Opening Day

Baseball started this week. It may be 2 months early, but for me this is the unofficial beginning of summer. As usual there were some major player movements this year: Halliday to the Phillies, Lee to Seattle, Holliday resigning with St Louis, Bay to the Mets, Lackey to Boston - what does it all mean, if anything?

Here's how I see things.

AL East: Yankees - simply too much talent not to win

AL Central: Twins - the loss of Nathan won't be as bad as a lot of people think.

AL West: Angels - Scioscia still has enough guys to get them past trendy pick Seattle and into the playoffs.

Wildcard: Boston - they should have tremendous pitching and an offense that's good enough to get them past the Rays for the wild card.

NL East: Phillies - should we give Halliday the Cy Young now or do we have to wait until the end of the year?

NL Central: Cardinals - Pujols and Holliday back to back, wow. In a weak division that should be more than enough, never mind they have good pitching.

NL West: Diamondbacks - This was the hardest division for me to pick but I'm going with the Dbacks on the theory that Webb and Haren will be healthy (two big assumptions) and some of that young talent will flourish. I’d like to pick the Giants as the home team, but I don’t think they have enough offense to get it done.

NL Wildcard: Braves - the Braves always have solid pitching and Hayword will give them enough offense to grab the wildcard.

ALCS: Yankees vs Boston - I like Boston's better rotation in a head to head series.

NLCS: Phillies vs St Louis - again, I'm going with St Louis because of the better pitching depth. I'll be the first to admit there is no one outside of Linsicum that matches up with Halliday though.

World Series: Boston vs St Louis ala 2007 with Boston winning in 6 games, again relying on their pitching.

Now I get to sit back and watch as the baseball gods make a mockery out of my predictions.