A Look Ahead

Baseball, baby. It's back. Really, what I'm looking for most is Barry chasing Hank. I'm already giddy thinking about the media response and fans booing. I for one want him to catch Hank and pull a Ricky Henderson type response.

I'm curious to see how the Reds follow up their decent '06 campaign. The offense was solid, the starting pitching actually held up alright, but the bullpen was awful. We panicked and made a terrible trade with the Nationals to get some bullpen help, but I don't know how much it will actually help this year. We'll see. I think that we could be anywhere from a 72 to 88 win team.

Looking back, my predictions weren't terrible last year. My predictions for the year are remarkably similar to last year's predictions, with a few additions:

AL Division Winners (and wild card): Yankees, Indians, A's, and Red Sox
NL Division Winners (and wild card): Mets, Cards, D-Backs, and Phillies
Teams that will just miss: Red Sox, Tigers, Angels, Braves, Cubs, Giants
Teams that will make a run early and fade by August: Orioles, Reds
AL Pennant: Yankees
NL Pennant: Mets
World Series Champ: Yankees
AL Cy Young and MVP: Johan Santana and Alex Rodriguez
2 other AL Cy Young candidates: Roy Halladay, C.C. Sabathia
2 other AL MVP candidates: Travis Hafner, Manny Ramirez
NL Cy Young and MVP: Roy Oswalt and Albert Pujols
2 other NL Cy Young candidates: Carlos Zambrano, Jake Peavy
2 other NL MVP candidates: Carlos Beltran, Chase Utley
Hitters ready to blow up (that no one's talking about): Edwin Encarnacion, Kevin Youkilis
Under the radar AL Cy Young and MVP candidates: Erik Bedard and Gary Sheffield
Under the radar NL Cy Young and MVP candidates: Tim Hudson and Josh McCann
Intriguing young AL bats and arms: Alex Gordon/Delmon Young and Justin Verlander
Intriguing young NL bats and arms: Prince Fielder and Anibal Sanchez/Mike Olson

Anyway, let's see if my Reds can keep me from becoming a Yankees fan for a while :-)

-Chairman