The 2014 major league baseball season officially began last weekend in Australia, with an idiotic decision by MLB to have the Los Angeles Dodgers and Arizona Diamondbacks play a couple games that actually count. But the Opening Day that counts is Monday and that means it’s time for TheSportsNotebook’s final 2014 MLB preview.
It’s been the spring of Yankee discontent, with Curtis Granderson, Mark Teixeira hitting the disabled list and even general manager Brian Cashman breaking his leg. This comes on top of a winter where the loss of Alex Rodriguez for the first half of the season and an autumn where A-Rod’s sudden inability to hit was the hot topic of conversation. What does it all add up to in the Bronx? TheSportsNotebook’s MLB coverage today will focus in on the Yankees, touch base elsewhere in the Big Apple with the Mets and look at how both teams are likely to measure up against their projected win totals in Las Vegas.
I won’t say that the city of Philadelphia is having the roughest stretch of any American sports city—as long as Cleveland and Kansas City exist, that’s a tough honor to claim. But Philadelphia fans can, at the very least, credibly claim to be the most victimized by high expectations of late. This was a city that was supposed to compete for a World Series and Super Bowl in 2012, and expected to have good teams across the board. Instead, their teams tanked. It’s in that context that TheSportsNotebook is going to start its MLB coverage—we’re going to take a look at the Phillies chances for 2013 in light of what this city’s fans have endured.
Opening Night is here in Major League Baseball, as St. Louis visits Miami to open the season tonight on ESPN at 7 PM ET. TheSportsNotebook makes its final predictions. Below are picks on each team’s record, along with the Las Vegas odds on their chances to win the division, pennant and World Series. I’ve also included a link to the individual team previews that have run here throughout March, and as a special bonus offered some of the same betting opinions that should be sampled with the same caution one would take on a medicine bottle marked “poison.” By of reminder, remember that each league now gets two wild-card teams in the postseason, with the two teams meeting in a one-game showdown to reach the Division Series. With that, let’s conclude the buildup to the baseball season here at TheSportsNotebook..
The Minnesota Twins had been on a roll as baseball’s most overachieving franchise. The team that was slated for contraction in 2002 as part of the last really serious players-owners dispute in MLB, has seven winning seasons in the nine years Ron Gardenhire has managed the club, and six of those have ended with an AL Central division title. And that snapshot doesn’t even include Tom Kelly’s even more successful tenure, with World Series wins in 1987 and 1991. But it came crashing down hard last year, as the club was hit by injuries to key players, and those that were on the field seemed to completely lose the grasp of sound fundamental play, a hallmark of the Twins in the recent era. They finished 63-99. So was that an aberration, or a sign that the old era is ending? TheSportsNotebook takes a look at the 2012 Twins, on the basis of their ability to get on base, hit for power, starting pitching and relief pitching.
It’s win-or-else time for the Cincinnati Reds, after a disappointing fade in the late summer and fall of last season. Cincy’s main competition from last year, Milwaukee and St. Louis, is re-tooling after major free agency hits. The Chicago Cubs have the money, but still have a big rock to crawl out from under. Houston is completely rebuilding. So with all due respect to Clint Hurdle and the Pittsburgh Pirates, that leaves the Reds in a position to win their second NL Central title in three years. And the word from the Queen City is that the heat is on Dusty Baker early—if they’re not off to a sound start, we can look for a managerial change by Memorial Day and a possible firesale. If they are playing well, Dusty’s safe and sound and the front office will get what they need to make the playoffs. This dynamic makes the Reds one of baseball’s most interesting teams in 2012, and TheSportsNotebook evaluates them today, based on their ability to get on base, hit for power, starting pitching and relief pitching.
It’s been hard times for the New York Mets’ fans lately. Let’s trace it all the way back to the 2006 season when they had the best team in the National League, won 97 games, then watched their starting pitchers drop like flies to the injury bug and they lost a seven-game heartbreaker to St. Louis in the NLCS. In 2007 they had a big lead in the NL East on Philadelphia and blew it. In 2008 they lost the wild-card race to Milwaukee on the final weekend. Then the bottom really fell out. The last three years have produced sub-.500 records, the Wilpon Family has disgraced the franchise and diminished the financial muscle they should have as a Big Apple and not a lot is expected this year. TheSportsNotebook evaluates the Mets’ ability to get on base, hit for power, starting pitching and relief pitching.
The Toronto Blue Jays have been a steady, winning franchise for several years now. Four times in the last six years they’ve won more than they’ve lost. Of the two non-winning seasons one was last year’s 81-81 campaign and they only losing season was 75-87. Not bad. But in the rugged AL East it hasn’t […]
The Colorado Rockies had a potentially promising derailed early on last year with key injuries, especially in the pitching staff. Can things be different in Denver this year, or will the Rockie season amount to four months for fans to kill time before another round of Tebow Mania (or Peyton Mania, who knows) starts up in the fall? TheSportsNotebook evaluates the Rockies based on the four cornerstone measuring sticks of the ability to get on base, hit for power, starting pitching and relief pitching
It’s a cruel irony, that just as casual or even non-baseball fans become interested in the story of Oakland A’s general manager Billy Beane in the wake of Moneyball—I have family members and friends asking me about the storyline—that the A’s fall on about as hard of times as they’ve known in the last ten years. TheSportsNotebook takes a look at this troubled franchise based on their ability to get on base, hit for power, starting pitching and relief pitching.
The Chicago Cubs swung for the fences with their offseason hire of Boston Red Sox general manager Theo Epstein and entrusted him with the opportunity to do for the Cubbies what he did for the Red Sox and deliver a historic World Series title plus maybe one more for good measure. The organization Epstein inherits has been an underachieving mess. Can they turn it around and move up the ladder in the NL Central, still the easiest division in baseball to show rapid improvement in? TheSportsNotebook looks at the Cubs based on their ability to get on base, power, starting pitching and relief pitching
The times are changing on the South Side of Chicago. After Ozzie Guillen’s eight-year tenure produced mostly winning baseball, a pair of AL Central titles and the 2005 World Series champion that got the White Sox off the schneid they’d been in since the Black Sox scandal. But the constant tension between Ozzie and GM Kenny Williams finally became too much and after an underachieving season in 2011, Ozzie’s in Florida, and Robin Ventura is Williams’ man in the dugout. Let’s size them up, using TheSportsNotebook’s usual measuring points of the ability to get on base, power, starting pitching and the bullpen.