: Seattle Mariners

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Well, I’m down to 1-2 following Washington’s dramatic 3-2 win over the Braves on Sunday night. With Monday’s slate of games fast approaching, I decided to err on the side of caution and just throw out my quick and dirty picks for Opening Day. In the future, I’ll probably briefly feature at least one of the day’s scheduled games before making my picks. But, in the interest of saving time, I’m just going to bust out the picks and then take about a seven hour nap. If you’re looking for MLB-related content, though, I’ve recently written preview pieces of each of the six divisions, and will probably culminate that series with my playoff/World Series picks on either Monday or Tuesday.

Here it goes.

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And now, before I go to sleep, I’ll bang out another couple thousand words, this time about the NL West. Good times!

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Time for part five of my pre-season (well, pre-first games) baseball analysis. In this installment, I tackle the National League Central, which I have declared war upon. I’m comparing my apples (correctly predicted games) to their best team’s oranges (actual , real-life wins) through the miracle that is winning percentage. All throughout the year, I’ll be competing with the cream of the NL Central crop as I embark upon this incredible time waster/content producer.

And speaking of content, here’s about two thousand words about the weakest division in the weaker of Major League Baseball’s two leagues.

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Once again, there’s only one game on the slate tonight, the National Game of the Week between the Atlanta Braves and the Washington Nationals.

So far, I’m 1-1 in my picks for the year, while there have been no games played yet by NL Central teams. In the big picture, these single-game dates are relatively meaningless to my overall goal of having a better prediction winning percentage than the best team in the National League’s Central division. Still, 2-1 looks a lot better than 1-2, even at this early stage.

Therefore, my pick for tonight’s game is the Atlanta Braves. Braves starter Tim Hudson has been outstanding against the Nationals throughout his career, racking up a 5-1 record in eight starts against the Nats while posting an ERA just over 1 and allowing less than a baserunner per inning. Historically, the most successful Nationals against Hudson are newcomers Rob Mackowiak and Paul Lo Duca.

Nationals opening day starter Odalis Perez hasn’t been quite as successful against the Braves. He enters tonight’s game with an earned-run average over 5 and just one win in seven career appearances (six starts) against his former team. Jeff Francoeur, in particular, has had a lot of success in his limited number of meetings against Perez, going 4-for-6 with a triple and a home run against the southpaw.

Tonight is the “official” Opening Night in Major League Baseball. Two games have already been played over in Japan, but for all intents and purposes, the season begins in earnest tonight and tomorrow.

The first stateside regular season game will see the Washington Nationals host the Atlanta Braves at Washington’s new ballpark, the simplistically named Nationals Park. The speculation seems to be that the new park is one that will favor hitters, a sharp contrast to the cavernous shithole that was RFK Stadium.

More on that a little later.

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Well, after playing beat the clock to produce the AL East and AL West predictions, I took a couple days off from the blog (’ja miss me?) to embark on the exciting world of municipal reporting. Yeah, journalism!

Anyway, having completed my real world assignments, I’m back to competing with time as I try to fire out the remaining four MLB previews before Opening Night/Day.

It would probably make sense, then, to start off this next set with the National League East, seeing as how the Nationals will open their new stadium tomorrow night by hosting the Atlanta Braves on Sunday Night Baseball. However, I still have a little bit of unfinished business with the American League, namely the AL Central. I never got around to finishing the AL off last week as I had hoped. So I figured, in the interest of symmetry and/or completeness, that I would get that preview out of the way first before graduating to the Senior Circuit.

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Well, it’s day number two and I almost forgot to publish my pick for the March 26 slate of games.

But here it is: the Sox will complete their Japanese sweep of the Oakland Athletics to push their and my record to 2-0.

This is probably the sleep deprivation talking, but I think I could put up a better winning percentage in picking Major League Baseball games than the best team in the worst division in the Big Leagues will put up after its 162-game season.

So I’m throwing it down right now, when I’m good and tired. I already lost to a video game in college football picks, leading to a self-imposed ban on picking college football games. Why not open myself up to a beating from the cream of the NL Central crop as well?

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I’m racing against time here as I try to post this chunk of the season preview prior to the first pitch of the Major League Baseball season. Luckily, the Oakland A’s play in the four-team American League West rather than the six-team National League Central. (More on the NL Central in my next post. Not much more, though.)

The way I see it, this is going to be a two team race, and I believe that both of those teams will end up playing in October.

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