With Major League Baseball in full swing, the Clarion editors decided to predict the future and find out who we’ll see come October.<\/p>\n
Joseph Stueve, assistant editor<\/strong><\/p>\n NL East – New York Mets <\/strong>The addition of Francisco Rodriguez and J.J. Putz helped stabilize a horrific Mets bullpen.<\/p>\n NL Central – St. Louis Cardinals<\/strong> I’m not sold on the health of the Chicago Cubs, so I’m going with the rock-solid Cardinals.<\/p>\n NL West – Los Angeles Dodgers<\/strong> The 50-game suspension of Manny Ramirez shouldn’t knock the Dodgers out of contention in a weak NL West.<\/p>\n NL Wild Card – Philadelphia Phillies <\/strong>The World Champion Phillies have too much offense to be held out of the playoffs.<\/p>\n AL East – Boston Red Sox <\/strong>If John Smoltz returns to original form, the Sox could stomp through the American League with great pitching depth.<\/p>\n AL Central – Minnesota Twins <\/strong>The Twinkies prove once again that money doesn’t purchase wins.<\/p>\n AL West – Oakland Athletics <\/strong>The A’s fight their way through a surprisingly difficult AL West thanks to another newly found core.<\/p>\n AL Wild Card – New York Yankees <\/strong>The Yankees squeak into October on another strong stretch run by C.C. Sabathia.<\/p>\n World Series – Mets over Twins<\/strong> The trio of David Wright, Jose Reyes and Carlos Beltran lead the Mets over a scrappy Minnesota team. Santana earns the World Series MVP over his former squad.<\/strong><\/p>\n Rusty Pate, editor<\/strong><\/p>\n AL East – Toronto Blue Jays<\/strong> This team can score a ton of runs and has one of the top pitchers in the league in Roy Halladay.<\/p>\n AL Central – Chicago White Sox<\/strong> Someone has to win this division.<\/p>\n AL West – Los Angeles Angels<\/strong> I think the Angels will get their starting pitching healthy before it’s too late.<\/p>\n AL Wildcard – Boston Red Sox<\/strong> The Sox can no longer rely on the long ball like they did in the Manny and Big Papi days, but they will get back to the postseason.<\/p>\n NL East – New York Mets<\/strong> I like the Marlins, and the Phillies should never be counted out, but New York has better pitching.<\/p>\n NL Central – Chicago Cubs<\/strong> The Cubs have too much offensive talent to not win this division.<\/p>\n NL West – Los Angeles Dodgers<\/strong> This team is far and away the best in the west – even without Manny.<\/p>\n NL Wildcard – Philadelphia Phillies<\/strong> The potent Phillies lineup will play in October once again.<\/p>\n World Series – Cubs over Yankees <\/strong>I know this prediction is wrong, because the Cubs will never win a title. Baseball needs a marquee series this year. The Cubs winning a title could bring all the fans lost because of steroids back into the fold.<\/strong><\/p>\n Kamari Stevens, news editor<\/strong><\/p>\n NL East – New York Mets<\/strong> The Metropolitans will finally put it together and make it to the playoffs.<\/p>\n NL Central – St. Louis Cardinals<\/strong> Short of MLB finding out Albert Pujols is a machine, the Cards have the hitting prowess and the defense to win the NL Central.<\/p>\n NL West – Los Angeles Dodgers<\/strong> In spite of the current Manny saga, the Dodgers should be able to run circles around the NL West, Manny or no Manny.<\/p>\n NL Wild card – Chicago Cubs<\/strong> The Cubs can sneak into the playoffs without all the hoopla of curses and can hopefully see there way into the World Series.<\/p>\n AL East – New York Yankees<\/strong> Once C.C. Sabathia gets back on track, so will the Yanks pitching staff. With Alex Rodriguez returning to the lineup, Mark Texeira will be able to let loose.<\/p>\n AL Central – Kansas City Royals<\/strong> After taking the model the Tampa Bay Rays used last year-and sure fire Cy Young candidate Zach Greinke-the Royals have what it takes to win the AL Central crown.<\/p>\n AL West – Los Angeles Angels<\/strong> After the tragic death of pitcher Nick Adenhart, I expect the Angels to continue to hold court as the best team in the weak AL West.<\/p>\n AL Wild card – Boston Red Sox<\/strong> What would the playoffs be without a BoSox sighting?<\/p>\n World Series – Cubs over Yankees<\/strong> I’m making this pick only because I want Steve Bartman to be able to come out in public again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" With Major League Baseball in full swing, the Clarion editors decided to predict the future and find out who we’ll see come October.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[55,1272,245,244,209],"class_list":["post-1777","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tartan-news","tag-baseball","tag-joseph-stueve","tag-league","tag-major","tag-predictions"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5s3vR-sF","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1777","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1777"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1777\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1923,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1777\/revisions\/1923"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}