House That Hank Built
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Predictions for the 2019 Atlanta Braves season from the TomahawkTake staff

By Alan Carpenter

NEW YORK, NY - APRIL 03: Gary Sanchez #24 of the New York Yankees takes the field to start the game against the Tampa Bay Rays during Opening Day at Yankee Stadium on April 3, 2018 in the Bronx borough of New York City. (Photo by Elsa/Getty Images)
NEW YORK, NY - APRIL 03: Gary Sanchez #24 of the New York Yankees takes the field to start the game against the Tampa Bay Rays during Opening Day at Yankee Stadium on April 3, 2018 in the Bronx borough of New York City. (Photo by Elsa/Getty Images) /
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<> at Steinbrenner Field on March 13, 2019 in Tampa, Florida.
<> at Steinbrenner Field on March 13, 2019 in Tampa, Florida. /

The season is nearly upon us and the Atlanta Braves are about to embark on their annual trek through the National League (mostly).  We have guesses on how they will fare.

It’s a fun… though usually perilous… exercise that we do each year:  it’s our attempt to predict how the Atlanta Braves and their 29 other foes will finish the season.

It’s not an all together level playing field… hey – Seattle is already 2-0 on this season… but it never is exactly level and plumbed.

The unbalanced schedule means that the NL East teams will all face one another 18 or 19 times apiece while having home-and-home series’s against the rest of the NL.

This year, the Atlanta Braves and their NL East rivals will also see the teams from the AL Central.

This is the big separator that needs to be cashed in – it’s a clear advantage that the East has over other divisions, and it could end up swinging the Wild Card results (The Central division gets the AL West; the NL West will see the AL East clubs).

I asked for complete end-of-season standings and the the World Series winners, plus those who would take home the major awards.

We have 5 results recorded for you to point and laugh at come October from Jake Mastroianni, Clint Manry, Fred Owens, Kyle Walter, and myself.  Hey – we’re fans, too!

Of course we’d also want to encourage you to place your own prognostications on this (virtual) paper once you’ve seen ours.

Let’s start with the American League.

AL East

I was going to put this into chart form, but as it turns out, only one of the 5 of us differed at all from the rest of the group.

Yeah – it was me.

Everybody believes that the New York Yankees will win this division this year.  They could repeat with 100 wins or more, but this time end up on top.

They also start with a ridiculously easy schedule and could leap out front by a large margin… that itself could discourage others in the East.

In truth, their team isn’t a lot different than last year except for a couple of major exceptions:

At the bottom:  we all picked the Blue Jays and Orioles to finish 4th and 5th respectively.  That just seems to be the correct alignment for these clubs – whether they’re rebuilding/tanking or whatever.

The difference in these guesses involved the Tampa Bay Rays and the Boston Red Sox.

I’m the outlier… the guy who picked the Rays to best the Red Sox for 2nd place.

The Rays seem to me more like a group of guys who are all in it together and will do anything to win… just like they did last year in taking 91 wins.

The Red Sox?  1 or 2 bad breaks and they could be in a world of hurt… especially with a sketchy bullpen.  If they start losing a few, it could cascade on them; that could bring Tampa Bay into the mix quickly.

So mostly, we call it this way:

  • Yankees
  • Red Sox
  • Rays
  • Blue Jays
  • Orioles

…though I have 2nd and 3rd places swapped.

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