Doubleswitch.com - 2005 AL Preview

2006 Season Previews

Hi! Thanks for visiting my website. In the past I have put a lot of time and effort into preseason previews, but this year decided not to do that again. Still, the site needs something; with the start of the new baseball season on hand, and approaching faster than I can write, I have finally posted some reviews and previews for this season and last - and everything else that has to do with the wonderful game of baseball.

Thanks for reading, and enjoy the upcoming summer.

It was a roller-coaster season, but most teams would have been happy with it. The Yankees in 2005 had a miserable winter, spending tens of millions of dollars on players who turned out to be crap. In the cases of Tony Womack and Jaret Wright, you, me, our grandmothers and just about everyone else knew they were terrible signings, and they were.

Then came the 11-19 start. But they persevered, thanks to talent, luck and more talent. Alex Rodriguez often gets criticized by people who think that talent is overrated, but from mid-April to the end of September he was an unstoppable force. The Yankees' playoff drive was aided by a summer as brilliant as the winter was awful, filling up one rotation spot with Aaron Small and then another with Shawn Chacon.

Which leads us to the inescapable conclusion that either George Steinbrenner or Brian Cashman needs to grow a goatee; as we all learned for the "Good Spock/Bad Spock" episode of Star Trek, a goatee is the most effective way to tell good from bad. Someone was responsible for those awful winter moves, and someone was responsible for those great summer moves; but with the Yankees, it is difficult to tell where Cashman's decisions stop and Steinbrenner's begin.

The past two seasons, the Yankees have done a remarkable job of offending Yankee tradition, and it's a little difficult to understand why. In 2004, they chose to start the season without a left-handed starter, despite playing in a stadium that is built for left-handers, and despite a rich tradition of great left-handers. They won 100 games, but booted the ALCS and made a desperate trade for Randy Johnson after the season.

The Yankees also have a rich tradition of great centre fielders. Bernie Williams is one of them, but he's old and slow and can't throw or hit; nevertheless, they traded Kenny Lofton before the season, and ended up with the worst centrefielders in the game. They even started Tony Womack 17 times in centre. They won 95 games but punted the ALDS, and then forked over $52 million to Johnny Damon.

The Damon signing should make the Yankees a lot better in 2006; God knows they need someone who can actually cover Yankee Stadium's huge centre field. I still see Damon following the Willie Davis career path, which means he should be good for the length of this contract and then will fall off the map.

I've been working in a corporate environment for six years now; it is a curious place, where how you do something seems to matter far more than whether you actually do it well. The mentality seems strange at first, but you get used to it, especially when you realize how widespread it is...

The Red Sox' bullpen in 2005 had a 5.15 ERA, the worst in the American League. They were 9th in saves and 9th in save percentage, numbers that don't look as bad but still aren't good.

In 2003, the Sox bullpen had a 4.83 ERA, 12th in the league. They were 8th in saves and 10th in save percentage, numbers that again don't look as bad but still aren't good.

The year in the middle, they were pretty good by any measure.

Despite almost identical outcomes, the 2003 bullpen was widely touted as an example of managerial incompetence, or what happens when the statisticians take over the asylum. The latter was just bad luck, in the form of a 32-year-old knee that went kaboing.

When a team tries something considered to be going against the grain (or in modern parlance, balle de l'argent), whether it's a bullpen-by-committee or a four-man rotation or a left-handed catcher or whatever, the critics tend to view failure as proof that the strategy doesn't work. It's a one-shot deal - succeed, or else.

What they forget is that failure is the natural state of things; bullpens fail under all kinds of circumstances, and pitchers get hurt, everywhere and all the time, and not just on three days' rest. It is a cliche in baseball that the best hitters fail 70% of the time, or that the best teams lose 40% of the time. But both statements are true, and it's amazing that in a sport where failure is a norm, a single failure can forever banish a new idea to the dustbin.

Before Cal Ripken, a power-hitting shortstop was moved to another position as soon as he had one off-year. Five-tool athletes were often denigrated until the Royals Baseball Academy proved that they could play; weightlifting was ridiculed until the late 1970's Angels proved that you could be both buffed and good. Nobody wants to think about what might have happened had Jackie Robinson hit .230 in his first year in the majors.

As for Boston... there seems to be a consensus that they didn't have a particularly good winter. I didn't mind their moves at all, though I confess that I have a sneaking suspicion that Theo Epstein and Larry Lucchino are baseball's version of Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling. But they just traded Bronson Arrojo for Wily Mo Pena, so maybe they really are the 'smartest guys in the room', no fooling.

The Jays enter the season needing to make up 15 games on either Boston or New York. The good news is that last year they made up 15 games on Boston; the bad news is that the next 15 will be a lot tougher. Most of last years' gains were a result of both teams gravitating towards the middle; the Jays couldn't have lost 95 games again if they had tried, while even a team like Boston isn't going to win 98 games every year.

I live in Toronto, and this is my team. The Jays had the most aggressive off-season of any team in baseball, and I should be excited about this upcoming season except that I didn't like half their moves. I like having Burnett, Overbay and Molina; the Ryan signing and Glaus deal were unnecessary and a little desperate. A team that is in solid position to contend in 2007 is going to try to arrive a year early; good luck to 'em.

If you listen to classical music, then you've probably heard Bach's Goldberg Variations, or Beethoven's Diabelli Variations, or Rachmaninoff's Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini. In Toronto, we have the Ricciardi Variations, or 25 Players based on a Theme by J.P. Ricciardi. Entering his fifth season as the team's GM, Ricciardi has displayed a predeliction for acquiring players who are a variation on the player they are replacing.

They replaced Ken Huckaby with Greg Myers in 2003, and when Myers was hurt in 2005, replaced him with Ken Huckaby. During their disastrous 2004 season, the Jays carried four identical players on their roster - Chris Gomez, Chris Woodward, Dave Berg and Frank Menechino. Last year they replaced Gomez with John McDonald and Woodward with Russ Adams and Berg with Shea Hillenbrand - the latter may be an improved variation on the others but is still just a variation.

Likewise, Lyle Overbay may be an improved version of Eric Hinske, but is just another variation on the same player. Criticized for signing Corey Koskie, an injury-prone, power-hitting third baseman, Ricciardi traded Koskie and traded for another injury-prone, power-hitting third baseman, Troy Glaus. This year they will start Aaron Hill, a young player in the Adams/Woodward/Gomez/Berg/Hillenbrand model; with luck he will be better than those guys but is still just a variation on them.

Even after losing 95 games in 2004, Ricciardi resisted the urge to shake things up a bit and has continued with new variations, or in some cases old ones. As noted, there ARE some improvements happening here, but they are small and incremental; you can only get so far by trying to replace Chris Gomez with a better version of Chris Gomez or trying to replace Corey Koskie with a better version of Corey Koskie.

I'll still be rooting for them, and if their pitching is healthy they will win some games. But I still see 85 wins as a ceiling for this team; at some point, you have to stop toying with variations and write the 9th Symphony.

In baseball, we obviously spend much time discussing greatness, not just among players but also managers and, more recently, general managers. For players, we can quantify greatness; for managers it is a little more difficult, and people like me are skeptical about how much of a difference even a great a manager can make.

I suspect that GMs are a lot like mutual fund managers, in that it's really hard to separate yourself from the crowd. Even the sharpest, hardest-working mutual fund managers have a hard time beating the market on a regular basis because the whole goddamned thing is so random and unpredictable. Each year, some manager buys into a hot market, makes a huge amount of money, wins a bunch of awards... and then you never hear from them again.

But while greatness is elusive, incompetence is easy. You can lose a lot of money by placing it in the hands of a manager who is incompetent. Quite often, if you can just find someone who is competent - who understands risk and diversification, and who doesn't charge outrageous fees - then you'll probably be better off than hiring a 'superstar' manager.

The Rays have been in the league for eight years, and have lost at least 90 games every year. They have a pretty damned good chance of losing 90 games in 2006. And yet, they appear to be in a similar position to where the Brewers were a couple of years ago; they have a few useful players at the major league level, and loads of young talent in both the major and minor leagues.

They don't need to hire John Schuerholz or Billy Beane or the ghost of Branch Rickey to turn them into a good team; they just need someone competent in charge. The Brewers appear to have found the right mix in Doug Melvin, Gord Ash and Ned Yost, not household names but perfectly competent managers.

