Relax: It’s Still Early
If the 2005 Major League Baseball season ended today, the Baltimore Orioles would be hosting the Minnesota Twins in the American League Division Series and the Arizona Diamondbacks, one year removed from a 111-loss season, would be playing the Atlanta Braves in a one-game playoff to determine the National League wild card team. But for some really strange reason, the 2005 Major League Baseball season does not end today. It ends in October!

The cliché, “Baseball is a marathon and not a sprint,” is perhaps the truest one in all of sports, including “We just wanted it more today.” After a month of football, a quarter of the season is complete. After a month of basketball, for the most part, the best teams have the best records. The jostling later in the season is usually for the last few playoff spots. But in baseball, the first month represents less than a fifth of the season, and everything – from the weather conditions to the way the manager handles his starting pitchers’ workloads – is different than the rest of the year.

Brian Roberts, the tiny second baseman from the Baltimore Orioles, is on pace to hit 48 home runs and drive in 156 runs this year. Of course these are just rough estimates – I multiplied his eight homers and 26 RBI by six - for April, May, June, July, August and September – and came up with his obvious final 2005 stats. Roberts, who is by no means a bad player, is hitting like Gary Sheffield, who is hitting like Shea Hillenbrand, who is hitting like Joe DiMaggio. These out-of-character offensive beginnings do not mean 2005 is the year Major League Baseball changed forever, they just mean that they are offensive beginnings.

A batting average is a funny thing. A player who is 9-for-90 in April could easily go 40-for-90 in May, and all of a sudden a .100 hitter is a .272 hitter. Likewise, the 10-14 Yankees could become the 30-20 Yankees in one month’s time, once Randy Johnson’s left arm is warmer and Mike Mussina’s command returns from its winter hibernation. And would it be so shocking if John Patterson – he of the 4.51 career ERA – saw his 2005 ERA shoot up above 1.00 by the end of the season?

Last year, only two of the six teams that finished April in first place won their divisions. Kevin Brown was 4-0, and people were asking where the Yankees would be without him. Let us, for a moment, imagine that the same sort of stuff is going to happen in 2005. Here are some bold predictions, predicated on the idea that in all non-1994 baseball seasons, the regular season does not end until October:

- Mike Lowell will get his average up above .200 sometime before the end of the season.

- Roberts will have a good season, but will not break 60 home runs or 150 RBI.

- Sheffield will finish with more than two homers.

- Brett Myers of Philadelphia will not win the National League Cy Young Award.

- Carlos Guillen of Detroit will not become the first player since Ted Williams in 1941 to hit over .400.

- Danys Baez, the closer for Tampa Bay who is 3-0 this year, will not become the first closer in the history of baseball to win 20 games.

- Brandon Lyon, the by-default closer of the second-place D-backs, will not break the 60-save barrier.

There are some things that have really caught my eye early in the season:

- Alex Rodriguez is now “comfortable” in New York, and will break the 45-homer barrier and hit over .300 this year.

- Matt Morris of St. Louis is back, throwing with fluidity, velocity and command, and just might become an ace again.

- Kerry Wood will never be injury-free, and never win 15 games in a season his entire career.

- The Twins bullpen – with Juan Rincon, J.C. Romero, Jesse Crain and Joe Nathan – is like the not-so-long-ago Yankee bullpen of Ramiro Mendoza, Mike Stanton, Jeff Nelson and Mariano Rivera. Don’t laugh.

- The San Diego Padres have an ace with Cy Young stuff – Jacob Peavy. You knew that. What you may not have known is that despite up-and-down starts, their No. 2 through No. 4 starters – Brian Lawrence, Adam Eaton and Woody Williams – could help the team make a run at the postseason.