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March 27th: The game is on, again. When last I left you in October, I admitted to having, once again, hit the wall and I was looking for someone to step up take the reigns of the Annual Baseball Predictions. Within a couple of weeks there were two offers. Josh Sinnett of Bellingham, WA and Chris Smith of Fort Worth, TX both expressed an interest in taking the game. Chris explained that his plate was full at the time but when he had caught up he would get back to me. I turned to Josh and in February we gave Josh access to the UnitedLeagues website and added him to the distribution of the E-mail Form page and we were up and running. Also at about that time I began to prepare a set of Operating Instructions for Josh. I trust that he is studying hard now. In any event I will stay with this until Josh is ready step up.

On March 19th the invitations went out to about 190 current and former participants and the first player predictions started rolling in. As of this writing we have received 46 sets of predictions.

April 3rd: This morning a reminder went out to about 120 current and former participants. We currently have 89 sets of predictions, including six this morning and six new players. Last year we received exactly 100 sets of predictions in the last two days so we'll probably be fairly close to 200 participants. Keep those cards and letters (and e-mails) comin'.

April 8th: The e-mail form page has been closed as of this date and we will go forward with 190 predictors including 15 new predictors. Work on the Consensus will begin now and we plan to up and running about April 30th.

April 18th: The Player Consensus has been uploaded. This year's consensus includes 186 players. Detroit in the AL Central is projected as a near unanimous pick to win the division, while two other teams, the Yankees in the AL East and the Phillies in the NL East are projected as easy winners in their respective divisions. The Angels and Giants are also projected as division winners while the Cardinals are a very narrow choice over the Reds in the NL Central.

Two divisions, The AL West and the NL Central are projected to have big gaps between the first and second divisions while the AL Central appears to be wide open behind the Tigers.

The American league representative, either the Angels, the Tigers or the Yankees are projected as the World Champion, over the Phillies from the National League. That would seem to reflect\ the fact the two of the senior circuit's top sluggers have defected to the American League this year.