Way back on March 27th, I posted a list of our staff’s predictions on how the 2014 season would go. I almost forgot about this, but it’s clearly time to review at least part 1 of the results: how each team in the majors would finish. Some of the prognosticators are no longer with us, but I’m pretty sure they’re still out there lurking about, so I’ll be happy to embarrass them (and myself) regardless… in the interest of “complete transparency,” of course.
This is gonna be humbling… but here we go:
NL East
Those predictions, please?
Well, most of us did get the Nats right. You could almost throw a tarp over the 2nd/3rd/4th place teams – unless you’re a member of the Marlins grounds crew, of course – but nobody got it completely right since the Mets won the tie-breaker for 2nd place.
Awarding 1 point for each correct slot, though, we have:
- Chris Headrick/Fred Owens: 3 points
- Alan: 2 points. Bummer – with about a week to go, I had this one perfect!
- Ben, Jeff, Julien: 1 point apiece
- Brandon: zippo
Every one of us had the second place team making the Wild Card (that’s the asterisk thing in the chart). Fail.
NL Central
Well, this one at least looks better, as 3 of us hit the top two teams and everybody had the Cubs nailed. After that…
- 3 points for Alan, Ben, and Brandon.
- 2 points for Chris, Fred, Jeff, and Julien.
- Honorable mention to Fred as being the only one actually having respect for Milwaukee. I’m not giving him a point for that, but at least we’ll acknowledge the effort!
Bonus point to Brandon for picking the Pirates as a Wild Card team.
NL West
Once again, this wasn’t a horrible set of picks: unless you were among those Arizona who was going to actually do something. Frankly I had figured the bottom three to finish in some random order, but miles from the leaders. That was kind of the case, though the order was messy.
- 3 points: Alan, Fred
- 2 points: Chris, Julien
- 1 point: Everybody else
Bonus points: Alan, Chris, Fred, Julien for the Giants-make-the-Wild-Card picks.
AL East
Okay, so this one is just plain ugly. Did anybody get any points here (never mind the wild card selections)?
- Alan: none
- Ben: 1
- Brandon: none
- Chris: none
- Fred: none
- Jeff: 1
- Julien: none
Two. Two points for all of us. Yeah, that’ll leave a mark.
I’ll give one “atta boy” (which carries no points) to Jeff for being the lone warrior who gave the Orioles a modicum of respect – he thought they’d be a Wild Card team.
Other than that… well, let’s just move on.
AL Central
This represents a return to sanity. A lot of us nailed this division.
- SIX points to Ben and Julien (all correct, plus the Wild Card pick)
- 5 points: Alan, Chris
- 3 points: Brandon, Fred and Jeff
Al West
Here we had a lot of shuffling. Nobody figured on Texas being so banged up that they’d be the worst AL team… even worse than Houston. That killed a lot of points here. So it was kinda bad, but not nearly like the AL East.
- 3 points: Alan (with Wild Card bonus)
- 2 points: Jeff
- 1 point: Fred
- None: Ben, Brandon, Chris, Julien
Playoff Bonuses… were there any?
In this part, we picked the World Series matchup and the winner. I’ll quote from the March article:
ALAN – Tampa Bay over Cardinals in 6 games
BEN – Detroit over Cardinals in 7
BRANDON – Oakland over Atlanta in 7
CHRIS – Dodgers over Tampa Bay
FRED – Cardinals over Kansas City in 7
JEFF – Dodgers over the Angels
JULIEN– Tampa Bay over the Washington
Nope… not real good! I will award one point to Fred for including the Royals, and since I’m feeling generous, he’ll get another point for seeing them falling in the seventh game. +2 for Fred.
So Who Won?
The point totals came out as follows:
- Alan 2/3/4/0/5/3/0 – 17 points
- Ben 1/3/1/1/6/0/0 – 12 points
- Brandon 0/4/1/0/3/0/0 – 8 points
- Chris 3/2/3/0/5/0/0 – 13 points
- Fred 3/2/4/0/3/1/2 – 15 points
- Jeff 1/2/1/1/3/2/0 – 10 points
- Julien 1/2/3/0/6/0/0 – 12 points
I guess that means I won. Actually didn’t know it was gonna turn out that way… seriously. But then again, since there was a maximum of 37 points possible, that 17 tally means I was right less than half the time. Not exactly something to brag about! Still, Fred seemed to have the “boldest” picks – and seemed to be on the trends for the season better than the rest of us, so that’s certainly worthy of mention for his strong 2nd place finish.
Brandon? Sorry, bud.
Once the post-season awards are done, I’ll revisit our picks for those and we’ll eat our humble pie once again!