O’Keefe’s Baseball Second Half Preview (woo hoo!)

Second Half Preview

The first half of the season had a lot of great, heartwarming stories in it.  I’m looking at you Rays, Marlins and Josh Hamilton.  Sadly, I think we will be hearing less and less of those stories, at least for the rest of this season.  It’s odd to say it but the landscape has changed significantly (at least in the NL) as we approach the Trade Deadline; normally it is a much hyped artificial and arbitrary deadline where the deals that have a real impact happen after it has passed.

AL East

The most surprising team of the first half is without a doubt the Tampa Bay Devil Rays (uhh excuse me, sorry Joe Maddon, Tampa Bay Rays).  The All-Star Break could not have come at a better time for them after tearing it up for two months, they are in the midst of a 7-game slide and need to right the ship quick or they could find themselves in some trouble.  I’m really hoping they manage to get things going and make it interesting in the East.  It would be great to see them finish in front of the Yankees just to see all the segments about the difference in payroll between the two clubs.  Note: A-Rod and Jeter combined make only slightly less than the whole Tampa Bay Rays team.  I am obviously a Red Sox fan and so it would be more than a little disingenuous to pretend otherwise, I do think that they will win the division.  That is assuming that David Ortiz comes back healthy and hits the ball.  They have played pretty mediocre losing way too many 1-run games and will need to improve if they want to make a serious run at the World Series.

Division Winner: Boston Red Sox
Wild Card: Tampa Bay Rays

AL Central

I hope the Minnesota Twins can figure out a way to hang on.  They have shown some serious heart in the past few weeks and if they could manage to pick up Adrian Beltre their chances would significantly improve.  The other really important question mark is the health of Francisco Liriano.  He has put up 20 straight scoreless innings during his rehab assignment and if that means that he is back to form.  Chicago White Sox watch out!  To be fair, the White Sox are in the lead for a reason.  They have been tearing the cover off the ball and their pitching has matched their offense in quality.  When on they have been nearly unstoppable, but I don’t think that they can keep this pace up.  Detroit has been remarkably bad this season.  When you look at the moves they made in the off-season there were many experts and fans alike who were convinced that the Tigers were going to be so unstoppable on offense that it didn’t matter if their pitching wasn’t solid.  Well like people expected their pitching hasn’t been very good, except their hitting has been almost as bad.

Division Winner: Minnesota Twins

AL West

This has been pretty disappointing all around.  The race is not close at all, the Angels are loaded and the only surprise has been just how bad the Seattle Mariners have been and just how good (relatively) the Oakland A’s have been.  K-Rod is going to set the record for most saves in a year and they are pretty well set for the rest of the year.  I think that the most interesting thing has been just how well Joe Saunders has pitched for them thus far.  While this always seems to be the case, I just can not get over the number of one run games that the Angels win every year.

Division Winner: Los Angeles Angels

NL East

I really don’t know what to say about this division.  It just a mess.  The back end of the Phillies pitching staff is in shambles, who knows what the Mets are doing (they are 9-1 in their last 10) and the Florida Marlins are hanging on by a string to all the excitement that surrounded their team a little earlier in the season.  I think that the Phillies will hang on to win this division.  The Mets are just too streaky and I don’t trust their pitching at all and they need to find someone who can replace Ryan Church for the foreseeable future, ask Eric Lindros about the effects of concussions and coming back too early.  I can’t see the Marlins hanging on long enough to sneak into the playoffs, but the Phillies are a team that could be very dangerous if they could get their pitching in order either by someone getting called up or a deadline deal.

Division Winner: Philadelphia Phillies

NL Central

By far the most exciting division race and that is obviously a direct result of the flurry of deals that were made last week.  But before I discuss those it is kind of remarkable how the St. Louis Cardinals have flown under the radar.  They are injury plagued, with far too many players on the DL and they managed to survive Albert Pujols being out for a couple weeks and at the All-Star break they are sitting I would imagine, rather uncomfortably in second place.  While the progress of Adam Wainwright and Chris Carpenter is something for Cardinal fans to cling to, I think that this just may not be their year.  That division just brought in two of the best pitchers in MLB and they went to two already very dangerous teams.  I wrote about this trade last week (http://thesportsspectator.com/?p=90), but I just can’t contain the excitement I have for the ten games between the Cubs and Brewers.  These were already going to be exciting games and now you have to figure in that you are most likely going to see Sabathia and Harden match up against each other a couple times. I can not wait! Ultimately, I think that Harden shows flashes of brilliance in the second half, including in a couple of those huge starts against the Brewers and Cardinals, and the Cubs pull barely hang on for the division crown.  There is no doubt in my mind that Sabathia is going to be a force for Milwaukee, but they have other problems that they have not addressed as of yet.

Division Winner: Chicago Cubs
Wild Card: Milwaukee Brewers

NL West

I’m hoping the Dodgers can pull something together here.  They have hung around even without Rafael Furcal for the past month and a half or so and will have to do without him for the rest of the season, at least in terms of solid production.  I would imagine that their GM is watching very intently on what teams are looking for at shortstop because ultimately Nomar Garciaparra and Angel Berroa are just not going to cut it.  Their pitching is a serious question mark for the rest of the season, while they are getting Brad Penny back soon, they just lost Takashi Saito to elbow tightness, which is more than a little scary.  The Arizona Diamondbacks on the other hand just can’t seem to string a couple wins together and I think that will haunt them in the end.

Division Winner: Los Angeles Dodgers

Tagged as: MLB, O'Keefe