Rejuvinating the Great Red Machine

[jaykno14]

Devil Rays that is. In '06 the ''evil fishies'' as Craig would call them, went 79-83 for second to last place. What else is new? It seems as though that is all that Tampa Bay can ever look foward to. A race to not finish last. This off season it looked as though they may try to shore up some major weaknesses on the club. They signed Eric Gagne to a four year $3,987,000 deal, which will help their 5.03 bullpen ERA this year and they signed a lucrative deal with Lance Berkman that is worth more than $17 million a year for three seasons. Also, they upgraded at first base by replacing Brian Buchanan with young star Ryan Howard, although they gave up highly touted short stop B.J. Upton in return. They also disposed of old, expensive talent like Jim Edmonds and signed veteran talent (Melvin Mora) to cheap deals (minor league contract). Things they didn't do this off season is fill in their pitching weakness from last year, which will prevent them from competing with the evil empire.

Last year one of the biggest reasons they struggled was their 28th ranked 5.12 ERA. That isn't surprising considering that their staff ace was none other than Casey Fossum. This year the staff will be led by Rob Bell, and lucky for them OOTP6 only knows rating not names. Bell has ratings of 7/7/8 which isn't bad. Fossum will be the second guy in the rotation with him being followed by Kevin Correia, Jorge Sosa, and J.J. Putz. Sure, there aren't a lot of names there but all of those guys have decent ratings.

In the bullpen they will have Eric Gagne as their new closer. That is a major upgrade over last year's closer Jim Mecir, who had a 6.48 ERA and was 6-14. He did somehow manage 27 saves though. This year Mecir has been downgraded to second middle reliever. Blaine Neal and Lance Carter will be the setup men and both have above average ratings. Joselo Diaz is their first middle reliever. Diaz has above average ratings at which he has a lot of movement and velocity between 93-96. Old closer Mecir and Roy Corcoran are the second and third middle relievers. Corcoran showed good stuff last year with an ERA of 4.19 and a WHIP of 1.25.

On the offensive side, the fishies were atop the MLB. Their .276 average was 3rd in the league, they had 162 HR which was 12th in the league, 569 walks which was 5th in the league and 864 runs scored which was 3rd in the league. That is what enabled them to remain around .500 the whole year with that awful pitching staff. At catcher the Rays will go with Mike Tonis who hit a respectable .276 last year and is a defensive specialist. Also in the infield they will have two new faces with the dealing of shortstop B.J. Upton and trading for Ryan Howard. At short will be Jason Maxwell who had a respectable .830 OPS and at first base they will have Ryan Howard who is an upgrade over Bucahnan. At third they have Eric Hinske who hit .240 last year as a lead off man. In the outfield they have Berkman, Craig Wilson, who they traded for this past trade deadline, and Michael Restovich who had 91 RBI last year. At DH they have Delmon Young the 21 year old phenom.

The D'Rays look set for the future because they do have the sixth best minor league system. Then again it seems like they always have one of the best minor league systems and it still hasn't worked out. They have five guys in the top 100 which includes Delmon Young (MLB), LHP James Houser (A), 2005 4th round draft pick LHP Robert Leon (AA), LF Wes Bankton (AAA), and 2005 3rd round draft pick RF Jerry Clouse (A). Bankston looks to be the only one rotting away in thet minors. He has been at AAA the past two years and has good enough stats to be at the MLB level but hasn't stuck in the majors.

To sum up the Rays would be my pick to take second in the AL East this year. They look like they're actually up to something down in Florida and it can only come out good. If their pitching can hold up or if they trade one of their sluggers for pitching, they could easily be in the race for a wild card.

[jaykno14]

Last year the Orioles went 80-82 which wasn't bad for them considering that they had the leagues 8th lowest payroll at $67,394,571. This offseason they didn't seem to improve much on what they had. All the contracts they signed were between minor league contracts and $2,226,000 and the biggest name they signed was Rick Stone. Exactly. This section of the preview was short for all the reasons I just stated.

On the pitching side of things, the staff had an ERA of 4.99 which was 26th in the league and an opponent's average of .282 which was 2nd to last. Also they allowed 885 runs which was 28th in the league. As you can see we have our third straight poor pitching staff in the AL East. Last year's staff was led by Sidney Ponson who did manage to get 18 wins but also managed to have a 4.99 ERA. He's gone. This year's staff will be led by 25 year old sophmore Ryan Hannaman who was the second pitcher on the staff last year and probably one of the best with a 4.18 ERA. Hannaman has excellent ratings of 7/7/10 so he will most likely do well this year. The average age in the starting rotation all together is 25.6 that tells you a little more about these guys.

In the bullpen the Orioles are a little older at 32.1 years of age. Not that it really matters. This years closer will be Darwin Cubillan who had a 4.78 ERA last year so he had to hand the job over to Ray King. King will be this year's left handed set up man along with Aaron Rakers who will go against righties. This offseason's biggest signing, Rick Stone, and he will be the mop up man along with middle reliever. Kevin Tolar and Billy Sylvester are the other two middle relievers. The bullpen looks as though it may have to anchor a young staff and help out the young starting pitchers as they go along.

