The Boys of Summer Are Back
April 6, 2007
Baseball fans, you can stop checking off the days on your calendar. The hot stove days of winter are gone and spring is back, and with it comes America’s pastime. The boys of summer are back and ready for another 162 game marathon of Major League Baseball. Every team will jockey to win the epitome of baseball achievement: a World Series Championship.
With the excitement that surrounds the beginning of every season comes the questions that every fan has about his or her respective team. For Red Sox fans, it might be the health of J.D. Drew or the rookie season of Daisuke Matsuzaka. For Yankees fans, it’s most likely the status of their apparently weak pitching staff, which will boast the oft-injured Carl Pavano as its opening day starter. For Cubs fans, it’s the anticipation of seeing the extremely well paid Alfonso Soriano leading the team back to glory. Despite the lingering questions and impending excitement, predictions must be made, however bold or wrong they might be. So let’s look at the year to come, division by division.
American League
The American League will once again prove to be the NBA Western Conference of Major League Baseball with the all three divisions providing several strong contenders.
AL West—The AL West is the weakest division in the AL, with the Seattle Mariners, Texas Rangers, Oakland Athletics, and Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim all hoping to take home the division crown. The leading contenders for the AL West will be the defending champion Athletics and the always-competitive Angels.
The Angels have a strong pitching staff, which boasts Bartolo Colon, Kelvim Escobar, and the young Jered Weaver, who was a Rookie of the Year finalist last season. Along with dangerous closer Francisco Rodriguez and outfielders Vladimir Guerrero and Garret Anderson, the Angels should be in contention.
Despite the loss of staff ace Barry Zito to the San Francisco Giants, the A’s are still a solid bunch with talented pitching. Young guns Dan Haren and Rich Harden should provide solid starts and closer Huston Street will provide late-inning relief. Veterans Eric Chavez and new addition Mike Piazza should keep the rest of the young team in check and possibly lead the team to an AL West championship.
AL—East. As for the AL East, it looks as if the age-old rivalry between the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox will take the spotlight. Both teams have undergone significant changes during the off-season and expectations in the two cities are enormous as both groups of fans are talking AL pennant once again.
The Red Sox have upgraded at several positions, the most notable being the starting rotation, with the 100-million-dollar man, Daisuke Matsuzaka. “Dice-K”will get ready to show off his arsenal of off-speed pitches, which have had baseball analysts and general managers spell-bound for the past several years. With staff ace Curt Schilling and the ever-improving Josh Beckett, the Red Sox pitching staff should be much more consistent this year.
Offensively, several other changes have also been made with J.D. Drew being brought in to replace fan-favorite Trot Nixon. Many believe the Sox overpaid for Drew who came into the league with high expectations, but has been plagued by injuries. The other notable addition to the lineup is former Tampa Bay Devil Ray shortstop Julio Lugo, who was brought in to replace Alex Gonzalez. Lugo will be an improvement offensively, however his inconsistent defensive play will be a cause for concern.
Moving down I-95, the New York Yankees are again expected to win the division, but the team is hoping to go deeper into the playoffs than last year’s divisional series exit against the Detroit Tigers, who went on to win the AL pennant.
The starting pitching is a huge concern for New York with Carl Pavano leading the aging and oft-injured staff. Mike Mussina and Andy Pettite, while still putting up solid numbers, are not getting any younger and the Yankees most consistent starter of last season, Chien-Ming Wang, is starting the season on injured reserve. The light at the end of the tunnel is Phil Hughes, the pitching phenom who is very close to the majors at this point and could save the pitching staff come September.
Though the Yankees have lost pitcher Randy Johnson and outfielder Gary Sheffield, Mike Mussina, Mariano Rivera, Alex Rodriguez, and Derek Jeter still don the pinstripes and the Bronx Bombers—with their MLB-leading $195.2 million payroll—should still be in contention.
AL Central—The AL Central will once again be the most exciting division in terms of the amount of teams which seem capable of making a playoff run. The defending Wild Card champion Minnesota Twins, along with the defending division champion Detroit Tigers should win over 90 games, while the Cleveland Indians will make things interesting with their wealth of young talent that could propel them over the aforementioned teams.
The Twins will rely on the bats of reigning MVP Justin Morneau, catcher Joe Mauer, and centerfielder Torii Hunter, while ace Johan Santana will lead the pitching staff. Santana is the best pitcher in baseball, but the Twins will have to hope that Santana’s supporting staff, minus the injured Francisco Liriano, can provide wins at the back end of the rotation.
