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Writings on baseball by Matt Barnard and Dan Stein.
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4.03.2004
Predictions (Parts I & II: Matt)
Dan's been better about writing lately, and since we want to run our season predictions in some reasonable order, I think I'll piggyback him through the process. It's awfully difficult to make a good appraisal of what rookies will spend a lot of time in the major leagues before a season, let alone who will perform well enough to be considered for Rookie of the Year. You don't need me to throw out names for you, but few of us could have imagined the impacts that the likes of Scott Podsednik, Miguel Cabrera, Brandon Webb and the 2003 NL Rookie of the Year, Dontrelle Willis would make last season. In making my judgments, I'm going to limit myself to guys who look like they'll open the season on the major league roster, for the sake of sanity and copping out (so I'm not considering Zack Greinke, Jeremy Reed or David DeJesus, for example, though it seems likely that we'll see them at some point). In the American League, I'm going with Bobby Crosby of the A's. He's got a starting job from Opening Day, he can hit and plays a valuable defensive position. As impressive as many think Joe Mauer is going to be in the future (and I apologize for being stating the obvious here, I know you've heard it before), he hasn't shown any power to date. If he sticks in the majors all season, that'll be impressive...I don't expect him to hit enough to compete with Crosby for AL Rookie of the Year. The field of rookies (at this point) should be deeper in the National League. As Dan mentions, the odds-on candidate is Kazuo Matsui. However, given that Hideki Matsui didn't win the AL Rookie of the Year last year because of the prejudices of a couple writers who excluded him from their ballots - not that he deserved to win, but he was certainly among the top three in the AL last year - I'm going to assume that some writers will do the same with the other Matsui, blatantly defying the rules so they can not vote for a Japanese player who happens to play in New York. (This assumes that the younger Matsui's play will make him deserving of the award...I think he'll probably have a nice season.) While it looks like Khalil Greene and Adam LaRoche will be regulars on Opening Day, my pick for NL Rookie of the Year is Ryan Wagner. I don't believe that Danny Graves is going to be effective enough as the Reds' closer to save his job - if that's the case, Wagner is probably next in line. He should be a real nice pitcher, and given the voter's love of counting stats like saves, he should be a prime candidate. - |