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2009 MLB Preview: NL Central
April 2, 2009 | 2 Comments
1. Chicago Cubs. Surely after two consecutive first round sweeps, the Cubs are due to at least win a post-season game. Eh, maybe. Though they should easily win their third consecutive division crown, this team is not nearly as impressive as some are making them out to be. Carlos Zambrano is not the dominant pitcher he was just a couple of years ago, and the rest of the rotation, though solid, is not going to be as good as it was last season. Though it would seem that Rich Harden is window dressing on an otherwise stacked team, the Cubs really need Harden healthy if they want to beat back the Billy goat curse once and for all.
As with their starting rotation, the lineup is well balanced but not spectacular. Derrek Lee is in a state of decline, even if he is still one of the ten best first basemen in the league. Milton Bradley may be the best player on this team, but as is the case with Rich Harden, he is an injury (or, in his case, a verbal explosion) away from contributing for only a short burst of time. I also have to take issue with Lou Piniella’s decision to go with Kevin Gregg as the closer over the clearly superior Carlos Marmol. That decision could unintentionally prove to be a blessing, however, as Marmol winds up pitching in more meaningful situations as the setup guy.
The Cubs will be good, but I’m not convinced that they are really the best team in the league.
2. St. Louis Cardinals. It’s arguable that Tony LaRussa’s best managerial performances have been in maximizing the performance of what has been a lackluster Cardinals roster over the past three seasons. The Cardinals continue to surround Albert Pujols with very little in the way of supporting talent on offense – Khlalil Greene has pop, and should improve upon a disastrous 2008 season in San Diego, but he’s the guy they’ve got batting fourth? Ryan Ludwick overachived in 2008 and is unlikely to quite repeat his performance.
Still, the Cards have some decent young arms, and they should be able to be the best of the rest of what is a mediocre lot in the central division. And they do have the greatest player in the game on their roster. That’s got to count for something.
3. Cincinnati Reds. I’m not exactly going out on a limb in picking them to finish third, but I do feel a little shaky about this pick. I’d have a little more confidence if someone other than Dusty Baker was at the helm, or if I didn’t hear things like that they are considering signing Gary Sheffield, but it’s time for this franchise to take a step forward. They are generally going in the right direction, but oddly enough they might have to rely more on their young pitching than with their offense, which is a risky proposition when you play half of your games in a banbox. Still, if Aaron Harang can rebound and if Edinson Volquez can come close to repeating his “rookie” season, then the Reds should be in the mix.
4. Milwaukee Brewers. Usually a franchise on the upswing doesn’t take a step so far backwards, but I don’t see how the Brewers can make up for the losses of Ben Sheets and and CC Sabathia. I know that they were reasonably successful without CC for 2/3 of the season, but there is no way they would have won the wild card without him. And though Sheets has returned to perpetually injured form this year, he did start over 30 games a year ago. But there’s simply no pitching depth there, unless Jeff Suppan and Braden Looper are really much better than their track record suggests they should be. Yovanni Gallardo might be a future star, but he’s not ready to be the ace of a pennant contender. And while Trevor Hoffman is actually an improvement over what they had a year ago, he ain’t getting any younger.
There might be enough offense to keep the Brewers hanging around, but this is a team that’s still a year or two away from contending again.
5. Houston Astros. Cecil Cooper might think this team has 90+ win talent, and he would be right – if it was 1999, not 2009. Unfortunately for him, Mike Hampton and Ivan Rodriguez will not be winning the Cy Young and MVP awards respectively. But hey, they get to enjoy the twilight years of Miguel Tejada’s career. That should put butts in the seat.
6. Pittsburgh Pirates. Seriously, the Pirates are actually headed in the right direction, and if they could ever spend a buck or two to retain their players or add some good veteran players, they might even be meaningfully competetive. In a couple of years. In 2009? Not so much.
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NR has a baseball article that includes a “why I love the game” from each team’s perspective. Here’s the Mets:
WHY I LOVE THE NEW YORK METS
I fell in love with baseball when I was seven years old, watching the Mets. Which means I fell in love with the Mets. And the main reason for both was that I was already in love with my dad, who had inherited a love for baseball from my grandfather and passed it on to my younger brothers and me as if it were the world’s most coveted legacy. Which, of course, it was — as I now tell my youngest son, age seven.
On green grass in the bright sunshine of glorious summer Sundays, we’d watch the games unfold. The outcome was never really in doubt: In those days (the mid-1960s), the Mets were awful — though awful with charm. (As I was to learn in the ensuing 40-plus years, there are all kinds of awful.) But here was the true allure of baseball: It’s not about the outcome but the journey. That part never changes, whether the Mets lose 100 games (as they’ve often done) or win it all (as they’ve done only twice). In each game, there is mystery: something even the sharpest, most experienced eye may never have seen before, and something that a culture infatuated with numbers and records and stats may not record in its box scores. There is no clock: It’s just ability against ability. It’s a team game in which individual talent matters as in no other. The season is a marathon in which the highs and lows are always one pitch away from turning around, and only the strong survive — at least until next year, because there’s always next year. There’s always spring.
— Andrew C. McCarthy, a senior fellow at the National Review Institute, is the author of Willful Blindness: A Memoir of the Jihad.
I knew there was a reason McCarthy is one of my faves at NRO.