The Rays... well, they have a new owner and a new GM and new field manager and new team President and a new just-about-everything so I guess we'll see what happens. 2006 won't be their year; Delmon Young has yet to have an at bat in the majors and B.J. Upton needs a position and Rocco Baldelli needs to prove his knee is sound and Scott Kazmir needs to build up some innings and so on. But they should be real good in 2008, even with merely competent management at the helm.

A few years ago, the term "Voros' Law" made its way around the internet. It asserts that "Any major league hitter can hit just about anything in 60 at bats" and is of course named after noted sabermetrician dude Voros McCracken. At the time, the Law was invoked to explain Shane Spencer's Ruthian September in 1998 and Mike Bordick's Banksian April in 2000.

A funny thing happened on the way to the forum in 2005. The Orioles spent the first six weeks of the season in first place, while second baseman Brian Roberts turned into Rogers Hornsby at the plate. The obvious explanation for Roberts' amazing start to the season was Voros' Law; but Roberts credited his new contact lenses (apparently made from materials used on the space shuttle) for improving his eyesight. By June, the latter had become the standard explanation among the media.

Now, I should be careful; it would be easy to dump all over the contact lens theory, since Roberts returned back to his normal self in June. But it's easy to assume that something is true and then deceive yourself; Roberts suffered a shoulder injury in June, and it's always possible that the positive effects of the lenses were offset by the injury. We won't know for sure until more players start wearing space-age contact lenses.

That said, it is curious that a theory about contact lenses would gain credibility so fast, given that baseball is a conservative industry in which theories about everything else are quickly dismissed. I guess you could call it the "Shiny Object Syndrome", where a person who is usually dismissive of new ideas suddenly entranced or hyptonized by a shiny object. Space-age coloured contact lenses... so bright... so shiny...

(this is also true outside of baseball, of course; in the industry where I work, there is a widespread fascination with bright, shiny and somewhat useless new objects.)

Man, I hate the Orioles. It's nothing personal... well, OK, it is kinda personal, but I'm also underwhelmed with what they've done. Much has been made of the hiring of Leo Mazzone this winter, though I think it's fair to point out that Bruce Chen pitched a lot better for Ray Miller than he did for Mazzone the first time around. They replaced a great pitching coach with an even greater pitching coach, and didn't do much else - I'm skeptical about whether it will make much of a difference.

The Curse of Rocky Colavito doesn't have quite the same heft to it as the Curse of the Babe, but it will have to do. Baseball's two most famous 'cursed' teams have each won a championship the past two seasons, while the Cubs' troubles have nothing to do with the occult and are firmly rooted in the laws of physics. So for now, Rocky Colavito is baseball's biggest bugaboo.

The Indians now move into second place behind the Cubs in the futility department. They've got a long way to go before they're the Cubs, but still, 1948 was a long time ago. And though I don't care much for jumping on or off bandwagons, we may as well ask the question now: how can they screw this up? How can the Indians not win a championship this time around?

They're young; they have enormous talent. They failed in some pressure games last year, but that was last year and now they're a year older. They have pitching, hitting, defence; they have a good manager and a sharp young GM. The White Sox are due for a post-championship let-down and they're better than the rest of the division. The 2006 Yankees are decidely NOT the 1996 Yankees. How can they screw this up?

OK, shit happens, I've been watching baseball long enough to know that. They've managed to screw it up before; they won 114 games in 1954, then had a bad week and were swept in the World Series. They got a little unlucky when Herb Score was smacked in the eye, and perhaps a little unlucky when they wilted in the 1959 pennant race.

Then they traded 25-year-old Colavito; they also lost patience with Jim Perry and traded him for a bucket of nuts, then lost patience with Mudcat Grant and traded him for a bucket of bolts. They fell into the second division for three decades, then built a great team around Albert Belle and Manny Ramirez. A Renteria bloop and a Fernandez bobble spoiled that run; the sluggers left town, Yankeesaurus Rex evolved and now here we are.

GM Mark Shapiro has done a crackerjack job since he took over in 2001, trading his laundry for Travis Hafner, then convincing the Expos to throw Cliff Lee and Grady Sizemore into the Colon deal in return for a pack of Cuban cigars. This winter he traded 25-year-old outfielder Coco Crisp, which sounds like something that would FEED the Curse of Colavito, unless it's one of those pesky reverse-curses (but not a Johnny Pesky curse, which has already been reversed).

Both their ace starter and their closer face the risk of being harpooned each time they go swimming. They have some wonky elbows, plus they have a Boone on their roster and for some reason that disturbs me. But man oh man; here in Toronto, we're cautiously optimistic about the prospects of the home team, which has some nice assets. But the Indians are a reality check; THIS is the kind of team that I can easily get excited about.

I have no medical experience or training, and really have no business commenting on anything medical. But this is Doubleswitch.com, not the Journal of the American Medical Association, so here goes. This winter/spring, we heard a pair of stunning stories about two ex-Twins, Jeff Reardon and Kirby Puckett, and I'm curious about them.

I feel like I live in a bubble when it comes to mental illness. In university I had a roommate who had frequent panic attacks, and that was the first time I had ever heard of them. Since then, I've had a number of what?? moments from my own family, when during a phone conversation with my mother I learn that a relative is seeing a psychiatrist or taking medication or having panic attacks or something. And everyone else just seems to shrug and treat these developments as just one of those things.

As an epileptic, I take very seriously problems with the brain. But mental illness is a different animal; I still get a little freaked when people I'm close to admit to having problems but treat it like an overdue bill or squealing brakes (though I confess that I'm equally nonchalant when discussing epilepsy).

First was Jeff Reardon, who committed armed robbery, then turned himself over to police a few minutes afterwards. What was at first a bizarre story has now turned very sad; it now appears that Reardon has been struggling with depression ever since the death of one of his sons.

I'm writing this a few hours after Kirby Puckett's death... in the sports world, everything usually gets distilled into matters of black and white. When Kirby was playing, everyone loved him, you heard nothing but good things about him; people named their children after him. After he retired, we heard all sort of nasty things about his relationships with women, and the consensus seemed to turn on a dime, that he is a douchebag who pretended to be a great role model but was just a phony.

Or maybe neither is true. The combination of his dramatic changes in personality, coupled with his massive weight gain in recent years, probably should raise some questions about whether Kirby had been living with mental illness, and falls outside of the standard debate over who's a good role model and who isn't.

It remains to be seen how Reardon's case will play out; howver, I think it could be argued that how a society treats its mentally ill is perhaps the #1 indicator of how advanced it is. The main reasons we put people in jail are to protect society, and to deter other potential criminals; it seems that a jail sentence for Reardon would fail on both counts.

The Twins have been overshadowed a bit in the past year by the Indians and White Sox; but as much as I love Cleveland, the Twinkies worry me. They have the best pitcher in the league, a good start, and some other useful parts. If their young sluggers step up, they are certainly a threat, and not only is that 'possible' it may even be 'probable'.

I have a theory of the universe that involves the White Sox. Well, sort of. Anyways, have you seen the movie Lost in La Mancha? It's about Terry Gilliam's ill-fated attempt to make a movie of Don Quixote. He had some bad luck, but he also didn't try very hard. He chose to film near an Air Force base, and was constantly interrupted by the noise of the jets. He could have saved a lot of time and money by shucking the sound equipment and dubbing everything afterwards.

Fellini used to do that, and some other major directors of the past. The lips won't exactly match the words, but what the hell. In fact, I'm not sure why Gilliam was even shooting on location; he should have just shot the whole thing in a studio and used rear-projection screens or models for a backdrop, like Alfred Hitchcock. That would have saved a lot of time and money as well.

Of course, had he made a film with dubbed dialogue and rear-projection screens, he would have been laughed out of the theatre by audiences and his career would have ended. And meanwhile, we worship at the altar of Hitchcock and Fellini. Somehow, in the past 30 years, we've become obsessed with versimilitude in movies. Anything that looks 'fake' onscreen is immediately dismissed as a sign of incompetence by the director.

And over the same span, Hollywood movies have been going down the crapper. Filmmakers spend huge amounts of time and effort in hiding the artificiality of film, an artificiality that was once celebrated by the Truffaut's and Polanski's. As a society, we should do ourselves a favour and just accept that films are fake, and it's OK if they look fake. Then, maybe, we would be less shocked to discover that JFK isn't entirely true, or that there were no tomatoes in ancient Rome.

