UPDATE: I knew this was going to happen, I am changing a couple of picks. I moved the Dodgers from Wild Card to NL West Champs, and the Braves from out of playoffs to NL Wild Card and NLCS losers.
From now until opening day, each front page writer will be writing their pre-season predictions. At the end of the year we will see which writer got the most correct picks! I will be posting a prediction open thread soon, so please do not use this as one. Here are last year's picks.
Here are my picks for 2011:
AL East Winner: Boston Red Sox (sigh)
AL Central Winner: Chicago White Sox
AL West Winner: Oakland Athletics
AL Wild Card: New York Yankees
NL East Winner: Philadelphia Phillies (sigh)
NL Central Winner: Cincinnati Reds
NL West Winner: Los Angeles Dodgers
ALCS: New York Yankees over Oakland Athletics in 6
NLCS: Los Angeles Dodgers over Atlanta Braves in 6
World Series: Los Angeles Dodgers over New York Yankees in 6
World Series MVP: Andre Ethier
AL MVP: Alex Rodriguez
NL MVP: Albert Pujols (Normally I don't pick players from teams that I don't pick to make the playoffs, but I think Pujols will have too good of a season to vote for anyone else and the teams I picked to make the playoffs will be more team-oriented than based on a single player.)
AL Cy Young: Felix Hernandez
NL Cy Young: Clayton Kershaw
AL Rookie of the Year: Jeremy Hellickson
NL Rookie of the Year: Freddie Freeman
AL Manager of the Year: Bob Geren
NL Manager of the Year: Brad Mills (Astros play competitive baseball)
AL Breakout Player: J.P. Arencibia
NL Breakout Player: Chris Johnson
AL Disappointment: Josh Beckett
NL Disappointment: Chris Carpenter
Yankees Surprise Player (does better than expected): Ivan Nova (Decided between him, Granderson, Martin, and Robertson)
Yankees Disappointing Player: Eric Chavez/Boone Logan (to a lesser extent Jorge Posada)
Bold Predictions: The Rockies are not in playoff contention by mid-August, Javier Vazquez returns to Atlanta form, Astros are competitive, Cardinals are not, Rangers come in 3rd in AL West.