Before the baseball season started, I ran a little experiment.  I am a casual baseball fan at most, and I made my predictions on all the division winners and both league’s wild card winner.  For the heck of it, I compared my predictions to those of Sports Illustrated team of experts, as well as my four year old son Hunter.  In the case of Hunter, who has never seen a baseball game, I asked him to point to the teams icons, and I disregarded his choice if he picked a team that finished more than ten games out of first place last year.  Heck, he is four…give him a break!

The results at the mid-point of the season?  Basically, a three-way tie!  This may of course change, before the season ends, but I thought it would be interesting to check in at mid-season.  Well, I thought it would be mildly interesting but the real reason I am doing it is because Beth wants me to do some yard work, and I am doing this while pretending to be doing something more important.  But, I digress.

Of the eight possible seletions (three division winners and a wild card in both the American and National leagues), all three of us got a whopping two correct. In the AL East, only Hunter had the Red Sox in first place.  None of us have the Tigers winning the Central, nor did any of us pick the Yankees to be the wild card team as they would be if the season ended today.  We all predicted the Angels to win the AL West.

In AAA, er, the National League, I alone predicted the Phillies to win the NL East, and SI alone had the Dodgers to win the AL West.  Nobody predicted the Cardinals to win the NL Central, nor did anyone think the Giants would win the wild card.

Keep this in mind next time you hear a sports prediction from a so-called expert.  You could literally almost predict the division winners at random and your predictions would be as accurate as people who do this thing for a living!