Kuzul

The 2010 MLB offseason has provided lots of excitement, surprises and shock. The money that’s been thrown around is upsetting to G.M.’s across the sport.

Cliff Lee to the Phillies, Jason Werth to the Nationals, Carl Crawford to the Red Sox and plenty of other players have switched teams.

The roller coaster ride isn’t over yet. Pitchers and catchers don’t report for another two months, which means the hot stove is still burning red hot.

Your club (yes, even the Phillies) still have holes that need to be filled on their roster.

Here are the needs for every team.

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The 2011 MLB season is just over three months away and already the free agent movement has caused a stir in the league power polls.

While the rest of the free agent situation gets sorted out and teams continue to strengthen, or weaken, we know that baseball is almost upon us.

With that in mind, every season has its surprises, for good and for bad.

The 2011 season will be no different in Major League Baseball, but it is always fun to take a look at what the season may have in store us.

So, let us take a look around the league and make 25 bold predictions for baseball in 2011.

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This off-season has already seen the three biggest free agents switch teams for the lure of a nine-figure contract, and two of the biggest names in the game traded to title contenders.

As more and more free agents agree to terms, we begin to see a clearer picture of what to expect next season.

Pitchers and catchers will begin reporting in less than two months and opening day is just over three months away.

With next season rapidly approaching, let’s take a moment to stare into my crystal ball and examine 50 bold predictions for the upcoming year.

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The New Year is quickly approaching and as baseball fans pour over the latest Hot Stove news, now is as good a time as any to look back at the 2010 season.

From a bevy of great pitching performances, to an unlikely home run king, to the Giants improbable World Series run, the 2010 season was a memorable one.

So here are the top 50 players from the 2010 season, from the subjective view of one sports writer. I welcome you to inform me where you disagree with my rankings, as this is certainly up for debate.

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The Milwaukee Brewers pulled the trigger on a big-time trade Sunday, and no it wasn’t the much talked-about Prince Fielder move, as they acquired disgruntled Kansas City Royals ace Zack Greinke.

That begs the question, where does Greinke fall in amongst the best of the National League? Between the St. Louis Cardinals duo of Chris Carpenter and Adam Wainwright, the Philadelphia Phillies “Big Four” and the San Francisco Giants duo of Tim Lincecum and Matt Cain, among others, the NL is not short on great starting pitching.

So here is the list of the NL’s ten best pitchers for 2011 and where Greinke falls into the mix now that he has joined Milwaukee.

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On Monday night, Cliff Lee shocked the baseball world when he signed a five-year, $132 million dollar contract with the Philadelphia Phillies.  Interest in Lee’s 2011 destination began as soon as he threw his final pitch to the Giants in the World Series, and all signs pointed to New York. 

When the Phillies announced Monday that Lee would become a member of their already elite pitching staff, baseball fans around the country wasted no time in dubbing this fearsome four the best staff in baseball—and possibly, of all time.

On paper, it is hard to argue otherwise.  The “Fearsome Four,” or “R2C2” of Halladay, Lee, Oswalt and Hamels is a staff that one would have a difficult time assembling for a video game roster, let alone a Major League season.  Halladay is arguably the best pitcher in baseball, and the other three would be considered number one starters on at least 25 of the other staffs in baseball.  Only the Giants boast a staff that is comparable, which brings us to the point of this column.

The question at hand is whether the 2011 Phillies pitching staff is the greatest ever assembled—and it is one deserving of serious debate.  In reviewing various articles that address this question, I noticed something was missing from the debate, and from the conversation altogether.  The Phillies are clearly the favorites to win the National League Pennant, and they will—barring injuries—hold opposing teams to very few runs over the course of the season. However…so will the San Francisco Giants. 

The 2010 San Francisco Giants pitching staff was finally able to thrust itself into the national spotlight when the group pitched itself past a solid Braves lineup, out-pitched the “best staff of all time at the time?” 2010 Phillies and then shut down the best lineup in all of baseball in the Texas Rangers.

  Claiming that R2C2 is a better staff than the Giants’, I can accept.  Forgetting to mention the Giants in the conversation altogether, I cannot.

The Braves of the mid ’90s had one of the best pitching staffs of all time. Their top three of Maddux, Glavine and Smoltz all pitched in different styles, and all put together Hall-of-Fame numbers in the steroid era.  The media seems to assume that the Phillies are destined to duplicate the success of this Braves staff. 

