Happenings

3 baseball related items of note this week

1. I got this year's Baseball Prospectus, chock full of more baseball information than I can ever read. They're pretty down on the Cubs this year, though they expect them to improve. The gist of the Cubs article was that Dusty Baker leaving the team alone would account for several wins - it was pretty scathing towards Dusty. After reading their statistics, I'm not inclined to disagree. I do happily wave goodbye to lousy 'speed' players like Freddie Bynum, Neifi Perez, Hairston...though we still do have Cedeno and Izturis in the mix, at least they have some upside. They also project a big regression for Howry, Eyre, and Ohman so our bullpen might still end up imploding this year as well.

2. Prior made his first spring start last weekend, and, while I know it was only his first start (and his second one total in the past three years), it sure seems that he has a giant fork sticking out of his back. I've been hoping for a return from Prior, but at this point what I'm hoping is a strong spring from Angel Guzman (he's been great so far) leading him to beat out Prior AND Miller for the 5th roation spot. Though of course if Prior could put things together...that would be great too.

3. Jennie and I watched Pride of the Yankees earlier this week - it was a great flick. I looked up Gehrig's numbers and, good god, they weren't exaggerating the kind of power he had.

Chicago Cubs Baseball is on the Air!

I caught some of the first spring training game while walking around yesterday, though I was in class for most of it - I tuned in around the 2nd inning. I hadn't realized it, but I hadn't truly felt that baseball was officially underway. But then, when I turned on WGN, Pat and Ron were discussing Ron's lunch and Ron made sure to let everyone know that he does not like beans. After that, it sunk in that it's now baseball time.

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

And we're back!

We just got back from a relaxing and enjoyable trip home. Here are a few highlights:

• Before we left, Jennie and I both went to graduation. Jennie recieved her Bachelor's Degree and I got a Master's Degree. Jennie's parents and brother Jim came out to watch and we had a good time. I'm lucky to have such not-crazy (future) in-laws, I feel as comfortable with them as I do my own family.


• The drive back was uneventful and fairly easy (in my opinion). It rained most of the way. Kira was very good in the car, and loved running around Penn State when we got there. Also, Herwig's (an Austrian restaurant in downtown State College) rocks. Their potato salad = the greatest...I now have an obsession with German/Austrian Potato salad.


• We got ice skates from the Crosses, so we all laced up our skates this year at the annual Christmas Eve ice skating event. I had tons of fun - for once my skates didn't murder my ankles/calves and I skated for the entire time. We're hoping to bust them out at Tenney Park now that we're back in Madison, but the ice is still too thin. We apparently brought the cold weather back with us.


• We did Christmas Eve at my parents' house and Christmas Day at Jennie's. It's a good thing our families have offsetting traditions, it made things super-easy for both of us. I bought Jennie tickets to Giselle (next week) and a print of one of her favorite poems (see http://www.storypeople.com. Jennie bought me tickets to Man of La Mancha and will get me tickets to the Cubs home opener in April (Jennie Rules!).


• We got a bunch of wedding-related tasks complete. Getting a hotel for out-of-towners was by far the most difficult. It's nice to have a bunch of this stuff out of the way. Our main tasks remaining is to get the stuff together for our officiant and to figure out what we're going to do for a rehearsal dinner (most of the restaurants we called are booked).


• Jennie had a great job fall into her lap - she's teaching sewing for the UW Theatre department starting tomorrow. She's looking for another part-time job to suppelement it. Right now her front-runner is to work at a kennel out on the west side, near Woodman's.


• We caught up with various friends that we haven't seen in awhile, several of which will be involved in the wedding in some capacity. We hung out with Millie and Kate a few times, and I drove down to UVA and had a fun evening with my old friend Matt Harrington. I forgot how great a college town Charlottesville is.


• Sarah was in town this Christmas and it was nice to see her too. She made curry for all of us one night and it was freaking awesome. We're probably going to try to add it to our repertoire once we figure out all the ingredients we need, and where to find them.


• We took a trip down to Fredericksburg to hang with Jim and cook him things to put in his lonely refrigerator. We've managed to get him to watch the first 5 seasons of Buffy, so now there's someone else who gets our Buffy-related jokes. Also he's revived an interest in Madden for me...I just started a franchise on the Madden 2006 copy he left me when he was out here. As if I didn't have a bunch of other games to play....not to mention homework/research.


