Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Topsy-Turvy World

..at least in the sporting world anyways.

As we sit here on May 14:

The Tampa Bay Rays are in first place in the AL east, roughly a quarter of the way through the season. They have the best winning percentage in the league and are tied for the second best winning percentage in all of baseball.

The Minnesota Twins, despite trading away their best pitcher in Johan Santana and losing their best position player, Torii Hunter, in free agency, are in first in the AL Central.

The Oakland A's, who after their season-opening series against the Boston Red Sox in which they lost three of four and looked like they were going to wage an epic battle with San Francisco for the title of "Worst Bay Area Baseball Team", are a half-a-game out of first in the AL West.

Topping all of those stories are the Florida Marlins, whose entire team payroll is $6.2 million less than Alex Rodriguez will make this season, are in first place by a game-and-a-half and have the same record (23-16) as the Rays.

Any prognosticator could say that Boston, Cleveland, the Angels and the Mets would be the top teams in their divisions. Name me the ones that picked Tampa, Minnesota, Oakland and Florida to be at the top of the standings 40 games into the season.

I'm guessing it will be a short list.

The craziness isn't limited to just baseball, but also basketball. Despite 21 fewer regular season wins, Cleveland is giving Boston all it can handle in the second round of the NBA playoffs. With LeBron James only shooting 25% in the series and averaging just 19 points in the four games against the Celtics, you would think the series would be over or Boston would be looking to close it out in Game 5. That certainly isn't the case with Cleveland winning the last two games at home.

My prediction for Game 5 - LeBron goes crazy and drops 40+ points on the Celtics and the Cavs win Game 5. Cleveland then closes out the the series on Friday night with a win in Game 6.

My prediction skills will probably be proven wrong again, but this is the bizarro world where anything can happen.

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