Middle Place

Well, the dream of an undefeated season is over for the Jays, but somehow not for the Orioles, which, I suppose, is entirely a function of playing the Twins for the first three games of the year.  Anyway, I'm only a little jealous, since the O's are pretty much 5% of the way to their overall win total for the season, so meh.

Anyway, we've got a few housekeeping items to take care of before I start shitting on the Red Sox and how douchey they are.  First, Kelly Johnson gets the Zaunhead for his game yesterday; he got on base three times, including drawing a big walk in the 9th inning to get Bautista to the plate with the game on the line.

Second, following Joel Carreno's first major league start, he was demoted to AAA in exchange for Aaron Laffey, who will pitch out of the bullpen (or start in an emergency, I guess).  The Jays won't need a fifth starter again until sometime towards the end of the month, and by then Dustin Mcgowan ought to be ready, but even if he's not, they can send Laffey back down and bring up Carreno or Cecil to start in his place (or have Laffey do it).  With the two exrta inning games played already, the Jays kind of needed a rest for the bullpen, so Laffey should provide a rest from the bullpen.  All the members of the bullpen save for Villanueva and Frasor had a rest yesterday, but the Red Sox are in town and they always make you throw a bunch of pitches, so the extra arm in the pen should come in handy.

Third, the home opener is tonight, and should be plenty exciting, considering a sold-out-in-ten-minutes type of hype surrounding this game.  That will probably be fun until about an hour in to the game, when the bottom of the second inning begins.  The Red Sox, of course, began the season by getting swept by the Detroit Tigers, starting the season 0-3 for the second year in a row.  Obviously, we can remember that Boston began last season 0-8 or something like that, before having a really amazing stretch of 120-ish games, and then missing the playoffs in hilarious fashion after a delicious final day of the season.  Hopefully the Sox start the season the way they did last year, since it would give the Jays three more wins.  It's only lunchtime right now, so the lineups aren't up yet, but I'll probably edit those in here later if I remember.  This game begins at 7:30 ET, instead of the usual 7.  I assume that's because it's the homo pinner and there will be some big ceremonial bullshit.  Wear blue!  Henderson Alvarez vs. Felix Doubront.

Finally, the Yu Darvish experience begins tonight, and it's going to be awesome since it happens against Seattle.  I'll be doing everything in my power to see this happen.

Lineups
Jays
Escobar SS
Johnson 2B
Bautista RF
Encarnacion DH
Lind 1B (!)
Lawrie 3B
Davis LF
Arencibia C
Rasmus CF

Alvarez P

Red Idiots
Ellsbury CF
Pederast 2B
Gonzalez 1B
Youkilis 3B
Ortiz DH
Ross LF
Sweeney RF
Saltalamacchia C
Aviles SS

Doubront P

Still First Place!

Man, this is fun.  Would have been nice of Sergio Santos to not "BJ Ryan" this one, but what can you do.  Would also have been nice of JP Arencibia to not make that error, which led directly to the Kipnis HR and the end of a no-hitter.  I'd be insane if I didn't give Brandon Morrow his first celebratory Zaunhead of the year, even though I forgot who started yesterday until about 10 minutes ago.  I also forgot that I had a blog that I regularly update until about 15 minutes ago, so, I dunno, maybe I should lay off the liquor or something.

Stuff
Haven't done a batch of stuff in a while, so let's have a quick look at the internet.  I'm just going to link to John Lott's twitter page, where he'll show you that Asher Wojocowski (or however the fuck you spell that) and Deck Mcguire had pretty rough outings for Dunedin and New Hampshire, respectively, among other minor league performance reports.  Lott is a must-follow, by the way.

Apparently they sell these in Toronto now?

I don't think I linked to this yet, but it's the fangraphs organizational ranking piece about the Jays, who they ranked 9th, 1 spot higher than the Rays.  They also claim that there's some serious dynasty potential.  Yep, that's fine with me.

Shi Davidi says that Dustin Mcgowan will start throwing soon.  He's got plantar fasciitis, if you've been living on Mars.

Elsewhere in baseball, apparently Jamie Moyer has faced 8.9% of all hitters.  Ever.  That's fucking mind-boggling.  This was the trivia question in the Rockies game yesterday, a feature that Jays games don't have, by the way.

Lineups
Jays
Escobar SS
Johnson 2B
Bautista RF
Lind 1B
Encarnacion DH
Thames LF
Rasmus CF
Mathis C

Carreno P

Indianos [/spanish accent]
Brantley CF
Cabrera SS
Choo RF
Santana C
Hafner DH
Duncan LF
Kotchmann 1B
Kipnis 2B
Hannahan 3B

Lowe P

First Place!

