Play Ball!

The 2012 Major League Baseball season gets underway at the Tokyo Dome today. This is Year 3 in my bold proposal experiment. The basic concept is explained here. The basic idea is to mimic European soccer's promotion/relegation model, eliminating all pretense that more than a handful of teams have a legitimate shot at winning the World Series each year. Last year's final standings, which determine this year's division alignment, are presented here. Here are my divisions for the 2012 season:


First Division

Phillies
Yankees
Rangers
Tigers
Rays
Red Sox
Cardinals
Braves
Angels
Giants
White Sox
Reds
Rockies
Brewers
Diamondbacks
Dodgers


Second Division

Marlins
Padres
Twins
Blue Jays
Nationals
Indians
Mets
A's
Pirates
Cubs
Royals
Orioles
Mariners
Astros

As always, I will consider the experiment a failure should a Second Division team ever win the title in the real world.

Once again, I will be following my childhood team, the woeful Baltimore Orioles. The biggest off-season news for the Birds was the hiring of a new general manager, Dan Duquette - not their first choice. There have also been murmurings that owner Peter Angelos may be shopping the team. Expecting anything beyond incremental improvements would be expecting too much. Breaking their streak of 14 consecutive losing seasons would be great but I'd settle for an improvement over last year's win total of 69 games. I'm trying a different approach to my Orioles posts this year. Stay tuned.