Baseball

Recently today, news broke that Commissioner Bud Selig is looking to expand the MLB playoffs from eight teams to 10. This, as you would imagine, brings some new twists to the 2012 postseason.

What's wrong with Jason Heyward?  He hasn't reached base in his last four games.  Wednesday night against the Dodgers he struck out three times.  However, the short answer is that nothing's wrong.

We all knew coming into this season that the Braves' pitching was going to be solid. But we also felt like that the offense was going to improve. With this combination, the Braves were thought to be one of the best teams in the NL. Well, at the moment, only one of those beliefs has come true.

The season is only 10 percent over, give or take depending on the the number of games each team has played. Hardly a milestone moment that allows early returns to hold any significance.

But it does offer a little more of a view than preseason predictions, does it not? Predictions that I did not make.

Thus, in election night coverage style, I will look at the early returns and make projections. These are the teams I forecast as winning the races for the eight playoff spots in order of record:

The St. Louis Cardinals opened up as cold as the weather on opening day and Albert Pujols was the coldest of all. Pujols' slump is officially over though and the Cardinals have been riding his bat, and everyone else's on the team too.

Heading into spring training, Michael Morse had already proven that he was a major league hitter. In parts of seven seasons, the 29-year-old had batted .284/.347/.440 with 21 homers and 92 RBI in 661 at-bats.

If he had a good spring, he had a lock on at least half of the left field job, likely platooning with Roger Bernadina. His spring however, was a knockout. Morse batted .364/.421/.818 with nine homers (second in the Grapefruit League) and 18 RBI.

He won the left field job outright.

The Milwaukee Brewers today signed 27-year-old outfielder Ryan Braun to a five-year contract extension which will make him only one of two MLB players signed through 2020, the other being the Colorado Rockies' Troy Tulowitzki.

Boston Red Sox chairman Tom Werner—amid rumors of his potential interest in taking over ownership of the Dodgers given the current squabble between L.A. owner Frank McCourt and Major League Baseball—reiterated on Thursday that he’s not interested in leaving Boston.

The Milwaukee Brewers farm system has been talked about all spring, but for all the wrong reasons.

After unloading a boatload of young talent to acquire two top-tier starters before Christmas, a common thought has been that the Brewers have the worst system in all of baseball. Yes, in order to acquire Zack Greinke and Shaun Marcum, the Brewers had to shell over their top prospects in Brett Lawrie, Jake Odorizzi and Alcides Escobar, among others.

The Seattle Mariners offense came alive last night against Phil Coke and the Detroit Tigers, scoring 13 runs on 15 hits. Mariner fans were left wondering one thing.

Was it for real?