Here are a couple of predictions sure to be wrong this winter. (It’s not that I lack confidence in my prediction abilities. I just have complete confidence that they won’t be right. But hey, let’s have some freaking fun anyway, huh?)

Albert Pujols: St. Louis Cardinals
Do the Cardinals really have any choice but to work out a deal with Pujols? He is their offense, period. Matt Holliday, David Freese and Lance Berkman are all nice players but their games are enhanced with the mere presence of Pujols, who remains the best hitter in baseball. St. Louis is coming off a miraculous World Series run and just lost icon Tony La Russa to retirement. Turning around and losing Pujols to the Cubs or Dodgers is simply unacceptable. I also believe that St. Louis is the only place Pujols wants to play. But he’s already said that he’s not going to take a hometown discount, which he shouldn’t. That said, considering the Cardinals have allowed him to essentially run the clubhouse over the last decade, he might find that the grass isn’t greener on the other side if he decides to leave. This is a marriage that should stick because it works for all parties involved.

Prince Fielder: Chicago Cubs
Seeing as how I don’t buy into the idea of Pujols leaving the Cardinals, the Cubs make the most sense for Fielder if they’re willing to spend. Signing Fielder could be the start of Theo Epstein’s rebuilding project in Chicago. While the Cubs have a couple of bad contracts on their books, Epstein could build his team around Fielder just like he did with Big Papi in Boston. Management would have to approve a $150-plus million contract for this deal to happen, but it’s clear the Cubs want to win. You don’t acquire Theo Epstein and then tell him to sit on his hands. Could you imagine how many home runs Fielder could hit at Wrigley? I think he just hit one deep while typing this…

Jose Reyes: New York Mets
There are plenty of suitors for Reyes, who is young and productive. The Marlins, Giants, Nationals, Phillies, Pirates, Reds, Twins, Rays and Cardinals could all get involved in the Reyes sweepstakes but in the end, I think he’ll return to the Big Apple. He’s a fan favorite and seemed willing to re-sign with the Mets during the season last year but the situation never played itself out. Trading Carlos Beltran during the deadline last year made sense, as does re-signing Reyes to a new long-term deal.

Carlos Beltran: Boston Red Sox
A return to San Francisco certainly makes sense for Beltran. The Giants obviously need hitting and GM Brian Sabean might want to save face after he inexcusably gave away his top pitching prospect for a three-month rental that didn’t even help San Fran make the playoffs. That said, the Giants still have Aaron Rowand and Barry Zito’s awful contracts on their books and once they get done paying Tim Lincecum and Matt Cain, they’ll either be unable or unwilling to sign a big-name free agent. Boston, on the other hand, seems like a perfect place for a guy like Beltran to land. They’re always willing to spend and have a void in right field. Plus, they don’t shy away from risks and seeing as how Beltran is a 34-year-old injury concern, he qualifies as a risk. He’ll be their first free agent signing in the post-Epstein era.

C.J. Wilson: New York Yankees
I had the Rangers listed next to Wilson’s name but I have a feeling that the Yankees will do everything in their power to land the top pitcher on this year’s market. They need a top-of-the-rotation arm to complement CC Sabathia and while Wilson struggled mightily in the postseason this year, he still racked up 250 innings over 39 starts and was Texas’ best pitcher. The Yankees have deep pockets and after missing out on Cliff Lee last winter, they’ll pony up for another Ranger this time around.

Other Predictions:

Jimmy Rollins: Phillies
Aramis Ramirez: Orioles
Edwin Jackson: Nationals
Roy Oswalt: Rangers

I’m not really sure what to make of this. Terry Francona won two World Series titles, and it seems silly to get rid of a great manager after one epic collapse. On the other hand, Francona seems exhausted, and maybe he didn’t want to come back that badly.

That said, I think the Boston owners are making a mistake here. It’s hard to make rational decisions one day after such an emotional end to the season. They all might have reached the same decision a week from now, but taking some time to think about this makes sense to me.

My 2011 MLB season predictions were a little off this year.

I said the A’s would win the AL West and they actually finished 22 games out of first.

I said the White Sox would win the AL Central and they just traded their manager to another team, which sums up how well they did this year.

I said the Giants would repeat as National League champions and in doing so I cursed Buster Posey, Pablo Sandoval, Freddy Sanchez and the 900 other players they placed on the DL this season.

I had the Braves winning the NL Wild Card and we all know how that turned out. Yiiiiiikes.

While I did have the Phillies winning the NL East and the Yankees making the postseason as the AL Wild Card, those were gimmies. My only claim to fame was predicting the Brewers to win the NL Central, although when you have the Red Sox winning the World Series and they don’t even make the postseason you have no right to brag about anything.

So if you’re offended by my postseason predictions below, don’t be. Chances are I’ll be wrong anyway.

