MLB Playoff Predictions: It’s Confirmed, We Suck
by christophergiblin
By Chris Giblin
I’m gonna try to keep this short, so as to keep the embarrassment minimal. What I can say is that this was the most exciting Division Series round that I can remember, with no sweeps and three out of four series needing the full five games to be decided. Every series was close, and just about every individual game was at least competitive. Another weird fact: Every team that outscored their opponent over the course of their respective series lost. That has to be the first time that’s ever happened. The Phillies (+2), the Diamondbacks (+2), the Rays (+5) and the Yankees (+11) are all gone, victims of poor timing and being on the losing end of close games. Or choking, whatever you want to call it. Regardless, had all those teams actually won, I’d have been 3-for-4 on predictions.
Before we get into the review of our picks, I also just want to say that all four teams I picked to win in the Division Series took Game 1. But if the Division Series this year has taught us anything, it’s that seemingly important things like scoring more runs than your opponent and getting off on the right track in a short series don’t have to be that big of a deal. I thought those first games were a good start towards going 4-for-4, or at least 3-for-4. Of course, I ended up with just one correct prediction, which is really probably the worst possible outcome since I was only one messed up guess away from the failure sweep. Because of this, I’m just bad at predicting; I can’t quite claim to be the worst at it, yet.
The annoying part about this is we can’t say other analysts didn’t see this coming. Grantland’s Rany Jazayerli broke down the two National League match-ups, correctly predicting the Brewers and Cardinals to win. However, he predicted both series to take four games when each took five. Jonah Keri put Jazayerli to shame, comparatively, correctly predicting the Tigers to win in five games and the Rangers in four. Really impressive. These two would have combined to amass six points to easily lead our MLB playoffs predictions league. They’d also have their World Series winners still alive, unlike us. I guess there’s a reason some bloggers get paid and others don’t… luck, of course. Here’s how we did:
Mike:
Picked the Phillies and Yankees to win, both wrong. However, correctly picked the Brewers in 5 and the Rangers in 4. That’s 4 points, easily better than me and good enough for first place.
Stone:
Picked the Phillies and Diamondbacks, both wrong. Correctly picked the Rangers, but in 5 games when they finished it in 4. Correctly picked the Tigers in 5. That’s 3 points and 2nd place.
Me:
Picked the Phillies, Yankees and Rays, all wrong. Correctly picked the Brewers, but in 4 games when it actually took 5. That’s 1 sad point and last place.
Well, as expected, we had a rough time doing this, especially me. Stone and Mike had their World Series winning Phillies go up in flames last night thanks to a complete game shutout by Chris Carpenter, while my Yankees got shut down by some guy named Doug Fister. The winner of this predictions contest will come down to who wins the ALCS, since Stone picked the Tigers to reach the World Series while Mike went with the Rangers. We’ll have an update once that series ends… then we might consider making even bolder, more specific World Series predictions. And you’ll read them, because we’d like to think we’ve gained your trust through so much proven, top notch fortune telling.
