Nine predictions and nine observations

The Pirates and Brewers are both in new ballparks, which sometimes gives a team a little goose, and both have go-getter new managers. (Pittsburgh's Lloyd McClendon is in his first year, Milwaukee's Davey Lopes his second.) Either team might surprise people. And the Cubs, with a happy Sammy Sosa, healthy pitching and a pretty good manager (Don Baylor), could be a middle-of-the-pack team if everything goes right. Of course, everything never goes right at Wrigley.

Observation 4: The Brewers and Pirates can sit in their new ballparks and think about teams that have gotten a boost from a new home in the past decade -- the Giants, Mariners, Rockies and Orioles -- and say, "Why not us too?"

Observation 5: The Brewers and Pirates are dreaming if they think their new ballparks are going to be some sort of magic bullet to improve their fortunes right away. Just look at the Astros, Tigers, Marlins and Rangers in the past decade. Not to mention the Louisville Colonels, who, as if I had to tell you, fell from ninth place to 11th in the National League after moving from the old Eclipse Park to the new one in 1893.

Observation 6: Nobody calls ballparks "stadiums" anymore. The rigorous standards of official nostalgia -- which officially ain't what it used to be -- dictate that any building where big league teams play must look like it was built in the teens (only with luxury boxes) and must be called a ballpark, not a stadium. I don't think I ever once heard a person use the word ballpark to refer to an actual building (as opposed to a metaphorical one, as in "Give me a ballpark figure") until I was close to 30. Now, everything's a ballpark. I miss stadiums. Dare I say it? I'm nostalgic for stadiums.

Observation 7: Teams that tailor their roster to their ballpark have a much better chance of winning if they have a big ballpark. Or even a big stadium. That's because big-ballpark teams build around pitching, defense and speed, and that wins more games -- home and road, regardless of the ballpark -- than home runs. Good for the Rockies, who have abandoned their strategy of stocking their launching pad of a stadium with home run hitters. That always seemed pointless to me. If your stadium creates home runs, why do you need to get home run hitters? Get guys who can do other things. Your stadium will do the rest. And that way you'll win some road games too. Detroit and Seattle have new digs that favor pitchers. Watch out for them in the coming years.

Prediction 6: The Rockies still won't win the N.L. West. Neither will the Diamondbacks, who are too old, the Padres, too undermanned, or the Dodgers, who are the Dodgers. That leaves the Giants. A lot of people are calling this the toughest division, but unless the Giants' pitching is ravaged by injury or something, they shouldn't have much trouble repeating. On the other hand: The last time the Giants repeated anything was 1936-37, when they won back-to-back pennants. But they're the pick here. If they have an off-year, 85 wins might take this division. Maybe Colorado after all.

Prediction 7: The Atlanta Braves will win the division. There, I said it. Everybody in the Western world knows the Braves will win their 10th straight division title, and everybody's saying so, and when they do win, the Braves players, you watch, will talk about how nobody respected them all year. The Braves don't look as overpowering as they have sometimes looked over the past decade. John Smoltz, Javy Lopez, Eddie Perez and Chipper Jones are all hurting to various degrees, Kevin Millwood hasn't been able to get anybody out in spring training and this team still hands the ball to noted unstable person John Rocker in the ninth inning. And get this: The Braves, the pitching-loaded Braves, actually have perennial nine-game winner John Burkett in their rotation, and not as the No. 5 guy.

But who's going to beat them? The Mets? Maybe. Bobby Valentine's teams have a way of winning around 90 games regardless of preseason expectations, so if the Braves underachieve, the National League champs might sneak up on them. But New York will miss Mike Hampton. Replacement Kevin Appier's 15 wins last year somehow don't equal Hampton's 15. And aside from Mike Piazza, who is one game closer to old age every time he takes his place behind the dish instead of moving to another position, and maybe Al Leiter, the Mets don't look too inspiring. They'll get a bunch of wins from playing the Phillies and Expos a lot, but so will the Marlins, who are young, talented, hungry and better than you think. The Marlins, the Mets and the second-best team in the Central Division (I'm saying Cincinnati) could have a pretty entertaining race for the wild card.

Last year the Phillies were the worst hitting team in the National League, had the worst bullpen and finished tied with the Cubs for the worst record in baseball. And yet that doesn't really do justice to how bad they were. This year, they look worse. Vladimir Guerrero and Jose Vidro alone ought to be enough for the Expos to finish ahead of the Phillies, which ought to be a real thrill for all 487 fans in Montreal.

Observation 8: Imagine if there were no such thing as a wild card. There might be a pretty decent pennant race in the National League between good teams, like the Braves and Giants, Braves and Cardinals or Cardinals and Giants, depending on how you want to imagine the league being aligned, or in the American League between, say, Oakland and Chicago or Cleveland and New York. Remember pennant races? The first requirement for having them: no wild cards. If it's not possible for the second-best team in the league to miss the playoffs, there can't be a great pennant race, defined here as a race between the two best teams in the league, with the loser eliminated.

Prediction 8: Ever mindful of the ability of Tony La Russa's teams to lose in the postseason, I'm picking the Cardinals to survive the playoffs and win the National League pennant. I think Mark McGwire will get to 600 homers this year, and that it'll be his last hurrah. That doesn't count as an actual prediction, though, if you're keeping score. Even without Big Mac, the Cards are the pick.

Prediction 9: Oakland over St. Louis in the World Series. A "small-market" (as in, the fourth largest market in the country) team triumphs by beating its old manager, who led them to two stunning Series defeats a decade ago. I'm still using that shaky logic here that the A's might not win the West, but if they do, they're the team to beat in the postseason. Really, if you say it enough times to yourself, it starts to make sense.

Observation 9: Soothsaying about the World Series in March makes me feel like one of those bogus "futurists" who tell us what life's going to be like 50 years from now. I really have no idea what I'm talking about, of course, but who's going to check up on me? By the time the season ends, no one will remember that I foolishly had the Indians beating out the White Sox, or the Reds winning the wild card. And anyway, the beauty of the Web is that I plan to bribe a copy editor to go into the archives at the end of the season and correct this story with the real winners.

Just in case that doesn't work, here are my predicted standings in easy-to-ridicule format.

A.L. East: New York, Toronto, Boston, Tampa Bay, Baltimore
A.L. Central: Cleveland, Chicago (wild card), Detroit, Kansas City, Minnesota
A.L. West: Oakland, Seattle, Texas, Anaheim
N.L. East: Atlanta, New York, Florida, Montreal, Philadelphia
N.L. Central: St. Louis, Cincinnati (wild card), Houston, Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, Chicago
N.L. West: San Francisco, Colorado, Los Angeles, Arizona, San Diego
World Series: Oakland over St. Louis

But as Joaquin Andujar should have said to Lou Whitaker: You never know.

• View blog reactions