They will run over their competitors in the National League and come face to face with the Boston Red Sox in the World Series: a perfect showcase of dominant hitting vs. the best rotation in baseball  (Giants vs. Rangers anyone?).  Another possibility is that the youthful and exuberant Giants pitching staff will do exactly as they did last year and beat the teams dubbed “unbeatable.” 

The potential for a matchup between these two teams in the 2011 NLCS is the real story, and it is being ignored.  I find it almost comical that fans, writers and analysts can forget to mention the Giants in argument with the supremacy of the 2011 Phillies.  Do you not learn from your mistakes? 

The Phillies may be the best pitching staff of all time in 2011—they certainly have the potential.  Yet, so do the Giants.  Perhaps the articles prematurely slobbering over the Phillies and Golden Boy Cliff Lee should wait until NLCS Round 2.  Halladay, Lincecum, Lee, Cain, Oswalt, Sanchez, Hamels, Bumgarner: A line of names such as these only exists in Cooperstown.  This is the real story behind Cliff Lee signing with the Philadelphia Phillies.

To attempt to make the debate as simple as possible, I have compared the pitching of the Giants and Phillies in slideshow format, comparing each starter head to head.  Before I address specific players, first let me address the pros and cons of each staff as a whole. 

The Phillies are aging, but not necessarily for the worse.  I believe, however, that Oswalt may be losing a bit of extra life on his pitches.  The Giants are incredibly young, with only Zito aging for the worse.  The Phillies’ incredible starting staff will hand games over to a solid, albeit limited bullpen, and a closer plagued by inconsistencies from season to season. 

The Giants’ starters will hand games over to an elite bullpen.  It is better than the Phillies’, and it is not even especially close.  I consider the closer a primary contributor of a staff, and it must be noted that the Giants are superior here as well.  Let’s now take a look at the starters.



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Spring training may still be two months away, but the cold winter months have had little success subduing MLB’s offseason hot stove.

The fall of 2010 has been an eventful one in the baseball world, even with the free agent class being as thin as it is.

As always, there are some teams that have added tremendously to their chances of World Series title contention in 2011, and plenty more that have been set back further, whether by their own missteps or by the unexpected choices of those they pursued (cough…Cliff Lee…cough).

With the likes of Adrian Beltre and Vladimir Guerrero still on the market, the hot stove might very well stay that way right up until Opening Day at the end of March 2011.

With that in mind, here’s a mid-December look at the offseason’s biggest winners and losers thus far.

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That man is smiling because Adrian Beltre is currently the “hottest” item left on the Major League Baseball winter stove now that Cliff Lee, Carl Crawford, Jayson Werth, Victor Martinez and Adam Dunn have found greener pastures.

Or more luxurious estates with more elegantly manicured lawns amidst a community with higher gates.

You say potato, I say potato…

The point is that the prize of the offseason is now a 31-year-old third baseman who’s proven to be underwhelming unless surrounded by an elite supporting cast, working in a hitter’s yard and/or playing for a new contract.

Oh, and he’s represented by Scott Boras.

What you just heard was the sound of 30 major-league teams shuffling through the deck for more efficient options or a more pleasant negotiating partner (which shouldn’t be hard unless this human Porta-John is the only name in their contacts).

And the first ones to pass were likely out near the Left Coast.

Based on the free-agent doings in the National League West, you can bet the Arizona Diamondbacks, Los Angeles Dodgers, San Francisco Giants, San Diego Padres and Colorado Rockies never even saw Beltre’s tires. Forget about kicking them.

The former Dodger seems priced out of each club’s budget and superfluous based on existing options at the hot corner.

So no, Adrian Beltre almost certainly won’t be in the division next year.

But there are other players who could help and Spring Training is still months away so the dealing’s not done. With that in mind, here are 15 players (really 12) who might be competing in the NL West come 2011:

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Cliff Lee just shocked the baseball world by going back to the Philadelphia Phillies.

The Texas Rangers and New York Yankees were widely thought to have been the front-runners for his services, but they’re now left in the dark after his signing.

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It’s the middle of December and as a blizzard hits the Midwest United States, the baseball hot stove is just heating up.

In the past couple of weeks, the Red Sox have signed Carl Crawford and traded for Adrian Gonzalez. The race to sign Cliff Lee has sped up and several lesser free agents have fallen into place.

But what if your team still needs pitching help? Don’t worry. Even if you don’t get Lee, there are still several starting pitchers and relievers worth bringing on board for 2011.

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