~~~~NL CENTRAL~~~~
*Chicago Cubs*
Strengths: Probably in the top ten best baseball teams in Chicago.
Weaknesses: Pattern recognition.
Deciding Factor: Insanity is sometimes defined as doing the same thing over and over, expecting different results. I’m not crazy enough to think that there is any factor that will prevent the Cubs season from ending with failure, regret, and intense alcoholism.
Fun Fact: Carlos Marmol is a mohawk and that “turn-you-white” disease Michael Jackson supposedly had away from a role in a remake of “Major League”.
*Cincinatti Reds*
Strengths: Playing in Great American Ballpark with this offense and this pitching staff, you will not have to worry about very many of those boring pitchers’ duels.
Weaknesses: Micah Owings has a career 5.45 ERA and a career .879 OPS. Why the hell is he still a pitcher. That’s like making Frank Thomas a pinch runner or Kyle Farnsworth a baseball player.
Deciding Factor: Should Aroldis Chapman jump on a raft and head back to Cuba to face his penalty for defecting to the US? I’m pretty sure it would be healthier than pitching for Dusty Baker.
Fun Fact: If “Musician” Bronson Arroyo were as good as music as he was at baseball, he’d still be pretty average.
*Houston Astros*
Strengths: LaTroy Hawkins is no longer with the team, so the bullpen has almost inevitably improved.
Weaknesses: Must field at least eight players each day who are not Lance Berkman.
Deciding Factor: Starting pitcher Brett Myers has gone almost four years without being arraigned on domestic violence charge. If his rehab continues to be successful, will we have to find new jokes to make about him? I have a great one about how opposing batters usually slap him around almost as hard as he slaps his wife, and I don’t want it to go to waste.
Fun Fact: Astros shortstop Tommy Manzella has an awesome name. It sounds like some kind of manly cheese.
*Milwaukee Brewers*
Strengths: The Brewers no longer have Jason Kendall, whose OPS last year was .636. To put that in perspective, that was closer to how Oliver Perez did last year than it was to Jason Varitek.
Weaknesses: Have to play baseball in Milwaukee.
Deciding Factor: Can Trevor Hoffman get more saves this year than he gets mph on his fastball?
Fun Fact: Prince Fielder represents 50% of the African American population of Wisconsin (by volume).
*Pittsburgh Pirates*
Strengths: Pirates are nicknamed the “Buccaneers” in hopes that people will think they are a football team, think they're in the offseason, and not watch their pathetic excuse for a team.
Weaknesses: The Pirates are “rebuilding” again this year. After such devastating failure, you would think they’d have learned their lesson by now. They’re like the New Orleans of baseball teams.
Deciding Factor: The Pirates are ready to live a dream season this year. Of course, it’s like one of those dreams where you go to work without your clothes. Except they’re only wearing Pirates uniforms instead of underwear, which is far more embarrassing.
Fun Fact: Gitmo prison initially investigated playing Pirates games as a form of torture, but discontinued it in favor of waterboarding, which was believed to be more humane.
*St Louis Cardinals*
Strengths: You know when you went into the player editor in your favorite baseball game and maxed out the hitting stats on one of your players so that playing the game was basically easy mode? That’s what happened with Albert Pujols.
Weaknesses: “Carpenter and Wainwright and pray for a delayed flight” doesn’t have the same ring to it as “Spahn and Sain and pray for rain”.
Deciding Factor: http://img32.imageshack.us/img32/4990/cardinalsh.jpg
Fun Fact: When I first saw David Freese’s name, I thought it was a reference to Kevin Millar’s fake name in MVP Baseball 2005. Not as good as MLB Power Pros where he was “Great Johnson”. Hahahah Johnson.
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Showing posts with label Astros. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Astros. Show all posts
Thursday, April 15, 2010
Saturday, April 18, 2009
NL Central
~~NL Central~~
Cincinatti Reds
Strengths: Homer Bailey is an awesome name for a future All Star slugger. Wait, you say he’s a pitcher? Is that some kind of a sick joke?
Weaknesses: Dusty Baker is surrounded by pussies who can’t pitch 300+ innings in a season. Screw inning counts, 300 was good enough for Cy it should be good enough for these wimps.
Deciding Factor: Edinson Volquez had a great first half last year before fading into obscurity, where he joined the rest of his teammates and the entire city of Cincinatti. That should be enough motivation to drive him to success this year. Or at least forcing a trade to get him out of that hellhole.
Fun Fact: Cincinatti’s Great American Ball Park is the only major league stadium where you can bunt a homerun over the center field wall.
Chicago Cubs
Strengths: With the addition of Kevin Gregg and Aaron Heilman, the Cubs can solve the dangerous problem of having too many late game leads.
