A NEW SEASON IS UPON US! And I will bow my head and give thanks for finally having baseball to whine about. I mean, as soon as college basketball is over, all we’d have left would be hockey and the NBA, and their 3 month long playoff processes. No, I prefer my over saturated, 6-games-in-7-days MLB, the freshly cut grass that you start to smell around the same time that baseball starts, the shock you feel the first time you go outside completely overdressed for the temperature and yell out “Holy shit! It’s not cold!” You can’t attach these random, irrational emotions to hockey. Or the NBA.

With the onset of a new season, we also have a horde of new storylines to follow. We will take a look at them…NOW

EAST COAST BIAS: Every year, somebody prominent picks someone from the AL or NL East to win it all, and almost every year (especially lately), they’ve been completely wrong. Even if they get the division right, it ends up being the Marlins winning, somebody that absolutely no one expects. With the strength that the White Sox showed last year, and the improvements they made in the off-season, I don’t think many people are going to make that mistake again this year.

STEVE PHILLIPS WILL PROVE, WITHOUT A SHADOW OF A DOUBT, THAT HE NEVER BELONGED AS A GM: He was on Baseball Tonight earlier, raving about how lucky the White Sox were that everything went right for them, and that the Indians were going to come close to overtaking them. I immediately named the A’s my Wild Card winner, and the White Sox as the runaway AL Central winner. The man has the baseball acumen of Bill Walton and the television presence of Eric Dickerson.

EIGHT TEAMS FOR FOUR SPOTS: The American League is going to be WIDE open this year. There are, by my count, 7 teams with a legitimate shot at competing for a playoff spot, and there’s ALWAYS one team that nobody ever picks who surprises (hence, the “eight teams.”). There are the Red Sox, Yankees, Blue Jays, Indians, White Sox, A’s and Angels, all trying to squeeze into the playoffs. The interesting thing is, six of the seven of the legit contenders have gaping holes. The Jays have never played together, the Indians are young, the Red Sox lost offense, the A’s and Angels both seem to be lighter hitting than a world champion should, and the Yankees, on top of blowing, have the most fragile pitching staff in the league. The only team that doesn’t have any obvious, non-contrived holes is the White Sox. They have the pitching, they have the hitting, and they have the management to pull it all off again.

As an aside, there’s nothing I hate more than “If they stay healthy…” Seriously, do you qualify everything like that? When you’re making predictions, everyone knows you’re working off of the information you have in front of you. Nobody’s going to come up to you at the end of the season and curse you out for not realizing that Johnny Damon and Alex Rodriguez would have catastrophic knee injuries…doing the same thing…while Randy Johnson would suffer a career ending elbow injury flipping off his baby momma. “Howcome you didn’t know this would happen??!?!??!???!? GOTCHA! YOU’RE A BAD ANALYST!” Jesus, I hate Steve Phillips.

THE WIDENING TALENT GAP?: It’s pretty much commonly accepted that 5 of the top 6 teams in the league are from the American League. That means one of the six best teams in the league won’t make the playoffs. But is the supposed “talent gap” actually widening? Sure, the top of the NL is a little crusty, but then you look at teams like Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, San Diego, even Atlanta and Washington are stocked with kids. In two or three years, we’ll be on the cusp of a decade of National League dominance.

WHERE HAVE YOU GONE, JIMMY ROLLINS?: I don’t care if it’s over the course of two seasons or not, I want Jimmy Rollins to break DiMaggio’s record.

NEW FACES, NEW PLACES: Frank Thomas in Oakland, Carlos Delgado and Billy Wagner in Queens, NOMAAAH in LA, Everyone’s Favorite Aruban in St. Louis, the handful of new impact players in Toronto (I think Overbay is going to end up being their best pickup), Jim Thome with the White Sox, Alfonso Soriano roaming Left in DC, Straight Guy Damon in the Bronx (Perfect fit, man. I can’t wait until he decides to publish his next tell-all book, detailing how he turned his second cumare into his third wife, and how A Rod likes to fly in Thai rentboys to crap on his chest during road trips), and Coco Crisp and Josh Beckett in Boston. Lots of names moving around this winter, and a lot of them are going to have a major impact on their team’s success.

On the subject of Coco Crisp, I really can’t wait until my “Toucan Sam” Sox jersey gets here.

NOW, ONTO THE PREDICTIONS!

NL East: Mets
NL Central: Cardinals
NL West: It doesn’t really matter.
NL Wild Card: Braves

Cardinals over Braves
Mets over whoever wins the West

Mets over Cardinals

AL East: Red Sox
AL Central: White Sox
AL West: Angels
AL Wild Card: A’s

Red Sox over A’s
White Sox over Angels

White Sox over Red Sox

IN THE WORLD SERIES:
White Sox over Mets

And there you have it. The upcoming season in a nutshell. I don’t think I’m forgetting anything, right? OH WAIT!

OH MY GOD, LOOK AT HIS FOREHEAD: Barry Bonds is a dick. Bud Seilg is everything you would expect out of an executive with the same name as that kid on the Cosby Show. Rafael Palmeiro is slime (Happy Anniversary, douchebag!). And this steroid mess is a complete and total disaster for the sport. A good commissioner would have dealt with this ten years ago. A mediocre commissioner would have realized that an investigation into steroid use in the sport ten years ago would be either completely meaningless or completely devastating, and would have just apologized for screwing up and told the public “We’re going to be on the cutting edge of steroid and HGH testing from this point forward. I won’t allow these drugs or these fools to taint this game any further.” A terrible commissioner just opened the very same meaningless investigation. And if the scapegoat that they pick (because don’t kid yourself, they’re going to use this investigation to scapegoat someone) is anyone short of Barry Bonds himself, I’m going to be furious. If they try and pin it on Palmiero, I’ll be furious. If they pin it on Canseco, I’ll be slightly less furious (only because he’s one legitimate “name” who might be more responsible than others—he was essentially the big dealer). They either need to bring everyone down, bring down the Sultan of Syringe, or bring no one down. Any half-assing it in this investigation will be more damaging to the sport than no investigation at all. And while I’m on a tear…

FOAMING LUNATICS: I particularly hate how the steroid scandal has turned otherwise sane, rational commentators into two-bit Skip Bayless hacks. I’m looking forward to this crap just going away, and everything getting back to normal. A world where the only Skip Bayless is Skip Bayless, and I can go back to pretending he doesn’t exist.