By Pete Williams

We’re still four days from Opening Day, three if we count the Sunday Night ESPN travesty (Yankees/Red Sox, you’re kidding?). I thought I’d beat the rush with my preseason picks.

AL East – New York
AL Central – Minnesota
AL West – Seattle
AL Wild Card – Tampa Bay

NL East – Atlanta
NL Central – St. Louis
NL West – Los Angeles
NL Wild Card – Philadelphia

ALDS

Tampa Bay over Minnesota
New York over Seattle

NLDS

St. Louis over Philadelphia
Atlanta over Los Angeles

ALCS: Tampa Bay over New York
NLCS: Atlanta over St. Louis

World Series: Atlanta over Tampa Bay in six games

Usually when you spend a lot of time around teams, their weaknesses seem more pronounced than they are. I’m based in Tampa Bay and usually spend more time around the Rays than I do any other team. This spring, however, I worked for Fox Sports South covering the Braves.

So naturally I’m calling for a Braves/Rays World Series. The main reason is because so many baseball people I respect said the Rays and Braves were the teams that impressed them the most this spring, at least in Florida. And since there’s no team in Arizona that looked like world beaters, I’m sticking with Atlanta and Tampa Bay.

Rays officials like to say this is their most talented team ever and that’s true, though the 2008 team had far more character and veteran leadership. Last year’s team missed guys like Cliff Floyd, Eric Hinske, Trever Miller, Rocco Baldelli, and Jonny Gomes. Pat Burrell’s toxic presence seemed to cast a pall on the clubhouse like so many Harry Potter dementors and he’s still around. Still, the Rays have too much talent, along with their best remaining window to win it all.

The Yankees again went out and bought the pieces they needed. This year’s Christmas gifts of Javier Vazquez, Curtis Granderson, and onetime Devil Ray Randy Winn should help. Theo Epstein and the Red Sox somehow cultivate a reputation as an underdog build-from-within operation when all they do is out-Yankee the Yankees. They’ll take a step back this year, along with the Angels.

That leaves the Mariners and Twins. Seattle has followed the Rays blueprint of building around defense, but they don’t have nearly as much offense. As for the Twins, moving in to a new ballpark is always good for five additional wins (unless you’re the Mets). So how ironic will it be when the Twins, finally free from the Metrodome trash bag, fall to the Rays in the Division Series at Tropicana Field? As magical as the 2008 season was in Tampa Bay, fans never enjoyed seeing the Rays knock out the Yankees, who missed the playoffs. This year, the Rays will win an epic ALCS over their “crosstown” rivals. (Not since 2007 has a team reached the World Series that did not train in the Tampa Bay area.)

That will change this year. The Braves train on a Disney sound stage adjacent to the Magic Kingdom. (Okay, it’s really a very nice ballpark, but Team Rodent sometimes forgets they’re putting on a baseball game.) The Rays moved their spring operations from St. Pete to Port Charlotte for 2009.

Frank Wren and Bobby Cox quietly upgraded a Braves roster that won 86 games last year. Troy Glaus is healthy and playing first base. Melky Cabrera helps the outfield and rookie Jason Heyward is being called the left-handed Albert Pujols. Billy Wagner and Tim Hudson are fully recovered from Tommy John surgery, Derek Lowe has new confidence-boosting mechanics he swears he’ll stick with, and Tommy Hanson and Jair Jurrjens might be the most underrated pair of young pitchers any team can send to the mound.

Plus, the Braves have the ultimate postseason trip insurance: Eric Hinske. Not only is he a valuable backup to the fragile Glaus and Chipper Jones, he’s bidding to become the first player to reach the World Series four consecutive seasons with four different teams (Red Sox, Rays, Yankees, Braves).

Cox, who is retiring at season’s end, is forever linked to contemporaries Joe Torre and Tony La Russa. That’s why it will be only appropriate when the Braves knock off the Dodgers and Cardinals in the N.L. playoffs before facing the Rays in the I-75 Fall Classic. There the Braves will get the best of their old friend Rafael Soriano and send Cox out with his second World Series championship.

AL MVP – EVAN LONGORIA, Tampa Bay. Joe Mauer will be unfazed by his new contract and probably respond with big numbers. But I’m taking Longoria since he spent the off-season training for the first time at Athletes’ Performance in Phoenix. I write fitness books with the training center’s founder, Mark Verstegen, so admittedly I’m biased. But I’ve noticed that guys almost always have monster seasons following the winters they’re introduced to the “Core Performance” program.

AL CY YOUNG – CLIFF LEE, Seattle. Lee won this award in 2008. Now he’s moving to one of the game’s top pitcher’s parks to play in front of perhaps the game’s best defense with the incentive of looming free agency. That’s a good recipe to win hardware in November.

AL ROOKIE – WADE DAVIS, Tampa Bay. For all of the hoopla surrounding David Price, Matt Garza, James Shields and previously Scott Kazmir, the Rays owe a good chunk of their success over the last two seasons to the back of the rotation. Edwin Jackson and Andy Sonnanstine were stellar in 2008 and Jeff Niemann carried the team at times in ’09. Niemann made a run at Rookie of the Year, but Davis will go further.

NL MVP – ALBERT PUJOLS, St. Louis – Pujols, Ryan Howard, and Jimmy Rollins have accounted for the last five N.L. awards, and it wouldn’t be surprising to see any of them win in 2010. Pujols will be the first to win three straight since Barry Bonds Laboratories won four in a row from 2001-04.

NL CY YOUNG – ROY HALLADAY, Philadelphia – If Halladay hadn’t spent his career with the remnants of the once-proud Blue Jays franchise, he’d have more than one Cy Young Award. Now he’s moving to the N.L. and the league’s best team over the last two seasons.

NL ROOKIE – JASON HEYWARD, Atlanta. I was around Alex Rodriguez a lot when he arrived and I don’t remember people talking about him the way they did this spring about the “J-Hey Kid.” I spent the last month with the Braves and it seemed every day a respected scout or manager rolled into town and raved about the 20-year-old outfielder.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 1st, 2010 at 11:29 am and is filed under Sports Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.