Weaknesses: Economists are examining Kosuke Fukudome as potentially the most prolific economic model of all time, as his batting average over the last season had a near perfect correlation with the Down Jones Industrial Average in the offseason.
Deciding Factor: In this division, the Cubs should have no trouble building up their fanbase’s expectations during the regular season only to crush them in their traditional manner in the playoffs like a glass at a Jewish wedding.
Fun Fact: Having exposed the racism of Canada, Cleveland, California and Texas, Milton Bradley seems to have completed his Odyssey, as he finally finds himself in a city with absolutely no history of racial conflict whatsoever.
Houston Astros
Strengths: Roy Oswalt and Lance Berkman are pretty damn awesome for guys nobody cares about.
Weaknesses: Houston can expect a return to form from set-up man LaTroy Hawkins. Unfortunately, that form sucks.
Deciding Factor: Houston signed pitcher Mike Hampton this offseason, and if he stays healthy, he could be a huge advantage for this team. That is to say, if he can stay healthy, everybody else in the world will die of shock, and with Hampton as the only surviving baseball player, Houston would win the World Series by default. Although he’d probably hurt himself taking the NLCS trophy and have to go on the DL for the World Series.
Fun Fact: What kind of ****ing name is Wandy? Wandy Rodriguez? Is that a typo?
Milwaukee Brewers
Strengths: At the end of last year, there were fears that the competition between Ben Sheets and CC Sabathia for the title of team ace could cause dissent in the clubhouse. This problem was neatly avoided by making sure that this year there are no pitchers even remotely close to ace-like, so whoever gets to be the pseudo-ace will just be happy not to be in the minor leagues.
Weaknesses: Prince Fielder on meat: 50 HR, .288/.395/.618, 156 OPS+
Prince Fielder as a vegetarian (through the end of last season): 34 HR, .276/.372/.507, 128 OPS+
At this point, even PETA wants Fielder to eat a god damn steak, because they need him to rake for their fantasy teams.
Deciding Factor: If Trevor Hoffman can continue to defy all logic and continue to rack up saves, the Brewers still wouldn’t win the division, but he would at least be able to brag about defying all logic.
Fun Fact: Ryan "The Hebrew Hammer" Braun offers a magnificent opportunity, in that Jewish people will finally have a new token athlete to mention, because we've all had enough of this Sandy Koufax bullshit.
Pittsburgh Pirates
Strengths: None
Weaknesses: Dude, they’re the Pittsburgh Pirates. Just writing about that team saps my will to live, halfway through this writeup and I already want to take a blowdryer into the tub with me. God only knows how it must feel for them, the fact that any have survived is a miracle.
Deciding Factor: The only way you’ll see anybody in the Pittsburgh clubhouse this October is if they want to use the HDTVs to watch the Steelers.
Fun Fact: In a survey in which all MLB players were asked to list the 30 MLB teams, Pittsburgh was absent from all but 4 lists, including those of Pirates players. Teams that got more mentions include the Montreal Expos, the Bad News Bears, and “that team from Bugs at Bat”
St. Louis Cardinals
Strengths: Chris Carpenter could be a great pitcher if he is able to stay healthy this year. Of course, Ted Williams could be a great hitter if he is able to stay healthy this year, but I wouldn’t be drafting him in fantasy, mainly because he’s dead.
Weaknesses: Their big offseason acquisition was Khalil Greene. The rest of the division is surely trembling in fear at his beastly .213/.260/.339 line last year.
Deciding Factor: If Tony La Russa can find the cloning facilities on Kamino and convince them to clone Albert Pujols instead of Jango Fett, then they can build an unstoppable team of Pujols, able to destroy all those who stand in their way. However, this would allow General Manager John Mozeliak to topple the feeble Bud Selig and rule as the evil Emperor of Baseball for decades of darkness. If they can manage to do this, they will not only dominate MLB for the next decade, but they will also have lived up to a far better plot than George Lucas was able to put together.
Fun Fact: St. Louis have the luxury of choosing their closer from a wide range of pitchers this spring, ranging from random prospect who got called up and pitched 40 innings last season to random prospect who got called up and pitched 10 innings last season.
(Division previews inspired by The Onion Sports, The Brushback Report, Gamefaqs Forums, and various substances of questionable legality)
Cincinatti Reds
Strengths: Homer Bailey is an awesome name for a future All Star slugger. Wait, you say he’s a pitcher? Is that some kind of a sick joke?
Weaknesses: Dusty Baker is surrounded by pussies who can’t pitch 300+ innings in a season. Screw inning counts, 300 was good enough for Cy it should be good enough for these wimps.