On the hitting side, it seems as if the AL East is full of slugging clubs. The Orioles were 3rd in home runs last year with 184 and 8th in runs scored with 832. Sammy Sosa has retired and will most likely enter into the Hall of Fame. The other leader of that bunch was Adam Dunn who slugged 32 home runs and Paul Konerko had 122 RBI along with 29 home runs. Miguel Tejada is at SS still and bats fifth. Last year he drove in 88 with 18 home runs and 20 SB. Yet another powerful hitter is David Newhan who hit only 16 home runs last year but has above average power ratings. No wonder the Orioles were 3rd in the league in home runs last year!

In the minors the Orioles boast the 8th best minor league system. Their top prospect is RHP Chris Ray who is 25 and still at AA. I hope he can get a move on and hurry through the system or else he is in trouble. Their second best prospect is a second baseman by the name of Tyler Johnson who is ranked 29th in the top 100. Johnson will be a speedy contact hitter who could possibly steal 50 bases in a year. He is 23 and at AAA. The 46th best prospect is CF Dave Caudillo. Caudillo is at A and is 23 years old. He better get moving also. Caudillo has above average power and that is about it. Thier fourth top 100 prospect is RHP Rene Moreno, who is a closer prospect. He is 19 and at AAA so he could see some action at the big league club this year if he does well enough. Moreno has excellent stuff and will probably make a good closer.

At the end, the Orioles look like they will probably fight for third again this year and could possibly be passed up by Boston, but that is unlikely.

[jaykno14]

I was wondering if anyone thought I have been hovering around stats too much? I wanna make this enjoyable to read not just "Eric Milton was 8-12 last year with a 4.78 ERA".

Criticizim is WELCOMED!

[seth70liz76]

Given that this is the first year of the dynasty, I think the stats are needed to give some context to how a player is doing in this universe.

[jaykno14]

The next type of birds in the flock that we have to go through is the Blue Jay. Last year these Blue Jays went 81-81 which was a surprising seven games over their pythagorean (sorry if i misspelled) record. This offseason, they decide to improve offensive wise by signing Alex Cora to a five year ($1,674,600) deal, Toby Hall to a massive four year ($8,993,900) deal, and Matt Lecroy to a $1,175,800 for one year deal. Lecroy was released less than a month later. With Hall they replaced potential fluke catcher Dusty Wathan who hit .282 with 7 homers last year and he was claimed off waivers by LAD.

As you may notice they didn't make any changes to starting pitching. Well that may be because starting pitching was actually one of their strong points last year with guys such as Roy Halladay, Kevin Millwood, Zachary Johson, a 23 year old prospect, Runelvys Hernandez, and they replaced Kurt Ainsworth by trading for Carl Pavano last July. Hernandez just pitched like sh*t but the rest of the rotation had an ERA under 4.80 with Jackson the only one being close to that because it was his first year. This year the rotation will be Halladay, who needs to have a 20 win season in order for Toronto to compete with the Evil Empire this year, Zach Johnson, who needs to have a good sophmore year, Kevin Millwood, who needs to repeat or not do too much worse than last year's 3.92 ERA, Runelvys Hernandez, who needs to bring his ERA a little more towards 5 unlike last year when he had an ERA of 6.62, and Carl Pavano, who needs to continue what he did last year with a 4.08 ERA.

In the pen of bulls, the Jays had Guillermo Mota as their $4 million closer. Last year he saved 26 games and needs to raise that by 39% (by 10 saves for those that are mathmatically challenged) in order to achieve what he is worth. He is set up by Jason Isringhausen who had 7 saves last year with an ERA towards the likes of 4.34. Him and Talley Haines (what a name), the other setup man, need to be able to pitch well so that the Jays can get to Mota at the closer position. The middle relievers are Jason Frasor, who was 5-4 with 5 saves last year, Justin Spier, and Jaime Vermilya. All in all good teams expect their bullpen to do that job and it will be the same here.

The lineup was changed quite a bit this year than last. Toby Hall took over the catcher position and will bat second and Alex Cora will play shortstop and bat eighth. Cora adds range to the middle of their infield which was missing with The Hackastic One last year. Also Cora will provide more average. The Jay's middle of the lineup can compete with the likes of anyone in the league with Vernon Wells who had a MVP caliber season last year with a line of .299/30/123/14 SB. If he can continue that this year, then I'd expect these guys to give the Empire a run for their money. Carlos Pena is the third batter and he hit 20 homers with 82 RBI's last yer while Reed Johson (hmmm...) is the fifth batter. Forget that I said that they could compete with anyone.

In the minors the Jays are the fourth best team. They have the best prospect in the Bigs (listen to this) Chi-Hung Chang, and the fourth best prospect Jaime Laursen. Chang is at A and has had a 2.76 ERA average the past two years and it looks like he may be their AGAIN! I have no clue what Blue Jay management is thinking but they best get him movin' through the system or else he could be wasted. Laursen is an OF prospect who has the potential to be an excellent leadoff hitter and could maybe hit .400 someday.

All in all the Blue Jays will most likely get in second again this year (I know I said that the Rays would hold that position but they don't have any pitching). They could possibly make a run at a division crown but the only likely way they can get to the playoffs is in the wild card position.