Spring Training Is Over, You Can Pay Attention Now

The longest month in baseball - March, is over, thankfully bringing an end to Spring Training, and a return to meaningful baseball.

From a fan's standpoint, the dog and pony show that is Spring Training is pretty useless. You can't watch the games, and even when you can, you don't want to. Managers and GMs may find it useful to jerk around the hopes and dreams of a bunch of aging reserve utility men and career minor leaguers, but really, the whole thing is largely a waste of time.

The Jays were particularly bad this spring, posting a batting average that ranked only ahead of Florida's - good for 29th. It doesn't matter though. March success has as much to do with regular season success as actual vocal talent has to do with winning American Idol.

The Jays have a lot to live up to this year. They are coming off an 87 win, 2nd place finish in one of baseball's toughest divisions. Last season was their, "Hey, look at us!" season, as they tried to remind the baseball world that there were more than two teams in the AL East. Unfortunately, our Jays will be in tough to challenge Boston and New York again.

Unlike baseball's twin Evil Empires (face it Boston, if you can pay $100 million for a pitcher who has never played in the MLB, you are an Evil Empire too), the Jays did not improve in any noticeable way. Born again Frank Thomas was the only headline grabbing news, the rest of JP Ricciardi's moves were more of a back-page blurb nature.

Veterans Royce Clayton is our new starting short-stop (which means our favourite Jay, John MacDonald is back on the bench), and aging Canuckle outfielder Mat Stairs will contribute depth.

On pitching, the Jays missed out on free agents Ted Lilly (unfortunately) and Gil Meche (thankfully) which left spots four an five open. Ricciardi went with the, toss everything on the wall and see what sticks approach. On said wall he tossed a motley crew of youngsters and vets looking for a second, or third chance, including Victor Zambrano, less than a year off Tommy John surgery, John Thompson, oft injured, Tomo Ohka, the Jays' embittered answer to Dice-k, Josh Towers, who I kinda thought would never ever pitch for Toronto again, Casey Jansens, who mildly impressed last year as a rookie and Shawn Marcum, who still has time to turn into something special.

Ohka and Towers stuck, with Zambrano putting up a good fight. Whether a rotation of Halladay-Burnett-Chacin-Ohka-Towers is capable of stringing together any number of wins is questionable, and the result of which will entirely determine the fate of this team.

Offensively, Toronto is more or less the same. The Big Hurt will provide more homers (speaking of Thomas, the man is huge. I used to think Troy Glaus was pretty big, but after seeing the two stand next to each other, Glaus seriously looks like he's made of matchsticks), and more strikeouts as well. Scoring runs isn't where these guys will run into problems.

I don't really care for the '07 Blue Jays, they are just a paler version of last year, but if you're not optimistic on opening day, than you really shouldn't be watching this sport. I predict the Jays will take the AL wildcard in a daring late September push.

Other predictions:

American League

EAST: Yankees win the division as the team becomes healthy at the right time of the season, that is, the end of it. Boston's pitching staff implodes, and Daisuke's gyro ball actually kills a man. Baltimore still sucks, but less so, and Canadian ace Eric Bedard makes it really, really hard to cheer against them. Tampa Bay still really sucks, except for that Kazmir guy, and their so called best outfield in baseball.

CENTAL: Detroit gets it right this time and wins baseball's new toughest division. The Indians still aren't as good as everyone wants them to be, and Minnesota and Chicago continue to be good without being great. Kansas City continues to bolster every other Central team with easy wins.

WEST: Los Angeles of Anahiem wins the division as they get all of their pitchers healthy, and Gary Matthews wins the AL MVP (Hah, just kidding). Oakland does nicely, and makes Mike Piazza a very rich man in the off season, but with another team. Texas quickly regrets their Sammy Sosa experiment, and Seattle gives no reason for Ichiro to re-sign next year.

WILDCARD: The Jays win it in the final days of September, beating out strong pushes from the Red Sox, White Sox, Twins and Oakland. No, I'm serious.

CY YOUNG: Roy Halladay pitches a full season, which as per the terms of his contract, automatically ensures him a Cy Young. Sorry Santana.

MVP: Alex Rodriguez wins another one, and Yankee fans are only too glad when he doesn't renew his contract.

National League

EAST: The Mets win this one, of course, but Philadelphia makes it close. Atlanta gets to reflect on life outside the postseason for one more year, while Washington treads water, and Florida comes no where near repeating last season.

CENTRAL: St. Louis wins this division again, but it's more because no one else is good enough than because the Cards deserve a chance at repeating. The Cubbies do not live up to the hype - gasp - Milwaukee, Houston and Cinncinati are all in the wild card hunt and Pittsburgh... still has Jason Bay.

WEST: Los Angeles wins this division, which is slowly improving as a whole. With Randy Johnson returning, Arizona slowly starts to remember what having a championship team was like, and in San Fransisco, Barry Bonds suffers an unfortunate "accident" involving cement shoes and deep water before he can commit his final act of sacrilege... Meanwhile, Colorado and San Diego continue being teams we know absolutely nothing about.

WILDCARD: Philadelphia takes it, and dreams of a Phillie-Toronto rematch stir up inside of absolutely no one.

CY YOUNG: The NL's winningest pitcher wins more than 16 games this time, and the award goes to Chris Carpenter, who is really the only thing we like about St. Louis.

MVP: Jimmy Rollins, baseball's anti-Bonds, hits a whole bunch of homers, and gets a whole bunch of MVP awards.

Check back in September when you shall be astounded to find every single prediction has come true. I promise.

Jason

A Few Words on the Worst World Series Champs of All Time

Ew. The St. Louis Cardinals are the World Champions. This is so wrong on so many levels, we don't know where to start.

