Well, we’re into May and the Major League Baseball season is a little over 1 month old.
In the 6 month, 162 game marathon that is the MLB season, nothing we know up to this point can be taken as gospel. For instance, is Tampa Bay going to finish above the Yankees in the AL East standings? Probably not. Is Josh Hamilton going to drive in 190 runs? Most definitely not.
But that is what’s so fun about projecting and forecasting with such a small sample size: anything is possible.
With that, I give you my Top 10 surprises of the young, yet exciting, 2008 MLB season:
1. The Bay Side teams aren’t playing nearly as bad as I thought:
I asked a friend before the season, “Hey, do you think you could take the rosters of Oakland and S.F. and make a competitive team out of their combined personnel?”. He laughed. Then he thought about it for a minute. Then he answered “No, absolutely not” with a serious look on his face.
And, honestly, their rosters, in terms of personnel, still aren’t pretty to look at. But winning is all that really matters, and both Oakland and San Francisco have far surpassed this guy’s pre-season expectations.
Oakland is 20-14 and 1GB of division leading Los Angeles, while San Fran is 14-18, a clear 2 games better than last year’s National League Champion Colorado Rockies.
A cumulative 34-32? Not bad at all, considering what they’ve got to work with.
2. Cliff Lee and Ervin Santana have been legitimate staff aces:
Both Lee and Santana came to The Show with a fair amount of hype. Both enjoyed early success, with Lee notching 46 wins between 2004-2006, and Santana registering a 16 win season in 2006.
But both guys had horrendous 2007 campaigns, landing in AAA at separate times and entering ’08 with decreased expectations.
But here we are, on May 6th, and they are a combined 11-0 and both rank in the top 5 American League ERA leaders.
After watching them both throw recently, it’s the improvement of control and command that has reversed the fortunes of these young guns.
Both Santana and Lee have dynamite “stuff”, but if you can’t locate in the majors, you are going to get hit. Improved control and trust of their secondary pitches has really been the difference between 2007 and 2008 for these two.
Case and point: in nearly 90 combined innings, these two have issued just 11 walks. That will go a long way in improving the always overrated W-L record.
3. Tampa Bay is 13-10 against AL East opponents:
Wow. I didn’t really realize this until just now looking it up.
Long time whipping boys of their division, Tampa Bay has more then held its own this year. While many estimated that Tampa would make strides offensively with Carl Crawford, BJ Upton, and Carlos Pena entrenched in the lineup, few could have predicted just how reliable Tampa Bay’s pitching has been.
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8 months ago
My favorite is number 10. Haha.
Good work.
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