So, how is my Houston preview looking...

Houston is 2 games out, on pace for 89 wins and I said 83 wins with a shot at 90 if all went right.  Not too bad eh?

But...

I said JR Towles would be good behind the plate, at least an improvement over the 72 OPS+ they got last year...er...he is at 52.
Michael Bourn in CF is at 52 also, which is worse than the backup last year that I called 'misc junk'.  Gulp.
I did say Chacon could be a good surprise and he is at 102 for ERA+ which is the best of all their starters outside of Wandy Rodriguez who is at 180 after 4 starts.
Berkman is the man though.  388-466-770 for a 219 OPS+, or better than Bonds pre-2001 and in eyeshot of 2003 Bonds.

Their offense is at 101 for OPS+, pitching at 95 for ERA+ vs 98 and 93 last year.  Their team is not playing like a 90 win club but they are winning like one.  500 is what they can do, and I still stand by the 83 win prediction.

Please. A little respect (for I am Costanza, Lord of the Idiots.)

The general gist of my White Sox preview was to make merciless sport of those optimistic souls who thought they might squeak out 85 wins or so:

The South Side of Chicago is the baddest part of town, and this year it promises to be the baddest part of the AL Central. If not the entire American League. If not the entire major leagues.

I did, however, get one thing right.

Let's face it - the White Sox bring out the stupid.

Here were my predictions in the team previews once again.  Please don't ask what I was smoking!  Right now, I can't pick the winner of a one-horse race.

Seattle Mariners:

Prediction - With the upgraded starting rotation, it should lessen the load on what was an overworked bullpen.  Richie Sexson can't be any worse than he was last year and Jose Lopez should bounce back from a trying season to give the team a better right side of the infield.  The Angels might be vulnerable should John Lackey and Kelvim Escobar miss a substantial amount of time.  A strong start to the season will be key in order to make hay.  92-70, 2nd place in the AL West. 

Reality - The rotation sucks with the lead suckage provided led by Washburn (2-2, 6.99) and Batista (3-6, 6.47).  Bedard has been good but has had injury problems, King Felix has been fine and Silva has been so-so.  An early season injury to J.J. Putz didn't help either.  Richie Sexson is just as bad as he was last year save for a slightly higher slugging percentage which isn't even at .420.  My prediction about Jose Lopez's performance is about the only thing I got right as he is batting just over .290.  I drank the Bill Bavasi Kool Aid on this one.

New York Mets:

Prediction - Thanks in large part to a Cy Young season from Johan Santana, a healthier Pedro Martinez and a refocused Jose Reyes, the Mets will win the East with a record of 96-66.

Reality - Santana's been fine but not awesome, Jose Reyes has been okay but not stellar and Pedro Martinez is still ailing with a sore hammy.  Right now, baseball's not a huge priority for Perdo as his father suffering a seizure recently, so who knows when he'll be back.

Summary - The Mets still have time to put it together but they won't come close to 96 wins.  The M's have a better shot at getting the first overall pick in next year's draft than winning the AL West. 

Lets see:

Pirates
Well, I thought they would go 67-95, and right now they are on pace to win 76, though they've been outscored by 20 runs... Not too bad here i guess. On an individual level, I said "LaRoche is a nice player to have around, but he can’t carry a team." Well, he's been dreadful, so go figure. I thought Andrew McCutchen would make it up at some point, but Nate McLouth's explosion (which I and everyone else missed) seems to preclude that. I liked Matt Capps and he's done well. "Both their hitting and pitching figure to be in the bottom third of the league." Well, they have the worst pitching in the NL and the fifth best hitting, so we'll see how that goes.

Dodgers
I thought the Dodgers would win 89 games and the wild card and they are on pace to win 88 games and are 1.5 games out of the wild card league, so I think I did alright on that one. I also spent a lot of time making fun of Juan Pierre, who responded by hitting .283/.355/.323, which I guess is not totally worthless, and certainly better than Andruw Jones, plus he's stolen 18 bases in 21 attempts. Speaking of Jones, I said that "He probably won’t hit .222 again as he did last year, but he probably won’t hit .300 again any time soon either....any combination of Jones playing well, and Pierre not playing at all will make the Dodgers instantly better than last year, which should allow them to improve upon their 10th best in the NL runs scored number from 2007." Well Jones has been abysmal... and the Dodgers are still 4th in the NL in scoring. Go figure. I also thought that, uh, Brad Penny would be a top 10 pitcher, that Derek Lowe was awesome, that Kuroda would scuffle and that Billingsley would be good. So thats one for four if you're scoring at home. I thought Kershaw would be up at some point, which seems likely. A mixed bag here.

I think the key, overall, is to just be as vague as possible. Worked for me!

I was among the 4% in the NL Central poll who voted for St. Louis, and I've been proud of that position so far.

"I'm a big TLR fan so I'm going to go with the team that has the best manager and player in baseball. A return to the NL is just what the doctor ordered for Clement. If Wainwright Piniero Reyes Looper and Clement can hold down the fort until Mulder and Carpenter come back, there's potential here because of the division's mediocrity. A lineup with the names Pujols Glaus Gonzalez Ankiel Duncan Rasmus has serious offensive potential."

