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Looking back on my predictions for this year way back when we were still months from having a baby, I did pretty well in the National League (nailed all five finishes in the NL East, got three in the West, and only two in the Central), correctly predicting all five of this year's playoff teams—including the Wild Card matchup we'll be getting on Wednesday night.
The American League? Well, that was nothing worth bragging about. While I did have three (CORRECTION: two) of the five playoff teams there right, I only got the three bottom finishers in the Central correct and everybody else wrong.
I'll just flat-out state that I'm not terribly optimistic about how I'll fare in postseason picks, as I could really see just about any of the 10 teams (mild exaggeration, but half-serious) in the playoffs winning it all.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know it's been a while, but yes, the baby's doing fine. And so is the wife. Fatherhood's a total joy, of course. Rest of the family? Well, that's another—
What's that? Football picks? Oh, right.
What with all the time I've dedicated to preparing for fantasy football over these past few months (i.e. mock drafts killing my cell phone battery), I've kind of forgotten how this whole "blogging" thing works. (Rest assured, there won't be any blogging about said fantasy football team this year ... or any fantasy team ... ever again, I assume.)
If I remember correctly, this is the time of year in which I submit my annual supposedly thoughtful stabs at where each team is going to finish and how the postseason will play out. Of course, I've admitted in recent years that I have no idea on occasion and just want to crank out some total guesses. However, I should point out that I did get six of the eight division winners right last year, in addition to correctly identifying the Super Bowl loser.
So, you know, hooray me.
I'm thinking this year will fall somewhere in between those two extremes. I'm guessing that once again, my AFC predictions will be very similar to what's already being commonly predicted, and then I'll take a chance or two in the NFC. Maybe. I don't know yet. I really am just winging it here.
I'm typing this on lunch breaks at work, so this will be anything but expanded thoughts. Probably no more than a couple sentences for each division and maybe one statement at the end for the ultimate predicted big winner (which I honestly have not yet decided).
I would spend more time on this if we had internet access at our current home in lovely Waller, Texas, but alas, we're still waiting for that sort of technology to be established. Trust me, I've brought the issue up multiple times, and the wife, to her credit has been even more vocal than I. The entire problem is, of course, entirely the fault of—oh, right.
I'll stick to the football.
I was surprised to look back and see that this here blog is nearly eight-and-a-half years old now. There have been numerous instances over By My Count's lifetime in which I've openly wondered what the hell I was doing here. For the most part, it has largely been about putting my predictions for various events in writing.
On October 14 of last year, the wife and I found out that we were about to become parents. I have mentioned this only briefly in some recent posts, but there's no getting around it now. The wife's water broke just as we were preparing to go to bed this past Tuesday night and our beautiful baby daughter arrived early Wednesday evening. The moment I heard the first cries of our child brought tears to my eyes as well as my wife's, and it immediately becomes the new favorite moment of my young marriage.
So is BMC now destined to become something entirely new? Tales about dirty diapers and baby burping? No, probably not. But I can say that I am anticipating that all of the posts that had become "annual" types (quarterly and final thoughts on the Four Bs, full predictions for each of the four major sports, etc.) will probably be abandoned. In all honesty, By My Count is probably the least successful of any social media endeavors of mine (I started a little Twitter account last month that already has more pageviews than this blogs had in its entire lifetime), but I never intended to make money off this account or break any new ground. For the most part, it became mostly just an excuse for recording my thoughts about my favorite sports teams (and the Oscars). If anybody else wanted to read them for some reason, that was cool.
If anything here is likely to survive, I would assume it would be the playoff predictions I've always enjoyed making. But I can't say for sure seeing as this is my first go-round with child-raising, and the baby's taking a bit of a priority over blogging. This is not so much a farewell as it is just a simple explanation why it could be a while before you hear from me again.
Blackhawks fans have been spoiled these past few years. The team had enjoyed considerable success in Games 5-7 of most any series they played in over the past four year, and it was the winning record in those games that probably led many of us (including yours truly) to assume that Chicago was on its way to a second straight Stanley Cup after the Hawks came back from a 3-1 series deficit to force a seventh game. But then reality happened.
Everything seemed to start well enough, and even when the Kings fought back to tie Game 7, the Blackhawks would retake the lead. As the series that had been so good even casual fans were raving about its quality saw the winner-take-all game go into overtime, we all wondered which Hawk would emerge as this year's hero. Toews had the game-winner on the breakaway in Game 5 in St. Louis and Kane had the series-clincher in Minnesota. This time though, the lucky bounce of the puck instead went in the other team's favor and fans all over Chicago were left speechless.
While it was certainly a heartbreaking conclusion to a hard-fought series, the end result is not cause for panic. There are questions that deserve to be asked, for sure. However, the Blackhawks were attempting to repeat after last season concluded later than usual, this season began earlier than usual, and the team was tied for the most skaters sent overseas for the Olympics. The fact that they made it as far as they did is a testament to how very good they are, and that they lost to a club that was arguably the best team in the league is nothing to be ashamed of.
