AL West

AL West:

Houston Astros

Oakland Athletics

Texas Rangers

LA Angels

Seattle Mariners

Houston seems to be one of the best teams in all of baseball right now. The Astros jumped four spots from last week’s power rankings going from #5 to #1.  Dallas Keuchel is off to a hot start with a record of 3-0 and .096 ERA. Houston wins the AL West. 

AL Central

AL Central:

Detroit Tigers

Cleveland Indians

Chicago White Sox

Minnesota Twins

Kansas City Royals

The Indians are having quite the World Series hangover. Their off to a 10-8 start and are struggling to find their way. They end up winning the division by at least five games. 

AL East

AL East:

Baltimore Orioles

Boston Red Sox

New York Yankees

 Tampa Bay Rays

Toronto Blue Jays

The Orioles are off to a hot start and don’t seem to be looking back any time soon. My prediction is that the Yankees will make it a tight race but the Orioles will win. 

Way too early

It’s time for my extremely way too early predictions on who I think will win each division and so forth. In this story, we will look at each division and I will give my opinions with who I think will win the it all. I will be working from East to West. These are the current standings. I will be posting them in separate posts for each division.

Bartolo "Big SEXY" Colon

They call him Big Sexy. If you saw him you would probably question as to why he was given such a nickname. To an average eye, he’s a middle-aged man with the stomach size of one. He stands at 5-foot-11, 285-pounds.

Bartolo Colon has become a fan favorite over the last couple years. He is currently the oldest player in the Major Leagues and is on the Atlanta Braves roster. To give you an idea of how old he is without saying it, he started his career with the Cleveland Indians back in 1997. In 2002 played for the Montreal Expos, the only active player from the Expos. The Expos haven’t been in Montreal since 2004 when they moved to Washington D.C.

He was given the nickname by his teammates and several media members. He plans to get the nickname trademarked and wants to sell merchandise with the name on it.

Big Sexy has had quite a good career. He was a win-loss record of 233-142, a 3.93 ERA, and 2,365 strikeouts. He became a huge fan favorite during his three-year stint with the New York Mets. His giant swing and misses became something one could watch for hours and laugh every time. On May 7, 2016, he hit his first homerun of his career. He holds one stat that nobody else has and that is the oldest player ever to hit his first homerun.

Many people look at him and think “well if he can play professional baseball, then I could play professional baseball.” Although he is large around the waste, he is fantastic shape. Bartolo works hard in the offseason in his home country of the DR. Someone at his age would more than likely be sitting at home and having a sweet tea while enjoying the life of being retired.

Quite frankly I don’t see Big Sexy retiring anytime soon. He has the work ethic and want to keep playing. As long as someone will give him a deal, he’ll keep playing. 

Pitchers Who Rake

The San Francisco Giants opened their season with a 6-5 loss to the Arizona Diamondbacks. There is a specific reason as to why this is a big deal. And no, it probably isn’t the reason as to why you would think it would be.

The Giants went with their ace, Madison Bumgarner, better known around the baseball community as Madbum. Madbum pitched a pretty good game going. He struck out 11 and gave up three runs while pitching seven innings. Normally that would be a pretty good outing for an everyday pitcher. Madbum on the other hand is not an everyday pitcher. While having a pretty good day on the bump, he had an even better day at the plate. He went 2-2 at the plate and smacked two home runs while he was at it.

810 feet… think about that. Madison Bumgarner is a pitcher and he hit two home runs a total of 810 feet. I know it’s only one game but the pitcher is leading the MLB home runs.

Many are calling for the pitcher to be in the home run derby and rightfully so. There is an un-kept stat that people like to keep, Pitchers who rake. In the National League the starting pitcher (and the bullpen pitchers) take an at bat when it’s their turn. That being said, NL pitchers have a better AB than AL pitchers.

Madbum has had a history of having some big homeruns. The pitcher is not only a fear for batters but a fear for opposing pitchers. His swing is like a gift sent from heaven. For pitchers, at least.

Madbum is just a beast no matter how you look at. You may not like him (I don’t like him because he single handily beat my Royals in the 2014 WS) but you can’t help respect the crap out of him. He does everything the right way. He works hard and day in and day out. My hat sir, is tipped to you. 

Uuugggghhhhh

The MLB has come out with a new rule and I personally hate it with a raging passion. The rule states that if the pitcher plans to intentionally walk a batter, the pitcher must notify the home plate umpire of said decision. After the umpire is aware of the decision, he must send the batter to first base without a single pitch being thrown.

Here is the reason I hate the rule so much. Over the years, we have figured out that no pitcher can just throw a lat te da pitch to home plate. His instincts always seem to take over and they try to throw the ball much harder than it needs to be. There have been wild pitches that have left the players on base the chance to advance because the pitcher couldn’t control himself to do one simple thing.

At the same time, there have been pitchers that couldn’t even get the ball outside of the plate. They throw in a little lob and its right over the middle of the plate. This couldn’t be any better for the batter as he sees the slowest pitch of the game coming right down his sweet spot.

All in all, I think the rule is stupid and people are just trying to make the game faster. Baseball doesn’t need to be faster. It’s a game of skill and smarts. Yes, people don’t realize how athletic you have to be to play baseball, but they also don’t realize that you have to be a quick thinker. Nothing is given on an intentional walk so why are we just trying to hand out bases like Christmas gifts? Reverse the rule and make players earn the base.