Since it's mid-season, I figured I'd take a look back at my pre-season predictions to see how I'm doing.
For the American League, I have the New York Yankees, the Minnesota Twins, and the Texas Rangers as winning their respective divisions. I have the Red Sox winning the wild card. As standings are right now, I was correct on two out of the four.
With the Twins I clearly didn't foresee Joe Mauer, Jason Kubel, and Michael Cuddyer's regression to the mean. I also didn't foresee Francisco Liriano pitching as well as he has, but having three of the guys in the middle of your line-up underperofrming seems to outweigh that. The Twins could of course still win their division, as they are only 3.5 games out, albeit in third place behind the surprising White Sox and the Tigers.
With the Red Sox I didn't foresee injuries taking 30+ days out of the season for Josh Beckett, Daisuke Matsuzaka, Jacoby Ellsbury, and Dustin Pedroia. Not to mention more minor injuries to Manny Delcarmen, Victor Martinez, Jeremy Hermida, Mike Cameron, Clay Buchholz, and Jason Varitek. Obviously those injuries are crippling, but guys will come back healthy sooner or later and the Red Sox are only 3 games back in the wild card.
My National League predictions look even worse right now. I predicted that the Phillies, the Cardinals, and the Rockies would be at the top of their respective divisions, and that the Atlanta Braves would win the Wild Card. Yeah, that's an 0 for 4.
The Phillies have heavily underperformed despite their powerful line-up and addition of Roy Halladay. Halladay has been every thing they wanted him to be, but the Phillies offense has been pretty horrible, something I didn't see coming at all. They are 4.5 games back in the East, and if they don't find a spark sooner or later they may sink further. I no longer feel they will win this division, as Atlanta seems fairly firmly entrenched in first place. There is the possibility of the Wild Card, however.
The Cardinals have performed about as I expected them to, the only problem is how well the Cincinatti Reds have played. The Cardinals, who are only sitting one game behind those surprising Reds, are in a good position to still win the division, and despite their current position int he standings, I'm still fairly confident they will achieve that, especially with Matt Holliday finally hitting how he should be this season.
The National League West is probably currently the most shocking division in baseball, as far as who is in first place. The San Diego Padres, on the strength of their league-leading overall ERA and ridiculous bullpen, have managed to be in first place for the majority of the season. The Rockies had a late second half surge though, and are currently only sitting two games back from the Padres. The Rockies are currently missing a big bat in Troy Tulowitzki, but they have Ubaldo Jimenez having the season of his career with lots of other stand-out offensive performers carrying the team.
As far as the Wild Card goes, I predicted the Braves would win it, and at the very least they have played better than most had foreseen them playing and are winning their division.
That's about it for now. It has been an interesting season so far. Tomorrow I will try and go over how horribly I bothced my Awards prediction for the season.
Enjoy the first night of the second half!
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