And none of this has anything to do with the White Sox, except that Chicago was involved in a few controversial plays in the postseason that revived the debate on instant replay. The proponents of replay argue that it's important to get as many calls right as possible; my response is... why? Who cares? Let's say that umpires get the call right 95% of the time, and with instant replay, the number would be 99%. Why do we need to fundamentally change the game to get that extra 4%? (or 6% or whatever).

Why have we become a society of nitpickers? I'm not a champion of incompetent umpires, nor the movies of Edward D. Wood Jr. But I also understand that perfection is a silly and unattainable goal. Instant replay sucks, in all forms; if you think that the game needs it, then I would seriously question why you're watching this game in the first place.

As for the Sox, they're the defending champs. They had an OK winter, but like the Red Sox last year are in danger of remaining too loyal to too much dead weight on their roster. They're not as good as Cleveland, but their pitching may be healthier and that might be enough.

After losing 119 games in 2003, the Tigers improved by 29 games the next season and lost only 90. They demonstrated something now seems obvious but was not intuitive - that losing 90 games is really easy if your only goal is to lose 90 games. They went out and got themselves Ivan Rodriguez, Rondell White, Jason Johnson and Carlos Guillen, and for tens of millions of dollars bought themselves a team that was bad but not embarrassing.

So they tried it again in 2005, spending millions more on Magglio Ordonez and Troy Percival, but fell back to 91 losses. And it demonstrated another related point, that buying mediocrity is easy, but once you've made that purchase it's then really hard to buy competitiveness. Winning 90 games with a group of middle-of-the-road veterans is really hard.

What was really depressing in 2003, apart from the 119 losses, was that the Tigers didn't appear to have any prospects to build around. The picture is still bleak but not as much. One young pitcher, Jeremy Bonderman, has taken a big step forward though he still has injury concerns, plus they have a terrific prospect in Justin Verlander. Chris Shelton, Brandon Inge and Carlos Pena may turn out to be solid late-bloomers, while Omar Infante has teased us by being alternately good or horrible.

They've added a pair of old fogies (Todd Jones and Kenny Rogers), and anything they get from them will be gravy. Other than that, they've got a couple of guys who might be a little better, a couple of guys who might be a little worse - and a whole bunch of guys who just need to stay healthy for once. New manager Jim Leyland has said this spring that the team lacks "swagger"; I'm not a swagger expert, but I expect that swaggering can be difficult when you have both a busted knee and back (Carlos Guillen) or a hernia (Magglio Ordonez).

(ASIDE: The 'swagger' story comes from a cat named Jason Beck, who works for MLB.com. There are many reasons why I don't get paid to write about baseball, including my tendency to stray off-topic, or simply forget to write anything for a month. But one perk about writing for free is that I don't have to write about the Tiggies if I don't want to).

Over the last five years, the Royals have posted the following records:

2005 56-106
2004 58-104
2003 83-79
2002 62-100
2001 65-97

The Royals are the cod of baseball. The cod, to borrow a phrase, was once "the fish that changed the world", while for two decades the Royals were the best organization in baseball, consistent winners and innovators who had the best owner in baseball (Ewing Kaufmann) and employed the likes of Jack McKeon, Whitey Herzog, John Schuerholz and Dick Howser in management.

In the late 1960's, fishing trawlers were taking massive amounts of cod out of the Atlantic Ocean. An unimaginable, indefensible number. The stocks dropped, limits were imposed, and the decline leveled off. In the 1980's, the catch went back up; as they had done once before, industry and government planned to impose limits if or when the stocks began to decline again. But the cod fooled 'em; instead of gradually declining, they just disappeared and never came back.

At almost the same time, the Royals spent a gadzillion dollars on two guys named Davis, Storm and Mark. The Storm Davis signing was indefensible; He was a bad pitcher with horrible peripherals, who had won 19 games the year before thanks to a juiced Oakland lineup and a closer who never blew saves. Mark Davis had won the Cy Young Award the year before; the Royals already had one of the best closers the in the game in Jeff Montgomery, and it's not exactly clear why they needed another, but anyways Mark Davis' stay in KC was short and not too sweet.

The Davis signings were part of a perfect storm that conspired to sink the Royals. Baseball was beginning an economic transition; for 15 years, parity had ruled, as a huge windfall in national TV money had allowed all 26 teams to participate in the free agent market. By the early 90's, rising salaries forced teams to rely on their local TV money, and the divergence in large and small-markets began. The Royals signed two brutal contracts just at the time when they could no longer afford to sign anybody.

The GM who signed those deals, John Schuerholz, fell on his sword and left the team, then joined the Braves and has won a crapload of division titles since then. Ewing Kaufmann died in 1993; Bo Jackson hurt his hip, Bret Saberhagen was traded, Gregg Jefferies was a bust and the franchise has never recovered. They teased us for a few weeks in 2003, when some romantics thought that Tony Pena had pulled a miracle out his ass, but reality has since hit hard.

I'm not sure whose prospects look bleaker this year, the cod or the Royals. The East Coast fishery is currently surviving on seal and lobster, and those aren't even fish. The Royals... I'm not really impressed by ownership or the GM or God Knows the manager; they have a couple of real good young relievers and a good young centre fielder and nothing else. And you know, even though I'm not a fan of the team, that makes me feel kinda sad.

A strange thing happened in the Bay Area in May of 2005; Joe Blanton was NOT sent back to the minors.

It was not surprising, if you have followed Billy Beane's tenure as GM. Of the "Big Five" starters that the Athletics have produced during Beane's tenure - Hudson, Zito, Mulder, Harden, Blanton - none of them was ever sent back to the minors, and none has made a relief appearance during the regular season, except for Harden when he's nursing an injury. Granted, the first four guys didn't give much cause for concern, but Blanton tested Beane's resolve.

Country Joe entered the season as a highly regarded but unproven young pitcher; he pitched OK in April, but got the snot beat out of him in May, and by the end of the month was 0-5 with a 6.66 ERA. Here in Toronto, another young pitcher, Dave Bush, was also 0-5 with a 4.81 ERA. Their records on May 31st:

               IP  HT  HR  BB  SO   ERA
Blanton  0-5 48.2  57   9  23  16  6.66
Bush     0-5 53.1  59  10  10  26  4.81

Blanton stuck with the team, but Bush was demoted at the end of the month. Blanton finished the year with a 12-12 record and 3.53 ERA in 201 innings; Bush later returned to the majors, but overall was 5-11 with a 4.49 ERA. Blanton may be a better pitcher, but boy, it sure must be nice when management believes in you.

There is a recurring debate in baseball over what is the best way to break in a young pitcher. Lots of pitchers have gone right into the starting rotation and never looked back - Hudson, Zito, Mulder, also Clemens, Maddux, Glavine and many others.

On the other hand, you have Earl Weaver's philosophy, that a young pitcher should spend a year in middle relief, then move to either the starting rotation or short relief. That seems to work too - Pedro Martinez, Curt Schilling and Johan Santana all started out in middle relief, and the Blue Jays in the Gillick era used to do it all the time, with Jimmy Key, David Wells and Pat Hentgen being the most notable examples.

I've come to believe that both strategies are sound - what is most important is that the GM makes up his mind and sticks to the plan. Nothing annoys me more than when a team starts slapping a young pitcher around like a hockey puck, moving between the rotation and the bullpen or the minors and the majors.

Even though J.P. Ricciardi is a golf buddy of Billy Beane, I'm considerably less impressed with his handling of young pitchers. In addition to the Bush example, the Jays in 2005 called up Dustin McGowan in the summer, and sent him back down after a few bad starts. Again, he was bad, but not Blanton-bad. Plus, it's taken them two years to figure out if Brandon League is going to be a starter or reliever.

Make up your mind, for chrissakes; if Dustin McGowan is ready for the majors, then stick him in the rotation and give him 30 starts. If not, then don't call him up. Billy Beane may have gotten lucky with the immediate success of the Big Three, but the Blanton experience was a case of a GM being rewarded for patience that most GMs lack.

The successful marketing of the Gold Glove Award has to be one of the more remarkable feats that baseball's braintrust has pulled off. At least, here in Toronto, a huge deal is made when a Blue Jay wins the award, both among fans and in the media. This, despite the fact that the Award has tried very, very hard to shred its credibility. We laugh when we recall that Rafael Palmeiro won an award in a year in which he was a full-time DH, but still applaud each season's winners for their defensive excellence.

