Wacky Races: The Recovering Ballplayer MLB Preview Extravaganza

Hours after our Rays team lost to the Phillies in the 2008 World Series, Evan Longoria looked at me in the visitors clubhouse dining room at Citizen's Bank Park and said, "I feel sick." I was fairly certain he was talking about regret, though the moment was too raw to interrupt for clarification. All hitters see pitches they should have hit—I've seen the same Manny Delcarmen four-seam fastball, low and in, for eight years—and though Tampa Bay's appetite for a championship was primed in 2008 with that American League pennant, the Rays' regular season success, given the investment of their owners, has always been enough.

Last year, our manager, Joe Maddon, opted to move to Chicago, a place where regular season success will no longer be enough. He left perhaps the most secure managerial gig in baseball for a seat that will be hot until the Cubs win the World Series.

To take over the Cubs managerial job is to know precisely what you're getting into. Managing a Cubs winner has become, over time, the greatest coaching challenge in sports. In a conversation I had with Joe when he was my manager, he indicated that he might like to be the first manager-GM. At least a handful of teams would probably have offered this to Joe to secure his services, but the allure of that first Cubs World Series since 1908 was perhaps too powerful.

The curse, of course, is only as real as the Cubs and their fans feel it is, and though the current Cubs roster is probably receiving the best curse-denying media training that money can buy, the fans and the media have no such scruples. During my spring with the Cubs in 2011, having recently arrived there from the Rays as the Happy Meal toy in their Matt Garza deal, I spoke often with Garza about the difference in atmosphere between the winning Rays and the cursed Cubs. It's hard to tell which is the chicken and which is the egg: Does the chemistry create the winning or does the winning create the chemistry?

Joe is the best team spokesperson in the history of the game. Like Ozzie Guillen, he diverts the attention away from his players, but Joe does it in a safer way; where Ozzie's honesty was too gaudy, Joe's common sense challenges to tired norms is like the baseball world's first electricity demonstration. With his Lebowski-Lite Eastern philosophy, Joe is the guy who baseball people want but lack the courage to be. Ozzie actually won a World Series in Chicago before losing that job, and then another. How long is Joe's leash? Before his first spring with the Cubs, he said World Series. He came close. In 2016, the Cubs' window to win is wider. Here are my predictions for the rest of the league.

National League

The 2016 Cubs are the sports world's most seriously regarded first-world problem, and their first problem is a stacked National League Central. The World Series will look a lot more attainable if they can snap the Cardinals' streak of division titles. But the same can be said for the Pirates—it would be particularly cruel and unusual for McCutchen and Co. to once again rack up one of the best records in baseball only to lose in another heartbreaking Wild Card game.

It would be, perhaps, even more heartbreaking to most of baseball if the San Francisco Giants continue their current streak of winning the World Series in every even-numbered year. Then again, it could be instructive: Is only trying every other year the new market inefficiency that nobody knows about? (Probably not.)

The Guggenheim-powered Dodgers, despite being decimated by injuries, look better than the rest of teams in the West in pre-season's still life. Expect all their general managers to coax a fourth straight division title out of the team as Carl Crawford edges out Hunter Pence for NL Comeback Player of the Year, and Yasiel Puig continues to incense old people with his markedly Korean bat flipping. Jeff Samardzija and Johnny Cueto will thrive in San Francisco, but only enough to pull the Giants to the Wild Card.

Speaking of not enough, Bryce Harper's repeat performance as NL MVP won't keep pace with the Mets in the East, where New York's starters will compete against each other for the Cy Young Award. Zack Wheeler's midseason return, and the addition of Jay Bruce and Brandon Phillips from the Reds' midseason garage sale, will power the Mets over the Dodgers and into a rematch with the Cubs in the NLCS.

The Cubs, meanwhile, will cruise to first place in the NL Central as the Cardinals edge out the Pirates for the second wild card spot, and cement their new status as gritty Central Division underdogs. The Cardinals will beat the Giants in a one-game playoff but fall to the eventual NL-champion Cubs in the NLDS.

