Opperman

I never said anything along those lines. Only a UT fan could get that confused. Santana will be outstanding again this year. His track record suggests nothing otherwise. There's a difference between repeating a year that matches your track records (Albert Pujols, Alex Rodriguez, et al) and repeating a year that's completely out of line with your track record (Brady Anderson 1996, Kevin Mitchell 1989, Carlos Delgado 2000, John Olerud 1993, etc.). Minnesota has some legit players, they're just not hyped like crazy. Johan Santana may be the best pitcher in baseball right now...if he played in New York or Boston, he'd get the press. But he doesn't. Morneau, Mauer, Corey Koskie, Shannon Stewart...they have some guys who can really play. As well as Santana, Radke, and a bullpen that's better than people think. As for chemistry...Jeff Kent had some nice quotes in the LA Times last week about it. "It all starts on the field. When is the last time you've heard of a team with great chemistry that stinks? It's all about the field." "Hey, Barry Bonds and I fought more in one year than anybody could imagine, and we went to the World Series. Now that was chemistry." "If guys hate each other, sometimes I think that's better. If they are fighting with each other, competitive with each other, they take it out on the field, on the other team, and that's great." "Let's say I go up there, bases loaded, and I don't get a hit. The guy batting behind me, if we're fighting in the clubhouse, he wants to show me up. He wants to say, 'That at-bat proves Kent stinks. Let me show everyone how I can do it.' Then he does it, gets a big hit, wins the game, just to spite me. Now that's chemistry." "Works for pitchers too. Let's say a pitcher is mad at somebody in this room. He goes out to the mound. He looks at the batter's box. He picks up the ball and looks at the batter and is like, 'I wanna kill you with this ball.' That's the guy I want on my team. I want that edge. Now that's chemistry." "Roy says that our chemistry is always just a three-game winning streak away." --Dodgers GM Paul Depodesta, quoting his assistant GM Roy Smith "Chemistry" in baseball is something players and coaches point to after a team is already winning. "Talent" is the reason winning happens.

Pitchers' win-loss record means jack squat. It's all about K rate, BB rate, and HR rate. If you know those three numbers, you can predicthow well he'll pitch. All three of those guys had outstanding K rates, pretty good HR rates, and were young enough that you could expect a solid improvement in their BB rates. And like btown said, everybody knew all three of them had "future ace" written all over them, it was just a matter of harnessing their control.

I don't care about Infante's HR total. I want to know his OBP and SLG, and what will they be this year? His OBP has never been anything special, and his SLG last year is completely out of line from what the rest of his career predicts. It isn't likely to happen again. He's a solid player, but he's nothing special. Pena might have a big year, but his OBP has to come up a good 30 points before he'll be a really good player. Ordonez is coming off a torn ACL. You can't possibly expect him to have zero trouble with it this year. Why did Pudge DH a lot in 2000? He's getting older and more likely to break down. As for Sanchez...batting average doesn't matter. On-base percentage is the important number. And his is not good. It's not awful, but it's not good. As for Robertson and your comparing him to Schilling...1) Comerica National Park is a much more forgiving park for HR's than BOB, so 30 HR in 196 innings for Detroit is MUCH worse than 37 in 256 innings for Arizona. 2) Schilling can get away with allowing a few more homers, because he struck out 293 batters that year...Robertson only struck out 155. Even adjusting for the same number of innings, Schilling is miles ahead. 3) Pitchers don't win and lose games. Teams win and lose games. Schilling actually pitched better (though he wasn't as durable) in 2003, with an 8-9 record, than he did with a 23-7 record in 2002. His teammates didn't score as many runs. Percival is about to drop off a cliff. You heard it here first. He's old, his predictive numbers have really fallen off. He'll probably still be a useful reliever, but he's not going to be even close to a dominant closer this year. ---- And finally, I completely forgot the team that's actually going to win the division...Minnesota. Cleveland's got a shot to challenge them, but I'm not sure they'll quite be good enough.

We knew about Willis's talent, though we didn't know what he'd do. And if you think Penny, Beckett, and Burnett hadn't shown anything, you're just as crazy as I thought.

I didn't think the broadcast was anything special in terms of quality...less than what the University of Memphis TV games are. Also, I don't know if the problem was on my cable company's end or the sending end, but the sound never worked more than two minutes straight. Does the production crew do very much sports? It wasn't overly smooth.

Whether they miss a start or not, they probably aren't HEALTHY.

So who's the Josh Beckett on Cincinnati this year? AJ Burnett? Dontrelle Willis? Brad Penny? Florida had outstanding pitching that year, everybody knew that. Cincinnati's pitching is horrendous. And that's being kind.

