Day 3 pick: Texas over 82.5
I felt pretty good about my picks the first two days. Now we enter some shaky territory. The range of the numbers from top to bottom have started to compact the last few years. Two seasons ago the Yankees' number was an absurd 101.5 to lead the way. Now they're at 96.5. Conversely, at the bottom of the AL are the Royals and Devil Rays at 67, a number neither reached last season.

So what you end up with is a lot of teams bunched together in the middle at numbers that are hard to pin down. The success of one of those teams in the middle will probably come at the detriment of another. The Rangers are one of those teams. I'm going a little with my gut and a little with superstition at taking Texas over 82.5

Whatever it is that Sammy Sosa has found (fountain of youth, wink-wink), it's working and will likely work out well for Texas. He's hitting .409 with four HRs this spring and gets thrown into the mix with Mark Texeira and Michael Young. Texas also brought in Frank Catalanotto to play left field, a player that always impressed me when he played the Yankees with Toronto. They're taking a chance with Kenny Lofton at leadoff, but a lot of teams have been taking that chance for the last five years and it has yet to really blow up in their face. I'll keep my fingers crossed that the next stop is the one where Lofton finally falls apart and plays his age. The pitching staff is not anything to write home about, but even when Texas was winning division titles in the late '90s it wasn't. And Brandon McCarthy, who was acquired from the White Sox, could be a winner.

That's what my gut tells me. My superstitious side tells me that teams do very well the year after they dump Buck Showalter (the Yankees in '96 and D'backs in '01 won the World Series). I'm not expecting a World Series title in Arlington, probably not even a playoff appearance, but a five-game improvement to 85 wins doesn't seem out of the question. On a non-superstitious note concerning the manager, I wouldn't be surprised if the team responds well, at least for a year or two, under a less-stringent Ron Washington than it did under Showalter's notorious iron fist.

THE PICKS
Monday: T.J. picks Minnesota over 83.5; Steve picks Arizona over 77.5
Tuesday: T.J. picks Kansas City under 67; Steve picks Atlanta over 80.5
Wednesday: T.J. picks Texas over 82.5; Steve picks ?????
Thursday: T.J. picks ?????; Steve picks ?????
Friday: T.J. picks ?????; Steve picks ?????