The Bucs have great pitching with guys like Liriano.

I plan on seeing the Pirates at least twice this summer. Once at their wonderful ballpark and once at Wrigley Field. This will be be my first trip to the historic Cubs home stadium and I am really looking forward to it.

Here are my predictions going into the 2014 season:

AL East
-New York Yankees

AL Central
-Detroit Tigers

AL West
-Texas Rangers

-Wildcards
-Boston Red Sox
-Oakland A's

NL East
-Washington Nationals

NL Central
-St. Louis Cardinals

NL West
-Los Angeles Dodgers

Wildcards
-Atlanta Braves
-San Francisco Giants

Two outstanding parks. PNC Park in Pittsburgh is the finest park, in which I've ever seen a game. I try to catch a game there when the Phillies are in town.

Irish, you are such a homer. I'm with you.

Not at all. I definitely expect the Yankees to have a turn around year. They won 85 games last year and were in the running for a playoff spot until the last few games of the season. This was a roster riddled with injuries to Jeter, Teixiera, Granderson and A-Rod (not to mention the worst season of CC Sabathia's career).

I definitely expect CC to bounce back. I'm not sure how many games Jeter will play but I expect Teixiera to be around longer than 15 games. Yes they lost Cano but don't forget they added McCann, Ellsbury and Beltran (not to mention Mashahiro Tanaka). I don't believe it's far fetched at all to say they can make a run at the AL East crown, despite what the "experts" say.

Toronto's going to be on the bottom looking up, followed by Baltimore. I would have put Tampa as a playoff team but I believe they're going to trade David Price before the July trade deadline and they just lost their closer to the Mariners (plus their achilles heal - offense - will continue to give them problems until they can better protect Myers and Longoria).

Rays! Rays! Rays!

Bucs! Bucs! Bucs!

Yanks! Yanks! Yanks!.....next.

Phils! Phils! Phils!

Cubs! Cu...actually never mind. I hope the Bucs beat out the Cardinals for the Central.

For his final year, Jeter will bat .350, hit 25 HRs, steal 24 bases, get 215 hits, fielding pct. .996, win MVP, drive in 3 winning runs in the World Series; after retirement he will marry Miss Universe then be elected President in 2016 running on a new party - The Yankee Party! Oh, Yeah!

Sign me up for that MaryCas!

In the alternative perhaps we should be hoping that he's still walking on two feet by August.

On a bad day Jeter is better than any of those wimpy Phillies on their best day, especially that pseudo-short,stop crying, J-Roll. Thank God Jeter doesn't need one of those asinine pseudonyms. He is just JETER. (You know I love you Kly).

Shhhhh, our wedding plans are supposed to be a secret.

I know...quiet, quaint dinner in the Tuscany Room at Marcello's. I've arranged to be the water boy that day. Been working on my pouring technique.

Kly, What's your feel on the Fillies? They are 5 and 12 with the lowest amount of runs scored. Does Sandberg have enough talent to work with?

I also hang my hat on the Phils!!

This team should only win 75 games, tops. Hamels should be ready in a few weeks, and with Cliff Lee they should be the bright spot. They have a few young hot prospects and a couple of promising young players from last season, but they'll find it tough to compete with the Braves (The New England Patriots of MLB) and the Nationals. There's still a crack of the whip left in the aging veterans, but not enough to win consistently over 162 games.

I like Sandberg a lot. There will be no complacency on the team, and the p[layers, other than Rollins, have responded well to him.

Hamels should have been traded. He's getting paid a lot, he's a whiner, prone to get injured, and doesn't act as a team player..remember how childish he acted in that one game

(Cartman Voice) " Here comes the bride all dressed in white"

So the Yankees have made it official and made Michael Pineda the 5th starter for the rotation. A lot of people seem to be counting the Yankees out this year but my only concern at this point is the bullpen. The rotation will feature Sabathia, Kuroda, Nova, Tanaka and Pineda (who will be on an innings limits). Plus there's Phelps, Warren and Nuno waiting in the wings should an injury occur. The offense beefed up with the additions of Ellsbury, McCann and Beltran (not to mention the returns of Jeter and Teixeira).

All ending in the letter "a". I wonder if that is a first?

Dodgers have the highest payroll this years; Yanks 2nd, Phillies, Boston......and the winner is?

Good, hopefully people will quit complaining now that the Yankees "buy" their championships (but probably not).

My oldest son is a junior business and finance major in college, and completed a project in a statistics class involving run variations in major league baseball. Part of his findings was that 89% of any team's runs can be predicted strictly by OPS, and that batting averagealone did not bear a significant relationship to runs. He also used OPS and three other factors to determine a team's runs to 94%.

There was one team that habitually scores a much larger number of runs each season than their OPS would suggest: the St. Louis Cardinals. A large part of this is because they tend to do better than the rest of baseball in one crucially important, but often overlooked statistic: BA with runners in scoring position.
This is not a random stat determined by luck. Rather the Cardinals have a pattern, my son found, of frequently getting a batter to first base when that base is open with other runners on second and/or third. There is a statistically better chance of a batter driving in a run with a runner in scoring position when first base is occupied.

The paper also found that base stealing for most teams produces a negligible effect on overall runs as the average SB percentage around the league makes the stat a wash.

Anyway, my son was an intern last year for the Pittsburgh Penguin farm team and he discussed his project several times with people in the office. He got a call from a friend that a member of the Pirates front office (a friend of the guys with the Penguins) was in town and asked to talk to my son and look over his paper, which he did. A few days later they called and offered him money...not for the report, but for his agreement only not to publish it or share it with anybody for three years.

Wow, interesting stuff klydon! I know he can't but I'd be interested in reading it when he's able to.

He didn't accept the money yet. I saw the report last year, but it didn't include anything about the new stat.

He will likely work something out with them, but they did invite him to meet some of the people in their business and statistics departments and watch a game this summer from the owner's box. I asked him if they'd let him bring a guest, namely me, and he said they probably would, but added, "But, Dad, I think I should do this alone."

Hearing him say that gave me more happiness than going to a ball game.

Very nifty Kly. BTW, what is OPS? Stats can be intriguing sometimes, but NOT the stupid stats that broadcasters throw out, "he's batting .325 with runners on second in the first 5 innings of a day game when the sun is shining and the wind is blowing in from right field if he's wearing Nike socks." And what is worse when they cite a record of one team against another for the past X years, e.g. "for the past ten years the Yankees have a .672 winning percentage against the Orioles." Statistically, that number has no relevance to what will happen that day.

OPS is on base percentage, plus slugging percentage.

Another element that seemingly has a greater impact on overall runs in a season than stolen bases or sacrifice bunts is wild pitch/passed balls.