UCB National League Central Predictions
Today marks that usual part of the year where we try like hell not to
be homers, and usually fail to some extent. Without further delay, our
predictions for the NL Central standings in 2009:
Pitchers Hit Eighth: Power Rankings debut
That’s right, we’ve got our own Power Rankings ’round these parts now.
After painstakingly developing (read: hiring a few monkeys with
calculators) a formula for these rankings, I present to you what
would’ve been our final ranking of 2008 (prior to the playoffs).
The display is hopefully self-explanatory. The team’s rank in our
system is at left, followed left to right by the team logo, their
Pitchers Hit Eighth: Power Rankings™ score, and then completely random
comments from yours truly.
The plan is to update this weekly as the 2009 season progresses. I’d
love some feedback on the display, if you think this can be presented
better, and/or questions about the list in general. Enjoy!
UCB National League East Predictions
Back for another day of predictions, and today we move into the Senior Circuit to explore the NL East.
- Philadelphia Phillies – Hard to pick against a
team that won the World Series in 2008 and should be as strong if not
better this season. They will have a full season of Joe Blanton in the rotation, they signed Raul Ibanez to replace Pat Burrell
(make your own comparisons there, I’ll take Ibanez), and they still
have one of the most dominant 6-4-3 combinations in the bigs today.
UCB American League Predictions
As part of another United Cardinal Bloggers project, below are our (largely uninformed) predictions for the American League standings in 2009.
AL East
Just an absolutely brutal division, could easily have three playoff teams if not for that silly “one from each division” rule.
- New York Yankees – they bought up every player under the sun this off-season, Hank and Hal are in it to prove they can win too.
- Tampa Bay Rays – No reason to believe this team should fall off, they are young, hungry – and could even improve upon last season. David Price should be up by June or so.
- Boston Red Sox – They’re going to have to start throwing some ridiculous cash around to play catch up again. No reason to believe they won’t.
- Toronto Blue Jays – The Jays lost AJ Burnett and didn’t really add anyone of note. That Vernon Wells contract may hamstring this team for a long time.
- Baltimore Orioles – Well, they can’t get much worse than the last ten years, can they?
UCB Live Podcast Wednesday 03.25
Join us for our weekly podcastat Blog Talk Radio on this Wednesday, March 25th, at 9:30pm CT. (Note the new time!)
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/UCB-Host/2009/03/26/United-Cardinal-Bloggers-Radio-Hour
As always, we’d love to have you call in with any questions or comments you have about Cardinals baseball.
This week PHE will be hosting, and we will be joined by St Louis
Post-Dispatch columnist Derrick Goold, who also burns the midnight oil
on his Bird Land blog at STLToday.com and on his Twitter page @dgoold.
Call in to chat with Derrick at (646) 929-1758 or leave questions in the comments below and we will try to get them on the air.
Thanks for listening!
John Mozeliak on Bernie Miklasz Show today (03.18)
Those of you listening to 1380 in St Louis today may find this duplicative, same if you read Bernie’s Press Box over at the STLToday forums.
If you fit into neither of those groups, this may provide helpful
for you. I listened to Bernie’s segment with Cardinals GM John
Mozeliak this afternoon, and there were some great tidbits in there
that I think go a long way toward providing us with insight into the
Cards’ roster for Opening Day and beyond.
Bernie has already posted his own synopsis at the Press Box, and I thought I’d add/duplicate to his list with the notes I wrote during the segment.
Below are the notes I jotted down from Mozeliak’s comments, in relative order as they were discussed:
Mozeliak, Boras talk about Ankiel contract
Ok, I’m sorry – you probably came here thinking I had a scoop – and
for that I apologize. There’s no scoop, Mo is not working on an
extension for Rick Ankiel (that I know about).
What I do have is a something I whipped up over at xtranormal.com, a cool little movie maker website, that I wanted to share with you.
UCB Radio, Roundtable, and more
Last night marked another edition of UCB Radio Hour. We hosted, Daniel from C70 joined us, and we had several solid questions from callers and chat members alike.
As always, you can listen via the iTunes podcast link (click on the
UCB logo at right) or you can use this here fancy player from
BlogTalkRadio:
—
The UCB Roundtable continues, with many great questions this past week:
March 6: Fungoes (main scoreboard at Busch)
March 9: Whiteyball (Colby Rasmus)
March 10: The Cardinal Virtue (Cardinal Mt. Rushmore)
March 11: Cardinal Diaspora (scrappiness)
March 12: 4thebirds…. (Mozeliak’s offseason)
Check them out – we’re doing our best here to participate in as many
of these as possible, but they are definitely hard to keep track of!
—
Just for reference sake, below are some links to a few more reactions to Joe Posnanski’s Albert Pujols article in Sports Illustrated:
They’re not all positive – but all represent their point well – great reads.
—
Finally, I leave you with another cool little thing found randomly
through the magic of Google and the weaved links of the interwebs.
Salary vs Performance
is a cool little interactive grid of sorts that shows what MLB teams
got for their spending. The graph linked above shows the end of the
2008 season, hopefully they continue for 2009.
I’m not afraid to believe in Albert Pujols
Joe Posnanski has done it again. The most recent issue of Sports Illustrated has Poz’s sit-down interview with Albert Pujols,
addressing (what else) his stance and defiance about steroid use. It
is an excellent read, and I advise any Cardinal fan to read it through.
Link it up! No, YOU link it up!
It just so happens lots of interesting things have been dropped onto
our desk in recent days, so figured why not share with the loyal
readers (all three of you).
Without further ado, the linkage:
- Braden Looper was scratched from another spring start
for the Brewers because of a bad oblique. I wish Braden all the
success in the world as a starting pitcher, and would much rather have
him (healthy) in Cardinal camp than Joel Pineiro,
but doesn’t that non-tender look pretty smart now? I wouldn’t go so
far as to say that Mozeliak could’ve seen this injury lingering around,
but between what Looper would’ve made in arbitration had the Cardinals
offered it – and now having issues getting ready for the season – looks
like ole Mo may know what he’s doing after all, eh? - I’m not sure why I hadn’t seen this prior to this morning, but here are the CHONE Projected Standings for 2009. For those of you unfamiliar with the CHONE ratings, Angels fan Sean Smith puts them together at BaseballProjection.com. Fascinating stuff to go along with the other projection systems out there. Look at those Cubbies coming back to the pack!
pitchershiteighth
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