Baseball 2005...Let's Look Back To April

Made our fearless, cough, lucky, predictions April 3, so let's see how we did:

And While We're On The Subject Of Baseball...

"...Predictions for the home teams 2005? For the Yankees it's falling off a log; bought and paid for borderline pitchers, old pitchers, but no bold pitchers. Taking an ailing, unproven staff into the season is rather dumb, especially when most of these guys take one look at the big ballpark in the Bronx, come down with a case of triple-decker-fever, and suddenly need to go on the disabled list with nebulous aches and pains. Still and all, that lineup is awesome, and Rivera is Rivera so figure a battle with the hated Sawx right down the wire. 95-66 sounds good."

"On to the Mets. Pedro Martinez should thrive in the National League, but he's been a half-season pitcher for so long it's a tough call. Less stress as he gets to face the obligatory National League slick fielding infielder who can't hit his bodyweight, the strong-armed, no-hit catcher, and of course the pitcher. After Pedro it's tweedledum and tweedledee in no particular order. Piazza's getting older by the nanosecond, the infield is too young to go through a pennant race, and the outfield is limpy, gimpy, and lazy. A .500 team if all goes well. 81-81 and that's stretching it just because it's Willie Randolph's first year as manager and everyone loves Willie."

UPDATE: Today, September 22:

The Yankees are about to go 89-63, and with 10 games remaining should win 95 games. The pitching fell apart...how surprising...but the unheralded newcomers pitched far better than anyone could have expected. Can't change the predictions now, but they'll go at least 6-4 so we weren't too far off. Hell, they better go 8-2. PS: Their 7-6 win means they swept a 4-game series from Baltimore, and taking 4 from ANY team (unless you're the Sawx facing Torre's tomorrow's-another-day Yanks of 2004) is a difficult thing to do, so I sweated the last few outs.

The Mets just lost, and that takes them to 75-77. Pedro was okay, never got much run support but didn't have a total breakdown. No one else stood up, so they are what they are...a .500 team that isn't moving up anytime soon unless they spend BIG bucks during the off season.10 games remain for them as well, and 6 and 4 the rest of the way to break even for the year? Whew, dunno. Possible. Go Willie.