If Nathan is out for the year, is it something like... Twins 84 / Sox 83 / Tigers 83 / Indians 78 / Royals 72?

Twins pitching staff is at least a notch if not two below the Sox...also with the move to a park that is very likely to mean less of a home field advantage, I don't see how the Twins could be the favorite- regardless of having the M Gods in the middle of the lineup.
I really like the Sox this year- even if Alex Rios sucks, I think CQ will hit 35 and knock in 100 ribbies and Andrew Jones will experience just enough of a revival- .250 20 hr's 80 ribbies to make the offense at least average, which is all they'll need with that pitching staff. Linebrink scares me, but I'm hoping Cooper works his magic again with Putz and the middle relief is good.

The Twins were better than the Sox last year, and the Twins had a pretty good offseason while the Sox had a mediocre one, which is why I rate the Twins as better. But not a whole lot better.

Twins have a better lineup than the Sox - they could easily get 20+ homers from every position except 2B and 3B.

Rios will be fine, I'm more worried about Q's health, since they won't give him as much DH as he should get. Your Jones prediction is fine with me, but this team still has Teahen, Pierre, and Kotsay - a lot of dead weight to try to work around.

Yeah they could do it with an average offense, but they had a bad offense last year and didn't do much at all to fix it. They even let one of their better hitters go to the Twins for pocket change. So it's hard to call them the best team in the division.

Agree with most of your points except I think the Sox offense will be at least as good as last year with more speed making up for a possible reduction in power (though lets not forget that Dye was nonexistent after July). Teahen is certainly no worse than Chris Getz, which is essentially who he's replacing offensively...and I think Beckham is ony going to keep getting better so there's an improvement offensively in the infield. Alex Rios might suck just as bad as last year, but that's probably not likely. Juan Pierre is at least as good as Podsenik...and CQ is an upgrade on Jermaine Dye. The only potential dropoff is from Jim Thome to Andru Jones/Kotsay and with the Jones prediction I mentioned above, I'd call that at least equal to a guy who might hit 5-10 more homers but plug up the basepath. To me, the only real loss I'm concerned about for the Sox is the intangibles that guys like Thome and Dye brought to the clubhouse...replacing them with somewhat questionable character guys like Jones and Rios...that's my biggest concern.

The biggest reason they'll be better than the Twins is the pitching. Adding Peavey changes everything. Now you've got #2 quality starters Floyd and Danks pitching in the 3 and 4 spots. This is huge. I'll give you that the Twins are better offensively- sure...but not as much as the Sox are better on the mound- where it matters more.

Help me out on who are the offseason additons to the Twins besides Thome?

Really want to see a few Sox games this year.

Indians could be the worst team in the league this year, and I say that as a fan

As of 3/8/10
Twins projected starters in Spring Training: 16 IP, 9 h, 5 BB, 12k, 0.00 ERA

So it looks like 162-0 with or without Nathan, guys.



And why are Sox and Tigers fans acting like every game the Twins play is going to be on the road? They're still going to have a home field advantage just like every other team. This might be a problem if they had the usual 3 or 4 glaring holes in their lineup like usual, but that's not the case this year. They easily have the best, deepest lineup in the division, they've got 8 capable starters, and even with Nathan going down, they're going to be designating 2 or 3 relievers that should be on a roster to AAA.

It is March and it's always an absurd and useless practice to predict how a 6 month long season will play out with absolutely no accountability with respect of being wrong. And every prediction going to have a bias of their team's strengths, downplaying strengths and their competitor's weaknesses downplaying strengths.

That said considering how weak the Sox lineup is and how strong their rotation is, they're going to need to win a lot of 3-2, 4-3 ballgames. Therefore, if the bullpen is good, I expect the Sox will be good and vice versa. It's way too tough to predict at this point which side of those 1 run games they'll be on.


