On Friday, managing editor Dave Cameron published the various (and probably wrong) FanGraphs staff predictions for the American League and National League — shortly after which the present author provided the readership their own opportunity to make embarrassing predictions.

Below are the results of that same exercise for the National League. The results for the American League, published earlier this afternoon, are available here. Note that, owing to rounding error, percentages might add up to slightly more or less than 100%.

Division Winners

West: L.A. (89%), San Fran. (6%), Arizona (3%), San Diego (2%), Colorado (1%)
Central: St. Louis (87%), Pitt. (8%), Cinn. (5%), Milwaukee (1%), Chicago (0%)
East: Washington (82%), Atlanta (17%), Miami (1%), Phil. (1%), New York (0%)

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On Friday, managing editor Dave Cameron published the various (and probably wrong) FanGraphs staff predictions for the American League and National League — shortly after which the present author provided the readership their own opportunity to make embarrassing predictions.

Below are the results of that same exercise for the American League. The National League will follow later this afternoon. Note that, owing to rounding error, percentages might add up to slightly more or less than 100%.

Division Winners

West: Oakland (49%), Anaheim (29%), Texas (18%), Seattle (4%), Houston (0%)
Central: Detroit (83%), Kansas City (10%), Cleve. (7%), Chicago (1%), Minn. (0%)
East: Tampa Bay (47%), Boston (37%), New York (8%), Toronto (4%), Balt. (3%)

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If there’s one thing I like here at FanGraphs — well, there are many things, but this is just one of those things — it’s our Depth Charts, which are fueled by manual inputs of playing time (the NL West is my beat, so you know who to yell at if you’d like to argue about, say, Marco Scutaro’s projections) and get funneled as part of the input into our projected standings. And if you look at the projected standings, they’re more or less what you’d expect. The Dodgers are expected to be the best team, the Astros the worst. The Dodgers, Nationals and Cardinals are projected to win the three NL divisions. The Red Sox and Tigers look to win the most games in the American League. This all makes sense, even if that’s all but certainly not how it will really play out. Maybe that’s not exciting, but projections aren’t supposed to be exciting. It’d be a lot more interesting if the Twins were projected to win the AL Central and then face the Marlins in the World Series. It’d also be proof of a projection system that wasn’t worth looking at.

Like with any projection system, you can quibble around the edges, but in five of the six divisions there are clear leaders, ranging from projected leads of two games (Red Sox over Rays) to seven (Nationals over Braves, because like every media site, we are biased against the Braves).

Then there’s the American League West:  Read the rest of this entry »

The Major League season is, I guess, already three games old, but for basically everyone who isn’t the Dodgers, today is still the real Opening Day. We have a nearly full slate of games on the docket, and we’ll be live blogging throughout the day here on the site. But before we get to the actual games, let’s run through a few more preview-ish things I believe about the 2014 that you might not infer from my picks in the Staff Predictions (NL, AL) posts from Friday.

1. I believe that the Cubs might be better than we think.

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In the first 2014 regular-season baseball game played in the Northern Hemisphere, the Padres hosted the Dodgers. A 1-0 game became a 1-1 game late, and then Yasmani Grandal got on and stole third base. Moments later he scored the go-ahead run, and the Padres held on to win 3-1. That steal happened to be the first of Grandal’s major-league career. It also happened to be the first of Grandal’s professional career. Grandal is a slow-moving catcher and he’s coming off knee surgery. You’re right to identify this as an unlikely turn of events. It was also, in part, the consequence of an unlikely turn of events.

Not long ago I wrote a few posts about the challenge of bunting. Bunting, see, has the reputation of being something absurdly easy to do, but it’s really quite hard, even if certain position players don’t do it enough. Sunday night’s attempted bunting was a mixed bag. There were seven attempts overall. There were two successful sacrifices. There was one blown sacrifice, where the lead runner was thrown out. Two bunts went foul. Another bunt went foul into a glove on the fly. One attempted bunt was missed completely. That missed bunt, by the Padres, was instrumental in the Padres earning the win.

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Seth Rosin is a Texas Ranger. At least for now. The 25-year-old right-hander learned yesterday he’ll be on the opening-day roster, but as a Rule 5 pick he will have to be offered back to the Phillies if he doesn’t remain with the big-league team all season.

Rosin‘s suitcase has been kept busy. Originally drafted by the Giants in 2010, he was traded to the Phiilies two years later. The Mets took him in last December’s Rule 5 and proceeded to sell him to the Dodgers. Rosin pitched well in spring training, but with no room in a loaded LA bullpen, they cut him loose. The Rangers picked him up on Wednesday.

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Right around the eve of the meaningful beginning of the 2014 regular season, baseball has announced an enhanced Joint Drug Prevention and Treatment Program. You can read the details right here, but the primary takeaway is that now a first-time PED violation will result in an 80-game suspension, and a second-time PED violation will result in a 162-game suspension. A third violation still earns a lifetime ban, since it’s not very easy to make that penalty tougher without breaking actual laws. Also, a player suspended for a violation will no longer be eligible for that year’s postseason.

Of course, there are other enhancements, too. And it should be noted that the majority of the players have been supportive of tougher penalties for users. Many of the players want to play within a clean game, and they’re not fans of what users do for the perception of themselves and everyone else. In that way, perhaps this shouldn’t be viewed as a concession, but one bullet point in there shows that the players got something extra for themselves in return.

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According to IMDB, Gone with the Wind pulled in nearly $200 million at the American box office. The Sound of Music pulled in just over $163 million. This makes them two of the highest-grossing films in US movie history. Those numbers are also utterly trounced by Fast & Furious 6’s $239 million. It can be said, technically accurately, that Fast & Furious 6 has been a higher-grossing film than the other two mentioned. But that sort of technical accuracy is deceptive accuracy, and, of course, we need to make adjustments. The raw numbers don’t tell us anything of value.

Listen to Twitter and you’ll find out in a hurry that the baseball industry was shocked by news of the new Miguel Cabrera contract. Cabrera’s now guaranteed $292 million through 2023, and beyond that there are another two options. It’s a massive deal for the Tigers, and a massive commitment, and seemingly a massive risk, that the Tigers didn’t need to take right away. Everyone’s floored by the magnitude of the thing. But then, we’ve seen this thing before. Cabrera’s contract isn’t the biggest contract ever, and in fact it’s hardly even in the conversation.

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This afternoon, Dave Cameron has published in these electronic pages the results of the FanGraphs staff predictions both for the American League and also the National League. As Cameron notes, those predictions will be wrong — grievously so, in some cases.

In the spirit of egalitarianism that pervades this site, FanGraphs is giving readers the opportunity to be just as wrong as our staff — by allowing them (i.e. those same readers) to predict the various winners of baseball’s divisional titles and wild-card berths and end-of-season awards.

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The 2014 Major League Baseball season kicks off for real on Monday — no, random days where the Dodgers play someone and it’s the only game of the day don’t count — and so, as a baseball site, we are compelled to offer our staff’s predictions for the upcoming season. We are compelled because you like to read our staff predictions, even though they are terrible. And boy are they terrible.

Among last year’s gems were things like Aaron Hicks, American League Rookie of the Year. Aaron Hicks did not get a single vote by any one voter on a Rookie of the Year ballot last year. We also had the Angels and Blue Jays making the playoffs. Predicting baseball is silly. Everyone is terrible at it, including us. But as long as you know that going in, it’s still kind of a fun exercise.

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