King Kaufman's Sports Daily

Look back in horror: This column's preseason baseball predictions, reviewed.

Read more: Sports, Baseball, King Kaufman, Sports Daily

July 14, 2006 | With baseball back in full-service mode Friday night, the second "half" of the season is under way, so it's a good time to look back at this column's preseason predictions about the American and National leagues to remind everyone just what a complete dunce this column is.

Also because that's what we columnists do after the All-Star break.

One of my favorite Web sites these days is Fire Joe Morgan, a blog with a fairly obvious goal, one I happen to disagree with. But it's a rare example of the printed word making me laugh out loud.

The site's writers -- who identify themselves as dak, Ken Tremendous, Junior, Matthew Murbles and Coach -- comment on baseball commentary by Morgan or anybody else they think reaches Morganesque levels of baseball unenlightenment. The "Baseball Tonight" crew is a favorite target, as is MSNBC columnist Mike Celizik, known to the FJM crew as "Hat Guy."

FJM presents the commentator's words in boldface, followed by the site's "Mystery Science Theater 3000"-like reaction in plain text. Like this exchange from a Joe Morgan chat at ESPN.com -- the reviews of which are Fire Joe Morgan's best material -- in which he's talking about whether you can use statistics to evaluate a player. The response is by Junior:

Joe Morgan: I never would have gotten a chance to play if someone had just looked at me on paper. I got a chance and it paid off.

For the last time, Joe: you had great statistics. Because you were great at playing baseball. In spite of your underwhelming physical appearance. I don't know how to be more emphatic about this. I'm already writing in choppy sentence. Fragments.

To my knowledge, I've never gotten the treatment. So, while I can't do it justice, I'm going to steal the format. Sample it, as it were, which makes it more of a tribute and less of a theft, as we look back at our look ahead to this season.

A.L. WEST

Too much Orlando Cabrera, or a key injury or two among the pitchers, and this [the Angels] is a wild-card team and first-round loser at best.

The Angels aren't going to win the wild card, but they could still sneak away with this weak division. Orlando Cabrera, of course, is having a fine season.

3. Texas Rangers: All kinds of offense in a hitter's park, but, like their National League cousins the Colorado Rockies, they just can't seem to put together a pitching staff.

The Rangers are tied for first thanks to their improved pitching. And the Rockies? They're fifth in the National League in pitching. Sweet analysis!

Next page: Reds in last place and the Braves winning the pennant