Question Of The Day

Phi: Myers/Hamels/Garcia--very solid top 3, and Eaton/Lieber/Moyer is much better than most teams have at the back of the rotation.

I think the Red Sox and the Angels are easily the class of baseball (at least potentially for the Red Sox) and all the others could be in various order of preference.

Note: Marlins have now lost J. Johnson for at least two months.

I have to give the nod to the red sox right now.

Though unproven and inconsistent in some cases, Josh Beckett, Daisuke Matsuzaka, and Johnathan Papelbon can definately bring the heat with the best of them. They are so young that they will all be good for a long time.

Toss in there Schilling and Wakefield and you have the best rotation in baseball. And Jon Lester is out of the picture at this point.

 - He's a knuckleballer. His age is far less important than it would be for other kinds of pitchers. Look up the post-40 careers of the Nierko brothers and Hough.

 - His record last year was misleading - between having to pitch to a kid catcher who was overwhelmed by the knuckler and never got the chance to adapt, and then getting hurt and never being right for the rest of the year, 2006 was an anomaly. Maybe it won't be 1995 again for Wake (his best year), but 2005 is easily attainable (he won 16, should have won 19 with even remotely adequate run support, and could have won 20. Oh yes, IIRC he's had the worst run support on the staff for a couple of years now.)

Of course, any rotation is "who knows". Beckett could continue to make us crazy, Schill might be hit by age, Paps certainly won't have as minuscule an ERA and BA-against starting as he did closing. But I got faith (and I'm looking forward to Matsuzaka in a big way.) So many things went as wrong as they could last year, we won't have that kind of luck again. (Right? Right? Oy.)

So I'm hoping for a staff of 5 aces, not 4. 20 wins each. Also a winning lottery ticket and for Jamie Bamber to come by my apartment and read me Shakespeare. (What? Next to the last two, the 5 aces looks pretty reasonable.) Also, for Nomar's third batting title, and is Loney still eligible for ROY? If not, then a ROY for Kemp. And for the Dodgers to lose the World Series to us on a walk-off HR by David Ortiz in the bottom of the 12th inning in Game 7 (score 1-0).