SMART CENTIPEDE MLB 2020 PREDICTIONS

Another season of baseball is here! Below you'll find my predicted standings and playoff results that show a few long suffering teams finally coming due, and a few perennial favorites suffering from upsetitis.*

(*These predictions were made before the entire nation was paralyzed by the COVID-19 scare. Obviously, with a shorter season, the results may not hold up. But I am presenting the entire 162 game results because we don't know how many games the 2020 schedule will feature, depending on how many games are lost to the mass sequestration.)

AL East
New York City is pretty much a hub of human contact, which I think will be a major distraction for the teams playing nearby. The Yankees have had a lot of injuries crop up late in Spring Training as well, which is why I think they will falter and finish a game back of the surprising Rays in the AL East. Boston still has a potent offense despite trading perhaps the best Non-Trout player in MLB, Mookie Betts, but they are historically subject to wild fluctuation in win totals. I feel like they're on a down year. Toronto is still a year away from the Baby Jays being a force to be reckoned with. Baltimore is still Baltimore.

AL Central
The biggest surprise will be how quickly the Indians fall from grace. The White Sox are primed to jump up in the standings with their fleet of new, young, team-controlled talent, but they still have too little experience to overcome the Bomba Squad Twins (+ Josh Donaldson) in the standings. Royals have few options for potent offense, except for Jorge Soler, who has struggled through Spring Training. At least they still have the Tigers to shield them from the bottom if the division.

AL West
The Athletics are ready to take the next step and win the AL West. They will be helped in this endeavor by fans all over MLB, who will bring as much negative energy as possible to games in which the Astros play. The Astros claim they will thrive on it (because they're smug pricks to the end), but it will wear harshly on them as the season goes on, and I can't in good conscience pick them to reach the playoffs this season. The California Anaheim Los Angeles Angels have perhaps become the most improved team in their division with recent signings, but they still have too many questions and will not be able to make it all click this season. Texas has made some great moves, but they still won't be able to crack the top half of the division. Seattle... poor Seattle. The last team to ever make it to the World Series (unless MLB expands, in which case, the expansion team may still make it before the M's) has a while to go yet.

NL East
The defending champs will have a tough road ahead, especially in that they've lost their most potent bat in Anthony Rendon, which is why they'll slip behind the Atlanta Braves come season's end. The Mets are confident, perhaps more than they have a right to be, but they'll do okay, especially in the same division as the Florida Miami Marlins. Philadelphia continues to wonder why they haven't instantly won the WS despite signing Bryce Harper for obscene amounts of money. They have the best lineup of any team that will not win 81 games.

NL Central
The Reds are the sleeping giants of the Central (as opposed to the Giants, who are the comatose Giants of the National League). They have the right group of guys to take advantage of a chaotic division. The Brewers have not done enough to keep up and lock down the division, and the Cubs have done next to nothing to try and slow the steady decline they find themselves in ('16 World Champs, '17 Central Champs, '18 Wildcard, '19 Nothing). I always pick the Cards to do poorly, and I'm always wrong, so I'm learning my lesson and picking them to have a decent season (if they trade for Arenado, they have a real shot at the Reds). The Pirates are in the beginnings of a dark era of playoff drought. Let's hope it's not another 21 years like the one they ended in 2013.

NL West
The Dodgers are mad as Hell, and they're not going to take it any more! They've been denied by the Astros, who cheated their way to a Championship in 2017. They were denied by the Red Sox, who... ALSO cheated their way to a Championship in 2018. They were denied in 2019 by the Washington Nationals, who defied the odds and defeated the cheating Astros in 2019. It's time for the best team in baseball (a status cemented with the trade for Mookie Betts) to finally get the ring they've been chasing. Arizona will erupt out of nowhere to swipe a wildcard spot from one of the struggling NL Central teams, while the Padres still haven't figured out how to turn Manny Machado into 10 wins. The Rockies are going to have to deal with a disgruntled Arenado, who, along with Trevor Story, is like 75% of their offense. The Giants will be sponsored by Zz-Quil this season for all the fans they put to sleep.

The Playoffs
The AL Wildcard will feature the upstart Chicago White Sox riding the bats of their young guns and their surprisingly potent pitching rotation to upset the New York Yankees in the Bronx for the AL Wildcard, but will fall short of the surging Athletics in the ALDS. The Rays will knock the Twins out to get to their second ALCS, and slip past the A's to take the AL crown for the first time in a dozen years.

The NL Wildcard will be the last hurrah of the World Champion Nats, who will beat the D'Backs but nevertheless be crushed by the juggernaut Dodgers in a revenge match. The Reds and Braves will go seven, and the Reds will emerge victorious, but be powerless to stop the Dodgers, who are on a mission.

