Prev: Matt Maloney
Next: REDS CHEERLEADERS
From: David Short on 29 Jan 2008 12:54
For those of you who have not done it. Every year towards the start of
spring training I set out several questions that look pretty easy at the
time. Folks answer and come the offseason we laugh about how wrong we
were. I�m gonna start looking over last year�s poll early. They start
reporting in a couple of weeks.

How many wins for the reds? (C'mon kids...it's spring!) We have a winner
folks!!! JustTom had our lowest guess and said 72 which was what they
did. Most of the answers were above 82. There were a couple of folk that
said this team would win more than 90 games. Good job just tom.

Are they a playoff team? (Drink that coolaid....) John Kasupksi, Bob
Braun, Chuck and Steve Mann drank the coolaid. Elsewhere level heads
prevailed. That�s about normal for us during the spring.

Order the teams in the NL Central. Cubs/Milwaukee�.Scott Jones, Chaos
and myself all had the Cubs winning the division. None of us had the
brewers in second. Almost everybody else thought the Cardinals would
repeat in that top slot. Don�t give me ANY credit at all for picking the
cubs. I�ve been picking them consistently for a couple of years and
stuck with it on the notion that sooner or later it HAD to happen.

Name the Playoff teams and the world series winner and loser. Rja, Bob
Braum. Scott Jones , Dan Szymborski and Choas all had four of the
playoff teams right. That�s only half of them! Only Tom Dunn and Chaos
had the Red Sox winning the series. Nobody had the Rockies getting that
far.

Which team ends the season with the worst record. Many of us got Tampa.
Those who didn�t usually voted for the Nationals who weren�t even the
worst in their division. Think there might be a little anti-jimbo stuff
going on here? �.That aside. The Nationals are getting my vote again
this year. That�s a terrible pitching staff masked by a park.

Much has been made of Roger Clemens. Last year despite a late charge,
the Astros paid Clemens and still didn't get into the postseason. Does
he play this year? Does he put a team over the top and into the playoffs?

Well, he did play, but it didn�t really make any difference. Clemens
went 6-6 with a 4.19 ERA in only a hundred innings. If the Yankees had
gone 1-11 in those same 12 decisions, they still would have made it into
the playoffs. They didn�t advance far into the playoffs. So, No Clemens
wasn�t a difference maker in any sense of the word. The consensus answer
(from Chaos) was �he'll go to the Yankees and be playing by late June.
He doesn't add that much of a greater value to a playoff contender already.�

After finishing below the pirates, the cubs spent a ton of money and
brought in Lou Pinella. Did they do a good thing or just waste cash?

Will and Kevin McClave thought it was a waste of cash. Everybody else
here has those rose colored glasses when thinking about Lou. They did go
from worst to first and you have to give the man some credit for that.

Any free agent that you want to stand up and say was a great, great pickup?

A lot of people sat out what I thought was a pretty fun question.

Noting that he wasn�t a free agent, Steve Mann named Josh Hamilton the
best off season pickup. He was on that bandwagon from the beginning.
More power to you Steve!!!!

Tom Dunn and myself both picked Daisuke Matsuzaka. In retrospect, yeah.

Bob thought the Soriano signing would really help the cubs and he did.

Chaos continued his remarkable string by picking both of the above.

A couple notable selections that I won�t attach to names would be Jason
Schmidt and Brian Giles, Carlos Lee, Zito.

That�s it for now. More later.
 | 
Pages: 1
Prev: Matt Maloney
Next: REDS CHEERLEADERS