And maybe that's a good thing. With all the increasingly venomous words that get passed around in the baseball world each day, it's kind of nice that people can take this award seriously without, you know, taking it seriously. Part of it, I guess, is the name; it's not the only "golden" award out there but "Gold Glove" just has a nice ring to it. Part of it is because it is still very difficult to objectively determine whether Greg Maddux, at age 39, is still the best defensive pitcher in the league.

(Curiously, a few years ago, Maddux complained that he does a very poor job of holding runners on first base, a sentiment that almost everyone agrees with. This failing appears to have little impact on the Gold Glove voters, and maybe it shouldn't; I mean, if Greg Maddux does a poor job of holding on runners, then how important is that, really?)

We all know that too many players win the Gold Glove with their bat and not with their glove, which is ridiculous but we accept it. We also understand that it is a legacy award, that once you win a couple you can easily rip off another ten in a row. During the 1990's, Omar Vizquel and Mike Bordick often battled for the Gold Glove at shortstop - except they didn't, because Vizquel had entitlement. In 2005, Aaron Rowand played 157 games and was the centrepiece of Chicago's championship defence; Torii Hunter played only 98 games, but again he had entitlement and won another award.

And then you have Ichiro Suzuki, who has won five straight Gold Gloves, largely based on one play early in his rookie year. I suppose that he is a perfectly fine outfielder; I've seen him make some nice plays, and I've seen him fall on his ass a couple of times, just like everyone does. There are other fine defensive players out there, but Ichiro has entitlement; he's won five in a row, and he's gonna win five more.

I really have no business ranking Seattle ahead of Anaheim, but you have to mix things up now and then. The Mariners should be a little bit better across the board this season; some veterans (Ichiro, Adrian Beltre) are capable of playing better, as are some kids (Jeremy Reed, Jose Lopez). They have the Sun King, Felix Hernandez. I like their chances to have a surprise season.

Darin Erstad gets dumped on a lot on the internet, mostly because of the exorbitant praise he receives from the mainstream media, and the exorbitant salary he is paid by his team. I'm reluctant to harp on a tired topic, but I really have nothing else to say about the Angels.

Fifteen years ago, Bill James wrote an article about racism in the Detroit media. He noted that Lou Whitaker and Alan Trammell had almost identical career stats, but that Lou was often denigrated for wasting his considerable talent, and Alan was often exulted for getting everything he could out of his (supposedly) modest talent. In reality, there is no evidence that one was more talented than the other.

I've been thinking the same thing about two centrefielders, Erstad and a guy who plays in my home town, Vernon Wells. Erstad was a multi-sport star in university, a highly-touted player who at age 26 hit .355 with 240 hits, including 25 homers and 28 stolen bases and a Gold Glove. In 2002, he was the best defensive outfielder in baseball and was the lynchpin of the Angels' championship defence. For a short time, he was Ty Freakin' Cobb.

Since then he's been crap. His power is gone and he hasn't again hit .300, never mind .350. He had surgery on his knee and has moved to first base, while Garret Anderson and his arthritic back has been forced to patrol centre field. And yet, Erstad's reputation as a player who hustles and always gives 110% grows among the mainstream media, in proportion to the decline in his skills.

Vernon Wells shot through the minors at age 20, had two disappointing seasons at Syracuse, then had a monster season at age 23 that included 215 hits and 33 homers. Although he has won a pair of Gold Gloves the past two seasons, Wells hasn't matched those offensive numbers from 2003, and here in Toronto last year there was widespread criticism that Vernon doesn't hustle enough.

I regret to say that, when I read or listen to commentators talk about 'hustle', I am obliged to think that 99% of it is bullshit. Darin Erstad and Vernon Wells are equally talented players who have teased us with greatness, but have fallen short of expectations. Wells is a better player now, but is also a few years younger; who will have the better career remains to be seen.

Erstad's reputation for hustling, and Wells' reputation for lackadaisacal play, is just a tired repeat on the Whitaker/Trammell theme. Erstad may be a good 'ol boy, but his career has been just as big a disappointment as Raul Mondesi's or Ruben Sierra's, and he doesn't deserve a free pass because of his skin colour - nor does Vernon Wells merit the automatic "loafer" label because he's a black man who had a disappointing season.

As for the Angels, they need a catcher (but have a good prospect) and a first baseman (but have another good prospect) and a centre fielder; Erstad has been playing centre this spring, so who knows, maybe he'll make himself useful again. They're good, but this could be a transition year, when they break in some new blood and get serious about cutting ties with guys from the 2002 club.

I have come to believe that, when a team makes a huge improvement from one year to the next, or vice-versa, it's usually for reasons beyond the manager's control. A good (or bad) manager may be able to make a few games' difference each year, but not 20 games. And that's a conundrum, because (1) managers whose teams improve by 20 games usually win the Manager of the Year Award, and (2) managers whose teams decline by 20 games usually get fired.

(Curiously, the BBWAA avoided the trap last season. Bobby Cox won the MOTY for doing what he does every year; the White Sox took a big step forward under Ozzie Guillen, but at least it was a good team beforehand. maybe the writers are tireed of managerial one-year wonders as well...)

Tony Pena hit both extremes over the course of two seasons; he won the MOTY Award in 2003 when the Royals improved by 21 games, then was fired last year when they returned to being the Royals. Of course Pena didn't deserve the award, nor did he really deserve to be fired but that's the way things go; at least he got a nice piece of hardware for his mantelpiece.

In 2004, it was the Rangers who improved by 18 games; manager Buck Showalter was rewarded with a Manager of the Year Award of his own. But the Ron Mahay Miracle didn't last, and they fell back by ten games in 2005. Again, I doubt that Buck was the best manager in 2004, nor did he turn into chickenshit in 2005; wild swings in team performance are just not something that a manager has control over.

The Houston Astros have won the race to be the First Team in Texas to win a pennant, or even a playoff series. The Rangers, now, are also the last of the original 1961-62 expansion teams who have yet to win a playoff series. The good news is that they have likely stabilized as a .500 club, which is the point where they can start making the incremental improvements needed to become a 90+ win team and win the division.

The first steps are easy on paper, and to some extent have been taken. The Rangers in 2005 had awful defence - in some cases, laughably awful. Neither their shortstop nor their second baseman could were competent fielders, putting them in a similar position as the 2004 Red Sox, where they have to try to move a pair of veteran stars who feel entitled to play those positions.

They offloaded the Alfonso Soriano problem on another team. The Rangers appear content to play Michael Young at shortstop for another year, which... well, I don't care, I'm not a fan of the team. But if you're looking to take incremental steps forward into contention, plugging a hole in your infield looks like a good place to start.

As Alex Trebek told Ken Jennings, all good things must come to an end. The Braves had just about the worst offseason they could possibly have, and their string of division championships appears to be near the end.

Well, last year I wrote that I would continue to pick them to finish first until someone beats them, and I'm sticking to it. The combination of Tim Hudson winning 20 games, Jeff Francoeur hitting 39 home runs, Marcus Giles winning the MVP and ????? ????? coming out of nowhere to surprise us will propel them to the postseason once again.

I haven't made enough good predictions on this site to brag about them, but two of the best involve Andruw Jones. Before the 2000 season I predicted that he would hit .300, and he did. Before last season I predicted that he would break out and hit 45 homers; he hit 51 but close enough.

However, I also hope to have learned the lessons of history. Even though Jones hit .300 in 2000, he did not become a .300 hitter; his highest average since then is .277. Entering 2006, he may have as much chance of hitting 50 homers this year as he does of batting .300 again; that is, not much.

Jones has had a strange career; elsewhere on this site I have called him Lee May with Gold Glove defence in centre, and that's not a combination that you see very often. He is remarkable for both his consistency and his lack of development; he is pretty much the same hitter that he was when he was 20, except that he is a lot slower. Consistent, but not really in a good way. But nobody can hit .265 with 35 homers every year as Andruw seems to do; sometimes they'll hit .300 (or .230) or hit 45 homers (or 25) just by a fluke.

That said, it will be interesting to see if Andruw can become a reverse-Hall of Famer; most non-pitchers hit their prime in their 20's, then use their 30's to pad their careers numbers. After ten years in the majors, Jones has all the padding he needs; the question is whether he can peak in his 30's.

The manager, Bobby Cox, is an old friend who once managed here in Toronto, and who managed against Toronto in the 1992 World Series. His career as a manager during the regular season has been magnificent, one of the best in baseball history. This despite a bit of a rocky start (back-to-back 90+ loss seasons with the Braves in 78-79).

