2014 Baseball Wrap Up

The season is officially over now that the awards have been given out. This is a good time to look back at my predictions and see how well I did…probably not well.

The Regular Season Predictions
I got 14 correct. I do not think that is too shabby, 46.67%. I completely nailed the AL Central, but completely missed the AL East. I was 6-9 in the AL and 8-7 in the NL. Not too shocking since I pay way more attention to the National League. I did four of the division winners right and two of the wild card teams right. And I was five out of six when picking the second place division teams. Good job me!

The Playoffs
I was not even close in the playoffs. I did not predict the Royals or Giants would make the wild card, so that made it impossible to get the World Series right. I did not even have ALCS or NLCS correct. I mean, everything about this years postseason was awesome and completely unpredictable, so I cannot complain about it too much.


The Awards
I did not get any of the awards right. At least Andrew McCutchen ended up in third place for the MVP voting. I am not sure how I feel about Clayton Kershaw winning the MVP, he had a great year and he was dominant, but was his season that much better than last year? Should he have won it last year as well? If McCutchen was MVP last year and you could almost argue from a stats POV that he actually was a little better this year, then shouldn’t he be your MVP again? I guess I am one of those people who does not like a pitcher winning the MVP. I really think the MVP should be for a position player and the Cy Young should be the MVP of pitchers, but that is neither here nor there.

IDPs
Now these are the fun, insane division predictions I like to make and I am usually pretty far off, but it is fun to see how they turn out.

To start, the Yankees did not finish below .500, so that one was quickly wrong. I also said that Miguel Cabrera, Eric Hosmer, and Carlos Santana would finish in the top three of MVP voting, umm, I was off since it was actually Mike Trout, Victor Martinez, and Michael Brantley (hey at least I got a Tiger and Indian right, and since Jose Abrea was fourth, that means three Central guys did compete, hmm, maybe this is a push, haha). Okay, I was wrong about Robinson Cano, he did live up to expectations, he was fifth in voting (although, he did only hit 14 HRs and I said 13…hmm).

Predicting no-hitters is tough (I was two years off on Homer Bailey and the Pirates) and being specific about a team is pretty dumb. Stephen Strasburg did not throw a no-hitter against the Braves, hell he did not really pitch that well against them all year. The Braves did get no-hit though, but it was by the Phillies of all teams. Pedro Alvarez did not hit 40 HRs, but fans did call him a bum and begged for him to be traded. Or cut. Anything. The Rockies have considered trading Carlos Gonzalez this off-season, but I guess that does not really count. Damn it!

Fantasy Stuff
Remember when I said I would write up a fantasy analysis to see who was the actual best team? Well I am finally getting around to it.

The season ended like this:
Ryan
Josh
Gideon
Dustin
Lindsey
Pat
Jason
Mark
Sean
Offord
Don
Steve

As you know, my method for figuring out if the teams were really as good as those final standings is by seeing where your final season totals ranked and then adding them up. Here are the hitting stats.

I was shocked that my team was mostly mediocre in the hitting department. I mean, it seemed like every week I was saying that my pitching carried my team. So I thought my team would be absolutely horrible on this side. On the head-to-head side, I had a losing record for hitting, so I guess I just had some unlucky weeks.

This was pretty much what I figured I would see, although I thought for sure that I would get more points than Ryan for pitching since he does not even try for holds.  For those of you that cannot add these totals up, here is how the rankings would go if this were a rotisserie league:

Ryan
Gideon
Josh
Pat
Dustin
Sean
Mark
Jason
Lindsey
Don
Offord
Steve

Lindsey probably benefited the most from a head-to-head league, especially in the playoffs. The stats show that Pat was a much better team, but she just had a great week. Sean and Pat would have definitely liked this system. Other than a few minor places being switched around though, the best teams end up winning at the end of the year.

Also, this clearly show that it is beneficial to have a balanced team. I used to believe in the idea of punting a category, but that is really stupid. Now Ryan was dominant in almost all categories, so he is a bad example. However, Gideon and I are the next two. We each led one category. By being consistent across the boards, you end up being a much more complete team. Also, dominating pitching will overcome those hitting weaknesses.

Alright, that is it for baseball for awhile. Now we get to pay attention to off-season moves and freak out about which teams signed certain free agents and any of the crazy trades that happen. Is it time for spring training yet?

Author: Ngewo