Baseballhead:
Immovable East

Michael Cox

Hark! Be that the crack of yonder bat? Would that I should smell the pine tar and leather and grass and Ben-Gay, but alas, the expense account is strain'd for the week.

That's right, literature fans! Spring comes a week early this year as the M's and A's begin their workouts today, and those of us in frigid climes couldn't be colder, er, happier. Also signaling the countdown to Opening Day is our first set of Baseballhead divisional predictions for 2003.

We begin the prognosticatin' in the AL East, where in case you forgot, the Yankees were last seen amassing a large destructive force of immense power, able to destroy whole teams with a single blast. However, they had not planned on a squadron of plucky rebels flying straight up their thermal exhaust port, and the special effects were so amazing that nobody in the audience even cared about the medal-presentation scene that came afterwards.

This year, the Dark Lord revealed that his new base, thought in November to still be under construction, is actually fully operational. Will the Empire strike back? Can the Force be brought back into balance? Am I going to start wearing polyester slacks and fearing girls?

Let's see, as we count down the East from last to first...

5. Tampa Bay Devil Rays

Q. What do you get when you take the worst-pitching, third-worst-hitting team in MLB, take away their second-best hitter and replace him with Rey Ordonez?

A. The same pained expression and sharp intake of breath you'd expect from watching a Discovery Channel special on catheters.

The Rays' only real improvement this offseason was the PR coup of signing manager Lou Piniella. Faced with a potential total absence of fans this season, acquiring Piniella was the most cost-effective way to get a few more dozen season tickets sold. Although high as managers go, Piniella's asking price was much cheaper than signing a player of similar drawing power. That's that. Certainly ownership must understand that even Piniella can't polish a...a...well, he can't polish the Devil Rays.

Let me briefly address those D-Rays fans who might be reading - all is not lost. Sure, your team is going to blow in a big way again, but I've been there (or more precisely, in Seattle circa the '80s), and you can still enjoy baseball. You've just got to develop a sense of humor about it. Drink a beer, heckle creatively, laugh as Piniella, who adores plucky veterans, repeatedly loses his temper with one of the youngest teams in MLB and praises the Pam-like (no-stick) Ordonez. Enjoy the cheap tickets (and sit in the good seats).

Now if you'll excuse me for a moment, I've got to take a Devil Rays.

4. Baltimore Orioles

Unfortunately, Orioles fans can enjoy neither a good team nor cheap tickets. Owner Peter Angelos spent the late '90s steadfastly refusing to even partially rebuild a team that was visibly aging, instead hoping to keep butts in Camden Yards seats by hiring end-of-career vets and hanging on to the aging remnants of the great mid-'90s Birds.

Now they're stuck with a middling pitching staff and not a single hitter with an OPS over .800 (and that even includes the bench scrubs and call-ups, one of whom you'd think would hit over .800 just due to a small sample size and the law of averages). Still, despite all the stories about empty seats at Oriole Park, the O's were still the third-best draw in the AL. With Ripken's salary finally off the books, perhaps Angelos was laughing all the way to the Chek-X-Change.

After making a token "hey, we tried" attempt to sign Ivan Rodriguez at a budget rate, the Baltos are returning with about the same roster they had last season. Oh, plus Deivi Cruz. Basically, the bottom echelon of the AL East is going to be playing a season-long game of "who's got the worst veteran shortstop?"

3. Toronto Blue Jays

This is truly purgatory. Neither talented enough to reach for the stars with Boston and New York nor as downright bad as Tampa or Baltimore, the Jays are once again a lock for third. As neither the butt of party jokes nor the toast of the town, Toronto will once again be simply ignored, while their fans stay away in droves disproportionate with the team's fortunes, showing themselves to be about the most fair-weather crowd in MLB. (C'mon people, who else are you gonna watch, the Argonauts?)

In the middle of the pitching table, the batting table, and just about every other table in the dining room, when I think "mediocre," I think Toronto.

The good news is that the Blue Jays should improve this year. They'll probably even finish with a winning record. The team will play exciting ball, with '02 ROY Eric Hinske, ace Roy Halladay, and perennial favorite Carlos "The Brow" Delgado returning, and the addition of Cory Lidle to the rotation. I know we praise the Jays' "youth movement" every year, but this year that movement will actually go somewhere.

The bad news is that even an improved record won't get the Jays out of third. Damn manual transmissions.

2. Boston Red Sox

At this point, I'm not even making these predictions myself anymore. I've actually hired a class of third-graders from a nearby school, and they came up with the same damn finishing order as Rob Neyer and the Baseball Prospectus gang. I was tempted to have the tykes write these blurbs as well, but I don't want you seeing them make the kind of astute observations you'd expect from myself or, say, Rod Beaton.

Like this one: "Dan Duquette was a poopy-head." Just think of the pages and pages of overthought invective that could have been saved if someone had just come up with that a few years ago. Thanks to the Selig-friendly ownership junta, Duquette was unceremoniously dumped in favor of the young Theo Epstein, although Duquette's severed head should remain above the front office door as a reminder of what becomes of GMs who believe their own hype.

Epstein has spent the offseason mostly tinkering, with the club's biggest moves being not keeping Ugueth Urbina and not dealing for Bartolo Colon. Mind you, half the starting lineup is changing, with Epstein signing the cost-efficient-albeit-unspectacular trio of Jeremy Giambi, Bill Mueller, and Todd Walker, but the upgrade is a mild one at best. Epstein is also apparently unafraid to damage MLB's fragile relationship with Japan, in his attempt to pry Kevin Millar away from the Chunichi Dragons (of Mr. Baseball fame). Apparently the theory is that as long as Millar stays in bounds he's America's property.

Another new concept the Sox will be trying is the "closer by committee," where the entire bullpen is theoretically available to finish ballgames, thus saving the team a closer's salary, which they can then sink into, er, Kevin Millar.

The bottom line here is that once again the Red Sox are poised to make a run at the AL East title, in the event that a giant sinkhole swallows up Yankee Stadium.

1. New York Yankees

A recent article in The Onion (motto: "Funnier than Fox News, and at least our crazy people are fictional") has already made it around the Internet five times (only two fewer than that chain letter in your inbox). Why is it so popular? Because deep in our hearts, we all know that if Steinbrenner could sign every player in MLB, he would.

Yes, the quest to win the World Series is Job One in the Bronx, to an almost ridiculous degree. After rumblings that big changes were going to be made, Steinbrenner proved the rumors right by firing office staff and cutting the hours of the elevator operator. On the field, he threw cash around as usual -- no, beyond usual, adding Hideki Matsui, Jose Contreras and Todd Zeile.

As it stands, Contreras is getting paid $32 million to be a middle reliever, which illustrates the lengths Da Boss is willing to go to in order to keep top free agents out of his rivals' hands. Steinbrenner had to have been embarrassed beyond belief during last year's first-round loss -- not only because his team lost, but because Americans once again tuned in in droves to watch them lose.

While some of us surely harbor the remotely conceivable notion that the highest-paid team in history could suffer a meltdown of epic proportions, the chances of that happening are similar to those of my discovering a new species of antelope grazing in my hall closet. Which is to say, anything's possible, especially if Steinbrenner can't pay the Homeland Security people to turn that alert back down to yellow so it won't stress out the foreign-born players.

With the East a Yankee lock (there, I said it), the only real nail-biting time for New York fans will be the first playoff round, where they'll still have to watch their thermal exhaust port.

about the author

Michael Cox would be remiss if he didn't say something good about New York. Suggest that complimenting the relative high quality of its sidewalk pretzel vendors may come off a bit weak at mc@strikethree.com.