Month: March 2013

Before I get to the predictions, a few updates and reminders about this site:

• For long-form blogging from Levi, look to I’ve Been Reading Lately, where he expounds about the books he reads.
• Levi also tweets at @levistahl on occasion — and sometimes he even mentions baseball.
• I tweet at @trainman74, more frequently than Levi does — and, again, sometimes I even mention baseball. I’m still unemployed from last year, but unlike last year, I won’t be in Ireland for Opening Day, so I do plan to live-tweet while I watch the games on TV via the MLB Extra Innings free preview. Opening Day being April 1 this year, I might even make up stuff. For example, I might mention that the Dodgers have a $250 million payroll. Ha ha! That’s clearly a ridiculous number.
• As for baseball road trips, which — you may recall from way back when — are really the entire raison d’etre of this site: no plans. My ongoing unemployment makes a road trip pretty much a non-starter this season for financial reasons, and as for the future, Levi and I haven’t discussed anything. For this season, I’m mainly looking forward to the Rays’ August visit to Dodger Stadium (as well as their Angel Stadium visit in September), which I hope I’ll have enough money to attend!
• Now that I visited New Yankee Stadium last June, there are 9 current MLB stadiums that I have not been to. I haven’t been keeping up with the “Jim’s MLB Games” link in the sidebar at left, but I have scanned all my baseball ticket stubs — which includes all but the first two MLB games I attended (in 1983 and 1987), as well as all the minor-league games from 1989 on.

On to the predictions. I want to note for the record that Sports Illustrated picked the Nationals to win the NL pennant, and the Rays to win in the AL. I also want to note that I think the cold equation that creates the baseballrelated.com predictions has the Yankees too high.

And…poor Astros. At least neither we nor Sports Illustrated foresee you outdoing the 1962 Mets (or the 1935 Boston Braves).

Still alive. As usual, to remind you of what happened last year, here are our mathematics-based predictions and Sports Illustrated’s expertise-based predictions compared to the actual results of the 2012 MLB season. Very obvious that the Orioles and the Nationals beat expectations (and the Red Sox did…not). If it’s possible to be proud of my ability to do addition and division on a calculator, then I’m most proud of our correct prediction about the Marlins’ order of finish, compared to Sports Illustrated having bought the hype that, hard as it is to believe now, actually existed around the Marlins at this time last year. 2013 predictions to come later this week, after SI arrives in my mailbox.