Yes we do actually. Let's start with the fact that the Tigers rolled over for them, playing a painful to watch game of possum. But that analogy only works so far because the possum is supposed to get up at the end and these Tigers clearly weren't pretending. The Tigers gave away a World Series title. It was theirs to lose. Because face it, the Cards weren't exceptional themselves (though Jeff Weaver's game five performance was about as good as it gets), but compared to the boys from Detroit, they were the freaking '98 Yankees. As far wiser talking heads have pointed out, St. Louis didn't beat Detroit, Detroit beat Detroit.

The Tigers just needed some token effort for the series, and they could have had it. St. Louis now has the ugly distinction of being the worst World Series winning team ever (in most news stories, the word "worst" is surrounded by quotation marks. This is not most news stories). They won a grand total of of 83 games.

83 games.

Do you know how many games the Toronto Blue Jays won in that same season? Hint: It was higher than 83, that's for damn sure. If there was a less deserving championship team in baseball history, we don't want to know about it.

Ahah, you might say, the regular season doesn't count for peanuts in the playoffs. Just look at the Edmonton Oilers. Nuh-uh buddy, that argument doesn't fly. There was nothing special about these Cardinals, there was no heart warming underdog label, just a bunch of semi-decent (and Chris Carpenter) baseball players plodding through October. There was nothing sexy about their run.

Compare that to the Tigers, who going into the Series, had all the momentum in the world. We frankly found it impossible to even conceive that Detroit could possibly lose, especially to such a bland team as St. Louis. Not that the Tiger's weren't bland too, but they had that magical playoff aura surrounding them that transformed every player into a potential playoff hero.

Except something went wrong. In the six days between sweeping the floor with Oakland, and beginning their first World Series since before anyone at 64 Years and Counting was ever born, something happened. The Tigers' momentum evaporated. Poof, and they were human again.

What's worse is that two years ago, the last time the Cards had a shot at the title, we were actually cheering for them. With all our heart and soul even. We were desperate to see them defeat Boston. The Cards were the only thing keeping the Sox from ending the curse, a prospect we weren't thrilled with (sharing a division with them does that to you). Except they didn't win. They didn't just not win the series, they didn't win a single game.

So that's why we don't like St. Louis. A forgettable team caps off a forgettable World Series in what has been an overall forgettable affair. But just imagine if Detroit had won it. Now that would have been a story. Just a few seasons removed from a 100 loss season, turning around and winning it all. That makes for good TV. St. Louis, does not.

In other news, the Ottawa Senator continued their regular season tradition of summarily kicking the crap out of Toronto, with back to back beatings this week. The Leafs can try to salvage some respect against Montreal in glorious Hockey Night in Canada action tonight. Or they could continue to embarrass themselves. Oh, and we heard Nik Antropov might be back tonight.

Guess which side we're leaning towards?

Jason

Sour Grapes, à La Russa

To recap: Kenny Rogers had something on his hand in the first inning of his impressive win against the Cards. And apparently St. Louis manager Tony La Russa has suddenly become professional sport's defender of fair play, integrity and all that is good and holy. Whatever. Rogers cleaned up, and went on to shut them down for another seven innings. Case closed.

And all of a sudden that's old news now (64 Years and Counting: Always Late to the Party), since the Cardinals went out and gave the Tigers their own take on good pitching, a 5-0 shut down by former Jay, Chris Carpenter (we are actually legally required to point out any player that has ever worn a Toronto uniform. Except Vince Carter). The Cardinals are up 2-1 now, in what just might be shaping up as the first actual World Series since a bunch of scruffy Marlins took down the Evil Empire.

However, all of this is in flagrant disregard for our World Series predictions, but we haven't lost faith in the Tigers yet. Tigermentum is still a go.

Detroit wins in six. Simple as that

Jason

(P.S - The Ottawa Senators are officially "Back on Track", handing out back-to-back pummellings to New Jersey and (our beloved) Maple Leafs. Also, we might have to revise our predictions for Pittsburgh - if that trio plus Marc-Andre Fleury (M.A Fleury? Ma Fleury?) is as good as they were last night, this team could be scary)

No, I Think I've Heard This One Before

The Leafs dropped their third game via shootout yesterday against the Rangers. The Leafs are one and three in that respect. The Leafs' shootout is pathetic this season, but that's hardly surprising, the Leafs' shootout was pathetic last year too.

It was the same usual suspects out there for the Leafs, Mats Sundin, Darcy Tucker and Alexei Ponikarovsky (which is a suspiciously similar trio to the one Coach Q always sent out). You can't question Mats Sundin's place, he's Toronto's best player and the man with the big C, he has to lead by example (his miss was tempered by the fact that his Blueshirt counterpart, Jaromir Jagr also missed). Darcy Tucker is questionable for shootouts. Sure he leads the team in goals, and he had two in the relevant game (which in a coach's mind means that player is "hot"), but Tucker doesn't score on breakaways. He scores by cleaning up the garbage. And Ponikabobsky? We love him, we do, but he should be ripping slapshots from the top of the circle, not dangling pucks in front of the goalie.

Granted, the Leafs don't have too much to work with when it comes to shootouts, no super finesse players (though Kyle Wellwood deserves a crack) who can turn a goalie inside out, twice, before the puck even leaves his stick.

The Leafs have lost three points on the season to the shootout. Last year, it was pointed out by the more observant media types that had the Leafs won just a couple more OT duels, they would have had hockey in May. Let's make sure that doesn't happen again.

In other news, the Detroit Tigers opened the World Series by playing possum, taking a 7-2 beating from St. Louis. Hah, those crazy Tigers, trying to infuse some drama into what was going to be another routine AL sweep, wasn't that thoughtful of them?

Tigermentum has made a brief pit stop, but it should be back on the road for game two. The Tigers win in five. Simple as that.