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 Anthony Caraturo is in his second year at Suffolk County Community College. It is his passion to write about sports and share his thoughts with people who enjoy reading. He would love to one day realize his dream as a sports writer acaraturo@gmail.com. |
| The Cubs will roll everybody. The Mets pitchers would stay healthy and this would be their year, much like it was for the Cubs. The Giants fresh off a playoff series win vs the Mets got their star closer and were ready to take on the NL’s best. These were all stories going into the season that many believed would turn out to be true. The Cubs have experienced the World Series “hangover” of winning a title and having everything go your way to struggling the next year in many areas. The Mets… ahh the Mets. What would an MLB season be without the Mets being the talk of the league and for all the wrong reasons? Injuries have returned to important pieces like Matt Harvey, Yoenis Cespedes (missed 37 games), Neil Walker, Asdrubal Cabrera and Noah Syndergaard, along with 51 save closer, Jeurys Familia. The Mets need to figure out why this continues to occur to their players, as no team loses more core players each year than them. The Giants signed Mark Melancon to a four-year deal worth $62M in the offseason. The Giants team era is still high and they lost superstar starter Madison Bumgarner long term due to a dirt bike incident in-season. Out of these three teams, it seems likely the Cubs will find their form and grab a playoff berth. As for the Mets and Giants, luck will have to turn in favor of them as they head to the finish line during the second half of the season. The surprise of the league has easily been the New York Yankees. Yep, Mets fans were riding high off that 2015 World Series run and thought New York had turned orange and blue. Not so fast. The Yankees sold high last year knowing their chances of making a run were slim and dealt stud closers, Aroldis Chapman and Andrew Miller which netted them top prospects like Gleyber Torres and Clint Frazier who hope to make an impact for the next decade or more. Aaron Judge struggled last year chasing pitches everywhere and struck out at an alarming 44% of the time in 2016 in a 27 game campaign. This year he is seeing the strike zone better and is destroying anything that is tossed over the plate. He is on a torrid pace. It looks like the Yankees have their franchise star to build around for the next decade. With many more games to play (~97 more at the time of writing this), there is enough time for some clubs to turn it around and get going. The AL East is still a tight race, the NL East seems to be Washington’s as long as Daniel Murphy and Bryce Harper stay healthy lead by flame-throwing right-handed starter, Max Scherzer. The Astros also look like they have the AL West easily locked up. |
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