AL Central Preview

Yuck! 1) Minnesota 2) Kansas City 3) Chicago 4) Cleveland 5) Detroit.

Minnesota won 90 games last season and while I’m not enthralled with all of their moves this season, the fact remains that they are very talented and have a lot of young players who should still be improving. A.J. Pierzinski was a real good hitting catcher, but I don’t think they’ll miss him much after Joe Mauer gets some significant playing time. Shannon Stewart should provide a lesson in “correlation” vs. “causation.” He’s a good player, but the Twins have a ton of good corner outfielders, and with a limited budget may have been better served spending the money elsewhere. Like second base, where Rivas doesn’t field particularly well, and can’t hit at all. The pitching is decent, led by Radke, Santana (in the rotation all year) and Lohse. If Joe Mays could come anywhere near his 2001 performance all would be good. Getting rid of Reed was a positive, but they replaced him with another worthless Rick (Helling), who fortunately broke a leg and won’t be on the mound at the start of the season. I think the Twins will win 87-88 games, which should be enough in this division.

I really really really wanted to pick the Royals to win the Central. They’ll give the Twins a run for their money, but I just don’t think that they have the pitching to keep up. Brian Anderson, Kevin Appier, Jimmy Gobble and Darrell May don’t inspire a ton of confidence. Gobble’s young and could surprise. May seemingly resurrected his career last year, but I’m not going to bet on a repeat from a guy in his 30’s. He could go all Jamie Moyer on me, but that’s not where the smart money is. The bullpen, however, is hugely improved this year. The Royals gave 142 innings (about 10% of the season total) to relievers with ERAs above 6.00 last season – most well above 6. (That’s not counting Chris George’s 93 IP at a 7.11 ERA, all as a starter, mind you). The Royals’ offense will be better, replacing Brent Mayne and his 651 OPS with Benito Santiago, who keeps chugging along (unless, of course, that BALCO thing played a factor), and bringing in Matt Stairs to keep Ken Harvey from having to bat against RHP. Also, Raul Ibanez won’t be missed if Juan Gone can play 120 games. Sweeney should be good for an extra 100 PAs this year, and Carlos Beltran is one of the best players in the big leagues who is just now entering his prime. The Royals are better than last year, but their record last year was a bit of an aberration (they gave up more runs than they scored), so I’ll say 85 wins for them.

I really really wanted to pick the White Sox to finish lower than third, because I believe Ozzie Guillen will turn out to be a worse manager than Larry Bowa. Ozzie was a slap hitter who never took a pitch and wants everybody to play the same way he did. It’ll be fun the first time he calls for a bunt from Frank Thomas. Still, the offense looks pretty good. Thomas can still hit and Ordonez is one of the best in the league. There’s no way Konerko and Crede can be as bad as last year. The pitching’s a little thin. The ChiSox didn’t get anybody to replace Colon, Buehrle gets away with a lot of balls in play (though last year is probably representative of the type of season he’ll probably put up), and you read it here first, Loaiza will not win 21 games this season. Ozzie’s not concerned with pitch counts, so look for someone to end up on the DL with a sore arm, too. Ozzie also has Billy Koch closing out games in spring training, so you know he’ll bounce back, but Marte is the best reliever in the pen and he’ll pitch a lot with the game on the line, too. I believe that the Sox have the talent to contend, but I think Guillen will botch things up enough that a couple of games over .500 is the best they can hope for.

Cleveland is a year or two away from contending. They have a real nice core of young players (Jody Gerut, Milton Bradley, Victor Martinez, Travis Hafner, Ryan Ludwick) and some good young pitching (Sabathia, Billy Traber, Cliff Lee, Jason Stanford), but I think they’ll take a couple of years to gel. Though I wasn’t impressed with the way they tried to screw the man, the Indians were smart to realize that they didn’t need to spend premium dollars for a closer and let Danys Baez go. Whether or not he should have been in the rotation to begin with is another topic. Anyway, say 70-75 wins for Cleveland this year.

The Detroit Tigers were historically bad last season. They pretty much could have fielded the same team this year and won more games than they did last year, because nobody is that bad. But the Tigers did better than that – they actually went out and got better players this year. Primary, of course, is Pudge Rodriguez, who will be one of the best hitting catchers in the league, as opposed to guys like Inge who barely put up a 600 OPS. Carlos Guillen was another good pickup. There are a lot of good shortstops in the AL (some of whom are now third basemen), but when you get past them, Guillen is as good as you’ll find. Rondell White is another upgrade, but I think that the money spent on Fernando Vina could have gone elsewhere. The pitching has to be better. Bonderman is only 21 and has a lot of promise. Cornejo added a new split finger pitch, and might even get his K rate over 3/9 IP. Mike Maroth is another soft-tosser who will be helped by being relied upon less. The Tigers also added Jason Johnson, who is nobody’s savior but is still a clear upgrade over Knotts and Bernero and Will Ledezma. It also looks like the Tigers are going to sign UUUrbina, who will be their best reliever, but why you wanna spend the extra money if you’re going to finish in last place again. Still, there is hope again in Detroit, and the side benefit to having one of the worst teams of all time is that you get to have one of the biggest single-season improvements of all time. I think they improve by 20+ wins this year, but fall a bit short of 70 total.