And the Twins' additions were

Orlando Hudson
JJ Hardy
Jim Thome
Clay Condry
(Retained) Carl Pavano

Their lineup will look something like this

Span - CF
Hudson - 2B
Mauer - C
Morneau - 1B
Kubel - DH/LF
Cuddyer - RF
Thome/Young - DH/LF
Hardy - SS
Harris/Punto/Tolbert/Valencia - 3B

Rotation

Baker
Blackburn
Pavano
Slowey
Liriano/Duensing/Perkins/Swarzak

Bullpen

Rauch
Mijares
Guerrier
Crain
Neshek
Condrey
Duensing/Slama/Delaney

"At least as good as last year" doesn't sound very promising - they were bad last year and the offense is why they didn't go to the postseason. They're not much faster now, and speed is not nearly as valuable as power. Juan Pierre's 40ish SBs with a 75% success rate is worth, what, a few tenths of a win?


Even if the idea that guys "plug up the basepaths" is a real thing, Jones/Kotsay isn't much of an upgrade over Thome in the speed department.


Calling Floyd and Danks #2 pitchers is an absolute best-case scenario, though. They're both good pitchers, and top to bottom its one of the better rotations around, but Danks regressed on Ks and BBs last year and Floyd is still on pretty shaky ground with his flyball style at US Cellular.


They bought low on JJ Hardy, got Orlando Hudson on the cheap, and brought back Pavano at a good price.

I actually like that offense - Choo, Sizemore, Brantley, LaPorta, Branyan, Cabrera, maybe Santana later in the year - lots to like. It's just the starting pitching that's holding them back. I don't see how they could be worse than the Royals though.


Ha, not me, I always either accurately rate the Sox or underrate them a bit (2008). I'll admit I have a bad record with the other teams, though. I'm always way off on the Tigers and Indians, and the Twins are always 3-4 games better than I expect them to be.

Kenny shoots for an 85 win team every year. If they get that, they will be in the thick of it. If they get more, that's gravy, if they get less, they are out of it. There is no wildcard to shoot for like the Red Sox and Yankees get to fall back on, it's win the division or nothing.

There is a domino effect for Nathan's injury in that when he doesn't close, they will need to take someone else out of the bullpen and introduce someone in that they weren't necessarily counting on. For example, when Jenks went down for the Sox last year, they had to use Thornton to close, which also hurt them in the 7th-8th inning setup role because the guy that replaces Thornton isn't as good as Thornton and Thornton is not the closer that Jenks is.

Initial talk is that two ex-Sox players will try to close, either Guerrier or Rauch. I was listening to MLB on XM and they said the Twins should go get Smoltz to close. Not a terrible idea for the Twins.

I think Smoltz still wants to start and is trying to stay in the NL, based on last year's AL/NL split.

Right, he's considerably better.

Matt Thornton had the fifth-lowest xFIP (Fielding-Independent Pitching with home runs normalized) of all relievers last year - behind only Broxton, Rivera, Hughes, and Wuertz. Nice company to keep. In Wins Above Replacement, he was at 2.5, second behind Broxton - ahead of Rivera, Nathan, Papelbon, etc. That's context-neutral, but still. Jenks was worth just .4 wins last year.

Anyway, your point about bullpen dominos is fine, I just wanted to take advantage of an excuse to praise Matt, one of my top three favorite players on the team.

Agreed. I don't follow baseball on a stats level, but last season you could see the difference between Jenks and Thornton just by watching them on the mound-- bleary-eyed v. sharp.

As it turns out, Jenks was in the bottle for a portion of last season, and it really affected his performance.

Well, that's a bit speculative. But even if Jenks was totally sober, he's just gotten worse in each of the past three years, while Thornton has gotten better each year during the same span. Jenks just doesn't use Uncle Charlie nearly as much as he did when he was dominant, and his heavily used fastball wasn't cutting it in 2009.

The Twins payroll is north of $96 million right now. And it will probably be more if the Mauer deal is inked. Nathan's replacement is coming from in house, most likely Rauch, who's in a contract year. I'm not terribly ripped up about this as the Twins are in great shape from a depth perspective and Nathan is getting old anyways. Pretty much everyone in Minnesota had the feeling that a continuation in his decline was inevitable.

Something that needs to be cleared up pretty soon is the idea that the Twins are a "small market" team. I read the other day that with the new stadium and their TV/radio deals, the Twins will place, going forward, among the top 8-10 revenue-generating teams in MLB. They will be above the Dodgers, for example. I wish I could remember where I saw that.

