another day in the trenches

my apologies, but i need to do this more often.

ON THE CHICAGO BASEBALL TIP:

obviously the big news now is the cubs sorely lacking 8-10 weeks of the indelible services of derrek lee thanks to a freak play the other night in los angeles. naturally, the cubs are used to having injured franchise-cornerstones, however position players are naturally an everyday aspect.

this means that we await the john mabry era with baited breath. for some reason, some call it defense, they might forsake the offensive production potential of a todd walker (he seems like .280/20/80 at his best) if i were the cubs i'd look for some outfielder who could play 1B this way you'd have excess depth. or at least this is the fantasy baseball dork in me talking.

one thing i find amusing with cubs fans is when there's an injury like this, they start mulling over who they want from other teams. i've heard that nick swisher would be nice. oh yeah, you know billy beane gives away moneyballer kids like that... ha, read the book.

the whitesox are looking like the team that i thought they'd be after their 1-4 start. after averaging something like 6.5 runs per game for the first 4-5 wins of the recent 9-1 run, they had a round of quality starts from contreras, garcia, garland, and vazquez. this whitesox offense is noticeably more potent not just because of the addition of jim thome, which has obviously paid dividends, but because players like joe crede are progressing as well. more experience coupled with the confidence of winning a championship should benefit this offense... so whereas the bullpen is a questionmark for the sox right now (keep in mind that politte and cotts, two big guns in the bullpen by the end of the year last year, were in mop up type roles at this time last year. now they're starting out in the heat of the fire...)

btw i have predicted javier vazquez to be the sox ace by the time the year is out. if he keeps his delivery more over the top and stops the arm angle from sinking downwards, that ball will stay down and he's got 4 pitches he can throw for strikes.

i remember the best pitched baseball game i ever saw, april of 2003 opening series at wrigley field. cubs/expos. mark prior vs javier vazquez. prior went the distance, giving up like 2 hits and a walk and striking out 12.

vazquez went 7, gave up 2 ER, and struck out 14.

dont forget that vazquez went something like 14-3 1.75/0.85 in the 2nd half of 2001 until ryan dempster plunked him in the head, cracking his skull and ending his season with a start or two lefrt. he's never had a dominant streak like that since, however, if you scroll down in this blog i called out contreras' potential... cooper did a great job last year turning contreras into your game 1 of the world series starter.

if he can do to vazquez what he did to contreras, watch out, for vazquez has been ~200 IP and ~175+ K for years, tho the ERA tends to hit 4.25 with the whip in the 1.30s

at his best, i think vazquez could push 17-20 wins, 2.75 ERA and a 1.10ish WHIP with 215+ Ks.

i predict at least 15 wins and a sub 3.50 era and sub 1.30 whip for vazquez with a minimum of 175Ks.

lets see how bad i look, eh?

as i say in all of my other journals, i have more to write but i have to go, so since what i write later will end up on top of this, i close out this journal with a phrase i hope you learn to know: more sooner!