Here in Toronto, another young coach, Sam Mitchell of the Raptors, has been taking some heat because the team has been, well, horrible, during his first two seasons. I'm not a basketball guy and I have no idea if Mitchell can coach, but it raises an interesting question: which of today's young, unsuccessful coaches will become the next Bobby Cox?

(Joe Torre also began his career with three straight 95+ loss seasons with the Mets. He moved around bit and had to spend some time in the broadcast booth before Torrus Resurrectus was discovered in New York. So don't count out Alan Trammell...)

Bobby has signed a new contract with Atlanta, and will have a chance to seek another World Series; as successful as he has been, there have been some postseason disappointments. Which leads us to the Phillies...

So our old friend, Pat Gillick, comes back for one more kick at the can. I don't say 'friend' to suggest that we have a personal acquiantance; but I spent my teenage years, starting in 1985 and ending in 1994, watching Gillick try to build a champion in Toronto and finally succeeding, which obviously had an influence on my formative years as a baseball fan.

In Philadelphia, there appears to be some trepidation about Gillick's arrival; it has been awhile since he last won a championship (at Philly's expense in 1993). Gillick's GM career has consisted of 30 years of successful teams that have been marred by some stunning failures and collapses, with two World Championships in the middle.

The Jays in 1985 blew a 3-1 ALCS lead, then in 1987 lost the final seven games of the season, then collapsed again in the final week in 1990. The Orioles in 1996 were Maiered in the playoffs against the Yankees, and the Mariners ended a 116-win season with an ALCS loss against New York. Without those two championships... well, he's be Billy Beane, right?

You can say the same thing about his former manager, Bobby Cox, whom some consider the greatest manager ever even though he's won only one championship. Tony LaRussa has won only one championship in an otherwise stellar career. Earl Weaver won only one championship, despite managing what some consider the greatest team ever. Whitey Herzog won once. The late Gene Mauch never won a championship, and presided over three spectacular collapses.

Branch Rickey won a pair of championships, both in the early 30's as GM of the Cardinals. As spectacular as his career was in Brooklyn, the Dodgers never reached the promised land with Rickey in charge.

If you look in detail at the careers of any of these men, you can talk or write at length about the failures and disappointments. Stand back, and look at all of them, you realize that in baseball, failure is the norm and success a rarity. When a team does win a cluster of championships - the 1996-2000 Yankees, the 1972-74 Athletics, even the 1992-93 Blue Jays, it is one of those flukes of history that upsets the natural order of things for a short time.

Fans of those teams will insist that, if we could somehow play those seasons over again, those teams would win the same number of championships. But history has taught us that winning is really hard, and unless the dice are loaded in your favour you can't expect to do it very often. Occassionally, the dice HAVE been loaded, one reason why the Yankees have 26 championships and no one else has ten.

There probably exist more myths about 300 wins than any other milestone in baseball. And there's a simple reason for that - we all grow up with the illusion that the game we are watching is the way it has always been played. The media is now dominated by baby boomers, most of whom grew up with a curious generation of pitchers.

To date, there are 15 pitchers who began their careers in the 20th century and have won 300 games. The ten decades have produced the following players:

00's 3 (Christy Mathewson, Eddie Plank, Walter Johnson)
10's 1 (Pete Alexander)
20's 1 (Lefty Grove)
30's 1 (Early Wynn made 3 starts in 1939)
40's 1 (Warren Spahn)
50's 0
60's 6 (Seaver, Carlton, Ryan, Sutton, Perry, Niekro)
70's 0
80's 2 (Maddux, Clemens)
90's ??

So if you came-of-age in a decade that produced six 300-game winners (not to mention Tommy John (288), Fergie Jenkins (284), Jim Kaat (283) and Jim Palmer (268)), it's natural that you would think that this is normal, and by 1990 would start saying that no one would ever win 300 games again because no one was close. And many people did say exactly that, not realizing that the 1960's were the exception and not the rule.

What is normal is for there to be long stretches in which no reaches the milestone. It is also normal for us to misjudge who are the best candidates, because many 300-game winners get the job done in their 30's and not their 20's.

Through age 33, Pedro Martinez has won 197 games. Here's another table that compares him to the pitchers above at the same age:

             thru 33  after 33  Total
Mathewson        361        12    373
Plank            186       140    326
Johnson          322        95    417
Alexander        235       138    373
Grove            195       105    300
Wynn             161       139    300
Spahn            166       197    363
Perry            158       156    314
Niekro            97       221    318
Carlton          207       122    329
Sutton           205       119    324
Seaver           219        92    311
Ryan             178       146    324
Clemens          192       149    341
Maddux           221        97    318
Glavine          187        88    275
Johnson          124       139    263
Martinez         197        ??    197

There are some extremes in this list. Christy Mathewson won an unbelievable 361 games through age 33 but only 12 afterwards; even Cy Young had "only" 286 wins at that age. Phil Niekro on the other hand won 221 games after he turned 33. Early Wynn had a losing record in his 20's, but starting at age 30 had a four-year run in which he won 78 games. Roger Clemens was tremendous in his 20's, but starting at age 30 had a four-year run in which he won only 40 games. He signed with Toronto at age 34 and got back on track.

Dwight Gooden had 91 wins through age 23, but fell short of 200. Randy Johnson's first win of the 1996 season was number 100 in his career; he was 32 years old, and won only five games that year because of a back injury. The odds of him winning 300 at that point were very, very long, and he still needs 37 more... but still.

Pedro Martinez, despite his injuries and his lost 2001 season, still has more wins than Clemens did at the same age. He trails Maddux and Seaver by a wide margin, and Carlton and Sutton by a little bit, but is ahead of everyone else in the past 85 years. The consensus on Pedro seems to be that because of his age and frailty, 300 wins is out of range - but is another 103 wins really all that much?

The best comparison might be Lefty Grove, who didn't throw a pitch in the majors until he was 25 but won an absurd number of games in his late 20's and early 30's, and had the same number of wins at age 33 as Pedro does now. At age 34, Grove had a disastrous season, going 8-8 with a 6.50 ERA; it was his first season with the Red Sox, and his fastball deserted him.

But he improved his curve and hung around a few more years in a more limited role, winning four more ERA titles and averaging about 14 wins a year for the next seven years. I won't be surprised if Pedro does that same thing, average about 180 innings a year for the next few years, win a few more ERA titles, pick up 12-14 wins a year - that will get him awfully close.

I'm deliberately trying to avoiding commenting on the Mets; they are what they are, ugly and overpaid as usual, but also awfully talented. They have three solid MVP candidates, they have the world's best pitcher, a young manager with a year of experience under his belt. They should win the division so I'm picking them for third.

And objects in the rear view mirror may appear closer than they are...

Apart from paying homage to the greatness of Jim Steinman, I bring up these words because they apply to a number of ballplayers in 2006. Perhaps none more than Alfonso Soriano, who only three years ago looked pretty awesome. At age 23, he hit 39 home runs, 51 doubles and stole 41 bases - I think that Joe DiMaggio and Alex Rodriguez are the only right-handed Yankees to hit more homers in a season. At age 24, he hit 38 homers and improved his OBP while cutting down on the strikeouts.

Of course, we now know that he was actually 26 and 27 years old those two seasons. His power numbers have since declined, despite moving from a poor hitter's park to one of the best. His on-base percentage has fallen way off. His defence at second base has declined to unacceptable levels. He turned 30 years old in January. As I write, he is proving to be a headache for his new team, refusing to move to the outfield.

His defenders still point to his unique physical skills, his speed and the way the ball jumps off his bat. But 2003 was a long time ago - three years for all of us, six years for Soriano. That player is gone, replaced by something less impressive. He may get it back for a couple of months - these guys often do - and get everyone excited until the decline resumes. The Nationals need to be realistic about what they have.

(or, on the other hand, maybe they also need to be realistic about what they DON'T have. Soriano at first refused to report to the team and play left field; now it appears that he has agreed to play but I guess we'll see)

There's desperation, there's desperation in the air

It leaves a stain on all your clothes and no detergent gets it out

And we're always slipping thru the cracks

Then the movie's over, fade to black

Last year I picked the Nats to finish last in their division. But Jim Bowden sold his soul to the devil in spring training, and they were in first place at the All-Star break. Fortunately, the devil decided that it wasn't worth the trouble and gave him his soul back, and the Nats' season took a sharp turn towards the cellar.