That's a little misleading, because it doesn't really reflect who's being counted on. If you look at Cleveland, for example, their best player is 25...next best is 27. Best pitcher is 24. Basically, they've got a bunch of guys from 24 to 28, with only a couple of guys north of 30 years old. Detroit, OTOH... Only played 130 games twice since 1999. Has been catching in the majors for 15 years now...catchers don't last that long very often. Major injury red flag. Pena's got a chance to be pretty good, but he's never had an OBP better than 340. He's in good shape to break out this year, though. Bright young star? No way. A 317 OBP last year? The 449 SLG was nice, but it's completely out of line with his minor-league numbers. Good hitter for a catcher, not for a 3B. Most of his improvement last year came in the form of singles, and those are very inconsistent. His HR rate picked up a little, but not by a whole lot. Guillen's a very good player, just short of greatness. But last year was very much out of line with his career, and it's not a season he's likely to repeat. And he's coming back from a torn ACL. Old, overrated. 7 walks, 50 strikeouts. Until he learns that the right-handers' batters box isn't in the strike zone, he won't be anywhere near last year's total. 40 steals may happen, but if he doesn't have an OBP of 340 or better, he's useless. VERY injury-prone, which is why they were able to get him. Coming off two major knee surgeries. How durable will he be? Average. Dude gave up 30 homers last year, in one of the most pitcher-friendly home ballparks there is. Old. His K rate last year was only half what it was in 2002 and only 2/3 what it was in 2003. That's not encouraging for this year.

No way to know right now...it's only a little easier to predict playoff winners than coin flips, and that's once you know who's in it!

1) Cardinals 2) Astros 3) Cubs 4) Pirates 5) Reds 6) Selig's Losers The Cardinals have the best overall team (about a 95-win team, though, not 105), the Astros and Cubs will be within a couple of games of each other at about 89 and 87, the Pirates will flirt with 500, the Reds will simply not have any pitching -- again, and the Brewers will continue their two decades of total incompetence.

1) It hasn't been the East since 1997. 2) I think it's going to be Cleveland or Chicago...Detroit is counting on a lot of old, injury-prone players who are more likely to decline than improve. And their pitching is awful.

Renteria probably isn't as good as we've thought. 2003 is looking like an outlier. And how exactly are the Red Sox different than the Yankees? Their payroll is $125 million, they're raiding other teams' rosters in free agency, they're in a huge northeastern market and own their regional cable sports network, they're paying their top three players more than the entire payrolls of Milwaukee, Tampa, Cleveland, and Pittsburgh. Welcome to being officially Yankees Jr., Boston.

SP = South Pittsburg = 300 or so miles from Memphis (at least the quickest drive is)

It's a lot better to watch in person than on TV. You may not like the NBA, but it's not "a joke".

The players don't try to win? THAT is an absurd suggestion. As for when the Timberwolves "beat T-Mac and the Rockets by some obsurd number the other night", I didn't realise 94-86 was an absurd margin. As far as blowout upsets...when 30 teams each play 82 games a year, you're going to have some nights where the better team can't shoot and the lesser team can't miss. Or a guy's sick and doesn't have the energy to last the 35 minutes his team needs him playing well. Minnesota isn't good this year, but I wouldn't call a team with Kevin Garnett, Sam Cassell, Latrell Sprewell, Troy Hudson, and Wally Sczerbiak awful. Nor would I call a team that's 35-34 in the West awful. Yes, they've underachieved, but they've still got a lot of talent, and they're a pretty good team. You want awful, let's look at Atlanta. But even they have some real talent, with Tony Delk, Al Harrington, and Josh Childress, Josh Smith, and Peja Drobniak. You get them on a night when Delk's hitting and Harrington's playing well, they can blow out some pretty good teams.

I wouldn't care about that. My worry would be that with the whole league owned by one entity, that entity would go out of its way to try to favor the franchises that can make them the most money. Pro sports teams need to be independent business operations.

I'd rather have a player taking 20 pounds a day of steroids than a manager who owes 5 figures to the mob betting with them on his team most of the time but not every game. And no, I don't think steroids are a good thing. Compromising the integrity of trying to win is the absolute worst thing you can do in sports. But you're ignoring my other point. If Bonds hasn't broken any rules of MLB, why should he be banned from the Hall? If breaking a federal law is the issue, why aren't we trying to get a whole bunch of other players kicked out?

But they're still illegal under federal law.

I wouldn't be surprised if BA and Bolivar both are...since BA's a 3-time champ and Bolivar a 2-time champ, both led by high-major at minimum prospects.

Mitchell is the kind of team that's inconsistent. It comes with their style. Haywood had the guard play to break the press and the inside play to beat a guard-oriented team. In general, though, I don't think you can pin a loss on the team's best player very often...and I don't think the Bolivar loss is one you can just pin on Thad.

They don't play defense? Watch a game in person sometime. There's some guys who aren't great defenders, sure, but the defenses in the NBA are incredible. That said, most of the time when a player gets clearly beat on a play, he doesn't make the always-fruitless effort -- more show than substance -- to get back in it.

Your nose is growing.

Marijuana is illegal under federal law. Should we kick players out for pot? Amphetamines are illegal under federal law. Should we kick Hank Aaron out of the Hall for that? Assault is illegal under every state law...should we kick Ty Cobb and Babe Ruth out for that? (And those are just two examples that happened during games) Drunk driving is illegal in every state. Should we kick Babe Ruth out of the Hall?

Replays showed the call was correct, though. The Pharaohs did a great job of staying in the game mentally despite all that went wrong in the first half. It's disappointing, but that was still a great run. I know you said you think R-E will be rebuilding as they move up to AAA, but I'm not sure. They're moving into a district they'll have a good chance to win right away -- Cordova and Bolton lost almost everybody, and Bartlett will still be young -- with a weak district on the other half of the region.

Wright definitely makes his teammates better...and so does Thad. They may not do it in the same style as Willie, but that doesn't mean they don't. I really didn't get the impression that Wright or Thad take 25 shots unless that's what their teams need him to do.