The Tigers are looking to build on their spectacular 2006 season where they literally went from worst to first, making it all the way to the World Series before losing to the St. Louis Cardinals. Led by a pitching staff of Kenny Rogers, Jeremy Bonderman, and Justin Verlander, the Tigers will hope the addition of Gary Sheffield’s powerful bat will help put them back into the playoffs.
National League
The National League might take steps in 2007 to combat the overriding concern that the NL is a second-tier establishment next to the American League. Before the St. Louis Cardinals won the World Series last year, an American League team had won seven of the previous nine championships. But all three division this year look strong which should make for competitive inter-league play.
NL West—Starting pitchers Jake Peavy and Chris Young will try to lead the Padres again to be the best team in the worst division in baseball. But the team has far to go offensively. San Diego fans are hoping that the losses of Mike Piazza and manager Bruce Boche won’t be detrimental to the team’s chemistry. The Padres’ main competitors will be the Los Angeles Dodgers and the San Francisco Giants.
The Dodgers have made a splash in the free agent pool by picking up starting pitchers Jason Schmidt and Randy Wolf and center-fielder Juan Pierre, but the Giants made the flashier acquisition this off season by picking up former Cy Young winner Barry Zito—one of the most expensive acquisitions in baseball history. But the continuous negative publicity surrounding Barry Bonds will most likely continue to be a distraction for the Giants.
NL—East. The NL East has experienced a changing of the guards in some way, with last season being the first in over a decade that the division champions were not the Atlanta Braves.
The New York Mets have put their stamp on the division as the team to beat, but both the Braves and Philadelphia Phillies will be looking to gain some ground in the division. If the Braves are looking to retake what was once theirs, they will have to get better contribution out of starter Tim Hudson, who was a shadow of his former self last season. Hudson was once one of the premier pitchers in the league but has been disappointing ever since he left Oakland. Though the Braves have John Smoltz to lead the pitching staff, they need Hudson to provide the one-two punch they thought they were going to get when they signed him.
The Phillies, on the other hand, are primed to make a run to the playoffs and if they aren’t able to top the Mets, they should at least be in the hunt for the Wild Card. The Phillies will be relying on NL MVP Ryan Howard to have another big year. The Phillies have an extremely talented infield led by shortstop Jeremy Rollins and second baseman Chase Utley and an All-Star pitcher in Brett Myers. With this talent, the Phillies have a great shot at making a run for a playoff spot.
The team to beat here is the New York Mets who were shockingly eliminated from last years NLCS by the eventual champion Cardinals. The Mets have a stacked offense which includes the speedy shortstop Jose Reyes, along with Carlos Beltran, Carlos Delgado, and David Wright. As long as pitches Tom Glavine and Pedro Martinez can stay healthy, the Mets should return to the NLCS for a second consecutive year.
NL Central—Finally we have the NL Central, a division that has put a team in the World Series the past three years. The defending champion St. Louis Cardinals will once again be the favorites to win the division after holding off a late season push by the Houston Astros in 2006.
With Albert Pujols in the lineup, it’s hard to argue that the Cardinals will not make it back to the playoffs, whether it is through the division or the wild card. However, the Cardinals pitching staff is in question with Chris Carpenter being the only consistent performer in the staff.
The Houston Astros are ready once again to make a push for the playoffs. The Astros will start the season without Roger Clemens who has until May to decide if he wants to play baseball again. That didn’t stop the Astros from making a splash in the free agent market. This past off-season they spent $100 million on Carlos Lee and also traded for starting pitcher Jason Jennings. It has been said that Jennings numbers were inflated after spending all that time in Denver where the thin air tends to greatly help the hitters so it will be interesting to see him in a different environment. The addition of infielder Mark Loretta should also provide depth for a team that is known for starting off slow but making late season surges.
The other two competitors will be the Milwaukee Brewers and Chicago Cubs. The Brewers will showcase a young team with solid players, yet they are at least a few years from making a serious push for the playoffs. While starting pitchers Ben Sheet and Chris Capuano are as fearsome of a one-two punch in the league, the team lacks the firepower on offense that can push them past Houston and St. Louis.
Then there are the Chicago Cubs, the team which seems to find new ways each season to physically and emotionally hurt their fan base. Perhaps the signing of Alfonso Soriano and new manager Lou Piniella will spark the Cubs and transform them back into contenders. But as usual, the question of health is the big factor. Mark Prior and Kerry Wood have yet to reach their full potential as a pitching tandem as injuries have hindered them for the past couple of seasons.
Play Ball
With the end of the season nearly six months away, anything can happen on the road to October. As we often learn as baseball fans, it doesn’t matter what happens these first couple of months, since any team can pick up steam in August and September and win the World Series. For now, lets just sit back and play ball.