In the AL West, my predicted finishing order was Texas, Oakland, Angels, Mariners. Currently the Rangers lead the Angels by three games, while the A’s are 18 back and the Mariners are 23 back. Texas is on-pace for about five more wins than I forecast, but otherwise I had them pegged – and their run differential (+147) is fourth in the majors – clearly, this team is for-real.
The Angels, on the other hand, have the worst offense of any contender, they’ve have outscored their opponents by only 38 runs – yet still have a chance to run down the Rangers and/or the Red Sox (only 3.5 GB of the wild card). How are they doing it? Pitching – especially their top three starters. In a non-Verlander year, Jared Weaver would likely be a Cy Young favorite – but more impressive to me, the Angels have three starters with over 215 innings already, meaning all three are virtually certain to finish with 230+ – a VERY rare feat these days, even the vaunted Phillies will not accomplish that this season. In addition, they have a deep bullpen spearheaded by rookie sensation Jordan Walden. Manager Mike Scioscia’s teams have made a habit of outperforming their run differential, at this point I’m willing to say it’s more than just chance – the guy’s a good manager.
I missed on Oakland because I thought their pitching would be the dominant factor in the division, not the Angels’ – once again, I forgot how unpredictable young pitching is. Seattle was never really a factor, their offense was terrible again and undercut a pretty good pitching staff.
In the AL Central, my predicted standings were Minnesota, Detroit, Chicago, KC, Cleveland. Standings today: Detroit, Chi/Cle 13.5 back, KC 23.5 back, Minnesota 27.5 back – and with the worst run differential in all of baseball! By far my worst miss, Minnesota buried themselves early and while they showed occasional signs of life, the only question left is if they can avoid 100 losses. What happened here?
Injuries were the main culprit – slugger Justin Morneau took a long time to recover from last year’s concussion, then re-injured himself; Joe Mauer battled injuries all season and has only recently begun to hit well again; the rotation has been a mishmash due to injury and ineffectiveness – nine pitchers have started 2+ games, only Scott Baker has an ERA below 4.00 – and he’s been out since August 8. The team has hit only 94 HRs and allowed 151, and they are batting only .244 with a .303 OBP – no team can win with offense like that, even with the decline in offense throughout MLB. I couldn’t have predicted ALL of the injury woes, but I should have been wary of Morneau’s spring training problems, and the lack of depth in the lineup looks painfully obvious in hindsight.
Aside from Minnesota, I actually had the rest of the division fairly well pegged – Detroit has ridden Verlander’s arm and Cabrera’s bat to a certain division crown; the Indians played way above their heads for half of the year, but have reverted to form since the all-star break (foreshadowing the story of a certain NL Central team), the Royals are in the midst of a rebuild, and the White Sox were doomed by a major offensive collapse – specifically by Adam Dunn and Alex Rios. The White Sox are 12th out of 14 AL teams in runs scored – I never would have guessed that going into the season!
In the AL East, I predicted Boston, NY Yankees, Toronto, Tampa Bay, and Baltimore. Actual standings are Yankees, Red Sox 4 GB, Rays 8 GB, Toronto 15.5 GB (but above .500!), and Baltimore 30 GB. I overestimated Boston’s pitching – mainly because Buchholz has been hurt and Lackey has been terrible – and everyone greatly underestimated the Yanks’ pitching – Colon, Garcia, and Nova have combined to make 71 starts, throw 440 innings, with a combined ERA of about 3.7, and the bullpen has been lights-out. Boston is hanging on by a thread – they are working around a ton of injuries right now, and look to be vulnerable headed into the postseason unless they get healthy fast. New York has to be the AL favorites at this point – really, aside from their fifth starter they’ve had no weaknesses this season.
Tampa’s offense has been about as bad as I expected, but their pitching has kept them competitive, while the Blue Jays have had just enough disappointments both on the mound and in the lineup to keep them from contention. Baltimore’s young pitching imploded, and their imports on offense weren’t nearly good enough to compensate – plus, in this division I knew someone had to take a beating and they were it.
On to the NL (you can find my NL preview here):
In the NL West, my predicted order was Colorado, San Francisco, LA, San Diego, Arizona. Actual standings: Arizona, SF 7.5 GB, LA 13 GB, Colorado 16 GB, San Diego 24 GB. My Minnesota pick was the worst ‘low’ miss (missing far below what I expected) – the Arizona miss was my worst ‘high’ miss. Justin Upton is a legit MVP candidate, and Miguel Montero has had a great season at catcher – but overall, despite hitting 164 HRs this isn’t a great offensive team. The pitching is the story – abysmal in 2010 with a 4.81 team ERA and only one starter with an ERA under 4.00, the 2011 DBacks have a 3.86 team ERA and four starters with sub-4.00 ERA’s, including Ian Kennedy’s brilliant breakout campaign (19-4, 2.99 ERA in 208 IP). That pitching, combined with the lack of offense in San Fran and the collapse of Colorado’s pitching staff, has given Arizona the West title. They will be underdogs in the playoffs, but if the starters can maintain their performance this team will be a tough ‘out’ in October.
