John Mugatu's blog

Sorry for lack of updates/content lately.

The few of us who dabble on this site have been busy with our real world jobs.

But we should have new articles coming soon. We will definitely have mid-season reports for MLB coming up at the All-Star break. Check out our MLB previews that we made before the season - not bad predictions, huh? Pretty close to what's happening so far.

As for today, kind of wild that Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett died today within 3 hours of each other, just two days after Ed McMahon passed. They say these things come in threes.

AL East Preview
The AL East – baseball’s premier division. This division has arguably the best three teams in baseball in the Red Sox, Yankees and Rays. It’s a shame that at least one of them will miss the playoffs. This expert predicts that whichever two make it, those two will meet in the ALCS because they’re just that much more superior to the rest of the American League. I’m also willing to bet that whichever team misses out will be a much better team than the AL Central and AL West winners. Without further ado … the AL “Beast” preview.

AL West Preview
The AL West – baseball’s easiest road to the postseason. These teams just have to outlast three others to get in, it’s that simple. I never understood why this hasn’t been addressed. And after reviewing the potential these four teams have, plus the staggering amount of flaws each team has, it’s really embarrassing that one of these teams will make the postseason. This might be a bigger problem for baseball than steroids.

NL Central Preview
It’s time to preview the NL Central, the most unpredictable and up for grabs division in baseball, year in, year out. Any of these mediocre teams could win the division … except for you, Pirates; you aren’t even a mediocre team.

Here’s one man’s look into the future at how it’s all going to shake out in the AFC:

A quick reminder: Last year, when the Celtics brought together Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce and Ray Allen, most pundits stated that while the Celtics were obviously improved, they would struggle to get these three superstars to mesh and their bench would be too weak for them to be a true championship contender. This was a fair reason however - bringing star players together did not guarantee anything, in fact, there are very few cases where a team with one superstar acquired two more superstars to join him and it garnered success.

I am sick and tired of hearing about "Big Game James" when his past start was his 4th postseason start. It made him 2-2 lifetime in the postseason with an ERA of 2.88 (good), a WHIP of 1.44 (bad) and Opp BA of .289 (very bad). In fact, he's gotten lucky with the number of hits and walks he has given up in the playoffs that none of the teams he's faced ever got the big blow he's flirted with. We might as well start calling Dice-K "Big Game Matsuzaka" if we're going to be handing out the "Big Game" moniker so freely.

It's Saturday morning, September 13th, and I'm not sure but this could be a record: 21 MLB games will be played today. Due to 6 rainouts last night (1 because of Ike evacuations) there will be 5 make-ups as doubleheaders today because of the rainout last night and another make-up from a month ago (Sox-Jays). Throw in College Football and Sportscenter won't have any time for their homo puff pieces and will have just tons and tons of sports to report. It'll be like the mid-90's all over again!

Ugh. This was almost ready to go and then Brady’s knee got Gillooly’d by Bernard Pollack and I couldn’t think about football until now. By the way, love the consistency of the NFL – Vince Wilfork gets pushed into J.P. Losman in last season's opener and got flagged and fined; Pollack hits the reigning MVP below the knee and gets nothing. Anyway, I’m amazed by the amount of glee all the Patriots’ ‘Haters’ have shown to Brady’s injury and look forward to an exciting season.

Thank heavens we're done with the boring, pointless and mostly unnecessary preseason (like 1 or 2 games wouldn't suffice?) and we can finally move on to the real games. This is going to be a quick preview of the season and predictions of each team's final standings.

AFC East