E.K. NATION

NATIONAL LEAGUE DIVISION CHAMPS:

AMERICAN LEAGUE DIVISION CHAMPS:

WILD CARDS:

NATIONAL LEAGUE CHAMPIONSHIP:

def.

AMERICAN LEAGUE CHAMPIONSHIP:

def.

2006 WORLD SERIES:

defeat

We will note that our pick of the Giants to win the weak N.L. West is not particularly predicated on a healthy return by Barry Bonds. The Giants have the best rotation in the division, and a full season of Randy Winn, who stunned everyone by hitting a boatload of homers in his two months with the team. And we are very anxious to see Matt Cain over a full season.

We're back to picking the Atlanta Braves to win the N.L. East. As long as we have this blog, the Braves will be the pick in this division every year until they finally finish somewhere other than first. We learned our lesson.

St. Louis is pretty much a lock to win the Central. They'll win 105 games this year. They're just way too loaded. And until the Astros show us that they are not solid, they're the pick for the wild card.

The defending world champion White Sox (a phrase it took over eight decades to return to the lexicon) should prevail in the A.L. Central. But we're picking Cleveland to be the wild card and advance to the ALCS instead of them, if only because anything can happen in a compact and quick five-game series. Hey, this ain't rocket science.

Toronto looks strong on paper, what with all their new acquisitions, but it just seems to trendy and right to be true. It's not often that a team with so many solid acquisitions over one off-season pulls it together and wins something. So we're simply going to go with the standby pick of the established New York Yankee Franchise.

The A.L. West is a real toss-up. Only Seattle doesn't have what it takes to win it. It will be a three-way dogfight all year. Stopping us from picking Texas is our pick of them last year. And repeating is difficult, so we're going with Oakland.

In the end, it's the Cardinals over the Yankees in the World Series. Then again, it could be the White Sox and Cubs. We don't know anything and we are very careful to let you know about that.