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Who could predict this?I would guess 98 percent of the time, these predictions ever get dragged back out for review. Partly because predicting like this is haphazard and not based on injuries and breakdowns. It's fun.
Why rehash fun?
I want to rehash it because in March, no one was giving the Texas Rangers any respect as far as making it out of the ALDS. To take it up another notch, absolutely no one thought the St. Louis Cardinals would even field a team.
That is, everyone but Sports Illustrated writer Jon Heyman.
Heyman was the only writer between the top four major sports media outlets (71 guys) to pick the Texas Rangers to win the American League pennant.
Additionally, he was only one of 10 writers among the four outlets (again, 71) to think the Cardinals would even make the playoffs. None, including Heyman (we can't all be perfect) thought the Cards would sniff a pennant.
To give the writers a little leeway, who could blame them on the Cardinals?
A review:
ESPN
Of the 47 writers and talking heads, 29 had the Rangers winning the American League West and another had them taking the wild card. Thirty out of 47 is not bad. Of the seven that chose the Cardinals to make the playoffs, three (Doug Glanville, Dave Winfield, Mark Mulder) are former players.
Of note, Jerry Crasnick, Jim Caple and Gordon Edes did not pick the Rangers to make the playoffs. Caple, in fact, had an awful time predicting things. He had the Boston Red Sox, Chicago White Sox, Tampa Bay Rays and Oakland Athletics winning their divisions. Should be noted that Richard Durrett of ESPNDallas had the Rangers winning the AL West, but the Red Sox taking the league.
Sports Illustrated
SI had 12 of its scribes take a shot at predicting things. Of those, seven had the Rangers winning the division and one (Heyman) the pennant. Included in the unbelievers were top-dog Tom Verducci, Joe Sheehan and Ben Reiter. Only Heyman and Albert Chen had the Cardinals making the post-season.
Yahoo! Sports
If you want a good laugh, look at the Yahoo! yahoos attempting to prognosticate. Of all the divisions between Tim Brown, Jeff Passan and Steve Henson, they predicted four total divisions correctly (two Rangers, one Philadelphia Phillies and a Milwaukee Brewers ... neither predicted the AL East, Central or NL West correctly, which is sorta mind blowing). All three had the Rangers winning between 86-88 wins and two, as noted, had them taking the division. None of them had the Cardinals making the playoffs.
CBS Sports
Finally, CBS Sports had eight writers take stabs at the 2011 season. Five had the Rangers winning the division. Danny Knobler picked both the Rangers and Cardinals to win their division, the only writer to have the Cardinals in the post-season.
FOX Sports/Ken Rosenthal
I found only Ken Rosenthal giving any predictions. He placed the Rangers behind the Oakland Athletics in the division althoug he notes that the Rangers have "enough talent to figure it out, either from within or through trades." Yes, they figured it out. By winning the division. The bowtied one also had the Cards out of the playoffs. To his credit, Rosenthal is the only writer of the 71 that revisited his predictions and admitted his faults ... or at least the faults of the teams he overhyped. Oddly, he skips over the AL West failing to admit his flub of evaluating the Rangers or overrating the Athletics.
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