Oct 16, 2012; Detroit, MI, USA; Detroit Tigers mascot Paws during game three of the 2012 ALCS against the New York Yankees at Comerica Park. Mandatory Credit: Rick Osentoski-USA TODAY Sports

AL CENTRAL: In what order will the also-rans run? The Royals could be pesky, with their young lineup a year older and James Shields atop the rotation. The Tribe appears to be trying to improve, though I am glad to see Shin-Soo Choo go to the NL. The Twins are in transition, and I sense the Sox’ strategy of essentially standing pat will leave them further than 3 games back this year.

1. TIGERS  2. Cleveland  3. Kansas City  4. Minnesota  5. Chicago

AL EAST: You can make a case to list any of these teams to be first or last. Toronto is a trendy pick, with the additions of R.A. Dickey, Melky Cabrera, Maicer Izturis, and most of the Miami Marlins. The Orioles were 2012′s surprise team, the Tampa Bay Rays used smoke and mirrors as usual to cobble together 90 wins; while the Bosox sunk due to age, injury and nobody’s Valentine, the Yankees defied age and injury to win the division. The Jays talent infusion is too difficult to ignore, the Rays come up a bit short, again; the O’s are good but won’t win all those one-run games; and all 3 will chuckle as ESPN’s home-teams and their bloated payrolls rest on the bottom.

1. Toronto  2. Tampa  3. Baltimore  4. New York  5. Boston

AL WEST: The addition of the Astros will likely give the division winner an inside shot at home-field advantage. The Mariners added some bats, but the Angels added Josh Hamilton. Oakland has an excellent pitching staff and that Cespedes guy is the real deal. Texas is still talented, but will their October swoon haunt them? Perhaps they can exact revenge on the A’s in the Play-In game. Will the Astros win a game?

1. California  2. Oakland (Wild Card)  3. Texas (Wild Card)  4. Seattle  5. Houston

NL EAST: The Nats and their strong starting staff look to repeat, with presumably a full season of Stephen Strasburg. Atlanta has the Upton brothers but is sans-Chipper; the Phillies went 44-31 in the second half last year and hope to make one more run with an aging roster. The Mets and Marlins both appear meaningless at this point.

1. Washington  2. Atlanta  3. Philadelphia  4. New York  5. Miami

NL CENTRAL: The Reds once again emerge as cream of the crop, although the Cardinals always manage to make it interesting. The Pirates may finally make it to 82 wins, and the Brewers will probably be in the same ballpark. Cubs fans have heard this before – wait ’til next year.

1. Cincinnati  2. St. Louis  3. Pittsburgh  4. Milwaukee  5. Chicago

NL WEST: LA, like the Bluejays, took the NBA-player-in-a-strip-joint approach to fiscal responsibility. Will their cast of All-Stars, with Kershaw and Grienke as a one-two punch, be enough to overtake the World Champion Giants? Over in Arizona, Kirk Gibson is going the route of the ’88 Dodgers, trying to mold a cast of no-stars into a winning ballclub. The Padres and Rockies seem destined to battle it out for the basement once again.

1. Los Angeles  2. San Francisco (Wild Card)  3. Arizona (Wild Card)  4. San Diego   5. Colorado

POSTSEASON: PLAY-IN GAMES – Pitching trumps hitting once again in Oakland,  as the A’s dump the powerful Rangers. Gibby’s grinders fall short and the champs survive to defend their crown.

ALDS: Angels triumph over the Bluejays in 4, while the Tigers rematch with Oakland is a less-stressful 4 game victory.

NLDS: Even with Strasburg, the Nationals can’t top the Giants in Game 5. Meanwhile, the best team Magic can buy dispatches Dusty’s Reds in a sweep.

ALCS: Verlander, game 7, ’nuff said.

NLCS: Will the Tigers get an opportunity to avenge the 2012 Series sweep? It’s time for two classic franchises to meet with a title on the line – Dodgers punch out San Fran in six.

WORLD SERIES: Once you get there the records go out the window, and momentum is tomorrow’s starting pitcher. I think the depth of Detroit’s starting staff shows, the will of Victor Martinez is integral, and Old Man Ilitch gets his trophy.

Feel free to clip and save these predictions – they may prove insightful, or a source of comic relief, come October.

Oct 28, 2012; Detroit, MI, USA; San Francisco Giants catcher Buster Posey (28) celebrates after Detroit Tigers third baseman Miguel Cabrera (24) strikes out to end game four of the 2012 World Series at Comerica Park. The Giants won 4-3. Mandatory Credit: Rick Osentoski-USA TODAY Sports

Giants 4, Tigers 3 (box score)

Well, they put up some semblance of offense, which is all we were asking for during the previous two games, but three runs wasn’t enough to stave off the Giants and avoid the series sweep.

The Tigers came back twice in the game. The Giants got on the board first in the second inning when back-to-back extra base hits by Hunter Pence and Brandon Belt pushed across one run, but the Tigers answered the next inning when Miguel Cabrera awoke from his slumber to poke a two-run home run to right field. Detroit would hold the lead until the sixth inning when a Buster Posey two-run blast put the Giants back ahead by one, but Delmon Young responded in the bottom half of the inning with a solo homer of his own to tie the game.

