John Ryan, a first time player from Amsterdam, Netherlands, has won the 2002 Baseball Predictions by 14 points over Tristan Cockcroft of CBSSportline.com. John was 2nd at the All-Star Break. He first took the lead on June 14th and held the lead for much of the time through mid-July. John took the lead for good on September 12th and built a commanding 30 point lead with just four days to play before coasting home.

There were twelve different leaders this year, up from seven in 2001, and 22 lead changes. The San Francisco Chronicle (30) was the leader when the standings where first computed in early May. Other leaders in the early going included Al Manzey (32), Dirk Soeterik (49) Gordon Edes (31), Warren Morris (27) and Darren Dawson (93). Brandon Funston (8) took the lead in early June and was the leader at the All-Star Break. Peter Gammons (6), Russ Shinabarger (9), Tristan Cockcroft (2) and Martin Visser (4) all traded the lead through the Summer until John Ryan moved back into the mix in September. The standings were computed 88 times this year. John Ryan led 36 times while Russ Shinabarger and Martin Visser each led 14 times.

Division Leaders: Below is a list of the top picks in each division. There were 94 correct division scores this season, including 74 in the AL East and thirteen in the AL West. Ten players managed to get two divisions correct while John Ryan (1), Rick Mize (3), Atticus Ryan (7) and Russ Shinabarger (9) made the list three times.

AL East			AL Central			AL West			NL East			NL Central			NL West
John Ryan	0		Ken Daley	0		Easy Freeman	0		Joe Sheehan	8		Mike Kern	11		Rick Mize	0
Rick Mize	0		Russ Shinabarger	0		Ken Daley	12		John Ryan	15		John Ryan	22		Colin McGee	0
Martin Visser	0		Colin McGee	0		Atticus Ryan	12		Rick Mize	15		Peter Gammons	22		Athlon Sports	0
Peter Gammons	0		Blake Vasquez	0		Colin McGee	12		Martin Visser	15		Warren Morris	22		Randy Youngman	0
Atticus Ryan	0		Charlie McCarthy	0		Robert Kuwada	12		Peter Gammons	15		Gordon Edes	22		Lindy's	0
Russ Shinabarger	0		John Sickels	0		Phil Rogers	12		Atticus Ryan	15		Stacy Rice	22		Stacy Rice	0
Robert Kuwada	0		Martin Visser	13		Phil Hensley	12		Russ Shinabarger	15		Dirk Soeterik	22		Eric Karabell	0
Jason Stark	0		Jason Stark	13		Eric Karabell	12		Jason Stark	15		Stacy Borah	22		Lucy Hay	0
Athlon Sports	0		Phil Rogers	13		Charles Kovac	12		Athlon Sports	15		SF Examiner	22		Bob McMeen	0
Blake Vasquez	0		SF Chronicle	13		SF Examiner	12		Lindy's	15		Doug Dickson	22		Darren Dawson	0
Randy Youngman	0		Gordon Edes	13		Ron Mize	12		Stacy Rice	15		Joe Sheehan	22		Steve Mann	0
Gordon Edes	0		Greg Skruch	13		Charlie McCarthy	12		& 54 others tied @	15		Jacob Flowers	26		Chris Mauro	0
Lindy's	0		8 tied @	14		John Baker	12					Phil Hensley	33		Street & Smith	0
Stacy Rice	0					Jordan Frank	12					Jim A. Slagle	33		13 tied @	5
Stacy Borah	0					Al Finlay	12
Lucy Hay	0					Ben Silverman	12
Steve Mann	0
& 57 others tied @	0		42 tied @	54		59 tied @	62		44 tied @	53		44 tied @	44		14 tied @	40

Tie breaker: The TB represents the points accumulated by each player's six projected division winners. Eric Mack (14) and Steven Richard (158) picked all six division winners and had a perfect tie breaker. Ken Daley (5) and Phil Rogers (23) both missed on the Giants and had a tie breaker of 2.5 points. Tim Moore (148) missed on all six of his projected division winners and had a high tie breaker of 116.0 points, but there is more to this game than picking winners as Tim finished with 32 points less than Steven and finished ten placed ahead of him.

Keys: The keys represent a code for each of the teams that were important to our success (or failure) this year. Caps represent good keys which helped to lower our score while lower case represent bad keys which increased our score.

The most important keys this year were Texas last in the AL West, valued at 42 points, Atlanta (38) 1st in the NL East, Colorado and San Diego (38) 4th or 5th in the NL West and Minnesota (27) 1st in the AL Central. Oakland (8) was also a factor but contributed less than ten points. Fourty-one players had both Texas and Atlanta correct, including nineteen on the top twenty-one finishers.

Cum Stats: Last year's winner, Sean McAdam (25), columnist for the Providence Journal and ESPN is the new CumStats leader with a three average of 5.8% and an 11.2% lead over Robert Kuwada (18), columnist for the Orange County Register. They moved ahead of last year's leader, Gordon Edes (31). Gerry Hamilton (82) retained the lead for veteran players with a 2.8% lead over Dudley Michael (160). There are 125 active players and 56 inactive players in the CumStat pages.

Best Prior: The last two columns of the final standings represent the best finish for each player through 2000. This is a weighted value. For example, it is better to finish 20th against over 200 players than to finish 10th against less than 100 players. There were eleven past winners in this year's game. Bob Thomas (15t/W82) was the highest finisher among those players. Winners of the last 27 games can be found on on the Prior Winners page.

Trivia: This year, our 43rd, marked the the first time that all six Slagles competed together. Nelson (47pl/43yrs) and his father, Gene (111/22), were both in the game when it started in 1955. Nelson's brothers Jim W. (81/30) and John (66t/21), both joined in 1966 and his sons, Jim A. (66t/18) and Jerry (102/16), both joined in 1980. Each has played for at least 16 years but this is the first time that they have all played in the same game.

This year there were thirteen father/son combinations. The fathers won seven out of thirteen. Nelson Slagle (47) and Al Julian both were 2-0 while Gene Slagle went 0-3. There were three husband/wife combinations and the wives won two of three.

There are five columnists from the Orange County Register in this year's game. Four of them, Cheryl Rosenberg Neubert (13), Steve Bisheff (17), Robert Kuwada (18) and Randy Youngman (28) finished in the top 28.

Credits/Kudos: I'd like to offer my thanks to those who contributed to this year's game. Randy Lang (44) with 20 submittals and Nelson Slagle (47) with 19 submittals were the top contributors. The following are some of the others who also contributed to this year's game:

And finally I would like to thank those that supported the game this year so consistently, especially Al F, Al J, Atticus, Mark, Jerry, John, Nelson and Tom. Your continued support, especially when I was on the last page, makes it all worthwhile and a lot more fun. Until next Spring.....

ggh 8oct