Handicapping the Home Run Derby

The 2012 Home Run Derby will take place tonight in Kansas City’s Kauffman Stadium and should be a real crowd pleaser. For the 2nd time the derby participants were selected by a team captain from each league. This year’s captains are Matt Kemp for the NL and defending champion Robinson Cano for the AL. Cano selected Prince Fielder, Mike Trumbo and Jose Bautista to join him on the AL squad while Matt Kemp selected Giancarlo Stanton, Carlos Beltran and Carlos Gonzalez to represent the NL. However Giancarlo Stanton is unable to compete due to injury and has been replaced by Andrew McCutchen. The AL team looks like the better foursome to me but any of these 8 guys are capable of taking this thing. The derby will no doubt provide some great entertainment for every baseball fan tonight, but for those of you who want to make it a little more interesting here’s each slugger’s odds at victory…

Full MLB Projected Team Records and Award Winners

I know I am a little late with this but considering almost every team still has 160 games left I still think it’s worth writing. I’m going to go through division by division, give my projected standings including win/loss records and give a short analysis on why I think that’s how they’ll end up. After that I’ll go through the playoff match-ups and give out my picks to win all the big regular season individual honors. Brace yourselves before reading O’s fans…

AL East

New York Yankees            99 – 63

Tampa Bay Rays              88 – 74