(I'm not being fair to Frank Robinson, who is one of my favourite people in baseball. One of the greatest players ever, and a trailblazer in his post-playing career. God Knows, he's a stubborn curmudgeon, and he has more than his fair share managerial idiosyncrasies - but in four years as manager of the Exnats he has won as many games as he has lost, and that's not something that I would have predicted)

I don't expect that the Nationals will be good this, and normally I would pick them for fifth place again, but now they have competition from...

The Marlins are baseball's version of the Infinite Improbability Drive. They're a team that can be predictably expected to finish at or near the bottom of their division every season. They've never had a good owner, they don't have a large fan base, they play in a lousy park and they play outdoors in a region known for its overbearing heat and humidity during the summer, plus the occasional hurricane.

And yet, improbably, they have won two World Series. If you ever visit Pro Player Stadium, and notice that the bleachers have turned into a fruitcake, or the right fielder has turned into a penguin, or that the right-handed starter is missing his right arm, don't be alarmed; that just means that the forces of Improbability are at work and are messing with your terrestrial mind.

In 2005, they were almost on the verge of being respectable. Over the past ten years, the Marlins have won two World Series while the Braves have won none; despite that record, the Braves are an infinitely more respectable team due to their ongoing commitment to winning. The Marlins got lucky by spending a wad of cash in 1997 and throwing some kids on the field in 2003, but their overall commitment to winning has been appalling.

Last year those kids from 2003 were still getting better, plus they signed a big hitter in Carlos Delgado. They were a respectable team that was prepared to dethrone the Braves, and didn't do so because that's just the way things work out sometimes. But they blew it all up after the season, apparently deciding that making a commitment to winning wasn't worth their while.

As things may turn out, they may not stink as bad as expected; it is very conceivable that the Marlins this year will have both the league MVP and Cy Young Award winner. They will not have either Mike Lowell or Al Leiter, which can only make them better. They have some real nice young players, and if they recommit themselves to winning could be good again in 2008. But it does appear as though they have already fed the 2006 season to the sharks.

One of the wonderful things about baseball statistics and analysis is that they keep fans occupied during those times when the games themselves aren't providing the adrenaline rush that makes TV sports so addictive. Which is, quite frankly, almost all the time. For every game-winning Albert Pujols home run in the NLCS that makes you want to run around the room several times and jump up and down on the sofa to get the heebie-jeebies out of your system, there's a whole lot of same-old, same-old.

As I write this, the winter Olympics have just wrapped up. The Olympics usually have several of these moments over the course of a couple of weeks, then nothing for four years unless you're a diehard who follows the regular biathlon circuit. Each baseball season usually provides only a few Pujols moments and they only last for a few seconds, and there's nothing at all during the winter so us diehards need something to tie us over between the adrenaline hits.

When I think of my favourite TV sports moments, I think of two sports that I don't even care for all that much - Secretariat's run in the Belmont Stakes and Hagler-Hearns II. The thing that both of them have in common is that they sustained an adrenaline rush for 3-4 minutes or so, as opposed to 15 seconds.

Human races can't do that - the 100m dash is over too quick. And though it's easy to admire longer-distance runners like Michael Johnson or Abebe Bikila, they're just not moving fast enough to get your juices flowing. Not only did Secretariat have a huge lead on the rest of the field, but he was still gaining speed when he hit the finish line.

I roomed with some boxing fans in university; we ordered a number of pay-per-view boxing matches, all of which were as boring as sin. Oddly, I stumbled across a replay of Hagler-Hearns II while channel surfing one afternoon... and for about four-and-a-half minutes I understood the attraction of boxing. Each match can end at any time, regardless of who is winning at that point, or what the score is.

As for baseball... there were a handful of memories of Blue Jays baseball from 2005 that may stick with me, including Eric Hinske hitting a game-winning homer against Randy Johnson and Shea Hillenbrand stealing home against Randy Johnson and... well, just about anything that involves beating Randy Johnson.

But the Pujols homer... I don't know if you can O.D. on adrenaline but I think I came close. As for his team, they still appear to have more strengths and fewer weaknesses than the rest of the division. Pujols is awesome, Edmonds is awesome, Rolen is awesome... I was also at the Dome the day that Chris Carpenter threw his one-hitter; that was impressive.

The Brewers ended a long streak of futility by posting a .500 record last season. They are a team that has a solid nucleus, and some fantastic young prospects who are just breaking in. The consensus seems to be that, with even competent management, the Brewers will be a contender this season.

And their management appears to be better than competent. The Brewers in 2005 made the decision to rush J.J. Hardy to the majors; but unlike many other teams, they didn't blame the player when he struggled and took responsibility for their decision. They were patient with him while he hit .187 in the first half, and were rewarded when he hit .308 after the break. Now, they have themselves a 23-year-old starting shortstop.

Before the 2000 season, the first year I ran this site, I wrote the following about Doug Davis:

"Despite the ignominious start to his career, Davis is a brilliant young pitcher who should be a star if he stays healthy."

And a year later, I wrote this about Mark Mulder:

"He is very young, and has very little professional experience... though to be honest, there isn't a heck of a lot to like about him right now."

Those are not two of the most brilliant observations that I have every made, though Davis has at least redeemed himself a little by pitching well the past two seasons, even striking out 208 batters last year. My questions is, if Davis had been an Athletics prospect and Mulder a Rangers prospect, would their careers be reversed? Or is there something intangible about them that would cause one to succeed and the other to fail, regardless of their environment?

Two years ago, that suggestion would have been heretic; baseball players, in particular, like to insist that success has everything to do with talent and attitude, and that team support and ballpark effects have very little to do with it. But now, as Davis and Mulder come closer to becoming equals, it is less obvious that one was ever better than the other.

Could Doug Davis have had a better career with a better team in a better park? How much did Mark Mulder gain from being incubated by the Athletics' pitching nursery? What was at stake in J.J. Hardy's career last summer? Did a few weeks' worth of patience make the difference between a good, long career, and a total bust?

We can't know the specific answers, of course; all we can do is acknowledge that just because something happened doesn't mean that it had to happen. The Yankees from 1996-2000 averaged 97.4 wins per season, and won four World Series. The Yankees since 2001 have averaged 99 wins per season, and have won zero World Series. Was the 1996-2000 squad really better? They won four championships, after all; it's in the historical record, and no one can change it.

History is an invaluable guide in helping us to confront the future; it's the ONLY guide we have. But to assume that history contains easy answers or absolute truths does not lead to greater wisdom; it leads to a simplistic view of the world that diverges wildly from what is actually happening.

In the mid-70's, when free agency became reality, the baseball establishment became suddenly worried abut the public relations impact of player movement. Before 1940, it wasn't all that common for players to spend their entire careers with one team; a few greats did, including Lou Gehrig, Walter Johnson and Mel Ott, and technically I guess Honus Wagner.

After the war, Joe DiMaggio, Ted Williams, Stan Musial and Bob Feller were examples of players who played for just one team, and became the face of that team or even the city. In the 1960's, a generation of lifers that included Al Kaline, Carl Yastrzemski, Brooks Robinson and other romanticized the notion of the baseball 'lifer'.

Though they couldn't stop free agency, the romantics (most notably Bowie Kuhn) put whatever measures they could in place to restrict player movement. The result has been an artificially small crop of free agents every year, which results in high-stakes bidding and a rapidly escalating salary scale. It's a high price that the owners have paid for a little romanticism.

Curiously, the first 15 years of free agency produced another notable crop of baseball lifers, including Mike Schmidt, George Brett, Robin Yount, Cal Ripken and Tony Gwynn. It may be becoming less common, but Barry Larkin just wrapped up a 19-year career with the Reds, while Craig Biggio just played in his first World Series in his 18th year in Houston.

(On the other hand, Frank Thomas has severed his long association with the White Sox to play in Oakland. But that's not uncommon; Ty Cobb, Warren Spahn, Hank Aaron, Willie Mays and Harmon Killebrew are examples of players who finished their careers with a new team after long, long careers in one place)

Anyways, Biggio is coming back for another kick at the can, though his partner in crime, Jeff Bagwell, may be done. They are old and had an uninspiring winter; I concede that I wrote the same thing last year so maybe they deserve a break, but I believe strongly that you can only get so far without turning over the roster. On the same day this past winter, the Astros re-signed both Brad Ausmus and Mike Lamb, and that's just depressing.