The seventh, eighth, and ninth innings came and went with little excitement – save Omar Infante suffering a fractured hand while getting hit with a pitch in the ninth – and the game moved to extra innings.

Ryan Theriot led off the inning with a single, because why wouldn’t he? That’s just the way things have gone. San Francisco predictably bunted him over to second base, but Angel Pagan followed with a strikeout to leave things up to Marco Scutaro. And since the script writes itself, Scutaro was able to single to shallow center field to drive in the go-ahead run. Many Tigers fans across the internet were up in arms that Jackson didn’t dive for the ball, but I think he would have been well short of the ball and Scutaro would have ended up on third base. Pablo Sandoval ended the inning with a groundout to Miguel Cabrera at third, but Detroit was in a dire position heading into the bottom of the ninth.

The Tigers had the top of the lineup due to hit, but Sergio Romo struck out the side in order – including freezing Cabrera for strike three on a fastball down the middle to end the game – and the Giants claimed the crown with little in the way of late-inning drama from the Tigers.

The Tigers were one of the last two teams standing — and there’s something to be said for that — but they’ll have to console themselves with their division crown and American League pennant while waiting for another opportunity next season. Those aren’t horrible consolation prizes, but it’s difficult to take solace in those achievements when the season ended so harshly.

The offseason awaits.

Oct 27, 2012; Detroit, MI, USA; Detroit Tigers first baseman Prince Fielder (28) waits in the on deck circle during game three of the 2012 World Series against the San Francisco Giants at Comerica Park. Mandatory Credit: Rick Osentoski-USA TODAY Sports

When Prince Fielder comes up to the plate, what are you waiting to see happen? Probably not a ground out or a pop out – though there is always a great chance of that. You’re waiting to see him drive one a mile and you know that with a guy like that at the plate a home run is always a possibility. Down by 1 in the 9th with 2 outs and a man on first? Our odds don’t seem too bad if Prince Fielder comes to the plate. But what are his odds of actually hitting that home run? 5.3%. That chance isn’t that big, but it’s plenty big enough for Tigers fans to hold out hope.

It is true that come-from-behind series wins in the playoffs have been rare, but there are a couple of good reasons for that. The first is that it is fairly rare for teams to take 3-0 series leads to begin with – which is obviously a prerequisite for any team to come back from 3 games down. The second is that playoff series – especially World Series matchups between teams of different leagues – sometimes have extreme talent differentials. Those 3-0 leads would be, logically, most likely to happen when one of the two is just a vastly better team. But we don’t believe that is the case here, do we?

Statistically speaking, suppose that these two teams are precisely equal in raw ability. Each should have a 50% chance to win any given game, right? That is simply based on – not luck – but how the good things that they do and bad things they do get randomly distributed between games and within games. If the Tigers and Giants are equal, there was a 12.5% chance that we would randomly wind up where we are right now (with the Tigers in an 0-3 hole). The Giants had a 50% chance to win game 1, a 50% chance to also win game 2 given that they won game 1 and another 50% chance that they would win game 3 given that they already won games 1 and 2. So… the Tigers have a 50% chance of winning game 4, right? And given that they win game 4, they’ll have a 50% chance of winning game 5 and a 50% chance of winning game 6 and a 50% chance of winning game 7. Multiply those percentages through and you get 50% of 50% of 50% of 50% or 6.25%. You want odds? Those are your odds. The Giants now have a 50% chance of a sweep, a 25% chance of winning in 5, a 12.5% chance of winning in 6 and a 6.25% chance of winning in 7 for a combined 93.75% chance of being crowned World Champions. Obviously you like the Giants odds a whole heck of a lot better than the Tigers odds – but it certainly isn’t impossible.

If you believe in home field advantage (like I do), you’d probably say that the Tigers have a 60% chance of winning at home but only a 40% chance of beating San Francisco on the road. In that case, the odds look slightly worse. There was a 14.4% chance that the series would wind up where it is right now, but given that it has the Tigers would have only a 5.76% chance of squeaking out a game 7 victory. But, hey, 5.76% is a whole heck of a lot better than a zero percent chance, right? And as we wait for game 4, we can at least console ourselves with the knowledge that the Yankees have a precisely zero percent chance of winning this year’s World Series.

One last statistical tidbit: the World Series has gone 3-0 23 times already – and the vast majority of those have ended up as sweeps, so it’s safe to assume that the “talent disparity” effect has been a factor. If we use that crude statistical technique above and assume that each team actually is equal in terms of talent and actually does have a 50/50 shot of winning any given game, how unlikely is it that we would never have seen a team come back from an 0-3 hole in World Series history? Well… each 3-0 team has an assumed 93.75% chance of winning the World Series, so the odds that they would win all 23 of those series is 0.9375 raised to the 23rd power. Tiny number? Not really, there is a 22.66% chance that – even if all of those teams were evenly matched – we still wouldn’t have seen a single miracle comeback in 23 tries. So don’t listen when they tell you that history is against the Tigers. History is just accumulated random chance. If they tell you the odds are against the Tigers, well that is obviously true.

And don’t lose hope. The Tigers are down 1 with 2 outs in the bottom of the 9th. But that 3-2 pitch to Miggy just sailed high and Prince is stretching in the on deck circle.