I also like how many Snakes & Ladders are doing so far.

"Ladders : Toronto, Oakland, New York (NL), Los Angeles (NL)
Snakes : San Fransisco, Seattle, Baltimore, Colorado
Biggest ladder = Toronto +14
BJ Ryan : 24 saves"

Arencibia homered (his 8th) and walked tonight.  I guess my Arencibia comments deserve at least a partial retraction.  He's still got to work on his W/K, but evidently he can hit.

I'm still enjoying Mick's bleak Yankees preview, now looking quite secure in its prediction of no playoff berth with Kennedy and Hughes out.

Here we are near the end of May, and I'd say the two kids are looking broken down, tattered and tattooed.

But I expect Mick is still hoping the official prediction of 94 wins will come through.

And Zito has won his first game of the year tonight against eight losses. How many losses before the next win?

My Snakes and Ladders post:

snakes: Seattle, Colorado, Atlanta

ladders: Tampa Bay, Detroit, Mets, Cincinnati

Biggest Mover: Cincinnati

Ryan Saves: 34

Don't really remember what it is I saw in Cincy, but I'm not surprised about Seattle.    And BJ's on pace for 33 saves.  Not bad.

And Zito has won his first game of the year tonight against eight losses. How many losses before the next win?

It all depends. Zito has not been very good, but his run support (or lack of same) has been unprecedented. In his first 9 starts, the Giants scored a total of 11 runs. That's hard to even believe. In six of those games, they scored one run or less. They scored more runs for him tonight than they had scored for him all month. His May ERA is 3.22, he's getting his act together.

Angels of Anaheim - 86-76, first place. Learned my lesson after putting them down for like 117 losses last year or whatever it was, and overcompensated by not really doing a full preview, thus placing a low ceiling on the number of horrible calls I could make. Along with every projection system out there, I underestimated Ervin Santana. Otherwise, not too bad, and I even pegged Oakland as the most dangerous contender in the AL West (score!) There's no mention of the sensation that is Jose Arredondo, and there's an implicit mention that Vladi Guerrero is a sure shot > .756 OPS (oops). I think he'll probably turn it around though.

Cubs - 89-73, first place. Looks a bit conservative at the moment

The call on the Cubs' offense looks pretty good so far. Their division, not so much.

The NL Central is awful.

The NL Central is 11 games over .500. Rotation, not so much:

The odd thing about the Cubs' rotation is that it really doesn't have a defined ace. OK, Big Z is the face of the staff, and the opening day starter. But his ratios aren't that great. Zambrano's biggest ace quality is his ability to go deep into games despite running up high pitch counts. He's a horse. On the other hand, he gives up a ton of walks for a supposed ace and succeeds primarily by beating the league BABIP benchmarks year in and year out - he has a .277 career BABIP despite not being a groundball or popup machine, which is incredibly rare. I mean, I know it's gotten to the point where it's happened enough that you can call it a trend and predict that it'll continue with a reasonable amount of confidence, but it's not something I'd enjoy betting on. Rich Hill and Ted Lilly, with their superior strikeout rates and natural lefty intangibles, are just as reliable as streak stoppers in my eyes.

Carlos Zambrano: 10 starts, 66 innings, 46 K, 19 BB, 4 HR, 2.45 ERA
Rich Hill: 5 starts, 19.2 innings, 15 K, 18 BB, 2 HR, 4.12 ERA, banished to Iowa
Ted Lilly: 10 starts, 56 innings, 56 K, 19 BB, 7 HR, 5.14 ERA

Z: 1. Me: 0. Lilly's going to come around, as his problems are mostly due to a rotten 65% strand rate (as opposed to a decline in defense-independent stats or hit luck or homer luck, all of which are in line with his career norms). Lilly's career LOB% is 72.3, solidly above average. He'll be fine. Promise. As for Hill, he's in AAA trying to free himself from the unyielding claws of the walk lobster, which is much less of a sure thing. I still like Lilly and Hill, but in a Game 7 situation with all three of them completely rested, starting Z is a no-brainer no matter how lefthanded the opponent is. Which I wouldn't have said in March.

Bullpen:

With Wuertz, Howry, Marmol and Wood, this pen is so deep that the Cubs don't figure to pitch too many guys on back-to-back days anyway.

Turns out we have an ace here after all. Carlos Marmol has an 0.66 WHIP, 41 strikeouts and 7 walks in 26 innings. If you haven't seen this guy pitch, you have no idea. Marmol's slider is one of the craziest pitches I've ever seen. If it's not the best slider in baseball, it's certainly at least the most ridiculous from a visual perspective. Lefties are hitting a positively Ruthian .184/.262/.368 off Marmol, while righties are a slightly less Ruthian .086/.159/.103 with 43.1% K. There's a very good reason why lefties' OPS is more than 2.4 times righties': they don't automatically buckle right away when Marmol lets the ball go. This guy may out-Huston Huston in the years to come. Marmol is sitting on a 1.84 WPA at this point, second to Brad Lidge among all NL relievers, including closers. Kerry Wood is doing a really solid job as the closer too. Mike Wuertz has been competent but lucky, while Bobby Howry has been unlucky but competent. Without Marmol, though, these guys would be in a much tougher spot. Didn't see that coming.

