A couple of days ago we asked you to give us your mood of the Braves’ chances in 2018. Today our writers will guess the finishes of all 30 MLB teams.
In case you missed a chance to give us your feedback on how the Atlanta Braves will do this year, then please take just a few minutes to do so via this direct link.
In the meantime, many teams have made many changes this off-season, and it’s about time to lace-em-up to see how those efforts translate to the field. There are almost as many predictions out there as predictors, but at the same time, you’d have to believe that sorting these 30 teams is easier than… oh, your NCAA brackets, for instance.
I asked our writers to come up with their predictions, and we are going to let you in on those today. As you can see from the tweet below, some of us went ‘old school’ with the technology to get their picks together.
2018 MLB Predictions! @TomahawkTakeFS pic.twitter.com/d0z3iLozOu
— Adam McCracken (@adammccracken) March 20, 2018
Let’s start in the American League.
AL East
Everyone picked the Yankees to win the division. Almost.
The first thing I have to explain is about Dan. I’m guessing I wasn’t entirely clear on the instructions – words like ‘finishing order for every team in every division’… things like that (grin). But I put in the info I had from him, and that’s okay, because for all of us, failure is definitely an option when doing this!
The Yankees would seem to be the clear favorites in the AL due to an offense that can probably out-pound anyone else… and they might have to, for I have some concerns about their pitching.
Sure, Steven Wright will begin the season on the DL, and then be suspended for 2½ weeks after that. But Boston’s pitching is still deep.
That really can’t be said for the Yankees, and Masahiro Tanaka has has a forgettable spring. If any of their starters ends up with a injury, they could be in a world of hurt.
As for the rest in this division, we had no consensus. The Rays were actually looking okay to me until their pitching started to fall apart… to the point that they are at least talking about a 4-man rotation (which I doubt will really be workable).
Until that happened, I had been figuring that the Rays might outlast both of the bird teams simply because I expect both to sell off their assets as some point during the year… the only question being “how soon?”. Seeing the Orioles get Alex Cobb this week, that may mean that they can hang on a bit longer than the Jays, and thus I finally opted to put them in the #3 slot.
So speaking for myself, I have no confidence whatever in guessing 3rd-5th place finishers. The Yankees and Red Sox should run away with the division – in some order – with the other three fighting just to keep their heads above water… and probably without a lot of success.