{"id":1916,"date":"2012-03-22T08:22:55","date_gmt":"2012-03-22T12:22:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ceetar.com\/optimisticmetsfan\/?p=1916"},"modified":"2012-03-22T09:23:03","modified_gmt":"2012-03-22T13:23:03","slug":"2012-nl-east-a-race-down-to-the-wire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.ceetar.com\/optimisticmetsfan\/2012\/03\/22\/2012-nl-east-a-race-down-to-the-wire\/","title":{"rendered":"2012 NL East: A Race Down to the Wire"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Phillies and Braves got worse, and the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ceetar.com\/optimisticmetsfan\/2012\/02\/22\/will-the-mets-be-better-than-2011\/\" target=\"_blank\">Mets<\/a>, Nationals and Marlins got better. \u00a0This season the NL East could finish with the first place team being less than 15 games ahead of the last place team. \u00a0Last year the Marlins finished 30 games behind the Phillies.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The top of the division shapes up to win a few less games, and the bottom of the division will win a few more. \u00a0This will bridge the gap between them and bunch everyone up in the middle. \u00a0 Injuries and other things can affect this of course, but the Mets and the Marlins figure to be falling in the middle somewhere. \u00a0 \u00a0Maybe there&#8217;s some doubt that some of the bottom teams can win the division or that the Phillies will finish last, but it&#8217;s definitely going to be a tighter race this season.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>These teams play each other in half the season&#8217;s games. \u00a0The head to head matchups are going to play a huge role in determining who wins the division this year. \u00a0The margin of error this year may be that much less that a good record against teams within the division make up the different between winning and falling short. \u00a0Even just an 11-7 record against the Phillies would make up four games in the standings. \u00a0If I&#8217;m right about the division being bunched up, it&#8217;s really going to intensify the rivalries between some of these teams. \u00a0That can only be a good thing that leads to teams setting up their rotations so we get more pitching duel matchups. \u00a0All five teams will go into September with a lot of games to play against each, meaning most of the NL East teams may still control their own destiny in terms of making the playoffs.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s going to be a fun season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Phillies and Braves got worse, and the Mets, Nationals and Marlins got better. \u00a0This season the NL East could finish with the first place team being less than 15 games ahead of the last place team. \u00a0Last year the Marlins finished 30 games behind the Phillies. &nbsp; The top of the division shapes up &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ceetar.com\/optimisticmetsfan\/2012\/03\/22\/2012-nl-east-a-race-down-to-the-wire\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;2012 NL East: A Race Down to the Wire&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1248,19,3,2152,1732],"tags":[1400,2552,2554,2556,2555,1926,2964,14,190,2553],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ceetar.com\/optimisticmetsfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1916"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ceetar.com\/optimisticmetsfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ceetar.com\/optimisticmetsfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ceetar.com\/optimisticmetsfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ceetar.com\/optimisticmetsfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1916"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/www.ceetar.com\/optimisticmetsfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1916\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1927,"href":"http:\/\/www.ceetar.com\/optimisticmetsfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1916\/revisions\/1927"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ceetar.com\/optimisticmetsfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ceetar.com\/optimisticmetsfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ceetar.com\/optimisticmetsfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}