MLB Prediction Review

Prior to the season starting the writers for Burning River Baseball made some predictions about all of Major League Baseball as well as for the Indians more specifically. We didn't fare all that well on the team predictions, so let's see how the big league predictions went.

All the focus here should be placed on the fact that I perfectly picked the NL Central which should have been one of the harder divisions to pick as he has more teams than any other division and they are more evenly matched. I also correctly picked the Braves as a Wild Card team. We both completely blew the AL East as did almost every person who predicted the outcome preseason. The same is true of the AL West. In the NL West, the Diamondbacks and Rockies were huge disappointments the the Dodgers being unexpectedly good. None of any of the four World Series picks even made the play-offs, so this was pretty far off. Overall, I got four of the eight playoff teams correct while Jen got three.

Along with the team standings, we also picked the winners of the two major postseason awards. 

At first glance it looks like we did terrible, as there are no correct answers, but it isn't all that bad. In the AL Cy Young, we picked the #2 (Verlander) and #3 (Weaver) placed pitchers, but of whom had great seasons. In fact Verlander finished just 4 points beind Price overall. In the NL, Dickey was a surprise runaway as no one picked him prior to the season to do much after years of mediocrity before joining the Mets. Lee and Greinke were both obvious preseason choices, but Lee struggled behind a poor offense and Greinke was traded to the AL mid-season. Neither received any votes.

The NL MVP was another surprise with Posey blowing everyone out. Tulowitzki wasn't a bad preseason choice, but an injury kept him out for most of the year. Upton also had some problems on a poor Diamondbacks team and didn't receive any MVP votes. Cabrera was probably the least surprising of all the major award winners in 2012, but for some reason we each went different directions. The ultimate first half player, Bautista had another great first half and then missed most of the second half of the season with injury. Pujols had a terrible start, but ended up making up some ground, finishing 17th in the voting. Who would have thought preseason that Fernando Rodney and Jim Johnson would have been better AL MVP picks.

Overall, there weren't very many upsets among the award winners. Mike Trout (AL) and Bryce Harper (NL) were picked to win the Rookie of the Year awards when they made their debuts and they did. Bob Melvin (AL) and Davey Johnson (NL) each excelled where they weren't expected to, so they deserved their manager of the year award. The AL Cy Young was one of the closest races and any one of the three pitchers could have won the award without much controversy. If there was one snub, it was the NL MVP, where Andrew McCutchen and Ryan Braun each had arguably better seasons than the Giants catcher. Most likely they were both hurt by their team's failure to make the postseason.

For the Indians-centric view, no Cleveland Indians players received a single vote for any award in 2012. If any Indian got snubbed here, it was Zach McAllister who probably deserved about a fourth place finish in the AL Rookie of the Year race.