We made some pre-season predictions, and now that roughly 32 games (20%) of the 2022 season have eclipsed, we can gauge the landscape a little.
With the new 12-team playoff format, here are the playoff teams if the season ended today:
American League
New York Yankees 22-8
Los Angeles Angels 21-12
Minnesota Twins 18-12
Houston Astros 19-11
Tampa Bay Rays 19-13
Toronto Blue Jays 17-15
Let's hope this stays the same, because these are the six teams we picked pre-season to make the AL playoffs. Keep up the good work.
National League
Los Angeles Dodgers 20-9
New York Mets 21-11
Milwaukee Brewers 20-12
San Diego Padres 20-12
San Francisco Giants 19-12
St Louis Cardinals 17-13
Five of our six NL playoff predictions currently have playoff bids, with St Louis replacing Atlanta as the sole inconsistency.
In The Hunt
AL
-Cleveland Guardians 15-15
-Seattle Mariners 14-18
-Baltimore Orioles 13-18
NL
-Arizona Diamondbacks 17-15
-Colorado Rockies 16-15
-Atlanta Braves 15-17
1/5 of the way through the season and our postseason predictions are holding strong.
In the American League, the Cleveland Guardians are surprising opponents with a strong start, while the Mariners and oft-ridiculed Orioles are in the hunt and making a case to be taken seriously.
The National League has the Arizona Diamondbacks accumulating more wins than expected in one of the toughest divisions in baseball despite having a league-worst .199 team batting average. The Braves aren't going anywhere, but who would have thought the Colorado Rockies (given a 0.2% playoff shot before the season) would only be 3 games out of the wild card?
As the players settle in to a season that felt rushed from the beginning due to a shortened spring training, we are starting to see the fallout of the off-season preparations by which players have already found themselves on an IL list. It's a marathon, not a sprint, and October is still a long way off. It's better to be in first than last though, regardless of what month it is.
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