NL East Pitching Staffs

WRESTLEMANIA IS ALMOST HERE.

Also, Shark Boy is coming to my hometown. I'm fucking psyched.

Ok. On to baseball. The rotations are from mlb.com

Rotation Slot 1

Smoltz, Willis, Glavine/Pedro (4), Patterson (3), Garcia (2)

I can't give anyone a 1 here simply because none of these pitchers are BAD. Patterson could easily outperform anyone here, while Garcia is probably a solid #2. I have no idea how much Pedro will play this year, but it'll probably be enough to "buff up" Glavine's stats into the Dontrelle range... that is, if Glavine will need any buffing at all. Also, as far as I'm concerned, Smoltz is made of beef jerky and total manliness and will pitch until he's 85. He will only quit then because he'll get into a man fight with Chuck Norris, Bruce Lee's Zombie, and Dmitri from Dillinger Escape Plan. The world explodes due to this epic battle.

Ok that was weird.

Rotation Slot 2

Myers, Hudson, Olsen, Glavine/El Duke, J Williams

Jerome Williams sucks, Brett Myers is very very good, El Duke is terrible, Olsen is a relatively unknown quantity with a lot of potential, and by God, Hudson is going to bounce back to 200 IP with a 4.00 ERA or better.

Rotation Slot 3

James (4), Sanchez (4), Hamels (3), Maine (3), Redding

Holy fuck the Nats are going to be really, really bad. The other 4 guys are virtually inseperable. All played half a season last year at above league average levels. Why don't I feel like Maine is any good? He performed just as well as the other guys last year.

Rotation Slot 4

Eaton, Redman, Nolasco, Oliver Perez, O'Conner

Eaton gets the nod here just because well, he sucks, but we know EXACTLY how much he'll suck since he's been doing it for a while. Perez could easily throw a Cy Young caliber year if he figures out how to throw a called strike, and Redman could also throw a solid year if he gets pumped because he's on a team not named the Royals.

Rotation (Everyone else)

Phillies (Moyer, Lieber), Braves (Hampton, Cormier, Davies), Marlins (Mitre, Johnson), Mets (Park, D Williams, Heilman?), Nats (Hill, Rauch)

FUCK the Nats are bad. Moyer and Lieber are solid #3 starters I supposed, so the Phillies win here. Hampton is probably a solid #2, but he's injured, while Davies and Cormier are barely #5's. Out of all these guys Josh Johnson has the best shot of throwing up a huge season, but I don't know why he isn't listed as in the rotation. Weird sauce.

Closer

Wagner, Cordero, Gordon, Wickman, Julio

Julio still sucks. Wagner and Cordero still rock a lot. Gordon and Wickman are getting old, and it's time for them to be replaced, but they ARE servicable.

Top Reliever #2

Gonzalez, .... I don't know.

I was going to break down the bullpens as far as: Closer, Setup, Setup 2, and then everyone else. But by God, other than the Braves, the bullpens are just...bad. Very bad. Braves get a 5. Everyone else gets a 2, except the Nats. They get a 1.

Braves = 29
Marlins = 21
Mets = 21
Nats = 12
Phillies = 26

I may have appeared biased, but this assigning of values thing simply probably isn't the best approach for pitching. There's just too much god damn variation in performances. And there's a bigger tradeoff for potential v. reliability (eg. Oliver Perez v. Lieber). Oh well. Braves win. That makes me happy.

Nonparametric NL East

I like nonparametric statistics. Mostly rank statistics. And mostly because I can sort of make up shit and be relatively justified. So, I'm going to rank the NL East from position to position, and then overall. #1 gets 5 points, and #5 gets 1 point unless otherwise noted.

Catcher
McCann, Olivo (3.5), LoDuca, Barajas, Schneider

Olivo only gets 3.5 because he's a heck of a lot closer to LoDuca and Barajas than McCann. McCann eats rubber tires like licorice and shits gold as far as I'm concerned. I really didn't want to put Schneider last, mostly because I don't think he's as bad as he was last year. I mean. Come on. The fucker was on the US team in the WBC. Then again, all the fangraphs.com projections say he still sucks. I still say they are terrorist anti-America scum.

First Base

Howard, Delgado, Johnson + Young, Jacobs, Thorman + Wilson (2)

I see Thorman and Jacobs basically being a push. I'd expect both to go .270/.350/.480 with 20 homers and a good eye. Nick Johnson for 400 ABs and Dmitri Young for the rest really isn't that bad at all, and if Delgado starts to show his age the injury platoon thing could possibly outperform the Mets.

