Bold Baseball Predictions: Tampa Bay Rays

• Rays will take the AL Wild Card. They will win 96 games.

 

• Their starting rotation will be the best in baseball in 2009.

 

• James Shields will be in the running for a Cy Young with a 21-6 record and 217 strikeouts and a 2.82 ERA.

 

• Evan Longoria will hit 36 home runs and have a .382 OBP. He’ll generally be the man crush of the league.

 

• Pat Burrell will do less than expected. He’ll be a constant power threat and have 24 home runs but he’ll only bat .241.

 

• Dan Wheeler, Grant Balfour and Troy Percival will make up the best 3 pitcher bullpen tandem in baseball.

 

• The Rays will start the season with good attendance numbers but by late June people in Tampa Bay will already forget about them until the Playoffs.

 

• Jason Bartlett will continue to be Jason Bartlett.

 

• Dioner Navarro will try his best to emulate A.J. Pierszynski by pissing off opposing players.

 

• Matt Joyce and his million dollar smile will bat .284 this year and continue to grow.

Bold Baseball Predictions: Pittsburgh Pirates

• The Pirates will finish with 67 wins.

 

• Nate McLouth will not be on the team by the end of the season.

 

• Nate McLouth will take his blonde locks somewhere else and finish with 29 home runs, 102 RBI .278 batting average.

 

• Paul Maholm and Ian Snell will both do their best to avoid being in the worst rotation in baseball. As long as they have better ERAs than the Tigers and Rangers, they’ll be happy.

 

• Brandon Moss will flourish in Pittsburgh with regular at bats. He will be traded by 2011.

 

• Matt Capps will be a consistent closer in spite of the lack of save opportunities.

 

• Ryan Doumit will be great and generally remind Pirates fans of classic Jason Kendall int he sense that they’ll have a great catcher and nothing else.

 

• Adam LaRoche will grow and maintain some of the worst facial hair in baseball.

 

• 9 .9 out of 10 Pirates will agree they’d rather be on a different team.

 

• Last place in the NL Central.

Bold Baseball Predictions: Philadelphia Phillies

• Fresh off the 2008 World Series victory, the Phillies will enter the 2009 season with new found confidence. They may have the deepest lineup in the National League and if their pitchers can hold it together (looking at you everyone except Cole Fuckin’ Hamels) they will finish 1st in the NL East.

 

• In the playoffs they will be too laid back and lose in the NLDS.

 

• Raul Ibanez will hit 19 home runs and have 94 RBI.

 

• Jimmy Rollins will steal 57 bases and hit 12 triples.

 

• Matt Stairs will start 13 games in left field. Fans attending those games will say “Matt Stairs is on the Phillies?/Matt Stairs still plays baseball?”

 

• Brad Lidge will save 41 games.

 

• Chad Drubin will start a chain of sandwich stores called “Durbin’s Deli” that will have a speciality sandwich featuring; roast beef, corned beef, pastrami, swiss, pickels,  onions, barbecue potato chips, lettuce and mustard. The sandwich store will be successful but not because it has his name on it.

 

• Pedro Feliz will get drunk and photos of him drunkenly swaying the night away will surface.

 

• Phillies fans will boo the team all the time as if the 2008 World Series never happened.

Bold Baseball Predictions: Cincinnati Reds

• When Brandon Phillips is the most recognizable player on your team, you’re probably a shitty team. Honestly the only reason most people know who him is probably because they play Fantasy Baseball and he quietly does many things very, very well. These trends will continue in 2009 and Brandon Phillips will hit .272 with 23 home runs, 86 RBI, 32 SB. He will also finish the season somewhere else.

 

• Jay Bruce will emerge as a reasonable slugger. He’ll bat .284 with 32 home runs and 107 RBI. Reds management will probably trade him too. They can’t have good players hanging around…

 

• Sensing that the season has no point outside of personal statistics, Willy Taveras will attempt to steal 200 bases. Unfortunately because he is so terrible at hitting, he won’t be on base  more than 100 times this season.

 

• Alex Gonzalez will play great defense.

 

• The Reds surprisingly good  paper rotation of Aaron Harang, Edinson Volquez, Bronson Arroyo, Johnny Cueto and Micah Owings will perform well all season. Unfortunately the extreme lack of offensive output will give all starters many, many losses.

 

• Joey Votto will get on base a lot.

 

• David Weathers will sit in the bullpen and think about life.

 

• The Reds will finish 4th in the NL Central. About 9 games under 500.

Bold Baseball Predictions: Cleveland Indians

• Grady Sizemore will continue to be awesome and continue to inspire other teams to get excited to make him contract offers.

 

• Cliff Lee will win 15 games. Which is way above average. But because he won the Cy Young last year sports writers will pretend he was a one year fluke and write him off completely. This will destroy his confidence and he’ll never win 20 games again. But not because he isn’t capable.

 

• Kerry Wood will be a great closer…for the 32 appearances he has before he’s out for the season.

 

• Mark DeRosa will decide he’s tired of playing every position and needs a bigger challenge and leave the Indians in July for “retirement” so he can try out for the Cleveland Browns. DeRosa will easily make the Browns and catch 63 passes as their second WR in place of a then incarcerated Donte Stallworth.

 

• Fans of other teams all over America will refer to Asdrubal Cabrera as “Ass Dribble” and laugh to themselves because they’re really really clever.

 

• Jhonny Peralta will finally just cave and change his name to “Johnny” to stop publications everywhere from seeing “Jhonny” in print and correcting it automatically because who the fuck is named “Jhonny”?

 

• Ryan Garko will get some playing time and hit 14 home runs. He will stroke out 110 times in 234 at bats and have a .229 batting average.

 

• Carl Pavano, anxious to prove himself, will get off to a great start with the Indians, recapture the love of Alyssa Milano and then break both his legs in a jet ski accident during All Star week.

 

• The Indians will come in last in the AL Central. That’s right. Behind the Royals.

 

• Fausto Carmona will be 9-14 and generally look average at best.

Bold Baseball Predictions: Chicago Cubs

• Rich Harden will win 20 games and have over 200 strikeouts.

 

• Aramis Ramirez will continue to be eerily consistent and finish the season with 29 home runs 109 RBI and a .286 batting average.

 

• Carlos Zambrano will get into a fight with someone.

 

• The Cubs will lose in the NLCS.

 

• Kevin Gregg will have a shaky first few outings as closer and the Chicago media will have a field day about how much better Carlos Marmol would be as the closer.

 

• Aaron Heilman will blow a game against the Mets at Citi-Field and get a standing ovation as he walks off the mound.

 

• Derek Lee’s slow descent will continue.

 

• Geovany Soto will continue to be one of the best catchers in baseball which will in turn prompt a Page 2 column on ESPN about if this is the new golden age of MLB catchers. The conclusion of the article will leave the decision up to the reader.

 

• The Royals will trade at least one of their starting pitchers to the Cubs for nickels on the dollar at the trade deadline.

 

• Bill Murray will drunkenly slide into second base during a game but because he’s Bill Murray, Major League Baseball will pretend it was a staged joke. He’ll console himself by sleeping with 22 year old scenester girls he meets at Pitchfork’s Summer Festival of Pretentiousness.