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Last season's picks were a fine reminder that there may be no more difficult sport to predict a final outcome for than Major League Baseball. Again, out of 63 experts from ESPN, Sports Illustrated, CBS, Yahoo, and Fox last year, NOT ONE had Boston or St. Louis in the World Series. And while I specifically noted that I was going against the conventional wisdom at the time that had either the Washington Nationals (28 picks) or the Detroit Tigers (23 picks) winning it all, neither the Texas Rangers nor the San Diego Padres lived up to my preseason prognostication. So to be fair, I'm certainly no better than any of the so-called experts. Hell, I'm probably a lot worse.
All of that said, I debated what I wanted to do with this annual blog post again this year. Based upon the odds I heard about yesterday, the Cardinals and the Los Angeles Dodgers are the two favorites to wind up as champions. Judging by some of the predictions posted elsewhere, the only other teams coming close to the number of people going with either one of those two clubs would be individuals choosing ... Washington or Detroit. Tampa Bay also has scattered support.
Where does that leave me then? In some divisions, I find myself concocting reasons to pick an underdog. In other races, it seems all but impossible to go against the majority. In the end, I figure I'm going to go with the outcome I'd least likely want to see happen—since I'm probably going to be wrong anyway.
As has been the case pretty much all year long, the Miami Heat and the Indiana Pacers remain far and away the only two elite teams in the Eastern Conference. And while the Bulls were essentially written off as soon as Derrick Rose went down only a few games in to the season, and while shipping Luol Deng off to Cleveland at about the midway point seemed to further cement the reality that this wasn't going to be Chicago's year, the Bulls just continue to grind away and keep winning games. If the playoffs were to start today, the Bulls would have home court advantage in the first round. But again, this is all simply delaying the inevitable. Do you want to be eliminated by Miami or Indiana?
For as much of a lost cause as this year is for Chicago, the team still has maintained a lot more interest among fans than I would have suspected. A big part of it has to do with the remarkable play of Joakim Noah, who became the first center to record three triple-doubles involving assists (as opposed to the blocks that are typically the third double digit for big men) in a single season since David Robinson in 1993-94. He was also the first center to record 14 assists since 1986.
As eye-popping as those statistical notes are, a lot of the talk naturally drifts to what the team will be able to do in the off-season. And the biggest headlines Noah has made in recent weeks has had to do with him reportedly urging Carmelo Anthony during All-Star Weekend to come to Chicago next year. This, as always, is a very entertaining concept to imagine, but probably has no realistic chance of actually happening. That won't stop many of the die-hards who still believe the crack in the championship window can be yanked wide open with one move.
This is the first time I've posted a quarterly update for the Blackhawks in 2014, thanks to what many of use are hoping was the final interruption for the Olympics. While the 'Hawks were fortunate to have their 10 players return without injuries (teams like the Red Wings and the Islanders were not so lucky), Marián Hossa of course left last night's game early on with an upper-body injury a few nights after returning from Sochi. I won't waste too much time bitching and whining about the Olympics though, seeing as there's a little thing called the Trade Deadline approaching on Wednesday. While it basically goes unnoticed here in the States, it's essentially a national holiday in Canada. This year, there might be reason for Chicago to be active on that market if the team's serious about repeating as Stanley Cup winners.
Sure, the Blackhawks got a couple forwards from the Isles about a month ago in exchange for a fourth round pick. But I don't blame you for not being overly excited about either Pierre-Marc Bouchard or Peter Regin, seeing as I had to look up who they were when the trade was announced. It's a low-risk move, but probably low on rewards too. And so the refrain remains, as it has seemingly almost every year around this time, for the team to find a stronger second line center. This news isn't going to make that chorus much quieter, and neither will the recent move by the chief rivals in the Central to acquire Buffalo's star goalie, Ryan Miller. The playoffs indeed seem like a safe bet for Chicago, but there's good reason to have concern about how far this team's going to be able to go.
If there was ever a year to play it safe with Oscar picks, it might as well be this one. Besides the fact that a majority of observers all have the same winners anyway, I'm looking to reverse a continuing downward trend in my own accuracy. In any other year, I might have a couple categories in which I go with an underdog that I'm rooting for and believe has a realistic chance at an upset. This year? Not so much.
So when you consider how I've been calculating points here in my Oscar predictions (ranking them in descending order of confidence, 24 points for my top pick, 23 for my second-most confident pick, and so on), the ranking is about the only thing that might make my own picks any different from every other set you'll find elsewhere on the internet.
As always, the Best Picture race boils down to a longtime assumed front-runner attempting to hold off a late charging challenger—although this year, that challenger actually appears to be the big studio hit that might ordinarily be a heavy favorite in any other year. Still, the acting races and most technical categories appear to be all but sewn up. If nothing else, I'm sure Ellen Degeneres will be an improvement over last year's occasionally cringe-worthy host, Seth MacFarlane. I forgot that Ellen's done this before in 2007, the year that I did not post picks here and fell asleep before the final award was presented. I'm pretty confident I'll be able to stay awake throughout the broadcast this time around.
