2012 Baseball Preview: The East Coast Monopoly on Baseball

Here’s part 1 in a series of post getting you ready for the 2012 baseball season, culminating in my eagerly anticipated predictions about who will win the World Series. My friend asked me the other day why it’s called the World Series if the entire world doesn’t play in it. I didn't know, so I said it’s because the Mayans used to play baseball against the Chinese during the Shang dynasty during the eight day of Summer, a tradition that lasted over 100 years. MLB honors this tradition by calling it the World Series. Alright I didn’t tell him that, I just stood in silence and looked stupid, which isn’t much different than how I act when I come in contact with a college girl.

Luckily for you, my baseball knowledge is much more sophisticated than my history knowledge, which is odd seeing as though I just took two college world history courses. Regardless, after going through numerous baseball previews, encyclopedias, magazines, dictionaries, and thesaurus’, along with watching and rewatching Nolan Ryan’s fastball pitching instructional video with Randy Johnson, I realized something: the Eastern divisions are packed.

There are ten teams in eastern divisions. The Orioles are bad. The Mets are average. Besides that, every other east coast team is going to at least scratch the surface of contention come August. Apart from the Angels, the best teams in baseball are located on the East. If the Astros were in any of the eastern divisions, I’m pretty sure they would win 3 games the entire year, maybe 4 to account for a lucky bounce here or there.  

5 teams in the 2 eastern divisions last season won at least 89 games, which is the same number of teams that won that many games in the 4 other divisions combined. The AL East was the only division to have three 90+ win teams, the Phillies were the only team to win over 100 games. The Rays and Red Sox were the only teams battling for the AL wild card, and if the Braves would have easily captured the NL wild card if not for an epic September collapse.

This season, the teams got even better. Here’s the brief low down of the offseason: In the AL The Yankees acquired a pitcher with Cy Young potential in Michael Pineda, the Rays have one of the best rotations in baseball now that they have super prospect Matt Moore for the whole season, and the Red Sox were great last season without getting anything from perennial All-Star Carl Crawford. In the NL, the Phillies still have a dominating starting rotation and should benefit from having Hunter Pence the whole year, the Braves should see improvements from young hitters such as Jason Heyward and Freddie Freeman, the Marlins added star Jose Reyes and other valuable assets to add to their promising young nucleus, and the Nationals acquired Gio Gonzalez and have super duper pitching prospect Stephen Strasburg for the whole year. If any of my past English teachers just read that paragraph, I sincerely hope you forgive me for my use of the run on sentence. I’m embarrassed. In fairness, I’d rather read this paragraph one hundred times than read about the guilt of Hester Prynne in mid 19^th century Boston.

The Phillies, Yankees, Rays and Red Sox were already the best teams in the regular season last year. This year, the teams are so good it should be illegal. The Red Sox and Yankees offenses are going to hit baseballs all the way to Uranus. I’m not laughing. Nope not doing it. The Phillies and Rays pitchers have better pitches than the ShamWow guy on steroids. I’m not exactly sure how much the steroids would help him, but I’m sticking with it. Now, the Nationals, Marlins, Braves and even the Blue Jays should all finish with a winning record and then some. The Central divisions should both be competitive but the teams are considerably less talented then Eastern division teams.  The West has great pitching, but the offenses across are all suspect with the exception of the Rockies, Diamondbacks and Angels. In fact, the Giants, Padres, and Mariners could score negative runs for the first time in history.

That said, the Cardinals won the World Series last year. The Giants the year before. Neither of those teams are in the east. But the teams that win the World Series aren’t always the best team. It’s whoever gets hot in October that wins, and that means even 84 win Cardinal teams like in 2006 can win. But for those concerned with regular season championships, and high win totals, the east coast is going to dominate the 2012 baseball season.