Consider it a lesser of two evils. The final two teams remaining are from America's two largest cities, one from a television ratings wasteland on the West Coast and the other being largely absent from social media mentions for most of the year until recent weeks. With a baby on the way, I'll just say I won't be too torn up about missing any moments of this year's Final.
I say that now, but because it is the last hockey series of the year, I know I'll be tuning in when I can. As a Blackhawks fan, I'm still clearly reeling from being one period away from a possible repeat to now instead seeing the Kings about to claim their second Cup in three years—and earning discussion of their own dynasty. Make no mistake, Los Angeles is the heavy favorite here, coming off of a Western Conference Final victory that was considered by many to be "the real Stanley Cup."
There will be no shortage of attractive underdog narratives for various media outlets to play up with this New York team, a franchise that last hoisted Lord Stanley 20 years ago. Sure, maybe having the best goaltender in the playoffs could indeed steal a game or two. But a series? Um, I've got my doubts.
This NBA season will conclude with the exact same two teams competing for a title that took seven games last year. For me, it's what promises to be a riveting conclusion to a third meeting between two all-time great players, LeBron James and Tim Duncan. It's also what I predicted last round and anticipated pretty much all throughout the playoffs (although I admittedly had the Clippers getting here at the beginning of the year).
In the Spurs, we have a franchise that's been a model of consistency, four titles in five Finals appearances over the last decade and half. The Heat, meanwhile, are looking to threepeat and secure what would be that team's fourth overall title. One club is going to tremendously solidify its dynasty credentials.
Of course, the matchup is also bound turn off a few people who either find San Antonio "boring" or simply hate Miami (or in my wife's case, both). I can partially understand those who might have preferred to see one of the younger West teams like the Thunder or Clippers to get to the Finals, but there really wasn't much question as to whether the Heat is the best team in the Eastern Conference this year. The only question remaining is whether the Spurs are the one team that can beat them.
As is usually the case, the first quarter of the baseball season passed by with me being far more engrossed in hockey and basketball playoffs to really catch too many games. This year, I even failed to notice that the Braves hit the 41-game mark.
The expectations for this season were dramatically lowered when Atlanta lost two of its starters before this season even began. It seemed like it was going to be extremely difficult to compete for the division, much less the Wild Card. Yet here we are, 41 games into the season and the Braves atop the standings.
Of course, this isn't terribly likely to hold. The Nationals are right behind Atlanta, and they have far more talent on their roster for the long haul. Depending on how everybody's health plays out, there remains the chance that the Braves may be able to compete for a postseason spot. While the story thus far has been the pitching, the team's offense has struggled mightily. Considering that it's more likely that the former will regress before the latter improves dramatically, it's going to be a real uphill fight all year long.
After an opening round that offered more stunningly competitive contests than we had been accustomed to in recent year, the conference semifinals weren't nearly the must-see TV I had been anticipating. With the exception of the Thunder-Clippers series, most of the remaining games were fairly one-sided affairs. The final four teams are invariably the same ones people had been pretty much anticipating all year long. While I think there's bound to be a few close games and terrific moments, I don't really think there's too much doubt that you're probably going to have to hold out hope that the Heat's threepeat bid fails in the Finals, not this round.
The Western Conference Finals ended up being what I had predicted last round, but the East turned out to be two upsets with the underdogs both knocking off the home teams in Game 7s. We're left with some fairly intriguing possibilities for this year's Stanley Cup Final, with the West featuring the last two Cup winners and the East boasting teams that last won it all in 1993 and 1994. In other words, we'll end up with one recent winner taking on a team that hasn't tasted success in two decades.
I'm guessing that while there will certainly be other individual heroes who score game-winning goals, much of the focus in both these conference finals will revolve heavily around the men in between the pipes for all four teams. The remaining goalies all have the potential to individually decide their respective series, and there's a very good chance that we'll be treated to several low-scoring goaltending duels. A single goal could be critical in both of these series, and both series could very well come down to which goalie allows the lone goal that results in the other team moving on to play for the Cup.
While basketball has been perhaps my least favorite of the four major sports for quite some time now, I cannot deny that 2014 has thus far provided probably the most competitive and watchable games of any year I can remember. In addition to a surprisingly entertaining NCAA Tournament in March, this first round of the NBA Playoffs—typically little more than a four teams sleepwalking into the next round—offered up no less than six must-see series of nail-biting, buzzer-beating action. While I went a respectable 6-2 on my picks for the last round, I wasn't even close on the number of games any of the series would last (oh, sorry ... except for Bulls-Wizards, where I was on the money but had the winner wrong).
With the exception of Miami's polite routing of Charlotte, I could have very easily gone 1-7 instead. As it turned out, five underdogs fell just short after forcing a Game 7. I remain glued to the Stanley Cup Playoffs every passing night, but I cannot deny that I have been keeping a far more watchful eye on the NBA than I have in years past. This has been a remarkable start to the playoffs, and I can only assume that it is about to take another step up to offer even more compelling and astonishing finishes over the next two weeks.
