{"id":12082,"date":"2016-04-04T07:05:34","date_gmt":"2016-04-04T11:05:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=12082"},"modified":"2016-04-04T07:05:34","modified_gmt":"2016-04-04T11:05:34","slug":"obligatory-2016-mlb-prediction-piece","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=12082","title":{"rendered":"Obligatory 2016 MLB Prediction piece"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>With almost no analysis and just absorbing information from national pundits and stuff I&#8217;ve read, here&#8217;s my 2016 prediction piece.\u00a0 Argue at will.<\/p>\n<p>Predicted Division Winners and why:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>NL East: <strong>Washington<\/strong>.\u00a0 They were better than their final record in 2015\u00a0 &#8230; they&#8217;re no longer the favorites so the pressure is off, and they have a manager who knows how to handle a veteran team.\u00a0 I sense a rebound.\u00a0 I also think the Mets will struggle with rotation injuries after driving their young arms way too hard last year.\u00a0 Washington&#8217;s offense, defense and intangibles are all improved and their rotation will be better than people give it credit for.\u00a0 Both teams win 90+ games thanks to their division but Washington nicks them at the end.<\/li>\n<li>NL Central: <strong>Chicago Cubs<\/strong>: who would pick against them after they won 98 games AND had the best off-season of any team?\u00a0 What a juggernaut.<\/li>\n<li>NL West: <strong>San Francisco Giants<\/strong>: somehow the Dodgers continue to have the biggest payroll out there yet can&#8217;t find enough healthy starters to fill a rotation.\u00a0 Arizona improved, but not enough.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>AL East: <strong>Toronto<\/strong>: still the best offense in the land; Tampa and Boston may be frisky.<\/li>\n<li>AL Central: <strong>Kansas City<\/strong>, though it could be close with Cleveland if KC&#8217;s bullpen doesn&#8217;t perform like they did last year.\u00a0 Concerned about the back end of KC&#8217;s rotation but they could always make another mid-season move if things get too bad.<\/li>\n<li>AL West: <strong>Houston<\/strong> again, with Texas nipping on their heels once they get\u00a0<strong>Yu Darvish<\/strong> back.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Wild Cards<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>NL: <strong>NY Mets and St. Louis Cardinals<\/strong>: the Mets will beat up on the rest of the weak NL East and get enough wins thanks to unbalanced schedules.\u00a0 St. Louis goes neck and neck with Chicago all year and settles for the WC.\u00a0 This leaves Pittsburgh, LA and Arizona out in the cold.\u00a0 Mentioning literally any other NL team in 2016 as a playoff contender would be shocking thanks to the wide-spread tanking going on in the league.<\/li>\n<li>AL: <strong>Boston<\/strong> and <strong>Texas<\/strong>; not as much tanking in the AL but there are a couple of weak teams in the AL West that help Texas.\u00a0 Boston is improved.\u00a0 The AL Central is too good to produce a 2nd team; they&#8217;ll beat up on each other all year.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Playoff Results.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Mets take the Cardinals in one WC<\/li>\n<li>Texas beats Boston in the other WC<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>In the divisional series:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Chicago and New York get a re-match of last year&#8217;s NLDS and&#8230;. the Mets prevail again in a shocker, defeating the 105-game winning Cubs with ease thanks to the Cubs 15 strike-outs per game against the Mets&#8217; hurlers.\u00a0 The curse continues.<\/li>\n<li>Washington gets revenge on San Francisco, winning games by not taking out starters in the 9th needlessly and handling SF&#8217;s all-around solid team.<\/li>\n<li>Houston (with the best record in the game) has to face hated rival Texas but wins an intra-state showdown.<\/li>\n<li>Kansas City outlasts Toronto but not before <strong>Jose Bautista<\/strong> causes another <strong>Goose Gossage<\/strong> meltdown with his bat flipping antics.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>In the LCS<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Washington and New York go 7 &#8230; having played to a 10-9 seasonal split.\u00a0 Washington&#8217;s arms are healthier in the end and they prevail at home in game 7.<\/li>\n<li>Houston ends KC&#8217;s AL dominance with a hard fought 6 games series.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>In the World Series&#8230;.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Two teams who have never won a WS game go at it.\u00a0 Washington&#8217;s aces shut down Houston&#8217;s offense and Washington&#8217;s veteran hitters squeak out the hits they need and NL Manager of the Year <strong>Dusty Baker<\/strong> leads the team to a WS title in his first season.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>What, it could happen couldn&#8217;t it??<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>With almost no analysis and just absorbing information from national pundits and stuff I&#8217;ve read, here&#8217;s my 2016 prediction piece.\u00a0 Argue at will. Predicted Division Winners and why: NL East: Washington.\u00a0 They were better than their final record in 2015\u00a0 &#8230; they&#8217;re no longer the favorites so the pressure is off, and they have a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[845,562,404,1016,300],"class_list":["post-12082","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nonnatsbaseball","tag-dusty-baker","tag-goose-gossage","tag-jose-bautista","tag-todd-boss","tag-yu-darvish"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12082","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12082"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12082\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12088,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12082\/revisions\/12088"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}