ALDS: Yankees over Tigers.
I don’t trust the Yankees’ pitching but I trust it more than I trust Doug Fister. Justin Verlander was the best pitcher in the American League this season but he’s had a knack for coming up short on the road throughout the years. Knowing the Yankees they’ll be down in every game of this series and figure out some way to advance. Derek Jeter will be 16-for-18 with 11 doubles and one game-winning home run or something ridiculous.

NLDS: Phillies over Cardinals.
The Phillies did the Cardinals a favor by beating Atlanta but if I were them, I would have wanted the downtrodden Braves to advance. That team would have just been happy to reach the postseason after a miserable September. Nevertheless, the Phillies’ pitching will dominate the hot-and-cold St. Louis lineup and the Cardinals’ pitching will fail them in Philadelphia. They’ve got Edwin Jackson slated to start Game 2 in that bandbox the Phillies’ call a stadium, which should work out well considering he’s a fly ball pitcher. (Read: sarcasm.)

ALDS: Rangers over Rays
I love the Rays and I would rather see a small market team like them reach the postseason in dramatic fashion than an underachieving Boston club. But Texas’ starting rotation is deep and was the first AL team since 1977 to have five pitchers with 13 or more victories. That’s an amazing stat when you consider Cliff Lee is no longer a part of the rotation. On the other side, the Rays will throw two rookies (Jeremy Hellickson and Michael Moore) and a guy in David Price who always seems to come up short in big games. I don’t like this matchup for the feel-good Rays, although Joe Maddon deserves to be the AL Manager of the Year with the work he did in Tampa this season. The guy has done great things despite being handcuffed by a cheap front office.

NLDS: Diamondbacks over Brewers
I get the impression that everyone believes the D-Backs are just happy to be here. But let me tell you something: This team does all the little things right. They pitch well, they steal bases, they play good defense and they get just enough offense to win ballgames. The Brewers have more overall talent but I like the NL West to reach the NLCS again this year.

ALCS: Rangers over Yankees
Again, I just don’t trust New York’s rotation. The Yankees relied on Sabathia and a three-man rotation en route to their last World Series title in 2009 but CC is running out of gas this time around. I know Ivan Nova and Freddy Garcia have good numbers but toss in A.J. Burnett and this rotation seems awfully combustible to me. Without Lee, I thought Texas wouldn’t even make the playoffs. But I’ve seen the error of my ways and like the Rangers to repeat in the American League.

NLCS: Phillies over Diamondbacks
While I do like Arizona’s chances of advancing past the first round I don’t think we’ll see a repeat of last season when Philadelphia’s bats fall silent in the NLCS. The Diamondbacks’ pitching is good but the Giants’ arms were special last October. Plus, I don’t see how the Phils don’t make the World Series with the rotation they have. It’s just too good. Bonus for Roy Halladay and Cliff Lee: No Cody Ross this year.

World Series: Phillies over Rangers
Yeah, I’m picking the favorite: what of it? Pitching, pitching, pitching…both of these teams have the starting rotation s to reach the Fall Classic and in the end, I see Texas coming up short again. I really like what the Phillies did at the trade deadline in acquiring Hunter Pence. To think Giants’ GM Brian Sabean gave away one of the best pitching prospects in baseball for a 34-year-old rental in Carlos Beltran when he maybe could have had a 28-year-old Pence for much less is just absurd. (Not to mention a 28-year-old Pence who is under team control.) Phils in six.

Last night will go down as one of the most riveting nights in the history of Major League Baseball’s regular season. Two wild card races came down to the last game, with the Boston Red Sox and the Atlanta Braves trying to avoid disaster.

For a while, things were looking pretty good for the Red Sox. The Rays were down 7-0 to the Yankees, and the Sox were clinging to a one-run lead in the 7th against the Orioles. And then the rains came. We’re always prone to look for meaning in random events, but when a team is staring down the worst September collapse in baseball history, a dreary rain delay seemed like a really bad sign.

By the time the night was over, Red Sox relief pitcher Jonathan Papelbon had given up the lead, and the Rays completed an incredible comeback to beat the Yankees in extra innings.

They’ll be talking about this one for a while. Here’s Scott Lauber from The Boston Herald:

It has been a slow, month-long march to baseball’s version of death — elimination from playoff contention — for the Red Sox.

Last night, it became pure torture.

One out from guaranteeing the Red Sox no less than a play-in game today against the Tampa Bay Rays, closer Jonathan Papelbon melted down. He allowed three consecutive hits, including a game-tying double by Nolan Reimold and a game-winning single by Robert Andino in a 4-3 loss.

Then, a few minutes after Papelbon and the Red Sox trudged off the field at Camden Yards, Evan Longoria belted a solo homer in the 12th inning at Tropicana Field. After trailing the New York Yankees 7-0 in the eighth, the Rays won 8-7.

And, with that, the Best Team Ever suffered the Worst Collapse Ever.

Lauber points out that no team has ever missed the playoffs with a lead as large as 9 games in September. The Braves managed to come close to the Boston choke job by blowing an 8 and 1/2 game lead in the National League.

