My 2016 Baseball Predictions

15 Tuesday Mar 2016

Tags

2013 Baseball Contests, 2014 MLB, 2016 MillersTime Baseball Contest, Baseball Predictions, MLB

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I avoided doing this ever since I began the MillersTime Baseball Contests for fear of showing my ignorance. But several of you have said I should stop hiding and show my baseball knowledge, or lack thereof.

Don’t take any of these predictions too seriously, and certainly, don’t be foolish enough to repeat them in your own 2016 predictions.

Speaking of which, we’re only about two weeks away from Opening Day and the deadline for your own submissions. Get to it.

Of course, I am not eligible for any of the prizes, but in the unlikely event that any of my own predictions would have won, I will send a MillersTime Winner T-Shirt to the next two contestants who send in their predictions following the posting of my predictions (March 15, 6 PM).

Contest #1: Predictions about a favorite team:

A. The 2016 Red Sox win-lose record – 88-74.

B. They will make the playoffs and lose in the ALDS.

C. The positive factors for their season will be outfield defense and bullpen efficiency. Starting pitching, although better than 2015, won’t get them to 90 wins.

Contest #2: Prediction about something in the 2016 MLB season:

No MLB player will play in all 162 games.

Contest #3:

A. The top 10 MLB players’ Batting Average will be .319, lower than the .322 in 2105.

B. The top 10 MLB players’ OPS Average will be .924, lower than .931 in 2015.

C. The top 10 MLB pitchers’ Earned Run Average will be 2.33, lower than 2.38 in 2015.

D. The top ten MLB pitchers will win a total of 188 games, higher than 183 games in 2015.

Contest #4.

A. Two teams with a combined won/loss record closest to .500 – Philles & Cubbies.

B. Team with the most won/loss improvement – White Sox,

C. Pitcher with most relief wins – Mark Melancon will edge out Craig Kimbrel and Trevor Rosenthal.

Contest #5. Who will get the most AL & NL All Star Votes:

AL – David Ortiz and NL – Giancarlo Stanton who will edge out Bryce Harper.

Contest #6. What 10 teams make it into the playoffs, which two to the WS and who wins it all?

AL – Kansas City, Houston, Chicago, Boston, Toronto

NL – Chicago, San Francisco, St. Louis, NYM, Arizona

Cubbies beat Royals

Extra Credit: Make up a question for the 2016 season and answer it:

Last year the total number of stolen bases in the MLB was 2,505. Will that number increase, stay the same, or decrease? What will that number be?

Decrease – 2,412.

Respectfully submitted on The Ides of March, 2016 at 6:00 PM.

To see all contest details, go to 2016 MillersTime Baseball Contests

Final 2013 MillersTime Baseball Contest Winners

11 Monday Nov 2013

Posted by Richard in Go Sox

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

2013 Baseball Contests, baseball, MillersTime Baseball Contests, Winners

With the conclusion of the World Series (wasn’t that just dandy?) and the naming of Wil Myers as the American League Rookie of the Year today, the voting closes for choosing the winners of Contests #1 and #6.

Contest #1 – Make a Prediction about the 2013 baseball season:

I put the 12 predictions that came true to a vote of MillersTime/GoSox baseball readers, and the result was a tie between two as voters seemed to appreciate the specificity of the these two predictions:

#3 – RA Dickey will struggle, his ERA will be higher than the past three seasons, and he won’t win more than 15 games. (His ERA was indeed higher, 4.21 vs 3.28, and his record was 14-13.)

#7 – Jordan Zimmerman will be the Nats best and most consistent pitcher, over Strasburg and Gonzales. (Zimmerman was 19-9, Strasburg 8-9, Gonzales 11-8.)

So Rob Higdon (#3) and Dan Cate (#7) tie. Their prize is an all expense over night car trip with me to Cooperstown between the end of the 2013 MLB baseball season and Opening Day in 2014. Hopefully we can work out a mutually satisfying time for this trip.

Announcing Three New MillersTime Baseball Contest Winners

25 Wednesday Sep 2013

Posted by Richard in Go Sox

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

2013 Baseball Contests, baseball, Major League Baseball, Red Sox, Washington Nationals, Wild Card, World Series, Yankees

As the 2013 MLB season winds down, or, for some of us, winds up, there are already three winners to announce for this year’s MillersTime Baseball Contests.

Contest #4 – Will Nats make the playoffs? If yes, how far will they go? If no, why not?

More than 90% of you said the Nats would make the playoffs, and some of you thought they’d make it to the World Series or even be the winner of the WS. Most seemed to believe the Nats would pick up right where they left off last year (98-64). With four games remaining, they are 84-74 and have been eliminated from the Wild Card.

Matt Gallati (“they will be plagued by injuries and thus lose more often than they win.”), Larry Longenecker (“Davey Johnson will eventually upset people by speaking his mind…”) and David Price (“…they won’t even be close…”) all thought they wouldn’t make the playoffs and seemed to understand that 2013 would be different for them than 2012.

But Randy Candea wins this contest with this prediction for 2013: “Nats (88-74) will finish behind Atlanta and not make the playoffs due to sophomore jinx. Unlike last year, they won’t win the close games.” He gets two tickets to a Nationals’ game of his choice in 2014.

Contest #5 – Predict the Sox-Yankee Split of the 19 games they play against each other. Since Jere Smith failed to take the opportunity to appeal my decision, Meg Gage wins the two tickets to Fenway in 2014. (See this earlier post for more details on the results of this contest.)

Contest #7 – Worst Prediction.

Actually this one was not one of the six original 2013 contests. In a moment of anxiety about how the Sox were doing, I distracted myself by going through everyone’s predictions and decided to add a category of the Worst Prediction for 2013. I found 15 predictions that were pretty wide of the mark and let you folks choose which one was the worst. (See all the 15 in this earlier post.)

Elizabeth Hedlund ‘won’ (got the most votes from you) with her prediction that “Stephen Strasburg wins 30 games, first since Denny McLain in 1986.” And because contestant Tracy Capullo encouraged Elizabeth to join the contests, these two Red Sox fans get to go to a Nats’ game of their choice in 2014.

Also,

Contest #3. Which League wins the All-Star game, what will the score be, and who will be the MVP?

I announced the winner of this contest earlier. Tim Malieckal and I will go to Minneapolis next summer.

Finally, there are still three contests to be decided: Best overall prediction (#1), Best Team Prediction (#2), and World Series Contestants and winner. We’ll have to wait until the end of October to see who wins these.