Santo non-election, spring opening lineup

All I have to say is, BOOO to the Veterans Committee. Santo belongs in the Hall of Fame, even just on his playing stats alone. He won 5 consecutive gold gloves and posted an OPS+ of over 100 in 12 of the 15 seasons he played. Compare him to Brooks Robinson, who was a no-doubt hall of famer, who won 15 gold gloves but who only had 10 seasons of OPS+ over 100 in 10 of the 22 seasons that he played. Ron's career was cut short by diabetes, but there's no doubt that offensively he was better than Robinson on a season by season basis, and just about as good defensively. I boo you Joe Morgan, Bob Feller, Tom Seaver and all the other tools who keep closing Ron out of the Hall.

Now that that's out ofthe way, I want to offer a big thumbs up to Sweet Lou's first Cubs lineup of spring training he currently has slotted

CF Soriano
LF Murton
1B Lee
3B Ramirez
C Barrett
RF Jones
2B DeRosa
SS Izturis
P

This is exactly the lineup that I would have chosen, he (or someone there) must understand that a) Matt Murton needs ABs because b) Matt Murton can get on base, and c) Michael Barrett is a great batter. I can only hope that this is the regular lineup opening day and beyond during the regular season.

Spring Training!

Spring training is finally here!

For those of you who don't know, or haven't known me for the past few years, I've become quite obsessed with baseball. Which means that I get to subject you all to my rambling team-by-team (or division by division, depending on how lazy I am) previews of the upcoming season. I'll probably start breaking things down more throughly about the teams I care about (i.e. the Cubs + to a lesser extent the NL central in general) sometime after I receive the Baseball Prospectus PECOTA projections in a week or so.

My first order of business is to make a preliminary projection for the standings/awards in the upcoming season. I'll likely change this to my final predictions right before opening day. (note that these W-L records probably won't add up to the right number of games, this is just an estimate)

AL

East
NYY 94-68
BOS 89-73
TOR 84-78
TB 74-88
BAL 69-93

Central
CLE 90-72
CHW 87-75
DET 80-82
MIN 76-86
KC 71-91

West
LAA 86-76
OAK 82-80
TEX 78-84
SEA 70-92

Cy Young: Santana (duh)
MVP: Grady Sizemore

NL

East
ATL 94-68
PHI 89-77
NYM 76-86
FLA 71-91
WAS 59-103

Central
MIL 87-75
CHC 84-78
STL 80-82
HOU 78-84
CIN 73-89
PIT 72-90

West
LAD 93-69
SD 86-78
ARI 85-79
COL 75-87
SF 68-94

Cy Young: Schmidt
MVP: Andruw Jones