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Future File
Posted: Monday July 10, 2000 04:22 PM We asked Sports Illustrated's gurus of the game to look into their crystal baseballs. Here's what they predict for the second half of the season.Tom Verducci 1. Alex Rodriguez will be named AL MVP for leading Seattle into the playoffs. Junior who? Just what free agent-to-be A-Rod needed: more negotiating leverage. 2. The Indians will be home in October for the first time since 1994. No team that began July more than five games out of first place has come back to win its division since the start of the six-division format. Cleveland has taken too many hits from injuries to make up ground on the White Sox. 3. Gene Lamont (Pirates), Larry Rothschild (Devil Rays) and Jack McKeon (Reds) will be fired. The first two pay the price for the mistakes of their front offices. The latter is let go because he couldn't meet expectations that the Reds could duplicate the magic of 1999, which included too many career years and too many innings by the bullpen. Where have you gone, Steve Parris? 4. The Orioles will dump players. At last, Peter Angelos decides his team has no shot. Let the bidding begin for Scott Erickson, Mike Bordick, Charles Johnson, Brady Anderson, B.J. Surhoff -- and maybe even Mike Mussina. 5. The Yankees will not win the World Series. Blame it on age catching up to them, as well as National League superiority. The Cardinals, Diamondbacks, Braves and Mets all rate ahead of the Yankees and the rest of the AL. Jeff Pearlman 1. Toronto's Raul Mondesi will become the first player to hit 40 home runs and lead the league in stolen bases in the same season. Why? Nobody's running these days, and with Carlos Delgado batting behind him, Mondesi will continue to get huge jumps on huge curveballs. 2. Dwight Gooden will be the Yankees' savior. New York calls on Gooden and his new split-fingered fastball in early July. He'll stay in the rotation and win some big games down the stretch. 3. The Pirates will fire manager Gene Lamont: A ballclub penciled in for 85-90 victories will lose that many instead. For a team unaccustomed to expectations, that spells managerial doom. 4. This season will be Cal Ripken's last. Catch Ripken while you can: He loves baseball, but he's also a prideful sort. Watching him hobble around like a table with three legs is depressing. 5. Jim Edmonds will hit only 10 second-half home runs. The Cardinals outfielder is a doubles hitter who jumped on a lot of fat fastballs early on. Stephen Cannella 1) Cleveland won't rock. For the first time in six years, the Indians will get October off. The White Sox aren't going to collapse -- even if some of those young hitters cool off, their strong rotation and deep bullpen will make sure of that -- and Cleveland simply doesn't have the pitching to make a run. At the break, Chicago was 55-32 and held a 10 1/2-game lead in the AL Central; if the White Sox went 41-41 the rest of the season, the Indians and their cast of Class AAA pitchers still would have to win 50 of their last 83 games just to tie. Don't count on the wild card either, Tribe fans: A brutal 15-game September stretch against the White Sox, Red Sox and Yankees will make it hard for Cleveland to finish strong. 2) Ivan Rodriguez will win the AL batting title. Not a surprise in itself since Pudge's average has climbed every year since 1996 and, at .366, he was third in the league in hitting going into the break, but a shock given the position he plays. No AL catcher has ever won a batting crown. Even if Pudge falls short of the title and finishes in the top five, he'll still be in rare company. Only three AL backstops -- Elston Howard in '74, Thurman Munson in '75 and Brian Downing in '79-- have finished that high in hitting in the last 60 years. 3) Barry Bonds will win the major-league home run race. He won't hit 70, but Bonds will beat out Big Mac, Griffey and Sosa. The main reason: the Giants play 18 of their last 30 games at Pac Bell, meaning Barry will have many chances to take aim at McCovey Cove. Plus, San Francisco will climb back into the NL West race; expect Bonds, who has carried that team down the stretch before, to have a monster second half. Meanwhile McGwire, with the Cardinals on cruise control in the NL Central, likely will get frequent days off in September to rest for the playoffs. He'll gladly sacrifice homers for a chance at the World Series. 4) Fiscal responsibility will be in. At least for one season, big spenders don't rule. The White Sox, A's, Blue Jays and Mariners all have payrolls below $60 million; all will be in playoff races till the season's final week, a refreshing expansion of a trend begun by the A's and Reds last season. Unfortunately, their success torpedoes the argument that only big-market teams can win, making it less likely we'll see much-needed economic reform (like revenue sharing or a salary drag) anytime soon. 5) See you in St. Louis ...which is where the World Series will be. The Cardinals knew they had the firepower -- now it looks like they have the pitching to knock off the Braves and go deep into October. Their opponent? That's a tougher call, but the Red Sox will right their ship when all those injuries heal. Once they're in the playoffs, Pedro will take over.
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