At this point, it’s tough to tell who will win the next World Series Championship and whoever wins has quite the task ahead of them. Not only will they have to overcome the best team in the opposite league and 14 others in their own, but they will have to top the Chicago Cubs coming back from being down three games to one and go to the 10th inning in Game 7 to break their 108 year curse. So who will become the 2017 Major League Baseball World Series Champions? It will be the-wait for it…
The Cincinnati Reds. Think about it; they’re outfield has been fantastic, they’re on a roll, and their pitching staff hasn’t been terrible for the first time since 2013. Sure, Jesse Winker struck out on four pitches to end his first game, but he’s had a great minor league career: he had a .296 batting average, 54 home runs, and 279 runs batted in. At this point in baseball, now, a great deal of the ballplayers will be former MiLB opponents. Currently, he’s back in the minors, but soon, the Cincinnati outfield will have the speedster who’s started to hit in center in Billy Hamilton, the power hitter in left in Adam Duvall, and eventually the five-tool player in right in rookie Winker. Hamilton has struggled in the past, but he has improved lately: his on-base percentage is up around .280 and he already has nine steals! The more he gets on base, the more opportunities he’ll have to steal. When Hamilton is hot, the Reds are on fire. Because of his insane playing of late, Cincinnati is just half a game behind the Chicago Cubs for first place in the National League Central division. Duvall is another story for the Redlegs, but with a similar theme: he already has five homers and an almost .290 OBP! Duvall is looking at yet another all-star season, but so are many other Reds! With this amount of star athletes, there is no way that the Reds do not make the postseason. It’s pretty clear that Duvall is going to continue to hit and get on base, and so is Hamilton, so what’s keeping the Cincinnati ballclub from the playoffs? The answer is their starting rotation. None of their pitchers who have started a game have an Earned Run Average below 2.70 and the majority of them lie around 4 and 5. Cincinnati’s Scott Feldman, Brandon Finnegan, Bronson Arroyo, Rookie Davis, Tim Adleman, and Amir Garrett need to step up their playing. Garrett started the year off strong, but has faltered of late: the 3-2 starter only gave up four runs in his first three starts combined, but in his last three, he has given up all of 14 runs! Unless Garrett and his fellow starters can pick up their play by the month of June, the Hunt For Red October will be over before it started. When Winker is called back up to the Big Leagues, after having figured out how to hit better, the Cincinnati offense will have the added boost that they so desperately need to bring them to a sixth World Series banner. Hamilton has been hitting, Duvall has been crushing the ball beyond the fences, as is usual for him, so all the team needs to win, is a powerful Winker and a functioning starting rotation. Once these are taken care of, the Cincinnati Reds will be your 2017 Major League Baseball World Series Champions. Jesse A. Cook May 16, 2017 “The World Series Champions Will Be The- Wait For It...”
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Aaron Judge stands tall at six foot seven in the New York Yankees’ right fielder spot, and he is the answer for trophy 28. The Yankees have struggled in the past couple years, but they are back in action with a young squad led by power-hitting Gary Sanchez, speedy Didi Gregorius, and huge Judge. How does this translate to another piece of pinstripe success?
Here’s the verdict: they’re right back ahead of their rival Red Sox, they have been absolutely on fire, and they’ve got a pretty easy schedule up ahead which is a pretty clear indication that they’re gonna break out into the playoffs, again. Another factor is the young Judge: The man is batting well above .300, he’s already hit close to 15 home runs by early May, his on-base percentage is above .400, and his slugging percentage is closing in on .800! The last pinstriped outfielder to start out this well in his rookie year was Joltin’ Joe DiMaggio. Judge is sentencing opponents to grim final scores. They’re merely becoming names in history books about Judge as who he set his records against. How do teams prepare for their trial against New York? Don’t pitch right into the strike zone. The best opportunity for getting the powerful Judge out is to pitch around him. That means something similar to intentionally walking a batter. Say you’re a left handed pitcher and Mike Trout comes up with the bases loaded; you don’t want to give him anything good to hit, but you also can’t walk him because then a run will score. What you do is throw pitches around the edges of the strike zone that wouldn’t always be called a strike by the home plate umpire, but still look close enough for the batter to take a whack at. The pitches are close enough to look hittable, but they’re much more difficult to strike than pitches right down Broadway are. That’s how pitchers have to play it against Judge. For example, last year he struck out 42 times out of just 95 plate appearances. His batting average was a mere .179, but his strikeout average was an astounding .442. This year, he’s struck out just 32 times out of 104 at-bats. That’s a strikeout average of only .308. His SO average has dropped by more than .130! The Yankees also have Gary Sanchez’s power in tow: Sanchez is batting up near .300 with an OBP close to .400 alongside 2 home runs in just 10 games for Sanchez. Last year, he came in second for the Rookie of the Year award behind the 11-7 Detroit Tiger, Michael Fulmer. Sanchez also went .299 for his average, .376 for his OBP, and hit all of 20 home run shots in just 53 games. If the Bronx Bombers ballclub can keep calling their shots, this team could come to be another rendition of their late 1990s and 2000s team, their 70s team, and maybe even their 1927 Murderer’s Row lineup. Baseball has been judged and the sentence is life in another set of Yankee World Series championship wins. Jesse A. Cook May 10, 2017 “Tough To Judge: The New York Yankees” |
AuthorJesse Cook: High school junior. Does play-by-play for the Sharon Varsity Eagles softball, soccer, volleyball, basketball, and football teams. Fanatic of the Boston and Cincinnati teams in the Big Four sports. Designs graphics of athletes, politicians, and musicians at Picsart.com. Archives
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