A gaze into crystal baseball predicts 2014 fortunes
Baseball does not successfully lend itself to crystal balls, as any search through our archives for past predictions will no doubt reveal.
Purely guessing what’s going to happen in this game is a fool’s errand, and reading palms is problematic if the palms in question are covered by batting gloves, catcher’s mitts or pine tar.
Ah, but that won’t stop MLB.com’s team of columnists from dabbling in the fortune-telling field for just a few moments. As we turn the page to 2014, this is a sampling of team achievements, star performances, individual awards, breakout seasons, etc., that we’re expecting to see in the new year.
And if none of this comes true, well, we’ll just claim the crystal ball had a little too much of that Lena Blackburne mud rubbed on it.
Mike Bauman
The 2014 season will be characterized, he said, not really knowing, by terrific, dramatic division races.
I would pay particular attention to the National League Central and the American League West as two focal points of this intense competition. The expanded Wild Card system made this possible, but so did the teams from St. Louis, Pittsburgh and Cincinnati.
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None of these teams is going to fade quietly out of contention. It will be fascinating to see what the Pirates do for an encore after breaking through to end their 20-year drought.
In the AL West, Oakland remains underappreciated, but the A’s don’t have to care about that after winning the division the past two years. In fact, every year of the Wild Card era, dating back to 1995, has seen at least one sub-.500 team from one season reach the playoffs the next.
The Mariners, by virtue of the Cano acquisition and all that follows, will be a popular pick to make that kind of leap in 2014.
This should be the year in which the Cardinals’ Oscar Taveras, the D-backs’ Archie Bradley, the White Sox’s Jose Abreu and the Mariners’ Taijuan Walker become nationally recognized names (the M’s, of course, would be wise to let Walker do so in their uniform and not that of the Rays).
This could be the year Mike Trout finally overtakes Miguel Cabrera in the AL MVP vote, particularly with Cabrera coming off groin surgery.
This ought to be the year the Royals finally get over the October hump, lest the ghost of Wil Myers hover over their heads for the next six seasons. But with James Shields, Billy Butler and Norichika Aoki all nearing free agency, the Royals have a pivotal opportunity in 2014, and I have a hunch they’ll seize it.
This will almost assuredly be the year the Rangers are the consensus pick to win the World Series. He’s going to have a monstrous bounce-back season, and when baseball’s best players are discussed, he’ll again be in the conversation.
Joe Maddon will be the AL Manager of the Year, David Price the AL Cy Young Award winner. And when all is said and done, the Cardinals and Angels will give us a tremendously entertaining World Series.
Cardinals in seven.
Tracy Ringolsby
It’s been 38 years since the Kansas City Royals last saw the postseason. An owner will want Baker — a manager with a track record who has shown he knows how to massage egos and create a winner.
Trout has been close but not close enough in AL MVP voting the past two years. Their $68 million investment in the Cuban slugger will be money well spent as he picks up an AL Rookie of the Year Award and even some MVP consideration after joining fellow newcomers Adam Eaton and Avisail Garcia in making it fun to watch baseball on Chicago’s South Side.
After losing 99 games in 2013, the White Sox will matter again, with Chris Sale building off his success the last two season and John Danks bouncing back from shoulder surgery to work 200 solid innings. Until some of that pitching goes away, the AL Central still belongs to the Tigers, even if the Royals (43-27 after the All-Star break last year) and Indians are positioned to catch them.
The AL will have to go through the Tigers and the Rangers, who with Fielder and Choo could get to the World Series again. Houston, stockpiling prospects, will be relevant in a year or two.
The ever-improving and maturing Royals are on the move, with Salvador Perez emerging as the new Yadier Molina, but the Tigers remain the class of the AL Central, armed to reach the Fall Classic. They’ll meet the Dodgers, fending off the D-backs and Giants in a strong NL West with great pitching, a full season of Puig and comebacking Kemp showing the world he’s still Kemp.
The Braves will be tough as usual in the East, but the NL centers again around the Cardinals and Dodgers.