I think I was misquoted! . Lol. But if you asked me today, I would still lean at the very most to .500 ball. I wasn't as worried about Sano at third as some, and I admit Polanco has exceeded expectations. I still don't think he would be my MLB SS, but he is not as bad as I thought he would be. And I think he will be a much better hitter than Dozier, sans the solo HR's. The OF, as long as they stick to the big 3 is as expected. The caveat was whether Molitor could resist sticking RG in the OF somewhere daily. The injury helped make that decision. But it's the pitching that confounds me. I know it is covered up by offense, but Jeez Louise that's a bad staff. The defense helps, but this pitching staff alone should guarantee a sub .500 season. The position players are ready to move up a notch, now they need the mound to pitch in.

Hmmmmm. There is one predictors name noticeably absent? That said the math was excellent.

I looked through the article and found that I didn't make a prediction. And it's a little late now. I think I was optomistically thinking upper 70s but I'm old and can't remember that far back.

I believe my final prediction was 71 wins, but obviously I was wrong either way. Anytime you're trying to figure out how six months of baseball is going to unfold, you're basically throwing darts.

I don't wanna take anything away from Brandon, who made some excellent points/observations. He was dead on about Jason Castro. But he wrote that piece in January. A couple reasons he provides optimism for the pitching were Phil Hughes and Trevor May. He also foretasted possible contributions from Stephen Gonsalves, Kohl Stewart and Fernando Romero. What I'm trying to say is that even those who predicted 80+ wins had insufficient information to work with at that point. But that's part of what makes predictions fun.

Part of what I was forecasting included a mid-summer fire sale. I thought if this club got off to a slow start, the Falvine regime would take the opportunity to really put their stamp on the org by trading Dozier, Ervin and firing Molitor. I figured the aftermath of that kind of shakeup would've been a really ugly second half. 

Again, I've already been proven wrong, but the Twins are at 74 wins as of today. Yes, I'd assume they'll be able to win at least six of their final 19 games to get to 80 wins, but I wouldn't count any chickens before they hatch. Baseball is weird. Even the mighty Dodgers have only won four of their last 20 games. 

I suppose I could really be stubborn and insist that my 70-75 wins prediction is still in play, but even I know that is unlikely.

The progress of the offense has been delightful and the defense has been awesome. I've seldom been so pleased to be wrong (a distant second to that woman I thought would never go out with me).

Give this offense and this defense some pitching and post-season play would be almost unstoppable.

That assumes, of course, no significant injuries next year.

Each April I send an email to my friends predicting the mlb standings for each division, wild card winners, award winners etc. (The highlight? Two years ago I got every playoff team in the AL wrong and 2/5 in the NL wrong. I picked three teams from the AL West to make the playoffs; all three missed it and the other two made it).

In this, I'm known for being wildly optimistic about the Twins chances every year. This year I predicted that they would finish a game under .500. Even at my most optimistic I didn't see this coming.