At the beginning of the year, the Toaster staff foolishly tried to predict the standings in all six divisions as well as the postseason winners.

With two months to go in to the season, I thought I would give a progress report to show how everybody was doing.

To rank everyone's predictions what I did was compare the prediction to the actual standings and then score a point for each rank that the person was off by. Then I squared that because somebody with more math skills than me said the sum of the squares was a better predictor of success. Something about multiple regression theory. So if I were a really fancy guy, I would have popped this into a spreadsheet and spit out the answers. But I'm not so I used a pen and paper.

There are a couple of ties. Most noticeably, the Yankees and Red Sox are tied for first in the AL East. So for that division, I gave everybody a zero (i.e., getting it right) if they put either team in first or second. In fact, everybody but Ken put the Yankees and Boston in the 1 and 2 slots in some order. But I made Ken's guess of Boston finishing third as being off by 2, instead of 1.

Also, the Giants and Rockies are tied for fourth in the NL West. All but two of us, Scott and Mark, picked, the Rockies fifth and all those people got charged 1 point. Again, I'm keeping score, if you don't like it, you will have to keep score yourself.

Only one person has correctly tabbed all the teams in a division correctly. And it's Mark Donohue. And he did it two times: in the AL East and the NL East. Mark has the Yankees as his #1 team and Boston as the wildcard.

There are two teams that have really messed up everybody's scores: Detroit, whom most people picked for fifth (except Ken who picked them first and Cliff in third) and Cincinnati, who was chosen to finish sixth or fifth.

But on to the scores, remember no wagering! And like golf, low score wins.

1. Carminati, 49
2. Arneson, 50
3. Smart, 53
4. Corcoran, 55
5T. Weisman, 57
5T. Donohue, 57
7. Siegrist, 59
8. Timmermann, 63
9. Long, 70
10. Belth, 71