Time to junk MLB preseason prediction as baseball reaches second half
Now that all that midseason foolishness is done – and big-time professional baseball has left Pittsburgh for another year – it’s time to review, revise and hedge on preseason predictions.
As usual, there is more oops-ing than crowing, more questions than answers:
Who would have thought that ma
king Jim Leyland the manager would turn the ’05 Detroit Tigers (they of 91 losses) into the ’68 Tigers (who won the World Series)?
Who would have thought that losing pitching coach Leo Mazzone would mark the end of the Atlanta Braves’ run of division titles?
Who would have thought the Rangers’ Mark Teixeira would turn into a singles hitter?
But we didn’t miss on everything. Even if we did pick the suddenly unarmed Braves to win the NL East, we expected the New York Mets to be a playoff team. We’ll stick by that choice, since the Mets are on pace to clinch the division by Labor Day and have one of the Cy Young favorites (although it might be Tom Glavine instead of Pedro Martinez).Even after missing virtually all of June with a strained oblique muscle, St. Louis’ Albert Pujols still is the best player in the National League. He and Scott Rolen could use a hand from the Cardinals’ starting pitchers, who aside from Jason Marquis have been pretty ordinary.
And even though Roger Clemens did indeed come riding into Houston on the proverbial white horse, somebody on the Astros besides Lance Berkman is going to have to start 
hitting consistently. In the first half, the Astros were 14th in the league in OPS and hits, and they tied for last in team batting average.
In the American League, where apparently the real baseball is played nowadays, the leaders are pretty much holding to form – aside from those pesky Tigers, who seem to be showing no signs of slowing down thanks to the ageless Kenny Rogers and those young flamethrowers, Justin Verlander and Jeremy Bonderman.
The most telling numbers for the Tigers in the first half, aside from the 2,354 cigarettes Leyland smoked, are at the far end of the statistics tables – Detroit’s pitching staff was best in the league in walks and hits per inning, and opponents’ batting averages, slugging percentages and on-base percentages were the lowest in the league.
The Tigers will need all the pitching they can get in the second half – they have 13 games coming up with the Chicago White Sox, who lead the league in home runs and are second only to the Blue Jays in batting average and OPS.
In Minnesota, it took until mid-May for the Twins to figure out that the amazing Francisco Liriano needed to be in the rotation. He was 10-1 with a league-best 1.83 ERA at the break.
And while the A’s may yet overcome the creeping parity in the AL West (in which all the teams are bunched, and all of them could run away with the division), the league’s spot in the World Series looks destined for the survivor of the Sox-Tigers duel.
And that survivor, of course, will bring home the big trophy at the end of October.
Odds to win 2006 World Series: Bodog Sportsbook
World Seies Prediction: Boston to defeat the Mets in six games.
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