As I write this, it is still unclear what the future of Roger Clemens is. He says he is retired, but hasn't ruled out re-signing with the Astros in May and adding another 25 starts or so to his distinguished career. A rumour floated about that Clemens' wife doesn't want him drinking beer and watching television all day. If true, then maybe Clemens still be pitching at age 50, joining the Astros in midsummer each season when his wife finally kicks him off of the sofa.

Quick: Which of these pitchers will throw the most innings in 2006?

- Mark Prior

- Kerry Wood

- Greg Maddux

- Ferguson Jenkins

- Three-Fingered Brown

Brown is dead, which puts him at a disadvantage, but he still has a chance for a four-way tie in the #2 spot behind Mad Dog...

No, I'm being mean; the Cubbies WILL win a championship in my lifetime - but they have a frustrating knack for fielding teams that could be real good if they didn't carry so much Cubsian baggage. Their championship drought is daunting not just because of its length; they're a self-perpetuating machine that seems destined to be mediocre for eternity.

I grew up in the 1980's, a decade of remarkable parity in baseball. Not just among teams, but statistically as well. No player in the 80's hit 50 home runs in a season, for example; in the wake of the steroid scandal, some of those players are being praised by hitting homers with clean bodies, but I remember at the time that those players were often savaged for not being as great as a Mays or Williams or Koufax.

Over the past decade we've seen some pretty amazing things; unfortunately, many of those feats have been tainted by PEDs and whatnot. But here is something truly remarkable: there are now two active pitchers who have a chance to win 400 games in their careers. It is almost certain that neither will do it, because it is an extraordinarily difficult thing to do, but wow.

Roger Clemens is 43 years old and needs 59 wins; that's a lot of wins for a man his age, but he had a 1.87 ERA last season. Greg Maddux is 40 and needs 82 wins; he's not aging as well as Clemens, but his strikeout/walk ratio is almost the same as it was seven years ago. 12 wins a year for another seven years... it won't happen, but man, it could happen and probably will in some parallel universe where all possible outcomes take place.

400 wins is just a nice round number with no particular significance attached to it; but in some ways, that's what I like about it. There is nothing significant about the number 756, except that Hank Aaron happened to hit 755 home runs in his career, and there is a name attached to his career.

As I get older, I am becoming less hung up on records; 756 home runs doesn't mean anything more to me than 400 wins, except that one is nice round number the other isn't. Hank Aaron's career is a self-contained entity in a specific and time and place; what happens in another era is, really, irrelevent.

Last year I picked the Pirates as my 'dark horse', a team that might jump up and surprise people. It didn't work out, but I guess that's why we call them dark horses, because they're, umm, dark. The things that went wrong are too numerous to mention, starting with Oliver Perez throwing the ball like Rosie Perez. They had the worst record in the league, the worst attendance, they fired their manager in midseason... it was ugly.

And yet... it's not difficult to imagine that, with competent management, this team could be respectable in 2006. They DON'T have competent management, so it's not worth imagining, but they've got some players. They have Jason Bay, who is fookin' awesome; they have left-handed pitchers coming out of their ears, including Zach Duke, who was the second-most electrifying rookie pitcher in 2005. Young Paul Maholm also looked impressive last season, while Rosie Perez is pitching for Mexico this spring, trying to get her mojo back.

They also have Bryan Bullington, the #1 pick in the 2002 draft who may be ready for the rotation this summer. He's a right-hander, but he had "minor surgery" on his labrum last fall so he may bow to peer pressure and start throwing left-handed as well.

I'm writing this during the WBC tournament; a few days ago, Canada upset the United States with an 8-6 victory. Reaction here in the north has ranged from realistic - it was an exciting game and the boys played really well - to the slightly hyperbolic - it was the greatest day in the history of Canadian baseball, a David-vs-Goliath victory that marks the beginning of a bold new era in the future of the sport.

For 24 hours, it seemed like a throwback to my youth, when the Jays were battling the Yankees in 1985. The common theme that year was that we were the new kids on the block, and we were amazed that the Yankees had given us permission to play with them, let alone let us win. Wide-eyed Torontonians would return from a trip to Yankee Stadium, and act like they had just taken a trip with Martin Sheen down the Mekong River. We got our first kiss that year, with the most popular girl in the class - and then she dumped us.

Sigh. That was a long time ago; innocence has been lost, in more ways than one. Occasionally that faux innocence that Canadians used to be so good at reappears, if only for a short time.

Anyways, a little hyperbole was OK, because Canadian Jason Bay was, im my opinion, one of top five players in the National League and probably one of the top ten in baseball, and my impression is that a lot of Canadian sports fans still haven't heard of him. When it came time for the annual selection of Canada's Athlete of the Year, Bay didn't even appear on the radar screen. Maybe this year, dude.

Fuck it; it's March 24 and I have nothing to say about the Reds. Last year I predicted that they would lose 140 games; I congratulate them for only losing 89. Good job boys, keep up the fine work.

When you've fallen on the highway

and you're lying in the rain,

and they ask you how you're doing

of course you'll say you can't complain --

If you're squeezed for information,

that's when you've got to play it dumb:

You just say you're out there waiting

for the miracle, for the miracle to come.

The 2006 Padres give me a nice, warm fuzzy. They have one-half of my favourite baseball brothers combination, plus they have the offspring of my childhood baseball hero, Jesse Barfield. They may not be very good, but their bloodlines are strong.

Which leads to a question: are we on the cusp of the golden age of baseball brothers?

There have, of course, been some terrific sibling combinations in the past. The DiMaggio's are probably the best-ever brothers; Joe was great, Dom was very good and Vince was OK. Paul and Lloyd Waner are both in the Hall of Fame, though I think Dom DiMaggio may have been better than Lloyd Waner. The Alou's had three brothers, two of whom were pretty good. There's also been the Perry's and the Niekro's, before them the Dean's and the Coveleski's.

There have also been some lopsided brother combinations, including Christy and Henry Mathewson, Hank and Tommie Aaron, George and Ken Brett, Cal and Billy Ripken, Tony and Chris Gwynn, Greg and Mike Maddux.

But man, look around spring training camps this year, and there seem to be brothers everywhere. Start with the Gileses, Marcus and Brian, who are both terrific and who both played in last year's NLDS. The Fearless Molina's have snagged three catching positions; Bengie has won a couple of Gold Gloves, while Yadier will almost certainly win one of his own. The Boone's and Alomar's appear to be no more, but there's another crop on the horizon.

The Young's, of course; Dmitri is already established as a good hitter with the Tigers, while his brother Delmon is widely considered to be the best prospect in baseball. The Upton's; B.J. is widely considered to be the second-best prospect in baseball, and his brother Justin's not far behind. The Weaver's; Jeff has been an above-average starter for several years, while his brother Jared is another prospect who is hot cookies.

Am I forgetting anybody? The Hernandezes are hanging on by the thread of El Duque's elbow; I should do some real research but this isn't meant to be a definitive catalogue. The point is, I don't have a brother; just two sisters. My youngest sister is actually a pretty good ballplayer, and my father used to coach and umpire and we always talk baseball. But still, I've often wondered how things might have turned out with another male in the family.

For some reason, I imagine that my brother would have been a bit of a heathen, to counterbalance my timidity at a young age. He would have gotten into scraps, started drinking at a young age, screwed around a lot with girls; maybe I would have joined him, maybe not. Maybe those awful, hour-long rides on the school bus each day would have been more interesting; maybe he would have bought a car and drove us to school. Maybe I would have had to take his keys one night to stop him from driving drunk - assuming that I was with him.

Or maybe not; maybe he would have been exactly the same as me, and we would have shared all the same interests. The possibilities boggle the mind.

Top 10 players in baseball history:

1. George Herman Ruth

OK, so after that it gets a little tricky. If you take Barry Bonds' numbers at face value, then he and Ruth are dancing for the #1 spot. If you don't, then you have to figure out if he's top ten, top 20, top 100, or whatever. And that's a highly subjective analysis.

Up until now, there has been little effort by the public or media to distinguish between intent and results as far as performance-enhancing drugs go. The curious thing about the latest Bonds revelations is that they are all about intent, though again, not many people are making the distinction.

An argument can be made that baseball players have been taking PEDs for more than a century, and that the only thing that makes today's players different from those in the past is that they have access to stuff that works. We know that players in the 60's took greenies to help their performance; players in the 20's probably took Dr. McAllister's Magic Muscle-Building Exilir, an alcohol-based carpet cleaner, while player's in the 1880's took... I dunno, buffalo testes or something.

