Baseball Wrap Up

In May I wrote a forecast for the season which can be found here: http://4cornersports.blogspot.com/2015/05/baseball-is-sound-of-summer.html

So lets take a look at some of those predictions as well as forecast for the post season.

Offensively, my predictions seemed to be spot on. Josh Donaldson is looking to be the AL MVP and Kris Bryant could be the Rookie of the year. As predicted, Kris Bryant hit 26 home runs, although, his batting average was a bit better then expected. The kid’s a beast.

On the other side, Joc Pederson and Josh Hamilton struggled in the 2nd half as expected. Actually more then I had expected. While his home run numbers were at 26 on the dot, his batting average dropped to just above the mendoza line at .210. Josh Hamilton on the other hand had a batting average very close to .260 but never had the at bats to get 14 home runs. He was on pace for about that many, however with 8 home runs in 170 at bats.

Bryce Harper broke out as I expected but I never foresaw him doing THIS http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/players/8875/splits/. His season has become a historic one. If you want to look into the numbers, you’ll see they’re rivaled only by names like Mantle, Hornsby, Ruth, Bonds and similar household names.That’s in terms of best seasons EVER. I’m giving myself a bit of a break on this one because I would have felt crazy if I’d predicted the numbers given, and you’d probably call me crazy and decided to never read my posts again. And we don’t want that. But to get some perspective, Bryce harper was on pace for about 20 home runs last year and 150 hits. I predicted 32 home runs and around 20 or 30 more hits. Instead, he doubled last years home run pace, and had roughly 20 more hits then that this year while he also doubled his walk rate with about 60 more bbs! It’s hard to guess about his future but keep in mind, he didn’t really break out until May. April (and technically a shortened October) was his only month he hit below .300, but since then he never stopped swinging a hot bat. 

Many of us joked “remember when we thought Bryce Harper would battle with Mike Trout for best player each year? hehehe”. Well now that looks like a real possibility. And keep in mind Trout is a better fielder. He is. The only fielding tool Bryce has over Trout is his arm. But imagine if Harper had stayed behind the plate as a catcher? Bryce harper may have been the clear number 1 value. This is still assuming he could stay healthy, but a lot of his problems have been from running into things in the outfield, so who’s to say he would have gotten hurt as often behind the plate?

So be before I get too thrilled with myself, we’ll move on to pitching which I was much more off on. While DeGrom was superb, and Carrasco had a good enough last month (and I maintained to be cautious), so I’ll call those a win, there were plenty that went wrong. McHugh, Richards, Pineda and Odorizzi never quite panned out. They all have great stuff, and have shown flashes of being fantastic, but never put it together enough to really have a fantastic season. 

The sell pitchers turned out to be more on point. Wacha still had good turns but as September rolled along, he fell apart. He truly is a good pitcher, but his numbers lead me to believe he’s hurt. Either way, he’s been doing no one any good in his final month of pitching. Archer continued a solid campaign, but returned to normalcy, posting an era between 3.20 and 3.30 as predicted. Kazmir also struggled big time as that month continued, but he also had some very good turns. While he definitely didn’t continue to be the pitcher he was early in the season, he still was a fairly reliable pitcher, more so then I expected, so I’ll take that one as me being wrong, which leads to the team predictions…

The New York Mets! This one was a bit of a reach on my part, as they were competing with the team favored to win it all. The Nationals. However Syndergaard proved to be a highly valuable pitcher who won them some games as soon as he was called up. While there’s plenty of competition, he may even get the call for ROY. Kris Bryant continues to be the favorite for ROY, but don’t sleep on Syndergaard if he gets hot in the post season and Bryant doesn’t. I like Syndergaard to have a solid post season, while I think Bryant may struggle out the womb in his first playoff birth. They’re both very talented players but if Syndergaard flourishes and Bryant flutters, that may be the push to give Syndergaard enough votes for ROY.

POST SEASON PREDICTIONS

Post season is one of the toughest things to predict as it’s hardly ever the best team who wins it all. This year, I’m predicting it will be however.

The TORONTO BLUE JAYS will win it all BUT ONLY if they can gain some momentum out of the gate. They play the Rangers who have been hitting very well lately, which could give them enough moment to knock off the Blue Jays before they pass go. If that happens, I think it’ll be the Astros to win it all. As it stands however, the Blue Jays have the offense and with newly acquired pitchers, David Price and Marcus Stroman, the pitching to win it all. The National league Mets will make it to the final showdown, but with all those young arms, not used to pitching late into the season, and their one veteran pitcher (Matt Harvey) on a pitch limit, their going to really start to struggle as it gets further into the race. I think they have enough to get there, but experience and arm strength will be the determining factor that holds them back.

So make your bets, find your local spot to watch them games and enjoy the fall season as baseball comes to an end!

See you next year, and in the mean time, enjoy some football!

-Alan Clark