Well, their 2009 salary was seventh-lowest in baseball. Besides 2007 (the last year with Santana and Hunter) they've been very consistent in that mid-50s to mid-60s range.

Opening Day payrolls for 25-man roster
(salaries plus pro-rated signing bonuses):
2009: $ 65,299,266
2008: $ 56,932,766
2007: $ 71,439,500
2006: $ 63,396,006
2005: $ 56,186,000
2004: $ 53,585,000
2003: $ 55,505,000
2002: $ 40,225,000
2001: $ 24,130,000
2000: $ 15,700,000

So I'll be interested to see if 2010 is an outlier or if they jump up into the mid-level payrolls (which is likely with the new park and almost guaranteed if they retain Mauer).

Here it is - it was from a Gammons article on MLB.com:



If they sign Mauer for more than $20M a season, I think it's pretty safe to say they'll be around $90M-$100M pretty consistently.

http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20...sp&c_id=mlb

100% OTM about Jenks...

More Charlie for sure:

% Curveballs per year

YEAR vs. RHB vs. LHB
2009 8.7 8.7
2008 9.4 11.0
2007 11.0 13.3
2006 17.3 13.0
2005 18.5 11.6

Gotta mix it up better, not sure if it's because of his back, kidney stones, too drinky or whatever.

And as for Thornton being a better closer, you might just be right, but then going back to the domino effect, who takes over setting up for Thornton and not lose quality? Not being argumentative, just filling the in blanks, it's an honest question. The bullpen has to work as a unit, with everyone doing their role to succeed.

The closer non-sense is just a useless institutional heuristic to help managers realize that they need their best possible reliever in the highest leverage spots. So they invented a stat for it and gave them a title so the player's union could get teams to pay premiums on these types of relievers. It's a stroke of genius.

If Thornton becomes closer, the next best reliever becomes the top set-up man, after that the third best guy and so on down the line. So if Jenks is the second best reliever he should be doing the 8th.



Fair enough. I just get annoyed because these systems only really speak up in March and keep pretty quiet after the season is over. Of course I'm not a subscriber of BP or anything, so maybe there are reviews on their projections.

This is called the Metrodome Effect. It's gone now.






I'm going to run this into the ground ;)

I'm interested to see how this team pans out. Can't believe opening day is less than a month away now. I'm also surprised that Jermaine Dye still hasn't signed with any team yet.

I've seen BP and some other places talk about their projections after the fact. Even if they're way off, they're worth doing so they can improve in the future. Individual player projections are useful and projecting the season for a team is just an extension of those. It's still in its infancy but it's interesting to think about.


He talked himself out of a few jobs. A guy like him needed to sign a one-year deal at a low price early in the offseason. With the Rays signing Blalock and the Sox apparently (unfortunately) happy with their roster as-is, Dye may well have talked himself into early retirement.

Now that teams care about defense and maximizing roster flexibility, his offensive numbers are, in effect, hugely reduced from the raw numbers you look at. There just aren't enough DH spots to go around, and few teams can or will devote a bench spot to a guy who can only PH. Thome's one of the few exceptions, like a Matt Stairs last year (and even then, Stairs was a waste last year (though he was obviously huge in the playoffs in 2008)).

It would be easier for guys like him if more teams went with 11 pitchers. You could have him platoon against lefties (who he still destroys), pinch hit, get limited outfield work, and spot-DH on an AL team. 200-300 ABs of Dye mostly against lefties and mostly without playing defense is pretty useful.

I can't say I've looked at it really closely, but anecdotally I'd say most teams could afford to ride their bullpens a bit harder, drop that awful seventh guy, and get an extra bat like Dye on the roster.

Bert Blyleven would say (since he takes every opportunity to say so) that managers should ride their starters harder in order to save the bullpen enough to roll with 11 pitchers. In an interview with Bill James a few years back, he mentioned that with the dawn of the 5 man rotation and the 100 pitch count, the implementation of both was probably unnecessary.




Going to?

Opening day!
Can't wait to get the season started.

Hard to believe it's already been 5 years since the Sox won the World Series.

