Midterm Report Cards for This Year's MLB Predictions

Most sports fans are familiar with the concept of the pre- or early season prediction article. This sort of piece is run by most major newspapers and sports magazines just before the beginning of a sporting season, and usually concludes with the publication's resident guru (or gurus) looking through that Biblical glass, darkly, and picking both the contestants for the given sport's final battle and the ultimate champion. The effect on readers is curiously mind-numbing, and the more unexpected the penultimate and ultimate picks, the more mind-numbing. For example, before the 2008 baseball season, Sports Illustrated picked the Tigers over the Cubs in the World Series in their annual "baseball preview" issue. Many probably read that and said to themselves, "Wow! Who would've guessed that?" Fewer likely reflected on the fact that, at that point, neither Detroit nor Chicago had won anything at all, that the Cubs were quite unlikely to win anything meaningful, or that SI never really checks back in at the end of the season to report on their prediction "batting average."

Such an article is odd exercise in hubris, a report of off-season player swaps and signings dressed up in a magician's tuxedo - one rabbit trick after another (all the teams are usually placed within their divisions), culminating with The Really Big Rabbit Trick (a rabbit from a thimble, as it were), the prediction of, say, the World Series or Super Bowl Champion.

Unfortunately, as suggested, no one ever seems to keep track of these predictions and what they might say about the experts who write them. Myriad opportunities for comedy, including self-deprecating laughs, are thus lost. Take the example above: In November of '08, somebody at SI could have written, "Seriously, somebody hit us in the head with a two by four in March. Who saw the Phillies and Rays coming?" (They had the Rays finishing fourth in their division, even farther out of the running for the playoffs than they had the Phils.) In '09 after picking the wrong New York team over the Angels as World Series champs, SI threw away an opportunity to declare that "we must've been drinking too much of that Metropolitan Kool-Aid."

Thus, in a modest effort to correct this situation - in other words, to apply some QA analysis to sports predictions - your humble correspondent will produce here a report card on his own (less systematic) baseball predictions made in this cyberspace on May 15^th and, after that, one for the folks at Sports Illustrated. The following grades were calculated, fittingly, on Hall of Fame Induction Day, Sunday, July 25^th.

Prediction 1:"Alex Rodriguez will not hit .300 for the season."Midterm grade: A. As I type this, Rodriguez is caught up in the pursuit of his 600^th home run, which baseball historians will automatically discount because he's admitted that he was a steroid user. His batting average was .277 on the day real Hall of Famers were inducted, and he was once seriously considered for the title of "The Greatest Ever," even over Ruth. To borrow from Whittier for the philosophical angle here, "[O]f all the sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: 'It might have been!'" For the strictly statistical angle, it should be observed that because of an everyday player's mathematical base of hundreds of at-bats by mid-season, it is far more difficult to go from .277 to .300 in August than it is in May.

Prediction 2: "Jose Contreras will be the Phillies closer by the end of the season."Midterm grade: C+. On Hall of Fame Sunday Contreras had three saves in four opportunities; nominal Phils closer Brad Lidge had nine in twelve, counting his effort that day. Lidge seems to have returned from the disabled list without a physical hitch as such, and Contreras' ERA has ballooned a bit. This was always an iffy prediction, largely because of Charlie Manuel's loyalty to the closer who won him a World Championship in 2008, but it's still a possibility. Grade "progress" here may indicate why Charlie Manuel is the Phillies manager and I am not. Charlie, however, likely can't answer why Brad Lidge seems to have devolved into a right-handed version of Mitch "Wild Thing" Williams. Williams used to claim that he pitched "like [his] hair [was] on fire." This summer it isn't hard to find Phillies fans who would like to set Lidge's hair on fire.

Prediction 3: "Andre Ethier, who leads all batters with a .392 average, will finish at .311." Midterm grade: A-. This doesn't get an A because it's a no-brainer that anybody hitting .392 in the middle of May will drop off some. Years ago a Sport Illustrated cover announced in seeming astonishment that Lenny Dykstra was hitting .400 in June. In fact, maybe this prediction deserves only a B or B+ because, in the third week of July, Ethier fell into a horrid slump and was hitting "only" .300. I'll bet he climbs that eleven-point hill by the season's end, however. He can hit, but the bottom line is that Ted Williams is dead.

Prediction 4: "Washington will finish second to the Phillies in the NL East."Midterm grade: D.The only reason this doesn't get an F, since the Phils aren't in first and the Nats are in last, is because the Fightin' Female Horses may actually overtake the Braves for the division championship. But while they've begun to hit again, the Phillies likely won't get Roy Oswalt to help, and they definitely won't get Dan Haren. About the time Andre Dawson finished up with his HOF speech, Haren was packing for Anaheim, where he'd been sent for three prospects who probably won't move Arizona out of last place in the NL West even in 2012. If they want even a second line pitcher to replace the all-too-noticeably absent Cliff Lee, Philadelphia is probably going to have to give up Jayson Werth this week, which will leave their fans saying, whatever happens after that, "We could have had Lee and Werth here in September"...as they throw batteries at Ruben Amaro's box. Car batteries.

Prediction 5: "After making the NL All-Star team and hitting .317 for the season, Andrew McCutchen will be traded to the Yankees, along with the Pirates best minor leaguer, for Nick Swisher and Brett Gardner." Midterm grade: Incomplete (but arguably a C- since McCutcheon didn't make the AS team despite hitting around .300 when the reserves were selected, and he was hitting "only" .288 after play July 25^th).

...all of which brings us back to SI and their grades at "midterm." After ignoring the Phillies for the two most recent years in their previews, this year they decided to put Philadelphia's new ace, Roy Halladay, on the cover of the prediction issue and pick the Phils over the Rays in the coming World Series.

Midterm grade for that: B. Both Philly and Tampa were in second place in their divisions before play on HOF Sunday.

SI's division champion and wild card picks with their grades thereby earned (and the actual leaders, if different, at noon, July 25^th): NL East: Phillies - C- (Braves - by 6); NL Central: Cardinals - B+ (Reds, but only by half a game); NL West: Rockies - D+ (Padres; the Boulders were 6½ back in 4^th place). AL East: Yankees - A; AL Central: Twins - B (Chicago, ahead of the Twinkies by 2); AL West: Anaheim - C- (Texas, ahead of the Halos by 6). NL Wild Card: Braves - B+ (Giants); AL Wild Card: Rays - A.

Sources not clearly indicated above:

Baseball Tonight. ESPN, Philadelphia. 25 July 2010.

"2008 Baseball Preview: Scouting Reports." Sports Illustrated 31 March 2008: 62+.

"2009 Baseball Preview: Scouting Reports." Sports Illustrated 6 April 2009: 68+.

"2010 Baseball Preview: Scouting Reports." Sports Illustrated 5 April 2010: 66+.

Gallozzi, Chuck. "Saddest Words." personal-development.com. 25 July 2010.

"Sortable Player Stats." philadelphia.phillies.mlb.com. 25 July 2010.

"Sortable Player Stats." pittsburgh.pirates.mlb.com. 25 July 2010.