Err.... I mean... when you cherry pick from your own articles it is important to always make yourself look as bad as possible by quoting the right parts.

The pen that remains is kind of like the rotation. Who's the closer? Who knows? Who cares? This is a team that could easily pull off the bullpen-by-committee approach this year if it wanted to.

Much worse.

Um, Magpie, I am this year's Constanza. But we'll get to that later.

First: the Milwaukee Brewers. I predicted a record of 85-77 and another year looking up at the Cubs. The Brewers are currently 22-26 and looking up at the Cubs...along with the Cardinals, Astros and Pirates. I used to have a habit a few years ago of telling people not to underrate the Astros and then they'd go out and prove me right. I never would have thought this year's team would achieve anything (and I still don't).

My final statement of the preview doesn't look wildly inaccurate, as I wrote: The keys to season could rest in Ben Sheets’s health and how well Gallardo and Parra do in their first full year in the majors. Sheets is healthy and doing very well, but Gallardo was injured in April and is out for the season and Parra has only been league average. Those pitchers aer why both Milwaukee still has hope, but why their chances of winning the AL Central don't seem particularly high. Of Eric Gagne, I wrote: I like this move, which I also stand by, as I didn't know Ned Yost would manage him like a drunken sailor. In fact, if my preview was missing anything, it was that I didn't talk about Ned Yost and the detrminetal effect of his managing abilities.

People I (so far) got wrong include:

Carlos Villaneuva:  I wrote: I think.... he’ll compare favourably to the fourth and fifth starters on many teams. Reality: Has a 6.43 ERA (mostly because he's been very hittable) and looks likely to be soon removed from the rotation.

Corey Hart: I wrote: If Hart’s production drops, it won’t be by too much . Reality: Has a 108 OPS+. Had a 126 OPS+ in 2007.

Bill Hall: I wrote: ZIPS pegs Hall for a .270/.335/.475 line, which sounds a bit pessimistic. Reality: Hall is currently hitting .220/.293/.422.

Rickie Weeks: I wrote: ZIPS predicts .254/.363/.422 line, but I think that’s a bit pessimistic and I’m going with .273/.378/.452. Reality: Weeks is hitting .210/.341/.376.

And this was my better preview? Wow. I'm so depressed I'll take a break and visit the other one in an hour or so.

Lilly's going to come around, as his problems are mostly due to a rotten 65% strand rate (as opposed to a decline in defense-independent stats or hit luck or homer luck, all of which are in line with his career norms). Lilly's career LOB% is 72.3, solidly above average. He'll be fine.

Lilly has come around - it's just that those 4 initial starts were really horrible.  In the last month, he's pitched as well, or better, as he did last year and is one of the better pitchers in the league.

His numbers for the last month (5 starts):

• 31.1 innings
• 38 K : 8 BB
• 0.99 WHIP
  
• 3.45 ERA
• only 3 HR

The 5.14 ERA still doesn't look good, but it's a huge accomplishment to get it that low when it was 9.16 after 4 starts.

So, my other preview was for the San Diego Padres.

My prediction: 88-74, second place to Arizona. That translates to a .543 winning percentage.

Current record: 18-32, last place to everybody (seriously, they're last in the majors). They have a .360 winning percentage. The Padres would have to go 70-42 over the rest of the season to make my prediction accurate, which translates to a .625 winning percentage. I doubt I'm going to be right with that one.

The question isn't where I went wrong, because the easier question to answer would be where I went right. The question is was the decline of the Padres predictable? I'm going to wait to answer that until the year's end, as I'm convinced the team will be significantly better over the second half of the season (it'd be hard not to be). As soon as they're sure he won't qualify for super-2 status Chase Headley should join the team and, if you remember, a major theme of my article was about the job Towers did last year improving the team on the fly. He might not do as well this year, but he's one of the better GMs are acquiring useful, or at least potentially useful, parts on the cheap.

I'd give you material to mock, but you can basically mock the entire preview. The Padres have two hitters with an OPS+ over 100 in Adrain Gonzalez and Brian Giles. The bullpen's been awful aside from Heath Bell, Cla Meredith and Wil Ledezma. Chris Young had an ERA in the mid 4's before Albert Pujols put him on the DL and the fifth starter spot was a mess. Things have gotten so bad they've already had to call up Josh Banks.

How about this? Hasn't turned out too good so far, but you got to admire the spirit!

...almost as disturbing is that anyone anywhere would think of describing A.J. Pierzynski as an "offensive stalwart." In what parallel universe might that be true? Lord in heaven, just how low are we setting the bar here?