2. However... they will fall in the post-season, after municipal "shelter in place" orders and massive salary dumps re-frame team rosters across the game.
3. The season will halt after the first active player dies from COVID. Teams will vote on whether to continue. Several franchises - located in viral hotbeds, or who are simply far behind in the pennant race - will cancel remaining games. In small markets, cratering TV ratings - (they'll be up against the NBA finals, nightly riots, and the election) - will add to the owners' desire to close, after trading off expensive stars.
5. Gerrit Cole will be the best pitcher in baseball, though he won't win the Cy Young Award, due to systematic anti-Yankee bigotry and a bullpen that cannot close.
6. As full-time DH Giancarlo Stanton will enjoy a great year, leading the Yankees in HRs and RBIs. This man was built for the 60-game season.
7. As stated above, the Yanks vaunted bullpen will be their downfall, due to the graying of closers Aroldis Chapman and Zack Britton. By season's end, neither will be a ninth-inning option, and the role will be handled by a committee of young arms... and not until critical games have been lost.
8. Due to injuries across the Yankee lineup, Miguel Andujar will wind up back at 3B. (Gio Urshela could be moved.) Clint Frazier will be the starting LF and most popular player, justifying the confidence and support that IT IS HIGH has always provided.
9. At some point early on, each major league team will face an outbreak of COVID. Their season will hinge on how quickly and effectively they deal with it.
10. The Miami Marlins, boosted by trades and used to playing in empty stadiums, will win the 2020 World Series. They will have become America's sweethearts, after a hurricane decimates south Florida. In his final act as outgoing President, Donald Trump will host the team at Mar-a-Lago. That night, winning manager Don Mattingly will run off with Melania, securing his future enshrinement in Cooperstown.
You heard it here first. Okay, folks, who out there also has crystal balls?
My balls are too delicate to just flip them on the table here. So I will be brief and concise.
ReplyDeleteThe Yankees will win 36 games.
They will get to the WS, that will be played no matter what happens health-wise. They will fall to the Dodgers in 5.
Fun fact: a massive very localised earthquake will destroy Dodger stadium just before the parade. Strange.
Frazier will be voted employee of the month 3 times at his new place of work, Burger Vegan King.
Stanton will be the emperor of strikeouts.
Mike Ford will be the Yankees MVP.
Thank you.
King Bul Gel
ReplyDeleteI, too, will not be flipping anything upon the table in terms of anatomy...
ReplyDeleteThis "season" is a mystery to me. With only 60 games and an NBA-style playoff structure, anything can happen, and probably will.
We could win 40 and lose in the postseason because only DJ will still be hitting. Or the bullpen big guns will show their age. Or Stanton and Sanchez will just continue to suck. Or Clint never gets a fair shot. And then there are the injuries, which might strike early and often as they've been doing in recent years. (What do you bet that somebody on this squad, or maybe two somebodies, injure themselves when taking a knee?)
We could be a .500 team (and still make the playoffs, of course). We could be a great team. We could go nowhere at all.
This should go down in the books as the Coin Flip Season of COVID.
@JM, yeah, I agree it's the "coin flip season of covid". Anything can happen, probably will happen. And there's a significant chance that an entire team could be sidelined by covid. Do they use replacements or do they tank the season? Can an entire team be tanked for the season while the rest of baseball continues, with the schedule adjusted to edit out the infected team?
ReplyDeleteThe Hammer of God
The Yankees will reach the halfway point at 23-7.
ReplyDeleteStanton will suddenly look like his Marlins MVP years. He will have 7 HRs and 24 RBI, and not be striking out nearly as much.
LeMahieu will show that last season wasn't a fluke, and will be hitting close to .400.
Judge will have 10 HRs and appear healthy.
Paxson will pick up where he left off last year, and look like a Cy Young candidate -- as will Gerrit Cole. the New York press will dub them the "PC patrol" or something equally silly, as they mow through the league.
We will appear dominant.
But it will all end there. Too many infections around the league-- players, staff, coaches. When a few start going into the hospital, the calls for the season to end will get too loud. The president will say they should keep playing -- it'd be wimpy to quit, unpatriotic -- but ultimately sanity will prevail, and the season will be done for the year.
My prediction? We'll be the 1994 Expos, part 2. The great might-have-been.
Just checked the weather. It has rain out written all over it.
ReplyDeleteAlso, read an article that Fox has developed a tech that will create a virtual crowd.
So, the ability to fill an empty stadium with "fans" as far as a broadcast goes.
"Hmmnnnnn. I wonder if there is another use for that?" he says fully knowing that we are sliding into a dystopia.
Doug K.
But hey, let's talk baseball. 36 wins sounds about right.
ReplyDeleteYankees beat The Milwaukee Bucks for the championship when ageing shortstop Tom Brady overthrows the Greek Freak leading to Evan Engram scoring from second in the top of the tenth.
The Bucks fail to score in the bottom of the tenth when Henrik Lundqvist blocks the plate preventing Lionel Messi from scoring (not that soccer players score all that much anyway) in a final WHO'S LEFT multi-sport grand finale.
Doug K.
I'm going with a cancelled season and a .550 winning percentage by the time that happens. So I guess 14 games won because I've been saying for months that they'd only get 25 games played.
ReplyDeleteI just cannot see the Yanks playing these games like they actually mean something when they know it won't last for more than a month. It'll be just like Spring Training games and they'll phone it in. So I expect a lot of crazy results, but totally meaningless like the 1994 Expos actually being any good.
Yankees will cruise to a 42-18 season. Biggest surprise will be their young middle-relief pitchers being shut down and Clint Frazier having a breakout year. They will be healthier than they have been in decades. In a repeat of last year's playoffs, they will play the Twins and Astros and crush them both. The only real competition will come from the Dodgers in the World Series where they prevail 4 games to 2.
ReplyDeleteThen I wake up and it's 6:30 PM tonight.
The 60 game season will go fine. Best record in the league. No unmanageable coronavirus disasters.
ReplyDeleteThen, in these 16 team playoffs with best-of-three, they will lost 2 out of 3 to a sub-500 team, and that's that.
38-22 (I CONCUR WITH VEGAS).
ReplyDeleteSTANTON WILL LOVE THE EMPTY SEATS WITH NO BOOING.
JUDGE WILL BE SOLID.
CLINT WON'T PLAY ENOUGH.
JORDAN MONTGOMERY WON'T PITCH ENOUGH. (HE LOOKS FANTASTIC, BTW)...
COLE WON'T BE AS GOOD AS WE HOPED.
GOT A FUNNY FEELING CHAPMAN IS GOING TO BE A DISASTER. (HOPE NOT).
PLAYOFFS?
WHO THE FUCK KNOWS?
SO TIRED OF LOSING.
OK, WE WIN IT ALL.
THERE, I SAID IT.
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