Vigilante Sports

1. Minnesota Twins – The big question mark for the Twins (as with every other team) is health. Over the last few years, injuries large and small have hampered Minnesota from emerging as a contender. Their young outfield (Michael Cuddyer, Carlos Gomez and Delmon Young) could all emerge as All Star quality guys. On the mound Fransisco Liriano sets the pace for the club. Joe Nathan gives them a closer they can depend on. This is a tough division, but the Twins have what it will take to win.
2. Kansas City Royals – Baseball’s sleeper team this year. The Royals have bludgeoned the the ball this spring and have a pitching staff of aces in waiting. The waiting should be over this year. Gil Meche and Zack Greinke provide a 1-2 punch that is the best in their division. Their infield (Jacobs, Teahan, Aviles and Gordon) knocked 73 HR last season. That number will climb this year. Joakim Soria in the bullpen will give them 40+ saves again this year.
3. Cleveland Indians – Travis Hafner has to be better than last year, right? Maybe. Probably couldn’t be much worse. The Indians raided the Cubs pantry this offseason signing Kerry Wood and trading for Mark DeRosa. I like the addition of Wood. He’s a top notch closer when healthy. I think the Cubs fleeced the Indians in the DeRosa deal. He’s coming off an offensive career year and will probably never hit that well again. He’s still a solid ball player, but probably not a key offseason acquisition.
4. Chicago White Sox – Who knows when Ozzie Guillen will flip out again? That makes the White Sox fun to follow. But that’s about it. It should be fun to watch theire young players Alexei Ramirez, Carlos Quentin and Chris Getz. Beyond that, this team is old. I forsee a lot of DL time for Konerko, Thome and Dye. Danks and Floyd give their pitching staff some youth but not enough talent to stay with the other teams in their division.
5. Detroit Tigers – Last year was a train wreck. This year might be more of the same. The top of their lineup is scary. Granderson, Cabrera and Ordonez all will probably have bounce back years. Cabrera killed it the second half of last year after starting slow. Granderson never seemed to get on track either. Coming out of Spring Training, all the talk is about the health of their pitching staff. Bonderman and Willis are hurt and Verlander struggled (to put it nicely) last year. One bright spot for Detroit fans is they’ll get to see their top prospect Rick Porcello on the mound in Detroit. That being said, if all goes well in Detroit, they could take the division.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 3rd, 2009 at 8:00 am and is filed under MLB. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.