Deciding Factor: Edinson Volquez had a great first half last year before fading into obscurity, where he joined the rest of his teammates and the entire city of Cincinatti. That should be enough motivation to drive him to success this year. Or at least forcing a trade to get him out of that hellhole.
Fun Fact: Cincinatti’s Great American Ball Park is the only major league stadium where you can bunt a homerun over the center field wall.
Chicago Cubs
Strengths: With the addition of Kevin Gregg and Aaron Heilman, the Cubs can solve the dangerous problem of having too many late game leads.
Weaknesses: Economists are examining Kosuke Fukudome as potentially the most prolific economic model of all time, as his batting average over the last season had a near perfect correlation with the Down Jones Industrial Average in the offseason.
Deciding Factor: In this division, the Cubs should have no trouble building up their fanbase’s expectations during the regular season only to crush them in their traditional manner in the playoffs like a glass at a Jewish wedding.
Fun Fact: Having exposed the racism of Canada, Cleveland, California and Texas, Milton Bradley seems to have completed his Odyssey, as he finally finds himself in a city with absolutely no history of racial conflict whatsoever.
Houston Astros
Strengths: Roy Oswalt and Lance Berkman are pretty damn awesome for guys nobody cares about.
Weaknesses: Houston can expect a return to form from set-up man LaTroy Hawkins. Unfortunately, that form sucks.
Deciding Factor: Houston signed pitcher Mike Hampton this offseason, and if he stays healthy, he could be a huge advantage for this team. That is to say, if he can stay healthy, everybody else in the world will die of shock, and with Hampton as the only surviving baseball player, Houston would win the World Series by default. Although he’d probably hurt himself taking the NLCS trophy and have to go on the DL for the World Series.
Fun Fact: What kind of ****ing name is Wandy? Wandy Rodriguez? Is that a typo?
Milwaukee Brewers
Strengths: At the end of last year, there were fears that the competition between Ben Sheets and CC Sabathia for the title of team ace could cause dissent in the clubhouse. This problem was neatly avoided by making sure that this year there are no pitchers even remotely close to ace-like, so whoever gets to be the pseudo-ace will just be happy not to be in the minor leagues.
Weaknesses: Prince Fielder on meat: 50 HR, .288/.395/.618, 156 OPS+
Prince Fielder as a vegetarian (through the end of last season): 34 HR, .276/.372/.507, 128 OPS+
At this point, even PETA wants Fielder to eat a god damn steak, because they need him to rake for their fantasy teams.
Deciding Factor: If Trevor Hoffman can continue to defy all logic and continue to rack up saves, the Brewers still wouldn’t win the division, but he would at least be able to brag about defying all logic.
Fun Fact: Ryan "The Hebrew Hammer" Braun offers a magnificent opportunity, in that Jewish people will finally have a new token athlete to mention, because we've all had enough of this Sandy Koufax bullshit.
Pittsburgh Pirates
Strengths: None
Weaknesses: Dude, they’re the Pittsburgh Pirates. Just writing about that team saps my will to live, halfway through this writeup and I already want to take a blowdryer into the tub with me. God only knows how it must feel for them, the fact that any have survived is a miracle.
Deciding Factor: The only way you’ll see anybody in the Pittsburgh clubhouse this October is if they want to use the HDTVs to watch the Steelers.
Fun Fact: In a survey in which all MLB players were asked to list the 30 MLB teams, Pittsburgh was absent from all but 4 lists, including those of Pirates players. Teams that got more mentions include the Montreal Expos, the Bad News Bears, and “that team from Bugs at Bat”
St. Louis Cardinals
Strengths: Chris Carpenter could be a great pitcher if he is able to stay healthy this year. Of course, Ted Williams could be a great hitter if he is able to stay healthy this year, but I wouldn’t be drafting him in fantasy, mainly because he’s dead.
Weaknesses: Their big offseason acquisition was Khalil Greene. The rest of the division is surely trembling in fear at his beastly .213/.260/.339 line last year.
Deciding Factor: If Tony La Russa can find the cloning facilities on Kamino and convince them to clone Albert Pujols instead of Jango Fett, then they can build an unstoppable team of Pujols, able to destroy all those who stand in their way. However, this would allow General Manager John Mozeliak to topple the feeble Bud Selig and rule as the evil Emperor of Baseball for decades of darkness. If they can manage to do this, they will not only dominate MLB for the next decade, but they will also have lived up to a far better plot than George Lucas was able to put together.
Fun Fact: St. Louis have the luxury of choosing their closer from a wide range of pitchers this spring, ranging from random prospect who got called up and pitched 40 innings last season to random prospect who got called up and pitched 10 innings last season.
(Division previews inspired by The Onion Sports, The Brushback Report, Gamefaqs Forums, and various substances of questionable legality)
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