Ask him, not me.
I can't, he left the building...
Anyways as far as predictions for JTZ's original Q, here's a post from a little over two years ago
So, the biggest story of the baseball off-season so far is that the Cubs hired Joe Maddon. This is especially significant because it means that they believe they are playoff bound this year (and they expect to make it for the next five years), so a coach with experience getting to the playoffs and managing there makes a huge difference.
You heard it here first but when they start doing well in 2015 there will be much talk about Back to the Future 2 predicting that the Cubs win the World Series in 2015. Too bad the Marlins are in the National League and not much better than a 500 team - cause they're supposed to beat Miami in 5.
Not saying that it would be easy to go from winning 73 to playoffs but apparently others are: http://espn.go.com/chicago/mlb/story/_/id/11817495/chicago-cubs-become-popular-world-series-pick-hiring-joe-maddon
Next move hopefully will be signing Jon Lester...
This would be year 3 in a row of making playoffs out of 5-7 straight. As far as what happens after playoffs start - in baseball - it's almost impossible to predict. I'm sure I'll be wrong about the other playoff teams since in general baseball is very hard to predict but I'd guess Red Sox, Indians, Astros with Seattle and Texas winning WC in AL and Washington, Cubs, Dodgers with Mets and Giants WC in NL. My 5 NL teams are all the same as last year, but the next closest team would be the Cardinals and I don't think they'll be better than the Mets or Giants...