Second Base

Utley, Uggla (3), Johnson (2), Lopez + Belliard (2), Valentin

Valentin is liable to collapse below a .200 batting average anytime now. That fucker is ancient. Uggla will regress a lot, while Utley will be an MVP candidate at second base. Here's the problem with the Nationals. On paper, they have a lot of pretty decent MLB players hanging out on their roster like Felipe Lopez, and Dmitri Young, and Ronnie Belliard, but you can only put one guy at each position. And it seems they're back to Guzman at short, leaving a black hole there, and second base will be league average at best.

Shortstop

Reyes, Ramirez, Rollins, Renteria, Guzman (0)

I didn't realize the 4 good shortstops in the NL East were alliterative. Neat. Reyes is very, very good, and the next 3 guys could easily flip around this year. Ramirez is hard to predict, Rollins is good, and Renteria can always bounce back to how he was when he was actually really good. Guzman is a safe bet for worst position player of the year with more than 300 ABs.

Third Base

Cabrera, Wright (4.5), C Jones (4), Zimmerman (3), Helms (1)

Cabrera, Wright, and Zimmerman are MVP candidates not only for this year, but for 2008-2014 most likely. Which scares the shit out of me as a Braves fan. Chipper has his best years behind him, but when healthy he can still fucking rake. Helms sucks despite his good year last year.

Left Field

Alou (4), Burrell (3), Willingham (3), Langerhans + Diaz (3), Church + Jim Bowden's Left Nut

None of these guys are very good. Church sucks as a left fielder, while is pretty solid as a center fielder. Alou could collapse any second, Burrell should put up 30 HRs every year, but doesn't, Willingham could explode anytime, and Diaz hits .300 and Langerhans is excellent defensively with great OBP skills. The cobbled together collection of misfits on mlb.com's depth charts for the Nationals is scary bad.

Center Field

A Jones (5), Beltran (4.9), Rowand (3), Sanchez (1), Logan (1)

I don't believe the stats claiming that Andruw is no longer a very good defensive center fielder. He may not be too quick anymore, but his instincts seem to make up for it. He and Beltran are about the same offensively, but I give Andruw the edge. Just because. Rowand is overhyped, and the other 2 guys don't deserve league minimum.

Right Field

Francoeur (4), Green (3.5), Hermidia (3), Victorino (3), Kearns (3)

First off. You know right field is thin when I consider Shawn Green as #1 for anything. None of these guys will very good in 2007, but I give Francoeur the edge because 1) he can fucking hit when it's a strike, and 2) he claims to be "woken up" this spring because he knows he sucked last year.

Adding all this shit up we get:

Braves = 27
Marlins = 24.5
Mets = 29.5
Nationals = 14
Phillies = 25

No surprise to me the Nats are horrid, and the Mets are the best. I also figured a push between the other 3. I'll do pitchers some other time, but I expect the Phillies and Braves to fight it out based on the Braves bullpen v. the Phillies rotation, with the Marlins young starters making a push. And the Nationals suck.

HGH in "Sports"

I've been reading a lot of shit around the interweb about these "HGH scandals" within baseball and professional wrestling. First off, the obvious (and only) response to these outraged sportswriters and fans is "NO FUCKING SHIT". Of course these men are taking HGH. If it is seen that an easy way to make your living is to take steroids, and they take that from you, then what do you do? You go for option 2.

It wouldn't surprise me one damn bit if every wrestler since about 1996 has either taken or thought about taking HGH. A few like Mick Foley probably didn't. His flub grew naturally. But come on. NOBODY can look like Bobby Lashley or Chris Masters without juicing on something--other than each other's cocks.

Opening fucking match.

I decided 2 days ago to do this. This will be my outlet for my ideas on baseball, professional wrestling (haha), video games, and other things I think are awesome. Like PBR. And applesauce.

Also there will be things here about things I think are lame. Like the punk rock/indie rock scene, high schoolers, small children, squirrels... you get the idea.

The first thing to do will be a list of things I hope to talk about in the next few days. 1) baseball data fitting, 2) Wrestlemania comments, 3) WWE storyline direction and possible statistics involving this, 4) WoW, and 5) ridiculous.

5) ESPN is on in the background. I've heard the fucking word "blogger" about 4 times since I started this god damn thing. I hate myself already.