2017 World Series Prediction: Hoping For the Best, Preparing to be Miserable

And so here we are. After what seems like multiple years of picking the Dodgers to either get to or flat-out win the World Series in the spring, that awful fucking team has finally made it. Congrats to them. And while I sit here living in the Houston area and hoping to see so many down-on-their-luck residents here find a little joy in the city's first World Series title, I know full well that I should probably expect the Dodgers to win this series in, oh, six games.

I will root like hell for the opposite. I believe I'm 4-4 on postseason picks thus far, and I truly hope I finish under .500 this year.

2017 League Championship Series Predictions: Anybody But L.A.

I wish that I had some reason to explain why I so passionately dislike the Los Angeles Dodgers, but there is no single isolated event that I can recall that led me to feel this way. The Dodgers easily swept away Arizona last round and appear to be living up to the hype thus far in the playoffs. I picked Los Angeles last year in the NLCS under the assumption that some unfortunate series of events would befall Chicago (I guess the Nationals have now taken over the seeming postseason curse).

I'm going to predict the World Series that I'm actually rooting to see, which is the Houston Astros playing the Chicago Cubs. I'm preparing for disappointment though.

2017 Division Series Predictions: Still Catching Up

Oh shit. I forgot to do this. I'm losing it, man. This site just isn't the first thing on my mind anymore. Hell, I forgot about the first pitch being thrown out. I didn't even make a graphic. Fuck.

Oh well. Let's just get right to it, in descending order of confidence here: Cleveland beats the Yankees in four, the Cubs beat the Nationals in four, the Diamondbacks beat the Dodgers in four, and I'm actually picking the Astros (already up 2-0 in Game 1, for the record) to beat the Red Sox in five games—even though I originally planned on picking Boston, but changed my mind this morning when thinking about how the whole #BostonStrong thing seemed to work out pretty well for a talented Red Sox squad a few years ago, so #HoustonStrong seems easy to buy into as well.

This will be fancier next round. Promise.

2017 Wild Card Playoff Predictions: So What, Who Cares

Let us be perfectly honest here. This blog is more than 10 years old, and the posts are all almost exclusively predictions for playoffs involving one of the four major sports. While I might have shared my personal experiences and love stories at one time or another, I don't much feel compelled to to do the same anymore—partly because I now write for a living and don't particularly feel all that compelled to do more typing once I'm done with work and partly because I'm getting divorced. Did I mention that already? No? Well, I'm getting divorced. Who knows when. As usual, it's not all that important and I'll probably be fighting the urge to write yet another love letter to whichever girl I begin sleeping with next. My assumption was that would not occur for another few years, but boy, the early adventures while getting re-acclimated to this being single again have certainly been encouraging.

What's that? Oh, yes. This post is supposed to be a blog about the first round of the upcoming MLB Playoffs. I'll spare you bogus commentary or faux insight, and I'll probably abandon pre-season predictions altogether (NHL and NBA seasons beginning soon, so sorry to those two sports for being my sacrificial lambs). Anyway, here's the hats of my predicted winners (presented, as always, in descending order of confidence):