From the Bleachers

So many things come to my mind after the first pitch of the 2002 baseball season.
Thoughts of September 11th came to my mind, then excitement followed for the start of a new and what should be an outstanding season.
The first thought that came to my mind was just how good are the New York Mets going to be this year?
With so many newcomers to the team and some key old players returning to the team, there is already a good nucleus set.
To lead things off, Roger Cedeno makes his return to the Mets after being with the team in 1998. He can easily steal 40-50 bags a season and hit .290. Then you have probably the best second baseman in all of baseball in Roberto Alomar. Last year, Alomar hit .330 and managed to hit 20 homers and still steal 30 bases for the Indians. He could have been MVP except for Ichiro’s great season. Batting third in the lineup is Mo Vaughn. Big Mo missed all of last season but is still one of the better first basemen around today.
Batting fourth is one of if not the best hitting catcher ever in baseball. Forget about Fisk, Berra and Rodriguez, Mike Piazza can just flat hit. But more importantly, this year he worked on his defense the entire off-season and is throwing a lot better than he ever has. Edgardo Alfonzo is the fifth batter and is swinging a great bat. After having a bad 2001 season, Fonzie is back and ready for this year. I can see him putting up MVP-type numbers the entire season. The sixth batter is no slacker either. Jeromy Burnitz can easily hits 30 homers.
The bottom two are looking for some great years. After having an outstanding rookie year in 2000, Jay Payton is healthy and ready for 2002. It showed as Payton (who is my favorite player in all of baseball) hit a homerun (420 long) off of Ron Villione. Rey Ordonez is hitting the ball like never before, and do not be too surprised if Ordonez hit .300 this year.
This is going to be such an exciting baseball season. The NL East could and should be one of the best races in baseball. The Braves added Gary Sheffield (instant power) to help out Chipper Jones. Furcal is healthy again, and Andruw Jones looks about ready to have a break out year.
The Phillies are going to be a pretty good team this year with everyone returns from their 2nd place finish last season. They finished the season 86-76. Scott Rolen is still one of the best players in all of baseball, and Pat Burrell is going to have a great season.
Also, the AL looks to be really competitive this year. I do not think the Yankees are the team too beat in the AL. With all of this year’s transactions, baseball had a lot of players change addresses.
My picks for each division look like this: AL East-Yankees, AL-Central-Twins, AL West-Oakland, the wildcard winner for the AL will be the Chicago White Sox, now over in the national league, NL East- Mets, NL Central-Cubs, NL West-Dodgers, look for the Braves to be the NL wildcard this year as the Mets are going to end the Braves’ winning streak of Divisions at 10.
NL MVP- Gary Sheffield
NL Cy Young- Randy Johnson
AL MVP- Alex Rodriguez
AL Cy Young- Tim Hudson
World Series: Mets over Yankees/Oakland six games
These are my picks, so if you have picks, let me know.
On another note completely off of baseball, I would just like to say that I did predict Maryland to, win and look who ended up winning the tournament.

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Apr 5 2002. Filed under Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry