Still can’t believe they talked them into moving to the AL next year. Although the new owner got a nice chunk of change for that.
Went over to the Astros blogs when that was announced to see how their fans felt about it. Couldn’t find one who actually liked the idea.

I guess they’ve got one season to be looking for a good DH instead of the normal NL extra BP arm or utility guy.

Heyward should be back, Uggla won’t start out as he did in 2011, Bourne will be better than McClouth and Schafer and Prado and McCann will probably be healthy all season. Chipper is a wild card but the starting pitching depth of Hanson, Hudson, Jurjens, Minor, Beacher, Teheran, Delgado and Vizcaino over a full season is pretty damn formidable and should help prevent some of that bullpen burnout they experienced last year.

I see the Braves winning 92+ and going to the post season and if Philly suffers just one big injury winning the Division.

Miami: Over

Mets: Over

Philly: Over

Washington: Under

Atlanta’s rotation isn’t as strong as most people think. Hanson missed the end of last year with an shoulder injury. Jurrjens hasn’t been able to pitch a full season the last two years because of injuries. Hudson is 36, and is going to miss the start of the season with an injury. Beachy looked really good last year, but he hasn’t proven himslef yet, and went on the DL too last year. After that, they have rookies, who have a lot of talent, but, how are they going pitch in their 1st year up here? IMO, Atlanta has a lot of question marks in their rotation. The guys they have are either injury risks or unproven.

Miami has a really good lineup – A lot of power and speed. And their rotation isn’t bad, plus they have a very good closer too.

Philly has an outstanding rotation, and their offense is better than most people think, even without Howard(remember last year they played without Utley too).

Washington is still a year a away, IMO.

And I see the Mets finishing around .500. The lineup will be good, but the pitching and defense isn’t strong enough to get us over .500.

Miami – tough one. As others have said, it all depends on their starting pitching. I’m leaving this as a push.

Phillies – under. I can see this being the year it all starts to unravel for them.

Nats – over. They’ve got the pitching

Mets – my heart wants to say over. My brain is telling me under. So I’ll go with a push on this.

Washington – over – I like what this team is doing a lot, I think beginning in 2013 this team is going to be the best team in the division. However, for 2012, 86 wins.

Miami – over – Josh Johnson will be back, Bell is closing games now, Giancarlo Stanton is the best young, pure power hitter in baseball…this team is going to be right up there with the Nats for years to come. 2012 – 85 wins

Atlanta – under – Team lacked offense last year and didn’t do anything to improve it for this year. Pitching is still strong for them. 2012 – 82 wins.

Mets – under – Their lineup has potential from the 2 – 6 spots. But, they are weak up the middle, and as the old baseball saying goes, you have to be strong up the middle to wins games. They have no catcher, they’re unproven at SS, Murphy is below average at 2nd base, and Torres, well, I don’t know much about him other than the fact that he can’t hit a lick. The Mets starting rotation is a mystery…Dickey seems to be the only sure thing there…and you’re kidding yourself if you think Rauch/Francisco are going to be an improvement over Izzy/KRod. Considering how good the division is now, I can’t see the Mets winning more than 70 games this year.

Also, as I said above you can’t pick even. LOL. Unless you plan on a tie.

Hey, just want to make sure the marlin, phils and braves fans are all in the right places!

I wonder what would happen if the Marlins or Red Sox find themselves like 4 games out of a Wild Card in the middle of July.

and it shows why the Mets have a punchers chance of sneaking into the playoff 9with 2 WCs).

if they are spot on (and no, of course they won’t be), it means that it will only take 86 wins to make the playoffs. And even USM up above there says they could be 85. Hell, even going from last year to 86 is only about 1.5 wins/month.

So while we all know there are “ifs” with the team (though just about every team in the NL has plenty of their own), with a reasonable amount of health, and the potential output from the offense, if they can hold together on SP then hell yeah, they can be right there in the mix with the rest of the NL teams fighting it out for the 2 WC spots.

I predict
Phillies, Cards, Giants, Dbacks, Reds (Cards and Reds finish with 88 wins and have a one game playoff where Cards win and Reds go to wild card game to play Dbacks who had 87 wins and beat the Braves in a one game playoff. Thus the worst possible scenario for this batty one game playoff.)