As mentioned, San Francisco could not overcome a terrible offense this time around – they are last by a mile (49 runs) in offense. When San Diego is outscoring you, your offense has major problems. Their pitching has been superb as usual – 517 runs allowed, second only to the Phils – but GM Brian Sabean’s insistence on bringing back the 2010 team really hurt their chances. LA was dogged by off-field issues all summer, and while they had two standout performances (Matt Kemp and Clayton Kershaw); by and large the rest of the team was terrible. Until the ownership situation is resolved, it looks like dark times in LA.
Colorado wasn’t terrible offensively, but given their home park, being decent is never enough. They never solved their problems at 3B or C, and the pitching staff was worse – the bullpen wasn’t bad, but the rotation was awful. Only one starter posted a sub-4.00 ERA, and none will make 200 innings. San Diego did about what I expected – regress hard.
In the NL East, I predicted Atlanta, Philly, Florida, the Mets, and Washington. Currently we have Philly, Atlanta 11 GB, Mets/Nats 25.5 GB, and Florida 29 GB. I picked Atlanta because I thought Philly would have offensive issues, but the Braves are the ones who have had major run-scoring issues. After Freeman, Bourn, Jones and McCann the offense has been a complete bust. The pitching has been good, but Philly’s has been even better than I expected – 474 runs allowed and a team 3.03 ERA. Only two pitchers have thrown more than 10 innings with an ERA north of 4, and neither is a major part of the team – in short, this is the best pitching staff in years, and the Phils are NL favorites on merit. I still worry about the offense, but that’s for the future.
The Marlins were as unpredictable as I feared – they are year-in, year-out the toughest team to forecast. I mentioned that I was tempted to take the Nats third or fourth, and it turns out I should have stuck with that – this is a young team on the rise, moreso next year when Strasburg is 100% back. They need a bit more offense, but the makings of a good pitching staff is in place. The Mets are going nowhere mighty fast.
Finally, in the NL Central I predicted Milwaukee, Cincy, St. Louis, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Houston. Currently we have Milwaukee, St. Louis 5.5GB, Cincy 13 GB, Pittsburgh 19.5GB, Chicago 21.5 GB, and Houston 35.5 GB. Milwaukee was my best pick – I saw them as the most talented, deepest team in the division and that was proven right, especially since the all-star break. St. Louis rode the resurgence of Lance Berkman and Kyle Lohse to contention, but lack of depth in the rotation and the lineup looks to leave the Cards just a bit short. I thought Cincy would have a top offense but the pitching would slide, and I was correct – the slide was just a bit steeper than I anticipated. They once again lead the league in runs, but their pitching is in the bottom third of the league. Aside from Cueto and Leake the rotation has been a mess, and the bullpen hasn’t been good enough to overcome that.
The Cubs are who I thought they were – an aging, overpaid team with no immediate hope due to the massive contracts and no-trade clauses – Chicago could be next season’s Astros. Speaking of which, the ‘Stros completely melted down, but at least they did it right by selling off almost all of their usable/tradable assets and starting from scratch – 2012 will be rough, but at least they are on the right track now.
Finally, your 2011 Pittsburgh Pirates – the most exciting/disappointing Pirate team of the last decade. Exciting because of the sustained run through the all-star break – the team was winning, in first place even, and it seemed like a chance for a miracle. Then, reality set in – as of 9/15 the team has lost 33 of its last 46 ballgames and spiraled into fourth place. They set a record for the quickest fall from first to 10 games out, and will finish with around 90 losses barring a late run. I got their record about right, but was way off on the underlying factors…I predicted a tough year on the mound, but an improving offense. Instead we saw real hope on the mound through 100 games, particularly Morton, McDonald, Karstens, and Hanrahan – and an offense that seemed to just barely scrape by. The scraping has given way to ineptitude, and the rotation broke under the strain…aside from Andrew McCutchen and the Pirate version of Derrek Lee, this offense has been horrible. There are some players to be excited about – Cutch, Presley, Walker, maybe Tabata – but Alvarez may be a bust and if so, there’s absolutely no power in any of the top three farm levels. In short, 2012 does not promise to be any better than 2011 ended up being.
Next week the Eye is on vacation – we’ll return the following week with our NHL previews, then it’s MLB playoff time!
Dave Glass can be reached at buggyracer@verizon.net.