Central Division

[beck72]

I don't see the Tigers doing much.

 

Kenny Rogers had the best year he's had in quite some time, and he's on the wrong side of 40, let alone 35 or 30.

 

Todd Jones had the best year of his career last year, and is also quite old.

 

I see the Tigers, at the very best, to be a .500 team.

 

The Indians look fine, the Twins look good still too, especially if they can get Baker into the rotation over Lohse, and the Royals look atleast a little improved. 

 

It'll be fun next year.

I agree. Detroit should be a .500 team in '06, if that

[Rooftop Shots]

I don't expect Detroit to be on top, but if all goes well for them, they can be a real pain in the neck. They have some players that are capable of having a great year (Maggs, Rodriguez Young, Guillen,Shelton, White). They have been hurting for pitchiing for a while. It was thought that Rodriguez was going to be the key to helping their young pitching staff flourish. So far it hasn't. Will Rogers help in the process of their youngsters? Not sure. All I know is.....Don't count them out. Anything could happen when individuals have good years and a team gels together. Look at us last year. We were picked 3rd or 4th in our division. One thing for sure..........3 years ago, nobody wanted to buy tickets to go see Central division games. UUMMMMMMM....I think that outlook has changed since then.

[RME JICO]

That arguement only goes so far.  You've heard of situational hitting and clutch hitters?  Well, there are situational and clutch pitchers as well.  Jack McDowell was one of those guys.  If the Sox gave him 5 runs to work with, he would very easily give up 3 or 4, yet if they needed a shutout to win the game, McDowell was good about delivering under those conditions as well.  Garcia is an example of a situational pitcher also.  The bigger the game, the better he pitches.  It's more than just straight ERA vs Win totals.

 

ERA and Wins are both overrated. Just like you said ERA can get bloated when there is run support and can be lower with no run support, and wins is directly related to run support vs ERA. That is why it is better to judge a pitcher by what he does vs the batter. WHIP is an obvious one, and another stat is Total Bases per IP. This counts HRs as 4, etc, etc, walks and singles as 1. So guys that give up a lot of HRs or extra base hits will obviously have a higher TBIP. The number is normally close to WHIP but has some variation with the addition of extra base hits.

 

In reference to the Central, it will be the Sox, Indians, Twins, Tigers, then Royals. The Sox and Indians will probably end up with about the same records from 2005; the Twins will be about the same, the Tigers will be a little better, and the Royals will lose another 100 games.

Edited December 10, 2005 by WinninUgly

[SoCalSouthSider59]

Let them go against Bobby...no youngsters will hit him.....Sox win divsion easily...stop looking at these other teams in the division...no one has the pitching like the Sox...no one has the power like the Sox...they're the team to beat (CHAMPIONS)....but they wont beat them gauranteed...stop lookin at the TIGERS (haha)  the Royals (HAHA) the Indains (F*** them) and the Twins (Last place)....Don't down our team...Back to Back....They'll do it...

 

Hell yeah! And, :fthecubs too..........

 

[The Ginger Kid]

This all goes back to the Jose Contreras argument. Jose Contreras in the 1st half of 2005 had the same problem, he wasn't winning his games. But was that his fault? No, and you know why? Run Support.

 

the reason the count had a bad first half is because he sucked in the first half - he didn't trust his fastball and got himself in big trouble. He basically said as much. It wasn't coincidence that he had a strong second half - he finally started listening to AJ and Coop.