Guaranteeing Dodgers’ victory: Mets are the team to beat!

This could get me fired. I have always been encouraged to bring a strong point of view to my posts, but that’s very different from actually influencing winners and losers.

Now, possibly you’ve heard that newspapers are going the way of rabbit ears on TVs, and jobs in journalism are increasingly difficult to find. Far be it from me to jeopardize my budding career.

But let’s face it, the jig is up. I’ve been had, my powers naked to all.

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Before spring training camp opened, I wrote that the Padres were the team to beat. Is a review really necessary? They were never a factor, never led the division by themselves, fired manager Bud Black in June and finished 18 games back of the Dodgers.

Hey, I said they were the team to beat and that’s exactly what the Dodgers did. A little appreciation here.

Then as the non-waiver trading deadline approached, I cleverly declared the Giants the team to beat. They had just won 11 of their last 12 to pull within a half-game of the Dodgers. After that post they lost six of eight and were never heard from again.

I don’t understand it either, but it’s foolish to argue the facts. Maybe I was bitten by a radioactive spider or hit by invisible gamma rays, but power is power.

The Dodgers recognized this a long time ago. One Dodgers executive would constantly beg me to write the team off every time they lost a couple in a row, keenly aware of my magical reverse powers.

Uncertain exactly how much pixie dust my fingers held at the laptop, I would always shrug him off and cautioned him to save those bullets for when it really mattered.

So here we are, on the eve of the postseason, and I’m here to tell you -- the Mets are absolutely the team to beat.

I would think this obvious. They were a nobody early on, the poster child for mediocrity. But after starting 41-41, they finished 49-31. They have three of the best young arms in baseball, Yoenis Cespedes may have been the National League’s best player the last two months, and you can just assume their bullpen is better.

Meanwhile, Adrian Gonzalez has had a bad back, Yasmani Grandal a bad shoulder, Justin Turner a bad knee, Scott Van Slyke a bad wrist, Joc Pederson a bad swing, and I’m pretty sure everyone else a bad hamstring.

Mets in four.

And my civic duty is done.

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