• We found an awesome book while packing up books in preparation for painting. It was all about code traffic and the special forces in WW2. Jennie finished the book right before we went to the Spy museum in DC with my parents, which further heightened the experience. We're both super interested in WW2 + cryptography related stuff now - I got a book on Turing and Jennie bought two books on various special forces stuff related to the book we read.


• We ate at Legal Seafood in DC, which was awesome, and I feel like there's now a precedent to eat as much of the good East Coast seafood as we can while we're at home. It's just not the same here in Wisconsin. I feel like both of us have really turned a corner in our appreciation of seafood - we were pretty much only shrimp and crab eaters before. Now we've found we actually like some fish! If only good fish weren't so expensive and tricky to cook...


• I bought a few wedding-related clothes (including some nifty suspenders!) at Tyson's, which can be a scary place traffic-wise. Jennie got some awesome new clothes including a cool new winter coat. We ate at Legal Seafood there, the second time this trip (yay swordfish!)


• The drive back was fairly uneventful. It certainly did not feel like the 14+ hours that it took. There was some snow along the way but none of it was really sticking. The best part was in western ohio, where all the trees were coated with ice. The sun was going down at that point, so all the foliage looked like it was made of shimmering crystals. It was pretty awesome.

Those are all the highlights I can think of for now. We'll be back in VA in 3 weeks for Jennie's cousin's wedding.

As for now, I'm starting my RA-ship tomorrow. My schedule for the upcoming semester is pretty awesome: I only have class on TR. My goal is to come in on MWF for most of the day as well, since I'm most productive at the office when I don't have a pile of computer/video games to tempt me. It makes scheduling things super great - I don't have to worry about missing class to go to the wedding next month...and it would make it easier for me to take the day off and go to a Cubs day game (like the home opener - so excited).

Winter Meetings end, Cubs sign Marquis

Props to Jim Hendry for finshing the Lilly deal while in the hospital. The Cubs also signed LH bench guy Daryle Ward, who seems to fit what we need. I do not think the Cubs will trade Jones at this point, it seems like they can only get pennies for him.

The big signing today however is the Cubs' signing of Jason Marquis.

Again, I'm not super-wild about this signing. In the plus column, he has a pretty good sinker, is an innings eater, can pinch hit, and did pretty well in the past few years (the second half of last season notwithstanding). On the other hand, he was AWFUL after the all-star break last year. Also, he's worked under both Leo Mazzone and Dave Duncan, widely regarded as being the best pitching coaches in the league, and even they weren't really able to turn him around. Anyway, this is what I see our rotation shaping up to be:

Zambrano
Lilly
Marquis
Hill
Miller/Prior

In terms of healthy-ness, if everyone was 100% and turns into their old selves. I would rank the three question marks in the order Prior, Miller, Marquis...but we need everyone to be totally healthy. I think Prior is more likely to turn things around than Miller, but Miller seems more likely to stay healthy. Once again...Prior is the wild card in our rotation.

Thus Roster/Lineup (12/9)

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

B Blanco
B Theriot
B Ward
B Pagan
B Some FA bat (Floyd?)

1 Zambrano
2 Lilly
3 Marquis
4 Hill
5 Miller/Prior/Rookie

B Dempster
B Howry
B Wood
B Wuertz
B Eyre
B Cotts
B Ohman

Lilly signs with Cubs (?), more rumors

Jayson Stark is reporting that the Cubs will sign Ted Lilly. I'm not super wild about this deal...I'm not sure what I think about Lilly. He's a flyball pitcher, which would suggest he is a bad choice for wrigley given our lousy outfield defense and small park. He did manage to keep a decent ERA while pitching in the brutal AL east. However, he was pitching at the Skydome (or whatever it is called now), and that place is such a barn. If I were to rank the (remaining) free agent pitchers, I would put him near the end

Schmidt
Zito
Meche
Padilla
Lilly

All of them have issues...Schmidt and Zito are the only real proven innings horses here. Schmidt is getting older though, and I've never trusted Zito somehow he never seems as good as his numbers. Meche is a perpetual upside guy, but who knows if he'll ever meet the projections people have been giving him - why hasn't he broken out yet? Padilla is a sullen loner and is rumored to have alcoholism issues.


In other news, the Cubs offered Jones (+ one prospect probably) for Jason Jennings. This is the kind of pitcher I want - a groundball machine. I hope we get him.

Hendry also came out to say that he is not trading Matt Murton, which is great news. As was pointed out, he's the best hitting prospect to come out of our system in a long time.