Detroit Tigers: Last year’s surprise team shouldn’t be taken lightly this season, meaning I don’t think a performance drop-off is in the cards. What drove the Tigers last season, their solid starting pitching, has remained completely intact for 2007. Their rotation is led by two young arms in Jeremy Bonderman, considered their fantasy stud/ace, and last year’s Rookie of the Year Justin Verlander. Nate Robertson (not Nate Robinson) is a very solid number four starter. And while he’s either guilty of defacing baseballs or wiping his ass with his hand, “George Clooney impersonator extraordinaire” Kenny Rogers should add another 15 win season in the twilight of his career. The guy was able to shed the stigma of beating up a cameraman last off-season, so how hard could it be to make people forget you cheated in the World Series?
A big misconception with the Tigers is that they have an average lineup, when in fact their offense last year was one of the league’s best. The team finished eighth in runs, sixth in homers and tenth in batting average. The thing is they spread the production throughout the order, and they don’t have that one big power bat as their automatic All-Star. Now while he’s getting up there in age (screw it, he’s already there), Gary Sheffield could be that guy if he stays healthy this season. He’s going to be nestled in the lineup with their second and third best hitters, Magglio Ordonez and Carlos Guillen, which is a pretty respectable heart of the order. Another reason I like Sheffield is the influence he can have on the team’s core of younger African American players, Granderson, Munroe and Thames. It is rare for a team in baseball to have four black players in the lineup this day and age, and while Sheffield has been labeled as someone who is hard to deal with, I think he is just misunderstood.
Speaking of Thames, it should only be a matter of time before this guy replaces Sean Casey at first base, or is inserted somewhere else where he can be an everyday guy. He is currently the team’s 10th man on offense, and he’s just too powerful a hitter for that to continue. Last season Thames had 26 homers in fewer than 400 at-bats, which means he’s due for at least 35 if he gets a full season in. On top of that, look for Joel Zumaya to finally take over the closer role from Todd Jones. Sure he was stupid enough to get injured while playing Guitar Hero, but he also throws in the triple digits, and is the league’s premier right handed reliever. I have total faith in Jim Leyland to make the right decision in both cases. Basically, I like this team a lot in 2007, and have them right behind the Yanks as favorites in the American League.
Minnesota Twins: The Twins second half surge to the playoffs last season (11 games back at the All-Star break to division champs) has to be one of the more underrated runs in league history, but there’s good reason for that. First off, their breakthrough starter Francisco Liriano, a guy who was labeled injury prone his entire minor league career, only two emerge as “Santana the Second” after joining the rotation last season…got injured. He had Tommy Jon surgery in November and is expected to miss the whole season. Without him in the playoffs, The Twins got swept by the Athletics, and just like that, their late season comeback didn’t seem as impressive.
Despite the disappointing end, there were a lot of things to be happy about if you were a Twins fan in 2006. First off, your ace pitcher had another dominating season, posting 19 wins, a 2.77 ERA and 245 strikeouts to win the Cy Young award. It’s not even a fantasy attribution for this guy – Johan Santana is the league’s greatest pitcher, and the drop-off after him is pretty big. Then you have your first baseman that sounds like a hockey player, Justin Morneau, come out of nowhere to win the MVP, and while many argued for Jeter, I think either guy was worthy. On top of that, your homegrown catcher, Joe Mauer, comes out of nowhere to win the batting title, becoming the first backstop to do it since…(google check) Ernie Lombardi! So a team that was dead in the water at season’s half came back to win their division, and produce the AL’s Cy Young, MVP and batting title winners. For that, there is a lot to look forward to in 2007 if you’re a Twins fan.
While the Liriano injury may sting, it may not be as detrimental to the team’s rotation as people think. When he went down last year, some bloke named Boof Bonser stepped in to emerge as the team’s second best starter, and finished the season strong (before the whole rotation, Johan included, choked in the playoffs). Now I’m not sure how much faith one should have in a guy who shares his name with Michael J. Foxx’s love interest in Teen Wolf, but all I am saying is give Boof a chance. As for the rest of the rotation, sure Brad Radke retired, but he was on the tail end. It’s looking like Ramon Ortiz and Sidney Ponson with fill out the three and four spots, so hopefully one of the Twins farm guys can emerge in the number five spot. Oh yeah, and they also have the league’s most underrated and dominant closer in Joe Nathan, to lead their steady pen. So all in all, I really like the Twins this year to compete with the Tigers, but ultimately settle for the wildcard. Let the Boof be told.
Chicago Whitesox: Not exactly the year the team was hoping for following their World Series run in 2005, as the starting rotation fell apart worse than Lindsay Lohan’s body. Mark Buehrle and John Garland got lit up last year in a majority of their starts. Jose Contreras started to show his age (85) and hit a huge a wall after a very strong first half. The same can be said for Javier Vasquez, who lets face it, has never been a top starter since leaving what was then the Expos. Probably their most consistent starter from last year, Freddy Garcia is gone, and for reasons I can’t explain, the Sox dealt away their top pitching prospect Brandon McCarthy to the Rangers.