Sox - 88
Twins - 85
Tigers - 83
KC - 76
Indians - 72

- - -

I just like the Sox rotation that much more than my Twins. I know my squad has their deepest line-up in years, but too many questions about our rotation and the bullpen in light of Nathan's injury. Our starters' ERA was 26th in the league last year (ugh) and I'm not sold on Rauch. Plus, I have BIG concerns about Morneau. Prior to being shelved last year, he declined pretty steadily after July 4th. Those back injuries can be tough to come back from, and his performance this spring doesn't give me a lot of hope that he's back on track.

But damn, that new ballpark is something. Took in the game Saturday against the Cards. It just fantastic. Blows Coors Field out of the water and is nicer than Safeco, too (the only two other "modern" parks I've been to).

Play ball

Kurt Newman playing the national anthem? Wild.

Where the hell was Sammy?

Buehrle with the play of the year on opening day. Amazing.

great game. hope it's a sign of things to come. I really thought this was how they'd play last season.

I'll be damned if a cooler defensive play happens this year.

That Buehrle play went just the way they had practiced it in spring training.

The first thing I thought of with that play was Iguchi's diving flip in a late April game against the Jays in 2006. Sure enough Konerko brought up the same play in the post-game interview.

In other news, the all-time record for HBP is 51 - I wonder if Quentin can top it? He's off to a good start.

Confusing headline on the Twins' yahoo page.

Twins write White Sox book

Good for them for actually doing this. I think every kid has had this thought run through their head playing video games once in their life. Someone was eventually going to do it. It's cool that they were actually kids.

Worked the White Sox game last night. Game time temperature was a balmy 39 degrees. Jeebus it was cold. And so help me God, if Peavy doesn't start pitching faster, he's quickly going to become my least favorite Sock. Last night he made Jose Contreras seem like Mark Buerhle. Longest 5 innings ever.

When people start bitching about the Twins playing outdoors in April, can we let the record show that it gets into the 30s and snows in April here?

Mark Buerhle vs. Nick Blackburn

When people tried to defend the mostly unnecessary arbitration buyout of Nick Blackburn this Spring, they pointed that more or less he's Mark Buerhle in a slightly above average year if you go by Blackburn's 2008 and 2009 track record (considering he more or less put up the exact same statistics both year). Both pitchers go through stretches when they are unhittable and stretches of consecutive starts when they can't get past the 4th inning, yet wind up getting reputations as inning eaters in the long run with respectable FIPs and ERAs because of their ability to induce weak contact and limit walks and in spite of their sub-par strikeout rates. Both work quickly and avoid deep counts. I have no idea who will be better today, but considering they were both sharp in their first starts I'm going to predict this 1:05 game will be over before 3:30.

So...the White Sox haven't been very good so far, have they? Having trouble scoring runs it seems.

what a game if they hold on and win it in the 9th. looks like the bats are starting to wake up.

My clock said 3:24 when Hardy got tagged.

I suppose Hardy or Scotty Ullger's mistake on that play was failing to realize that Juan Pierre was playing practically on the warning track for Thome. He was right there to play off the hop. But even so, Pierre needed a good throw into Teahen to get the runner and I suppose Ullger just didn't think he had it in him. Kudos.

I was at BW3 when the game ended, and I had to laugh after the whole place started screaming after Thome's hit, and everyone yelled out 'NOOOOOOOOOOO' when Hardy rounded 3rd to come home. Surprised Hardy didn't pull a Pete Rose and crush A.J. at the plate.

more late inning heroics.

the bullpen has thrown 19 innings through 7 games, and pretty much all of them have been in close game situations. over 2 2/3 per game doesn't seem that high, but i don't really have anything to compare that too. it certainly feels like the team has been over-reliant on them to chew up innings so far. with only 2 off days between now and 5/10 they can't keep this trend up.
sure could use another offensive blowout like opening day to rest some of those arms

They had already been in 3 extra inning games. The starters have been doing their share, that's just how it's going to be considering this is a strong pitching weak hitting team. I've been saying it all winter, but this team is going to sink or swim based on how well this bullpen does. Santos off to a good start is surely going to help.

Andruw Jones is beast. Juan Pierre is just a foul ball machine (Ozzie has him at DH now cuz of his defense) and he makes me miss Scotty Pods.

LULZ BACK TO BACK WALK OFFS. LOLOLOLOL. HURRRR SWEEP

wtb .500