NL East on par with AL East

Written by Colin on June 19, 2010 – 8:46 am

In the last two weeks, the Atlanta Braves have played the Tampa Bay Rays, the Philadelphia Phillies have played the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox. Now the Florida Marlins are playing the Rays and the New York Mets are taking on the Yankees now that they’ve demolished the pitiful Baltimore Orioles. The record so far? The NL East has won 12 games, the AL East had won 5.

The NL East is good this year. Yes, our Bravos are good (and we’re damn good). We’re 29-0 when we score 5 runs or more, and we have the best home record in baseball. But it’s not a one-team division. The Phillies are starting to bat again and have started winning a few games. And though the Mets have been beating up on last place teams like the Orioles and Indians, they’ve won 8 straight. The Marlins and Nationals have shown flashes of brilliance but are riding some younger teams that aren’t developed to the point they need to be at to compete in the NL East.

The AL East is good too. Obviously you have the defending World Champ Yankees. I will point out their pitching staff has been improved by an NL East castoff (Vazquez). The Rays are just playing great baseball in almost every aspect of the game, and then you’ve got the Red Sox hanging just one game back. Even the Blue Jays have surprised and are playing six games above .500. The Orioles don’t deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence as the word “good,” but I just screwed that up, didn’t I?

Bottom line is the NL East is comparable to the AL East. Even if you throw out the Orioles series (as might be fair), we’ve won 9 of 14. But we won’t throw series out. After all, the Yankees and Rays have played the O’s and those wins count towards their .612 win percentage. We’ve won 12 out of 17 games.

I’m going to go out on a limb (a very strong limb) and predict an NL East vs. AL East World Series. With a National League Champion.


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Posted in General, League Analysis | 4 Comments »

2008 Preseason Awards

Written by Colin on February 25, 2008 – 7:48 am

We’re going to dig into this year’s preseason and hand out some of our own awards and make predictions as to the end of season awards.

Preseason Team Awards

Best AL Team: Detroit Tigers
Best NL Team: New York Mets (I said it, but I’m not happy about it.)
Most Hyped Team: New York Mets
Worst AL Team: Tampa Bay Devil Rays
Worst NL Team: Florida Marlins (this was a no-brainer.  The state of Florida is apparently cursed.)
Best AL Division: The AL East beats out the Central for this title with the Blue Jays being the determining factor.
Best NL Division: The East is strong (and beats out the West) with the Mets, Phillies, and Braves all looking for the division title.  We should see some great baseball out of this division all season long.
Worst AL Division:  The West is going to be ugly with Oakland, Seattle, and Texas.  Texas should be on the rise, but Oakland completely disassembled whatever they had last year in their fire sale.
Worst NL Division:  The NL Central has a couple teams that are decent (Chicago and Milwaukee), but Cincinnati, Houston, and Pittsburgh bring the division down to the worst in the NL.

This year is going to be fun to watch in several divisions – the AL East and Central promise to be intriguing, as do the NL East and West.  The Tigers and Indians are going to create some great story lines, and we’re all familiar with the NL East and the competition we’ll see there this year.

Preseason Individual Awards

AL MVP: Alex Rodriguez
NL MVP: Matt Holliday
AL Cy Young: C.C. Sabathia
NL Cy Young: Jake Peavy
AL Batting Title: Ichiro Suzuki
NL Batting Title: Matt Holliday
AL HR Title: Alex Rodriguez
NL HR Title: Ryan Howard

There we go – our projections for the individual awards in 2008.  No, we don’t think Johan Santana will win the NL Cy Young award this year – he’s a great pitcher, but I think Peavy will pull it out this year.  The others don’t have many surprises – Matt Holliday is a very solid hitter that is only helped by the fact that he plays in Colorado.


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Posted in League Analysis | 11 Comments »

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