Bold Predictions

If you’re at all like us, you’ve been inundated with spam for sports betting services for the past few weeks. We’re not sure where this came from, because we’ve never visited any of these web sites or bet online. Our guess is that it came from an online NCAA tourney pool for bloggers that we participated in (finishing 35th out of about 350 entrants).

Regardless of the source, that spam has prompted us to one-up the touts and make some of our own fearless, guaranteed, 100%, stone-cold, lead-pipe lock picks for the 2005 season. Feel free to take these to your favorite Vegas (or other legal) sports book. They’re definite winners.

1. The White Sox won their opening game yesterday 1 – 0 against the Indians. While this does provide the Sox with the chance to go “wire-to-wire” in first place, we guarantee that they will not finish the season 162 – 0. We’ll also go on record as saying that we have a strong hunch that the Sox won’t shut out their opponents in each of their wins.
2. Dmitri Young hit three balls yesterday that would make Joe Buck say “slam-a-lama-ding-dong”. This puts him on pace for 486 home runs for the year, which would eclipse Barry Bonds’ single season record by 413 long balls. He’s not going to do it though. Young would be lucky to hit 20% of his current projected pace. Take that to the bank.
3. On a related note, should Jose Lima – who gave up two of Young’s home runs – continue to put up performances like he did yesterday (3 innings pitched, 5 earned runs and three homers allowed), Lima-time will not be such a hip thing in Kansas City this year.
4. New Yankees’ ace Randy Johnson earned his first win in pinstripes on Sunday night. Depending on how you do the math, that puts him on pace for somewhere between 30 and 162 wins for the season. If he keeps it up, Johnson would become the first pitcher to win 30 games since Denny McClain did it in 1968. The pick here is that Johnson falls short – even of the low end of the current win projection – but that he has a less tumultuous life after he retires from baseball than McClain. Not sure where you’re going to get odds on that though…
5. Former Miami Hurricane and current Phillies’ slugger Pat Burrell went 3 for 3 yesterday at the plate and committed one error in the field. Something’s going to give here eventually though. Burrell isn’t going to hit 1.000 and commit an error per game all year. If he keeps up with the defensive miscues, Charlie Manuel will show Burrell to the bench – even if he is hitting 1.000. Have you ever heard the phrase “defense wins championships”? Well, Pat the Bat might be hearing that sometime soon.
6. Adam Dunn hit a home run yesterday off of Pedro Martinez that is probably somewhere in the stratosphere at this moment. Contrary to what you may have seen reported on television, the ball will ultimately return to Earth. Gravity always prevails in these situations. If we’re wrong on this one, well, I’m guessing their will be larger consequences for all of us than merely the fate of Adam Dunn’s ding-dongs.

Those picks alone should make you a pretty penny. Still, if you’d like some more advice, feel free to drop us a line. For only $99.95 per topic, we’ll be happy to give you more guaranteed “picks of the year.”