NL MVP: Bryce Harper

NL Cy Young: Zack Greinke

NL Rookie of the Year: Kenta Maeda

NL East: New York Mets

NL Central: Chicago Cubs

NL West: Los Angeles Dodgers

Wild Cards: St. Louis Cardinals, San Francisco Giants

NLCS: Chicago Cubs defeat New York Mets

American League

Perhaps the strangest thing about the defending champion Kansas City Royals is that they seem so beatable. Good defense isn't bombastic. The Royals don't bring rain like "the bringer of rain," 2015 AL MVP John Donaldson and his Blue Jays. The Royals don't have a megastar position player; most of their lineup will hit around .260 and drive in about 60 runs while playing above-average defense. And though this is terrifying for opposing teams, it is unsexy in Vegas, where the Royals have 14/1 odds to repeat. The Royals don't have an ace starting pitcher, but they don't really need one since their shutdown bullpen protects all the leads that their pesky lineup procures.

Like the Royals, the 2016 AL West champion Houston Astros count on an inexpensive core of young talent that are derived from the great fortune of having fielded terrible teams for so many years. Both clubs were subsequently rewarded with the impactful high-draft picks that now carry them. With the most enviable middle infield in the game, the Astros will keep pace over the Rangers in the AL West. They'll probably need some pitching help, for which, ironically, they may be forced to deal a young budding star. Carlos Correa already looks like the best shortstop prospect since Alex Rodriguez.

Speaking of A-Rod, 2016 will be a throwback year for his division, the AL East. Expect gutsy pitching at the back end of the Yankees rotation by a sober and motivated C.C. Sabathia, who, like A-Rod, should see an opportunity for another title run with the emergence of Luis Severino as the Yankees' ace, taking pressure of Masahiro Tanaka's elbow. With their freakish bullpen, look for the Yankees to be satisfied with more five-and-dive outings from their starting pitchers. Solid years from Yankee and Red Sox greats (who these days need only to be pretty good) like Mark Teixeira, Carlos Beltran, Brett Gardner, Dustin Pedroia, and David Ortiz will power another classic AL East race. But expect Boston, with exciting young stars Mookie Betts, Xander Bogaerts, and Jackie Bradley Jr.—plus a resurgent Hanley Ramirez having fun playing first base—to be too much for their division foes to contend with.

The AL East teams will beat up on the other divisions, too, and produce the AL wild cards. The Rays are long overdue for some injury luck, and will put their health to use challenging the Blue Jays and the Rangers, two teams who will pull off maverick deals at the deadline to improve their club just like they did last year with Troy Tulowitzki and Cole Hamels. At the deadline, look for the Rays to counter with a historic deal of their own, resourcefully dealing first base coach Rocco Baldelli for Marlins hitting coach Barry Bonds. Bonds will be promptly slotted into the five-hole as the Rays DH, helping Tampa Bay give the Blue Jays and the Rangers a run for their money in the wild card race.

The most fascinating season scenario of 2016 has David Price edging out Chris Archer and Sonny Gray for the Cy Young but struggling again in the postseason, somehow. So though we'd love to see his Red Sox teammate David Ortiz trot off into the sunset on Peyton Manning's horse as a world champion, the Blue Jays, with their bat-flipping, parrot-arming, high-powered lineup blowing kisses at the dome, make for great television, especially if Drake is heckling from behind home plate. Ratings dig the longball, and Drake, too.

AL MVP: Hanley Ramirez

AL Cy Young: David Price

AL Rookie of the Year: Byung Ho Park

AL East: Boston Red Sox

AL Central: Kansas City Royals

AL West: Houston Astros

Wild Cards: New York Yankees, Toronto Blue Jays

ALCS: Boston Red Sox def. Kansas City Royals

The Cubs have the horses, and they've always had money to burn, it's just that they haven't been able to attract the top-tier free agents to give the money to. Good omens are aplenty: Jake Arrieta looks sharp this spring after throwing a troubling number of high-leverage innings last year, Jon Lester is practicing his pickoff moves, and the Cubs haven't even given up the farm yet. In suspenseful stories, victory often comes with sacrifice, and in the story where the Cubs win the World Series, it costs them more than Jorge Soler—it probably costs Javier Baez, who might just be the best player of the posse. Losing Baez will hurt, though it may be unavoidable. For a championship, the Cubs would be willing to sell even more.

The 2016 World Series will be a slugfest. Once a team of destiny themselves, the Red Sox can't overcome the Cubs' momentum. Their veteran players look old up against Chicago's youngsters. David Price flirts with a no-no in Game 1, but Bogaerts makes an error that looks eerily similar to the one Alex Gonzalez had for the Cubs in the Bartman game. Boston never recovers. Kyle Schwarber mashes many home runs.

2016 World Champion: Chicago Cubs

MVP: Kyle Schwarber