It is still unclear what kind of advantage a player gets from either amphetimines or buffalo testes, but obviously it's nothing like steroids. Certainly, the results of steroid use should be treated differently than non-enhanced performances - but should we treat the players' character differently? I mean, cheating is cheating, right? Even if you're taking drugs that don't work, you're still taking drugs in the hope of gaining a competitive advantage.

From what I understand so far, the new Bonds book doesn't change much except intent. Most of us had a pretty good idea that he was taking steroids, but a reasonable argument could be made that BALCO were the bad guys, and that Bonds was just a dumbass ballplayer who was enticed into a don't ask/don't tell relationship with the company.

The new information now makes Bonds out to be the Lex Luthor of steroid users, someone who not only initiated the program, but who had complete control over what he was doing, and even told BALCO where to go if he didn't like their advice. The rising anger against Bonds in recent days seems to have less to do with the discovery that he took steroids, and more to do with the discovery that he actually knew what he was doing.

As for the Giants, they are depending heavily on the bat of 41-year-old Bonds and the arm of 21-year-old Matt Cain; the remainder of their roster is aggressively mediocre. This team has a Happy Zone, but I don't think that they will find it.

See the Detroit Tigers... after losing 111 games in 2004, the Diamondbacks proved that you can quickly improve from "horrible" to "mediocre" if you spend enough money. The DBacks spent tens of millions on Russ Ortiz, Troy Glaus, Shawn Green, Royce Clayton, Craig Counsell, Shawn Estes and Tony Clark. They had a 77-85 record, a huge 26-game improvement; but they spent an awful lot of money just to lose 85 games in the worst division in baseball.

What's more, their Pythagorean record was 66-96, not an encouraging sign that they will avoid the Tigers' fate last year of slipping backwards. But they have some advantages that the Tigers don't have, like some young players who actually appear to be good and a division that still looks terrible.

I think that there is a growing belief that there is a relationship between teams with good bullpens and teams that exceed their Pythagorean record; mostly because of the Yankees, who have consistently exceeded their run-loss differential in the Mariano Rivera era. But the Diamondbacks last season exceeded their Pythagorean record by a whopping 11 games, despite having the worst bullpen in the league. No, wait, they may have had the worst bullpen in baseball history.

Here in Toronto, there has been considerable debate and gnashing of teeth about the Jays' 2005 season, in which they fell six games short of their Pythagorean record. Why did they underform? Youthfulness and/or immaturity was one idea that was floated about. More importantly, was it a fluke or not? If they are really an 86-win team (as their Pythagorean record suggests) then maybe they have a shot at the playoffs this season. If not... then they probably don't.

We live in a world where there is constant need to explain things, even if a good explanation isn't readily available. Teams that under- or over-perform their run-loss differential all have one thing in common, which is that they don't have anything in common. Nevertheless, the need exists to explain why this is happening, so analysts start pointing out the obvious traits of each team.

The Blue Jays were a young team, so they underperformed because... they were a young team. The Yankees have a great closer, so they overperformed because... they have a great closer. The Royals in 2003 overperformed because of manager Tony Pena, and underperformed in 2004 because of manager Tony Pena. According to Jim Bowden, the Nationals overperformed in 2005 because of, well, Jim Bowden.

As for the Diamondbacks, the reason given was that because their bullpen was horrible, they got the snot kicked out of them a few times during the season but really weren't all that bad. I'm not saying that all of these explanations are wrong; all of them may have some truth to them. But baseball seasons are vast complex, systems, and many, many reasons are likely at the root of all of the oddities that occur in any year. The DBacks lost 111 games two years ago, probably should have lost at least 90 in 2006; despite their talent, they have hills to climb.

The Paul DePodesta era came to an abrupt end after two seasons, producing one division title and one flop. I come to bury DePo, not to praise him; the evil that men do lives after them, the good (trading Shawn Green for Dioner Navarro) is oft interred with their bones. So let it be with DePo.

"I've learned a tremendous amount over the last couple of years." - Frank McCourt

Lesson #1: Shit happens. The good news is that the new guy, Coletti, appears to be competent; the bad news is that the owner is looking like the West Coast-version of Peter Angelos, which may prompt Coletti to get a real job when one becomes available.

The Dodgers recently have been reminding me of... France. In the late 19th century, less than 50% of Frenchmen actually spoke French; it was during that time that 'nationalism' swept across Europe and defined the little nation states that we know today. The great social experiment of nationalism is alive and well in France today, as was recently affirmed when the government banned religious dress and symbols from public schools.

"All the children of France, whatever their background, whatever their origin, whatever their beliefs, are daughters and sons of the Republic. They must be recognized as such, in law, but above all in fact. By respecting this requirement, overhauling our policy of integration and our ability to ensure equal opportunities at the practical level, we will restore full vitality to our nation�s cohesion." - Jacques Chirac

Why they continue to do this is not clear; nationalism has proven to be about as healthy for a nation as inbreeding is for a royal family. France has had two sets of violent riots within the last few months, and the government has been remarkably short on solutions. I might argue that, in the past 100 years, French nationalism is the second-worst thing to happen to France (the worst of course being German nationalism).

And the Dodgers... they had their own French Revolution in 1947. In the 1970's, a form of 'Dodger nationalism' developed and probably peaked when Steve Garvey High School opened in southern California. The era of Dodger Blue sustained itself throughout the 1980's, winning championships in 1981 and 1988 but paying a price by ruining every young arm in the system. It then blew its brains out in the 90's, trading Pedro Martinez and then squandering five consecutive Rookie of the Year Award winners.

"The Dodgers are at a crossroad. This is a very important time. I'm mindful of this historic franchise and it's tradition of greatness. I'll be satisfied with nothing less." - Frank McCourt

Coletti deserves a break, of course, to prove that he's his own man; we'll see if he gets the chance, or whether he's 'integrated' into Dodger tradition. A couple of years ago, France won some admirers for opposing the Bush administration. They may or may not have been vindicated, but opposing one set of values does not validate your own.

Last season was probably the worst season that the Rockies could possibly have. First, they lost 95 games and failed to compete in the worst division in baseball. Second, they played well the last two months, creating the impression that they are moving in the right direction. Third, Jeff Francis had decent numbers at Coors Field, convincing management that he can be successful there.

The Rockies play in a park that creates illusions, and they fall for them every time. GM Dan O'Dowd is the man in the desert who, when he sees an oasis, goes running after it, only to discover each time that it is just a mirage. They're not moving in the right direction - you can't build a good team around a group of 26-year-old rookies, because they're already as good as they will ever be.

Jeff Francis is a terrific young pitcher whom the Rockies could trade for a couple of real good young hitters. Unfortunately, the Rockies are determines to wait until Jeff is beaten senseless, and then in two years trade him for a bucket of bolts (now known as the Shawn Chacon Gambit). Exactly zero starting pitchers have thrived long-term in Coors Field, and Francis, unfortunately, won't be the first.

Sigh. It has now been ten years since the Rockies signed Larry Walker. In the ten years since, the best hitters they have acquired have been Jeff Cirillo, Preston Wilson and, I dunno, Jeromy Burnitz or somebody. It is a horrible record of incompetence, but management gets a free pass because everyone just throws up their hands and says there is nothing that can be done in Colorado. Maybe that's true - but you have to try, don't you?

I will offer, in a few paragraphs, a Mission Statement that I would advise the Rockies to post in all of their offices:

WE, THE ROCKIES, will acknowledge that we will not win unless we lead the league in runs scored. We will spend huge gobs of money on hitters, guys who can really mash. We will spend as little money as we can on pitching.

WE WILL ACKNOWLEDGE that balls don't curve in the thin air. We will acquire pitchers who rely on changing speeds and deception. We will never again acquire a Darryl Kile/Mike Hampton type, whose best pitch is his curveball. Jeff Francis is a nice young man, but his slider isn't going to cut the mustard at Coors. We will also return to getting cheap Dante Bichette/Vinny Castilla types, guys who can't touch a curve but can mash a fastball.

WE WILL ACQUIRE pitchers who will throw strikes. We acknowledge that home runs will happen, and that it's best not to walk to previous two batters when they do.

WE WILL NOT WORRY about what happens in road games. We acknowledge that we have no control over the Coors Effect, and we're not going to worry about things that we can't control. We're just going to build a team for our home park.