Opening Day 2012

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Today is Baseball’s North American Opening Day — A sure sign that the summer should be here soon enough and that ESPN will no longer commit 80% of their airtime to replays of dunks and half-court shots. (Don’t you sometimes wish that the “world-wide leader in sports” would cover some world-wide sports highlights. ??? ?????? I hear European Lawn Diving is in full swing right now.)

Baseball in Japan
It was probably because it was 5am, but I'm pretty sure this is what I saw for MLB's opening series

At the beginning of any sporting event the only thing, really, for one to do, is to predict the outcome of that event. I am not doing anything different, but I shall mix it up by coming up with crazy ways to make these predictions. This year I am going to predict the final standings of MLB based solely on team salary. Using the salary numbers from Baseball Prospectus, I’ve calculated the teams Cost Per Win (CPW) for last year. And based on this years salary (and a 4% inflation due to an overall increase in spending across the league) and that CPW, here is what we have:

American League

AL East Wins Loss
 Tampa Bay Rays 123 39
 Boston Red Sox 89 73
 New York Yankees 89 73
 Toronto Blue Jays 88 74
 Baltimore Orioles 53 109
AL Central
 Detroit Tigers 109 53
 Kansas City Royals 106 56
 Cleveland Indians 81 81
 Chicago White Sox 55 107
 Minnesota Twins 50 112
AL West
 Texas Rangers 116 46
 Los Angeles Angels 85 77
 Seattle Mariners 51 111
 Oakland Athletics 41 121

National League

NL East Wins Loss
 Miami Marlins 115 47
 Philadelphia Phillies 98 64
 Washington Nationals 88 73
 Atlanta Braves 77 85
 New York Mets 45 117
NL Central
 Milwaukee Brewers 101 61
 St. Louis Cardinals 85 77
 Cincinnati Reds 76 86
 Pittsburgh Pirates 67 95
 Chicago Cubs 51 111
 Houston Astros 36 126
NL West
 Arizona Diamondbacks 115 47
 San Francisco Giants 84 78
 San Diego Padres 74 88
 Los Angeles Dodgers 62 99
 Colorado Rockies 61 101

As you can tell by the crazy number of Wins attributed to the Rays, that I do not take into account a variable CPW, where the higher the win total the more it costs for additional wins. But even without that, I wonder how close to this outcome, standings-wise, we will see? Will the Royals be a wildcard team? ???? ????? ?? ??????? How many teams will actually have 100+ wins (last year: 1)? 888 casino arab

Want to make your own predictions? Go ahead and leave a comment and we can come back here in a few months and see.