So that was fun, huh?  First Zaunhead of the year goes to Jose Bautista.  He also happens to be the leader in fangraphs-WAR, though they aren't updated to reflect today's (Friday) games, and Carlos Pena has himself a nice little day out there.  I got stupid drunk last night while watching the game.  The innings just kept coming, and so did the beers.  I broke a nice little 6-year vomit streak, so I'm not catching Jerry Seinfeld until I'm at least 37.

I actually got up this morning, still drunk, and watched the highlights of last night's game, and frankly, I don't remember a lot of it.  I'm told that all of the Jays' relievers pitched, but I really just don't remember seeing Francisco Cordero, Darren Oliver, or Carlos Villanueva, which is weird, since they threw a combined 3+ innings.

Speaking of Jays relievers, nice little job by Luis Perez, going 4 innings in relief.  Too bad Farrell doesn't know the rules yet, and sent Perez back out to warm up instead of getting Santos in and ready in time.  And throwing Adam Lind out there in the 4-hole doesn't really help.

I'm going golfing tomorrow morning, so I doubt I'll have time to make a post before the game.  Afternoon game, and we'll get to see Brandon Morrow go out and toy with the Indians' lineup.  Ubaldo Jimenez, appealing his suspension, will start for Cleveland for the time being, until he's ultimately suspended for five games for throwing at Tulo the other day.

By the way, Blogger's new layout is AIDS.

Jays vs. Indians, April 5

Boy, that feels different.  I think I'm too excited to write anything even remotely coherent for any more than a paragraph or two, but whatever.  To boot, I'll probably start drinking in about two hours, and hope to find some Masters coverage until the ball game starts.  I'm used to coming up with some kind of pun about a piece of baseball-related news or something, but there's no time for that today.  Straight preview.

Ricky Romero vs. Justin Masterson is your pitching matchup.  We all know what to expect from Ricky, but Masterson is a bit more of an unknown entity, especially since he plays in Cleveland and has only been good for a year.  He's like 6'6'', so he has a really nice downward motion to his pitches, making him an extreme groundball-heavy pitcher.  I expect him to be fairly successful this season, especially when you consider the infield defense behind him.

This Cleveland lineup seems pretty meh to me at the moment, so maybe we can just go right ahead and call for a sweep?  Seems fine to me.  I find it interesting to see all the lefties against Romero, especially Hafner at DH, though I suppose they might not really have any other options.

I watched most of the MIA-STL game last night, and uhh, frankly... that stadium is a piece of shit.  Two balls that Stanton hit to CF should probably have been gone, but apparently they opted to play that game in San Diego or something, because those balls just didn't carry at all.  I still think that Miami is going to be a really fun team to watch this year, even if they finish under .500 and disappoint an awful lot of people.  It will be interesting to see if they bring those green screens fences in during the offseason, because if Stanton can't get a ball out of there, nobody can.

I'll probably be surfing around, trying to check out Roy Halladay pitch against Pittsburgh, because he might just no-hit them, and I'll hope to see Strasburg against the Cubs as well, for the same reason.  Of course, Clayton Kershaw is almost a mortal lock to no-hit the Padres tonight, and I'll probably actually watch that whole game since it's on after the Jays and the Masters.  Big weekend.

Lineups
Jays
Escobar SS
Johnson 2B
Lawrie 3B [sidenote: fuck yes.]
Bautista RF
Lind 1B
Encarnacion DH
Thames LF
Arencibia C
Rasmus CF

Romero P

Indians
Brantley CF
Cabrera SS
Choo RF
Santana C
Hafner DH
Duncan LF
Kotchmann 1B
Kipnis 2B
Hannahan 3B

Masterson P

2012 Previews: Atlanta Braves

Last one.

The Majors
I think this is a really good team, top to bottom.  The rotation is really good, the lineup is, at least from an offensive standpoint, really solid, and this is probably the best bullpen in baseball.

It shouldn't really come as a surprise, since they've been doing it for decades now, but this rotation is nice and deep, to the point where they could have moved a starter or two this offseason without much worry.  The Derek Lowe trade was just fine, leaving them with plenty of options to go with, without rushing any of their prospect depth to the majors.  Tommy Hanson, Tim Hudson, Brandon Beachy and Mike Minor are all front-end starters, and Jair Jurrjens is a pretty good choice for a #5.  Jonny Venters and Craig Kimbrel make up the two-headed monster at the back of the bullpen, with other weapons such as Eric O'Flaherty there to take up the rest.