That last move really has me scratching my head. I know they got two pitching prospects in return, but to trade a guy as highly regarded as McCarthy, who never really got a chance when he joined the team last season, just doesn’t make sense to me. I think the Sox are really panicking about their rotation, and figured a two for one deal was needed to insure their suspect starters. Call it quantity over quality I guess, but nothing can really be said about the move until the season is a good 50 games in. The thing is, despite their pitching problems the Sox did start last season on about the same pace as 2005, going 57-31 at the break. The problem is, they fell a lot harder in the second half of the season, and the competition around them grew. It’s said that pitching wins championships, so when a team wins a World Series on said pitching, and then has its rotation become exploited by two better rotations (Tigers, Twins) the following year, the championship mentality will vanish rather quickly.
I still feel there is a winning mentality on this team, but it is definitely coming from the opposite side of the roster, as the bats crushed the ball in 2006. The team hit a whopping 236 homers last year to lead the league, with the four top guys (Dye, Thome, Konerko and Crede) all hitting at least 30. Now that is an insane amount of power, but it was pretty much wasted on a team that finished third in its division. While many fantasy experts predict drop-offs for both Dye and Crede, I predict similar numbers, the question is will it be enough. The good news is Scott Podsednik has recovered quickly from his off-season hernia, and will be able to start the season on opening day. If not the team would have gone with Darin Erstad, whose career is definitely on the decline (great signing!) Still, I expect this team to hit well enough to have a respectable season. Considering I just picked two of their division-mates to make the playoffs, respectable is the best they can hope for.
Cleveland Indians: A lot of people are really high on the Indians this season for some reason, similar to how they were touted as a playoff team last year. Buster Olney, who I suppose I have to respect because he’s one of ESPN’s top baseball insiders, even picked them to win the World Series while filling in on Mike and Mike this week. Now I say people are really high on the Indians, and it makes perfect sense here, because what exactly is Buster Onley smoking? (I assume some old man weed he snatched from Peter Gammons wooden pipe). The Indians have a fine offense, which will probably only get better this year with the growth (ahem) of Grady Sizemore, and the addition of sleeper second baseman Josh Barfield. Leading the pack is the league’s most underrated slugger Travis Hafner. Sure the guy decided to stop fielding at the ripe age of, uh, 29, but he is probably the league’s premier player when it comes to the overlooked category of OPS. He’s just a monster at the plate.
But what did we just learn with the Whitesox? Hitting can only get you so far, especially in the American League. I’m not saying the tribe’s rotation is awful, but can someone tell me who their ace is? It sure isn’t C.C. Sabathia, unless you’re fine with admitting that your ace is C.C. Sabathia. Cliff Lee, who helped the Indians have the best team ERA in 2005, ballooned to a nice 4.40 last year. Even worse was the team’s bullpen, also strong in 05, which ranked at the bottom of every pitching category possible. “Well obviously I have the Indians picked to win the World Series this year…” rambles Buster Onley, while I’m forced to switch to whoever talks sports on WFAN at ten in the morning.
The team has a lot of faith in Jeremy Sowers, and while he pitched well in 14 starts last year, he still has a lot to prove. He’s still developing, as is another youngster named Adam Miller also expected to come up sometime this season. If these two guys can meet their potential, than OK, maybe the Indians have something to work with, but it’s too early to crown them as anything else but a potential 80 win team. As for their bitch-slapped bullpen of 2006, the team snatched two potential closers this season in Joe Borowski and Keith Folke. Then Keith Folke retired at the ripe age of, uh, 35 leaving last year’s surprise on the Marlins, Borowski, to carry the load. Should be a solid improvement however over the mixed bag of guys they got to replace Bob Wickman last season. Nonetheless, there are too many question marks with this team, and they’re playing in arguably the best division in baseball, maybe better than the AL East. The only thing I really like about this team is that they have an outfielder named Shin-Soo Choo, which sounds a lot like shinshi shinshi from that SNL skit with Christopher Walken. What is shinshi shinshi? I let the master explain it best.
Walken: One wintry night after eating Indian...Catherine whispered into my ear, her breath rich with faraway spices, that she desired to make love. She wanted to try shinshi shinshi. Now, I'd been begging her to try shinshi shinshi for months. She'd refused on the grounds that it was unclean. Finally, she was willing to accept her lover's body in places no one had ever trespassed. Specifically, the ear canal.
The Kansas City Royals: Ugh, Do I really need to breakdown the Royals season outlook? I don’t know why, I’m sure other teams have been worse in my lifetime (although probably not), but the Royals depress me like no other franchise in professional sports. They’re just so plain and generic, and the fact they haven’t competed since the mid eighties doesn’t help. They are coming off three straight 100 loss seasons, after making a slight attempt to be respectable in 2003, which ultimately failed. In fact, does anyone remember that? I think the Royals were leading the central for most of the first half of the season that year and almost became a feel good story. Instead, they stumbled back to awfulness.
The Royals are the type of team that will never be able to hold onto a franchise player (see Beltran, Damon and Dye) because of their small, economically challenged market. The fact that the team’s most recognizable star over the past ten years has been Mike Sweeney is a true indicator as to why the team is such a modern day baseball tragedy. For the love of god, their two biggest free agent signings in the past few seasons have been Reggie Sanders and Gil Meche.
But I should really stop dwelling on this in an attempt to say one positive thing about this team. Like the Devil Rays, the Royals low win total has equaled into high draft picks, netting them top prospects like Alex Gordon, who along with Mark Teahan and Ryan Shealy makes up a fairly decent core of young hitters. But in today’s big league environment, it’s going to be impossible for a team like the Royals to compete. If anyone wants to point to the Marlins sporadic success, another meager market team, just remember that they play in Miami not Kansas City, and that anything’s possible in the National League.
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