My World Series Predictions

Warning: My baseball predictions are normally awful. For example, my pre-season MLB picks this year had the Red Sox beating the Nationals in the World Series and of course, neither team made the playoffs. But, I never give up, because I’m an idiot.

So, here goes. This is my breakdown for the 2015 World Series:

The Mets are this year’s surprise team and anyone who picked them to be in the World Series in April is either crazy of lying. The Royals were the best team in the American League this season after barely losing to the SF Giants in the Series last year, so the fact that there here again is not  a huge surprise.

The Mets snuck past the Dodgers and spanked the Cubs and now they’re looking to finish this thing. The Royals want to prove that they deserve to be at the pinnacle and are hungry to make up for last year’s defeat. I look at both teams and I see that they’re pretty close in talent and I do believe that the Royals are a more solid, better-coached and overall deeper squad. But in the end, the Mets have too much amazin’ starting pitching and that’s why I think they will win the Series in 5 games.

The Royals have some hot hitters (Ben Zobrist .326 and Alcides Escobar .386 in the postseason) and they will surely not be intimidated after being in last year’s Series. They also have some solid starting pitchers (Ventura, Cueto, Volquez and Young), but in the end the Mets just have too much superior pitching.

It will be a Series of power vs. contact, but this year proves that home runs are king. So, I am picking the Mets to score more runs than the Royals. They say the Royals don’t strike up much, but they don’t always face a staff like NY’s.

Matt Harvey, Jacob deGrom, Noah Syndergaard and Steven Matz are all young and explosive. They remind me of the four young pitchers that the Amazin’ Mets rode all the way to the world championship in 1969—Tom Seaver, Jerry Koosman, Gary Gentry and a spot starter by the name of Nolan Ryan.

As far as offensively, the Mets have arguably the hottest postseason player in the history of this great game. With seven home runs and a batting average of .421, why would you even think about pitching to Daniel Murphy?

So, here is how I think the Series will play out:

Harvey and deGrom will dominate the first two games in Kansas City. These guys have lights out stuff and the Royals have not seen them enough to know what’s coming.  A rested Harvey will be poised and prepared to take Game #1 and deGrom is young, but I don’t that he’ll get rattled about pitching on the world’s largest stage.

By the time the Series hits the Big Apple, the Mets will be up 2-0. I think KC will take #3, mainly because I just don’t think that the Mets can sweep a very good Royals team, so I am picking Syndergaard to lose a tight game. Then, I believe Matz will take #4 and Harvey comes back to finish the job in New York.

The Royals have a better and deeper bullpen, but the Mets have a superior closer with Jeurys Familia (0.00 ERA, 86 K in postseason). The Royals are better defensively, but the Mets’ pitchers make that less of a factor. The scene in KC will be insane, but the atmosphere at Citi Field will be over the top!

Who will the MVP of the Series be? My pick is David Wright and here’s why. The Royal’s pitchers will be thinking about Daniel Murphy and Wright bats in front of Murph. I believe they will be too concerned about Murphy to concentrate on Wright and that’s why he will be their MVP.

To make the Series more complete, I also hope these things will happen:

-Amy Schumer announces her engagement to Matt Harvey, breaking poor little Bradley Cooper’s heart.

-Jacob deGrom sits in and plays with the SNL band while Daniel Murphy hosts

-The son of the Mets’ fan who made all those great signs during the ’69 Series continues the tradition.

-A man tries to bring a goat into Citi Field and they let him

-The Royals start in-fighting and a headline in the NY Post reads “Yost Infection”

-Announcer Joe Buck loses his voice and the underrated Harold Reynolds takes over

-Erin Andrews asks at least one interesting question

-Tim McGraw gets to sing the anthem at one of the game’s in NY, out of respect to his late father

-Ba Ba Booey from the Howard Stern Show and 50 Cent do not throw out first pitches (Seen enough)

-Some NY fan catches a ball without dropping his baby and two beers

CALL FOR ARTISTS

Artists Uniting To Save the Elephants (and Rhinos Too!)

96 Elephants are killed needlessly every day and that’s why we’re calling upon 100 artists to donate their artwork as part of the Pachyderm Sticky Note Project (PSNP), a collective art assemblage featuring the work of 100 different artists from all over the world, representing the 96 elephants (and four rhinos), depicted on 3” x 3” Sticky Notes.

The finished piece (30” x 30”) will be sold as fine art numbered prints as well as smaller digital prints and also used on other items, such as beach towels, t-shirts, tote bags, etc. All of the proceeds will go to www.MarchforElephants.org to fund their efforts in saving this endangered species.

So, we’re putting out a call to artists to create an image to tell the story of the elephant’s plight while raising much-needed funds for www.MarchforElephants.org.

Details: If you’re a painter or want to use a larger format, that is fine, as long as we can reduce it to 3” x 3” for this assemblage. If you’re doing to use a sticky note, please please use 3M Post-it Notes, because the other ones are cheap and different shades of yellow, and always please use yellow for the purposes of uniformity. You can fill out the background, but please go with yellow. PS—since it’s a serious message with this poster, we don’t want the elephants smiling or being too cartoonish but we don’t want them looking too sad either.

How to Get Involved: You can scan the image and send it to us at era39@aol.com so we can look at it, but we do need the original, so please send it to us at Ed Attanasio, 2005 Vallejo Street, San Francisco, CA 94123. You will receive full credit for your art and if you’re in the San Francisco area, you can also attend the unveiling and signing of the poster, scheduled for mid-2016.