Papelbon has always been a loudmouth, so watching him blow it was pretty entertaining. His post-game news conference is equally satisfying.

Rays win, and the Red Sox lose. They’re all tied up with two games left, and Boston fan’s worst nightmare is being realized. The Sox still have a chance to salvage the season, but this epic collapse seems hard to reverse with the Rays playing a Yankees team that has nothing to play for in these last two games.

Yankees GM Brian Cashman was feeling rather frank on Friday while speaking to the media, as he discussed some of the moves and non-moves (Carl Crawford) he made last offseason.

From ESPN:

“I actually had dinner with the agent to pretend that we were actually involved and drive the price up,” Cashman said. “The outfield wasn’t an area of need, but everybody kept writing Crawford, Crawford, Crawford, Crawford. And I was like, ‘I feel like we’ve got Carl Crawford inBrett Gardner, except he costs more than $100 million less, with less experience.’ ”

Surprisingly, one could argue that Gardner has had a better season than Crawford. Gardner is batting .261 and leads the league with 46 steals. Crawford never got going in Boston and is hitting .259 with only 18 steals, the fewest he’s had since his rookie season.

Going into the season, Cashman said Red Sox GM Theo Epstein, who also landed Adrian Gonzalez, “kicked my a– in the offseason.”
How does he feel now after winning the division?

“What I said was accurate: The Red Sox had a great winter, and I had a bad winter,” Cashman said. “But as it turned out, I had a better winter than anybody would’ve expected, including myself.”

It’s hardly a genius act to fane interest in a free agent that you don’t want so that you can drive up the price for your most hated division rival. But either way, it worked as the Red Sox shelled out big coin for a player in Crawford who has given them the same production as what a Triple-A hitter could have. Plus, and this is a biggie, the Yankees are heading to the postseason after winning the AL East, while the Red Sox are doing their best to give away the Wild Card.

Of course, who knows what’s going to happen next. Things look bad for Boston now but maybe it reaches the playoffs, Crawford goes gangbusters and the BoSox will the World Series. Then all of Cashman’s talk will go for naught. The season isn’t over yet so let’s just see how everything plays out.

Considering the Yankees are currently sitting six games above .500, the question in the title of this post seems rather silly. Until you take a closer look, that is.

After sweeping a hapless Oakland team and taking two of three from the Angels in L.A., the Bombers were just swept by the Red Sox, who outscored their hated rivals 25-13 in the process. Joe Girardi’s club has now lost seven in a row to Boston and is just 1-8 in the season series.

Adding insult to injury, it appears as though reliever Joba Chamberlain could need Tommy John reconstructive surgery after he was diagnosed with a torn ligament in his throwing elbow. The injury is a major blow to the club, as Chamberlain heads to the DL with a 2.83 ERA and a 1.05 WHIP. He had stabilized one of the biggest issues for the Bombers, who have struggled getting to Mariano Rivera in the ninth.

If Rafael Soriano (elbow) could ever get healthy and pull his head firmly out of his rear end, then the loss of Chamberlain could be slightly mitigated. But the $35 million offseason acquisition has been nothing shy of disastrous thus far in the Bronx, so relaying on Soriano at this point isn’t prudent.

Of course, the Yankees can pick their poison in terms of what their biggest weaknesses is right now: their bullpen or their starting rotation. For the most part, Freddy Garcia and Bartolo Colon have pitched beyond expectations. Teams with as much offensive firepower as the Yankees have will certainly take Garcia’s 3.86 ERA and Colon’s mark of 3.39.

But at some point, A.J. Burnett will have to step up. He’s 6-4 on the year but his ERA is north of 4.30 and worst of all, he remains inconsistent. One start the Yanks are getting seven innings out of him and the next he’s done in five. Assuming Colon and Garcia have at least one bad stretch coming up between them, the Bombers need a more consistent effort out of Burnett. (It would have also been nice if CC Sabathia could have stopped the bleeding with a win over Boston on Thursday night but alas, not even the big fella could save this club right now.)

The other more subtle issue that seems to be growing more problematic by the day is Girardi himself. His moves lately are baffling and just in terms of managing his pitching staff, it seems as if he either leaves his starters in too long or overuses his bullpen. It’s like there’s no middle ground with Girardi and you have to wonder when his players will start losing confidence in him – if they haven’t already, that is.

The good news for the Yankees is that the American League doesn’t look as strong as it has in recent years. The Red Sox are the class of the division and the league, but the Indians have figured out that they’re the Indians, the Tigers are inconsistent and the Rangers look a lot less scary than they did a year ago. It’s not inconceivable that an 88 or 89-win Yankees team could make the postseason as a Wild Card and hope to get hot at the right time. After all, they’re still third in runs scored, first in home runs and second in slugging percentage and OPS. In other words, their offense can certainly carry them all season.

But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a major dark cloud that is presently hovering over this club and it’ll be interesting to see what the front office has in store if things continue to get worse.