IT'S OPENING DAY! LET'S PREDICT SOME BASEBALL!
How else do you start the season but by predicting everything that will happen over the next seven months?
You can’t predict baseball, right? Wrong. You absolutely can! You can’t predict it correctly, or at least I can’t. But that doesn’t mean I don’t try my absolute hardest. Over the years, I’ve done some slight variations on both how I predict the season and when I do it, but since starting this newsletter, I’ve settled pretty nicely on Opening Day as the day that I unveil everything that will (probably won’t) happen during the upcoming season. So below you’ll see my predictions for every team’s record, the major awards and how the postseason will go. And I’ll give you a little explanation for why I’m predicting what I am. Yes, there is some dart throwing, but there’s at least some thought behind it.
Before I get into it, I just want to say what a joy it is to be able to write about the Royals specifically, but baseball in general, for such an incredible group of readers. I started this newsletter before the 2021 season. My first newsletter was about the Royals acquiring Andrew Benintendi. Now we’re heading into the fifth season on here, which is just absolutely wild to me. But it’s not just here.
I started a blog after I was laid off in 2010 and just needed something to write. Greg Schaum ran Pine Tar Press at the time and asked me to join the site, so I went there and wrote at PTP through the 2015 season before I helped start Baseball Prospectus Kansas City. When that shuttered, I wrote for myself a bit on Medium, but then went and wrote for Max over at Royals Review.
Ultimately, I decided I needed a place of my own and started this community that has grown so much over the years, and that’s all thanks to you. Not everyone has converted to a paid subscription, and that’s okay. I hope each and every one of you who has thought about it over the years will consider it again (if you’re able, please don’t overextend for this silly newsletter) and join us throughout what promises to be an incredibly fun season of Royals baseball. I do have 25% off a year of an annual subscription still live, so now is the time!
So thank you for allowing me into your inbox on so many mornings. The real stuff starts today, so we’ll get back to the day-to-day analysis that is so much fun and we’ll just see where it takes us. For now, let me absolutely spoil the entire season for you so you can spend more time with your family and reading Inside the Crown.
Yes, I have the Royals winning the division. No, I’m not insane. It’s kind of funny how jaded Royals fans are. It’s not that there isn’t good reason for it. You could be turning 30 years old this year, which is certainly not old but also no longer a kid, and be able to say that you’ve seen just five seasons of better than .500 baseball in your life as a Royals fan. So yeah, I totally get it. And no, they’re not perfect. I don’t agree with everything they’re doing, but they are well run these days. It’s easy to get caught in your bubble and not realize what is happening around the league, but there are people I talk to who have nothing to do with the Royals who comment all the time how the Royals are doing things right.