As for the lineup, the only real question marks are Tyler Pastornicky and Chipper Jones' hamstring.  I fully expect Jason Heyward to return to 2010 form, but even if he's his 2011 self, that's still above average production from a 23 year old.  Brian McCann and Dan Uggla will provide the power, and Michael Bourn will provide the speed.

I expect plenty of good baseball from this team, and I think they will be the ones to put an end to the stretch of division championships for the Phillies.

The Minors
I think a lot of people overrate this system, thanks to some really special pitching prospects.  They have a lot of great pitchers in the system, but have very few position players within the system.  They can probably turn a lot of that pitching depth, either at the MLB level or at the prospect level, in to position players through trades if needed.

The Verdict
I've got the Braves going to the World Series.  They're a really strong team all around, and have enough prospects and payroll to go for it this year.  Beyond that, Chipper Jones is retiring at the end of the year, so I can see them trying to go nuts in his honor.

Projection: 92-70, 1st in the NL East.

Breaking: Joel Carreno Makes Opening Day Rotation?

#Bluejays rotation will be following to start season: Romero-Morrow-Carreno-Alvarez-Drabek, according to Mgr Farrell.
— Brendan Kennedy (@BKennedyStar) April 3, 2012

I've never heard of this man,  but Richard Griffin just retweeted it, so this has to be true.  In other news, Brett Cecil's career is over (probably).

2012 Previews: Cincinnati Reds

Canada!

The Majors
This is a pretty good time to be a Reds fan.  Walt Jocketty is going to do all he can to convince both Joey Votto and Brandon Phillips to stick around, and that involves going out and trading for young pitching studs like Mat Latos.

The offense, led by Joey Votto and Jay Bruce, shouldn't be a problem.  They scored 735 runs last season, even with uninspiring performances from Scott Rolen and the SS combo of Edgar Renteria and Paul Janish.  The latter should be tempered with the emergence of rookie Zack Cozart, though I don't really know what to say about Rolen.

As mentioned, the rotation will get a severe boost with the addition of Mat Latos, and the subtraction of Edinson Volquez.  Mike Leake, Homer Bailey and Johnny Cueto will round out a pretty decent rotation, and if everyone stays healthy, the historically terrible Bronson Arroyo won't throw 200 innings again.  This rotation is pretty thin though, so if someone gets hurt and misses a significant amount of time, it could be curtains.

The signing of Ryan Madson made this bullpen look outrageously strong, but he's now going to miss the season.  As result, "outrageously" changes to "pretty".  Sean Marshall should get the bulk of the save opportunities, and Aroldis Chapman will likely be the setup man.  Nick Masset and Bill Bray will also provide some solid relief innings.

All in all, this is a good team, and is my pick to win the sort-of-strong NL Central.  They should have been better than they were last year (and would have been if not for disappointments from Volquez and Rolen, plus injuries in the rotation which forced them to give Bronson Arroyo too many innings), and they definitely improved over the winter.  May as well make a push while Votto is here.

The Minors
I fully expect Walt Jocketty to sell out his farm system this summer.  They could use another arm in the rotation to move the virtually untradeable Arroyo to the bullpen (he has $15MM deferred in his contract, but trading him voids the deferral and that money needs to be paid upfront), and maybe find another 3B if Rolen continues to disappoint.  The problem is that they moved a lot of good prospects in the Latos deal, and now have a fairly modest system.  There are still parts there, but most of their big pieces are now in San Diego.  I can see Jocketty going after Matt Garza at some point this summer, but I'm not quite sure if he's got the pieces to get the deal done if there are other suitors.

The Verdict
When you combine the removal of Albert Pujols and Prince Fielder from the division with the improvement that this team has made over the winter, I think this is the best team in the NL Central.  If Phillips walks after this season, or if Votto walks after 2013 (Votto is obviously the less replaceable of the two), I can see some big problems going forward.  This team was bad for quite a while before winning the division two years ago; it would be nice if they could hang around for at least a little while.  Instead, it looks like they're going to have a rough time keeping both guys around, and with such a mediocre farm system, I struggle to see any success past 2013 without Votto.  The Reds should be all-in for these next two seasons, and then it might be back to the drawing board.

[Update: I'll just leave this here. http://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2012/04/reds-to-extend-joey-votto.html]

Projection: 91-71, 1st in the NL Central