• Garko puts together a fine season with 25HR and 100RBIs

• Martinez shows improved power boosting his HR total past 25

• Barfield has a rough year with a sub .300 OBP

• Trot Nixon goes on the DL (I need to get one right too)

1. Grady will hit under .265. No, this is not due to his spring, but to the fact that the players I hope he most resembles (Bonds, Snider) both had an off year their third year (Bonds hit .248!), before coming back with monster 4th seasons.

2. C.C. will finish 1 or 2 in the Cy Young voting. He is due for a monster year.  

"Use the statistics to support your point. Don't make the statistics the point." (Make it up, then find the numbers! Or maybe don't even bother!)

"Jose Valetin was the reason the Mets were so good offensively last season." (Veteran presence and leadership batting eighth had a lot more to do with it than 130 HR from the three, four, and five holes. Obviously.)

"We've seen Glavine start to come inside against righties recently. Once the scouting report is out on a guy, he has to start making some adjustments." (That particular scouting report on Glavine took 14 years to write, apparently.)

The Tribe will face at least 2 major setbacks due to injury.  Westbrook may wish he had signed an extension earlier, but I hope I'm way off.

White Sox will disappoint.  You don't trade 2 quality starting pitchers and hope to compete.

The wildcard in the AL will probably come from the East so it doesn't look good for whoever finishes 2nd in the AL Central.

It's April 2, 2007.  Hope springs eternal !

Hello fleerdon,

As I mentioned in my post in this MinorLeagueBall thread on Danks, his HR tendencies are more pronounced than McCarthy, and while his K/9 IP rate at AAA was 9.17, the rest of his important stats there were average to below-average:

H/9 IP = 8.53
HR/9 IP = 1.40
BB/9 IP = 4.33

In essence, I don't think Danks will help the White Sox in 2007 as much as McCarthy would have; Danks MIGHT help them a bit more later on down the road, presuming Danks can recover from being rushed a bit (by both the Rangers and the White Sox in my opinion,) gain better command, and keep the ball in the ballpark better, but that's far from a certainty at this point, especially considering his home park gives up HRs at a higher rate than any other ballpark, including Coors Field.  It certainly doesn't help that Danks is going from a pretty good hitter's park to the best hitter's park in baseball, especially for HRs, something that Danks has had increasing trouble with ever since he was promoted to AA in 2005.  Therefore, I really don't see how Danks will help the White Sox be better in 2007, and I'm not convinced he'll be the better starter over McCarthy for the long-term either.  

Admittedly, the White Sox aren't young, and their farm system is arguably the weakest in the Central Division, so they had to try to infuse some young talent into the system, but I'm not sure acquiring Danks and Floyd were the best answer to that problem, especially when you had to give up a more accomplished young pitcher in McCarthy to get Danks.  He might be rueing that trade of OF Chris Young for RHP Javier Vazquez as well, especially if OF Brian Anderson doesn't develop as expected, which is a decent possibility at this point.

To me, I think the Danks and Floyd trades are more gambles on Ken Williams' part; he's hit the jackpot on a few of them (mostly in 2005 when his moves helped them to win a WS,) but personally, I think he has missed on more of his gambles than he has hit jackpots with them.  That's partly why his farm system is so thin, and why his ML team this year, in my opinion, has many questions with their pitching (both starting and relieving - outside of Jenks and MacDougal, the rest of that bullpen has potential, but is far from proven.)

Just my 2 cents.