I thought my colleague Tim Kurkjian framed 2015’s most challenging prediction quandary the best: There was nothing more difficult, he said, than trying to figure out who will finish fourth in the AL Central, baseball’s best and deepest division.
The Tigers have won the division each of the past four years and are stacked with star talent. The Indians have excellent pitching, led by 2014 Cy Young Award winner Corey Kluber and a defense bound to improve over the past year’s mess. The White Sox have upgraded their roster significantly over the past 20 months by adding Jose Abreu, David Robertson, Melky Cabrera, Jeff Samardzija and Adam LaRoche.
Then there are the Kansas City Royals, who are merely the defending AL champions and came within one superhuman Madison Bumgarner performance of winning the World Series.
The division is stacked and, as an intellectual exercise, picking a team other than the Royals from this group is reasonable.
Except to the Royals, apparently