The Amazing Predicta-King

The "analysts" and "experts" and "baseball men" have made their predictions for the season.

I also have predictions, but there is a key difference: whereas their predictions are efforts in futility, mine are guaranteed to be right. So without further ado...

1. A fringe player will break out and by May 15 hit more home runs and collect more R/RBI/hits/TB/XBH than he'd ever collected in a full year.

2. A fringe pitcher will throw lights-out for awhile and notch more strikeouts/shutouts/complete games/wins than he had in his career up to that point.

3. Someone will earn his first win/save/walk/triple/SB/four-hit game/etc. since the first Bush presidency.

4. Several players who have proven injury-prone over the years, or who have begun breaking down with age, will get hurt yet again and be termed "disappointments" when in fact their injuries were predictable. (See Pedro, Hampton, Kazmir, etc.)

5. A hitter who left a team playing home games in a bandbox for one playing home games on the plains will perform just as he always has, but the park will wreak havoc on his statistics and the "experts" will declare his season a disappointment.

6. A hitter who left a team playing home games in a cavern for one playing home games in a launching pad will perform just as he always has, but the park will artificially inflate his statistics and the "experts" will declare his season a breakout.

7. Repeat #s 4 and 5 for pitchers, except in reverse.

8. Repeat #s 4-6, except replace ballpark with other context, like league, lineup support, defense, etc.

9. A pitcher who is not pitching particularly well but who gets great relief and run support will rack up a bunch of wins and at mid-season the "experts" will declare him the next big thing. Luck will catch up with him and he will fade over the second half.

10. A pitcher will have a great season, maybe even the best in the league, but will not even get a sniff for Cy Young because the "experts" will dismiss anyone with a 12-14 record.

11. A player who excels for a mediocre team will fail to attract any MVP attention because "they could lose without him just as well," even if careful analysis reveals him to be clearly the player who contributed most to his team's win total.

12. One of the teams picked by nobody to make the playoffs will get off to a hot start and ride that nearly to mid-season, causing many of those "experts" to shelve their pre-season analysis and jump on the bandwagon. That team will regress to their skill level by the 100-game mark and hardly be heard from thereafter.

13. A team with low expectations will out-perform them. A couple of off-season moves will pay off. A heretofore brittle pitcher will make most of his starts. A hitter will have his career year. An unheralded rookie will burst onto the scene. A couple of bounces will go their way. Their defense will improve. They'll get lucky and win a bunch of close games. The experts, unable to discern the level of improvement in any of these small changes, will attribute the team's success to the manager or a veteran player or chemistry or something else that can't be measured, proven or disproven.

14. Someone having a below average season will again make the All-Star team because of the moronic rule that every team has to have a representative.

15. The "experts" will analyze four playoff teams into oblivion after they lose the first game of their five-game series. However, the same analysts will reverse the doomsday scenario after the next game when the game-one loser is victorious in game two. This will go on ad infinitum as if the analysts had never experience playoff baseball before.

I guarantee my predictions. How? Because I'm no expert.