I’ve written more than enough about the 2011 season in the past ten days, so let’s leave it at this: whatever is going to happen with this franchise — whether it’s going to break in the right direction as Neal Huntington and company’s plan comes to fruition or whether it all goes up in flames again — is going to start today. I’m excited for a full season of Cutch and Tabata and Walker and Pedro. I’m curious to see how Morton and McDonald and the minor league arms shake out. Mostly, though, I’m just happy to have baseball back for another year and happy to have this blog and its readers along for the ride with me.
Two quick notes: I’m not bringing Clemente/Cangelosi back. It was a lot of fun, but a bear to keep up with. I’m taking on a few more writing responsibilities outside of WHYGAVS this year and school is taking up an increasing amount of my time and I just don’t think I can keep it going. I do want to take this chance to once again pimp the Livefyre comments system to be used as a gamthread. I know BucsDugout has awesome gametheads and several other great Pirate blogs do livechats across their sites and Twitter works as a de facto open-internet chat, but I’d still love to get some conversation going here during the games. You can sign in through Livefyre or with your Twitter or Facebook accounts. It updates live, and I’ll be in the comments talking during the games. So click down and check it out.
Finally, Joe Aiello of Veiw From the Bleachers asked me some questions about the Pirates and I asked him some questions about the Cubs. You can find my answers for him here, and his answers to my questions are below. Let’s kick 2011 off in style. Ryan Dempster and Kevin Correia go at 2:20, weather permitting. Baseball is officially back.
WHYGAVS: If you could group the NL Central right now, it’d be easy to put the Cardinals, Brewers, and Reds at the top and the Pirates and Astros at the bottom. The Cubs finished in the lower half of the division last year, why might 2011 be different?
View from the Bleachers: If I had to put on my optimist hat and answer this question, there are a few reasons why 2011 can be different. First, I certainly do not expect them to go 5-10 against the stinkin’ Pirates. That was a farce last year that best not be repeated again. If we take trash talking out of the equation, I think there is a lot of reason for optimism given some of the younger talent we’ve seen emerge from the farm system. The Cubs have been known for developing pitchers fairly well over the last decade or so, but not really for producing position player talent. In 2011, Tyler Colvin, Geovany Soto, Starlin Castro, and Darwin Barney all have the chance to be major players on the team. Barney played so well in the spring that he vaulted himself from a guy who had to fight for a roster spot as a utility infielder to a guy who has a legit shot at being the starting second baseman. That young talent and a revamped bullpen should be reason to believe that maybe, just maybe, 2011 might be different.
The Cubs gave up quite a bit to get Matt Garza from the Tampa Bay Rays. What does Garza have to do to justify that trade in the eyes of a Cubs? How good do the Cubs have to be in the Garza era for you to say the trade is worth it?
It’s a tough call. I’ve been a guy that is worried about trading young prospects for veterans. I’m guilty of overvaluing the talent we have in the farm and not wanting to give to get in return up until recently. 100+ years of losing will do that to ya. I applauded and still applaud Jim Hendry for having the dangly bits to deal 4 of the top 20 prospects in the system for Garza. We got Fernando Perez in the deal as well, but essentially this deal was for Garza. In my mind, Garza needs to be a 16+ win guy with an ERA in the high 2’s or low 3’s. He needs to be that upper rotation guy to complement Ryan Dempster and Carlos Zambrano and he needs to be that for at least four or five years. Then again, if Chris Archer and the rest of the mix all bust. Maybe it wasn’t a bad deal after all. I tend to thing Archer’s ceiling is no higher than Garza’s, so we’ll see.
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