By: William Robinson
Every year I try to do a top nine baseball prediction list for the upcoming season. Last year I got 4 out 9 correct and so if I were a baseball player this would be pretty good, but in the prognostication business I need to step it up. So, this season, I’m swinging for the fences. Here we go:
1.) Eloy Jimenez wins Rookie of the Year and not Vlad Jr. A lot of people are going to be on the Vlad Jr. hype train from the start of this season and while I love watching the massive bombs that he can hit, I’m not sold on him being a consistent superstar for his entire career. He is not very athletic, or at least he doesn’t look like a professional athlete. He is defensively limited and likely will spend most of his time at DH or 3B this season and I could easily see him getting tired as the season rolls on. On the other hand, Eloy is very athletic and will likely have a bit of a better team around him. This will lead to him having a more successful season than Vlad Jr and thus winning the ROY award.
2.) Yasiel Puig is going to win MVP of the NL. Okay now stop laughing. Seriously, stop it! I’m being very serious. I think that Yasiel Puig is going to play his butt off this season and will win MVP after taking the Reds to the playoffs. Only the Phillies and Yankees have done more this offseason than the Reds. They added Puig, Wood, Kemp and more to a team that desperately needed any bit of life injected into it. Well what injects more life into a baseball team than one of the most exciting players in baseball? Yasiel Puig when properly motivated can be one of the best players in baseball and what motivates a player more than money? This year is Puig’s walk year into free agency, so we all know he’s going to be uber motivated to play hard all season long.
3.) The Reds make the playoffs. This one I’m not very sure about. Last year I predicted the White Sox to make the playoffs and this one could be just about as much wrong, but hell call me a homer. I’m from Northern Kentucky and have always been a Reds fan and I think they did enough this offseason to make the playoffs. However, in order to do that there has to be some things that break right. The Cubs or Cardinals or Brewers have to take a step backwards as do the Dodgers or Rockies. That’s a lot of steps.
4.) I predict the Braves to disappoint this season. Last year the ownership group kept telling everyone that the Braves would be able to shop from any aisle. That they would be going out and spending money this offseason in order to make the team more competitive. Going out of spring training this team has a payroll of 110 million dollars which is 20 million less than they spent last season. That’s frankly a big pile of poop and fans in Atlanta have every right to be just as pissed off about this as I am. This team won the division last year and they only free agents they picked up were guys who are either hurt all the time or over the hill. It’s a damn farce and they should be ashamed of themselves and it wouldn’t surprise me one bit if they didn’t pay for it by ending up near the bottom of their division.
5.) I predict the Red Sox to finish third in their division. Frankly speaking I think the Rays and Yankees are better than they are this year.
6.) The A’s come back to reality. I’m not a big believer in them. I think they got extremely lucky last year and there’s only so long that you can be cheap with your team and do well.
7.) Stanton and Judge bust out this year. I think that Stanton is finally going to be comfortable in New York and with him comfortable that means that the Bronx street bombers are going to be back. Look out for the Yankees this season.
8.) The Cubs are going to be really really good. Last year the Cubs won 95 games and during that season Kris Bryant their best player underperformed, and they got nothing out of Yu Darvish and the weather was terrible in Chicago to start the season. That isn’t going to happen again, and I predict that the Cubs are going to be really good. Like I think they will win over 100 games good.
9.)The Yankees win the World Series. I love their pickups of Adam Ottavino and James Paxton. They are motivated by Sabathia’s last season and like I said Stanton and Judge are going to be on fire. I’m calling it now that the Yankees are the champs come October.