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Cubs-Love from ESPN Pre-Season Prognosticators
By Dan Zinski
ESPN has polled its baseball writers for one of those absurd pre-season prediction articles (the kind no one remembers at the end of the season, ensuring the writers will not be held to account for their silliness). 21 scribes participated – there’s a nice Vegas-y number – and of those, 3 have picked the Cubs to win the World Series. The Cubs lovers are Jorge Arangure, Jr. of ESPN the Magazine, Rob Neyer of ESPN.com and Gene Wojciechowski also of ESPN.com. Brave men all, to buck a 101-year trend. In addition to these 3, another 3 writers – Jerry Crasnick, Tim Kurkjian and Keith (not Vance) Law – have picked the Cubs to make the World Series but lose. Boo on them.
The majority of ESPN writers at least picked the Cubs to win the division, but a few chose the Cardinals in an upset. Interestingly, none picked any of the other NL Central teams to take the division – at least according to ESPN’s experts, this is a two-team race. Also perhaps worth noting is that none of the guys who took the Cards to win the division gave the Cubs the Wild Card. In other words, people are expecting the division to once again be weak compared to the others. The East seems to be getting the most love, with the Marlins and Braves popping up in Wild Card predictions, and the Mets doing well overall. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem that every writer polled took their job entirely seriously: one dude, Jim Caple of ESPN.com, picked Randy Johnson to win the NL Cy Young and the Twins to win the World Series. He does know this isn’t the early ’90s anymore, right?