With the first pitch of the 2013 regular season just 19 days away, there will surely be plenty of journalists making picks and prognostications for teams and players.
In the American League, the Angels and Blue Jays have become trendy picks with the addition of Josh Hamilton in LA and Jose Reyes, R.A. Dickey, Josh Johnson and Mark Buehrle, among others, in Toronto. I’m not convinced either team will have the success they are hoping for.
In the National League, the Dodgers have eclipsed the Yankees as baseball’s highest-spending team but I don’t necessarily see their high payroll correlating to a high win total. On the opposite coast, I see a team from the NL East winning the most games in a season since the 2001 Mariners won 116.
Instead of giving insight for each of the 30 MLB teams, here are my bold predictions for five teams whose records may not be what many expect.