We’ve had one full day of baseball and I’ve seen enough to know who will be making the postseason. I considered making this a probabilities thing where I say the Phillies have a 95% chance to win the division and the Braves have a 5% chance, but where’s the fun in that. So without further ado, my picks for the 2010 playoffs:

• NL East: Philadelphia Phillies
• NL Central: St. Louis Cardinals
• NL West: Colorado Rockies
• NL WC: Atlanta Braves

As you can see, in the NL I’ve ruffled no feathers. The Rockies are becoming the trendy pick over the Dodgers by analysts. I honestly have thought all offseason that the Dodgers could find it difficult to win 85 games, much less the division. The Diamondbacks are not entirely dismissable in that division, despite having some weaknesses. The Giants need to do something about that Brokeback Offense. Adding Aubrey Huff and Mark DeRosa does not qualify as “doing something.”

Everybody and their mom has the Cardinals winning the NL Central, so my pick there isn’t surprising. What probably would surprise you is that if I broke it down by percentages, I think the Cards have maybe a 40% chance to win the division. I like the Brewers a lot more than the rest of the baseball world and have them barely trailing with a 35% chance to take the cake. The rest of the odds are split between the Cubs and Reds.

Occasionally people come up to me and ask, are you worried about the Braves? And in all honesty I am not. I think both the Phillies and Braves are teams capable of putting up 90+ wins and I think that more than guarantees them playoff berths. In my eyes, these two clubs are the class of the NL in 2010 so the disadvantage of facing the “better” playoff team in the NLDS is rather unintimidating.

AL after the break:

• AL East: Tampa Bay Rays
• AL Central: Minnesota Twins
• AL West: Texas Rangers
• AL WC: Boston Red Sox

The AL is a hard league to predict this year. With the NL, I’m confident that 3/4 of my slate will get in or I’ll be able to point to catastrophic injuries as an excuse. I have the potential to miss every pick here in the AL (although one of Tampa/Boston should at least secure a WC berth).

I’ll start with the easy explanations. Much like the Rockies, the Rangers have become the chic pick to win the West. And much like the Rockies, all the analysts that are switching their picks now are really taking the wind out of my sails in regards to the boldness of my selections. I’m unimpressed by the mediocrity of the other AL West teams.

The AL Central kind of resembles the NL Central for me, the difference being that everybody in the world knows that the AL Central has no king. I have the Twins despite Joe Nathan’s magical exploding elbow because I’m expecting a huge year from Francisco Liriano, whose velocity and invisible slider have finally returned to him. I think they have the most well rounded and deepest roster in the division. I can see the White Sox extraordinarily pitching heavy roster remaining competitive for awhile, but I think the Tigers, Indians, and Royals will be nothing more than also-rans.

And now the tough one to justify, the AL East. At the heart of this prediction is a set of probabilities that really contains no separation. I think the split of odds for Yankees/Red Sox/Rays looks something like 36/32/32. So you’ll notice I have the Yankees with the highest odds of winning the division (barely), yet I don’t have them making the playoffs. Odd right? If you look at the Sox and Rays and compare them to the Yankees you’ll notice two things. They aren’t quite as talented as the Bombers, and they are soooooooo much deeper. The Rays in particular are stacked with depth. When nothing really separates 3 teams, I fall back on depth as the tie breaker. The Yankees have an old roster and not much waiting to pick up the slack. A couple key injuries will leave them out of the playoffs or forced to ship off their Jesus Montero’s for game changing replacements. So that leaves me picking the Rays and Red Sox to battle it out for two playoff spots.

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