The World Series will feature the dominant Dodgers for the third time in four years, facing off against the Rays who are sneaky good, but not quite good enough to put a halt to the Dodger Blue finally getting their first championship since 1988.

The Verdict is In

The 2017 Astros have been found guilty of using technological means to enable stealing signs from the opposing team's catcher.

The punishment is as follows: Fine of $5MM, the maximum allowable fine under baseball's rules; one year suspensions for General Manager Jeff Luhhow and Manager AJ Hinch; forfeiture of 1st and 2nd round draft picks in 2020 and 2021.

The Astros went on to further punish both Luhnow and Hinch by terminating their contracts altogether.

Notably, not punished by the ruling: Alex Cora, former Astros bench coach and current head coach of the Boston Red Sox, or any of the multitude of players who orchestrated and benefited from the ever evolving cheating scheme.

MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred stated “Assessing discipline of players for this type of conduct is both difficult and impractical. It is difficult, because virtually all of the Astros’ players had some involvement or knowledge of the scheme, and I am not in a position based on the investigative record to determine with any degree of certainty every player who should be held accountable, or their relative degree of culpability. It is impractical given the large number of players involved, and the fact that many of those players now play for other clubs.”

As a diehard White Sox fan, this portion of the ruling is disturbing. In 1919, the Chicago White Sox were acquitted of charges of conspiring to throw the World Series against Cincinnati. The Commissioner of Major League Baseball, Kenesaw "Mountain" Landis (appointed following the scandal by the owners of MLB as a way to ensure that the game would maintain its integrity) banned eight White Sox players (and a St. Louis Browns player Joe Gedeon who knew of the fix and bet on the Reds) from ever playing in the Major Leagues again, including "Shoeless" Joe Jackson and George "Buck" Weaver. In his ruling, Landis stated: "Regardless of the verdict of juries, no player who throws a ball game, no player who undertakes or promises to throw a ball game, no player who sits in confidence with a bunch of crooked ballplayers and gamblers, where the ways and means of throwing a game are discussed and does not promptly tell his club about it, will ever play professional baseball again."

Buck Weaver had 11 hits for a .324 batting average in the series. Joe Jackson batted .375, with the series' only homerun, and was errorless in 30 chances on the field. Both players were banned nonetheless for knowing about the scheme and failing to report it to their manager, Kid Gleason, or the team owner, Charles Comiskey.

With no evidence that Jackson and Weaver took part in the fix, and evidence that they played to their utmost, they were still banned for life for knowing about it and not reporting it. So why are these modern day players being given far more leniency?

Money. I guarantee you it's about money.

Were Rob Manfred to ban every player involved, even for a year, the Astros would likely be decimated by the ruling. It is highly unlikely that any player on that team (with the possible (yet still unlikely) exception of the relievers in the bullpen) was unaware of what was transpiring. Even a day-one rookie would likely be curious as to why there was someone just down the tunnel banging on garbage cans like they were auditioning on drums for the Fat Albert Junkyard Band.

Manfred could have fined the players half of their 2017 salaries (they only benefited at home, after all), and if you truly want to punish a player, their pocket is the place to do it. Forcing players to turn over their World Series rings would be some measure of justice, but those rings are awarded by the club, not Major League Baseball.

The entire team would need to be suspended, including players who are now playing for other teams. Why should the other teams be penalized? Suspending the players, even for just a year, would be catastrophic. Rob Manfred is not Judge Landis. Houston is the fourth largest city in America and there is no way he wants to be the guy who destroys a franchise in such a large market. The $5 million is a drop in the bucket. Luhnow can be replaced. Hinch can be replaced (and there are a plethora of qualified coaches looking for work). The draft picks are the part that will hurt the team the most; not being able to draft high quality, controllable prospects for two years will potentially take a big bite out of the team's competitiveness over the next five to ten years. At some point, I expect the draft penalties will cause a drop in win totals, and I can see them becoming a 90 loss team again for a few years (unless their new GM gets crazy lucky with late draft picks and is a savvy trader). That's bad enough to punish a fan base that technically did nothing wrong.

The absence of Alex Cora in any of the punishment language, to me, is telling. Why punish the Red Sox for something the Astros did? It's not like Cora's very next team won the World Series the following year- oh, wait, that's exactly what happened. The Red Sox won the World Series in 2018 (Cora's first year as head coach), and now they are being investigated in a sign stealing scandal. Quelle surprise!

I think the reason Cora was not mentioned is that Mandfred knows what happened with the Red Sox in '18, and he's just waiting for the evidence to be presented. I think at the conclusion of that investigation, Cora will be banned from baseball for life, and I hope that is what happens. The danger is what if the investigation into the Red Sox somehow finds no evidence of sign stealing; does Cora get away scot free?

I don't think so, and I hope not. You know what they say, "Fool me once, shame on me; fool me twice, yer ass is getting torn up."