Baseball season is only a couple days old. As the old cliche goes, hope springs eternal for baseball fans everywhere.
Unless their favorite team plays its home games in Cleveland. Or Kansas City, San Diego, Detroit, Tampa Bay or Milwaukee.
You can find predictions about who will wind up in the playoffs just about anywhere -- the sports section of your favorite daily newspaper, cable television, the preseason magazines or any sports-themed Web site. And most of them will be wrong. Quick -- name one "expert" who prognosticated that the Anaheim Angels would win their first-ever World Series last October.
Predicting the losers, though, is a much more exact science, even if some of the traditionally putrid picks are approaching the level of respectability.
Minnesota famously jumped from the brink of contraction to a division title last year, in no small part because three-fifths of the American League Central would struggle to contend at the Triple-A level.
Montreal, another franchise headed for extinction at this time last year, made postseason noise for much of the season, remaining above .500 despite a stretch-run collapse. Not that anyone cared -- in a desperate attempt to squeeze some revenue out of the team without a fan base, the Major League Baseball-run Expos are playing 22 home games in Puerto Rico this season while Washington, D.C. and Portland battle to see who gets to change the team's wildly unpopular name and uniform next season. Another playoff flirtation is highly unlikely, but the Wherever Expos have enough decent pitching and everyday talent, particularly Vladimir Guerrero, to ensure they won't rank among the absolute worst.
The same goes for a couple of other perennial patsies, the Pittsburgh Pirates and Baltimore Orioles. Both once-proud franchises have been eliminated by May Day the past few seasons, but both enter the spring with enough starting pitching to kid themselves into believing they could go somewhere. They won't, but they're weak candidates for the 100-loss club.
That still leaves plenty of truly dreadful teams to mock. So, in the spirit of picking on the poor, weak and infirm, here are the Niagara Falls Reporter's choices for the Horrific Half-dozen of 2003, ranked in order of feebleness:
6. CLEVELAND: Some Indians fans, a somewhat delusional lot, kidded themselves into thinking their team was anything more than a collection of has-beens and never-weres with last season's 10-0 start. After a poorly timed column by one of those front-running Cleveland devotees appeared in this paper, though, the Tribe quickly found its level. In the basement.
By July, the Indians were dumping most of their decent, and decently paid, talent. Ace Bartolo Colon, veteran lefty Chuck Finley and free-swinging outfielder Russell Branyan were the first to go, followed in rapid succession by Einar Diaz, Charles Nagy, Jaret Wright and Paul Shuey -- all mainstays through Cleveland's glory years in the mid-and late-1990s.
The final slap to the faithful who filled Jacobs Field since its construction came during the offseason, when management refused to continue paying Jim Thome, who set a single season franchise record last year with 52 home runs and had come to embody the team and the city.
So a year after thinking they had enough to make one more run, the Indians enter 2003 with one promising young starter in C.C. Sabathia (though his performance late last season and this spring hint that he's been dangerously overworked), an antediluvian designated hitter in Ellis Burks, a brilliant shortstop in Omar Vizquel and a bunch of guys who should be riding the bench in Buffalo for Cleveland's International League affiliate.
If there's any cause for cheer this time around, it's that expansion-driven realignment put the Indians in the same division as Kansas City and Detroit (see below). The Indians will lose at least 90 games, but they won't finish last.
5. KANSAS CITY: Through the late 1970s and early '80s, the Royals were one of baseball's model franchises. A strong farm system produced a steady stream of dominant pitchers, not to mention Hall-of-Famer George Brett.
But those things cost money, which Kansas City ain't got. The Royals still have a decent farm system, but like most of baseball's bottom feeders, they can't keep the talent once it develops.
If Kansas City still had Jermaine Dye and Jeremy Giambi in the lineup, Paul Byrd and Jeff Suppan in the rotation and Roberto Hernandez coming out of the bullpen, it might contend in the Charmin-soft AL Central. But all of them left for bigger salaries elsewhere in the past two years, leaving the Royals to fight it out with Cleveland and Detroit in the race to avoid 100 losses.
If the Royals achieve that modest goal, it will only because they get to play so many games against the Indians and Tigers.
4. MILWAUKEE: Bud Selig may be a lousy commissioner, but he's an even worse owner. If there's a reason for optimism, it's the departure of Bud Light's daughter from the front office, along with the rest of the architects of last year's 106-loss embarrassment.
But though Bud's not allowed to call the shots, he still pays the bills. Last year, that led to the National League's second-worst pitching staff and a lineup filled with free-swinging strikeout artists.
The Brewers specialize in paying too much for players well past their peak. This year's big addition is shortstop Royce Clayton, who couldn't hold a regular spot in the lineup of the Chicago White Sox.
Centerfielder Alex Sanchez is a one-man youth movement, and Richie Sexson will hit some home runs when he's not whiffing. Other than that, the only thing fans at Miller Park have to cheer them will be copious amounts of the stadium sponsor's product.
3. TAMPA BAY: Only the arrival of manager Lou Piniella keeps the Devil Rays from ranking even lower.
After leading the Cincinnati Reds to an unlikely World Series title in 1990, Piniella famously elevated the Seattle Mariners from the kind of team that makes lists like this to the ranks of the elite.
But those Mariners had Randy Johnson, Ken Griffey Jr. and the Martinez boys, Tino and Edgar, when Piniella took over. These Devil Rays possess no such building blocks, having given up their top player, centerfielder Randy Winn, to get Piniella.
What's left is the least patient, and therefore least dangerous, offensive team in baseball. The team is hyping outfielders Carl Crawford and Rocco Baldelli, both whom struck out roughly five times as often as they walked in the minors. Not that there's anybody around to drive them in if the youngsters did get on base consistently.
The pitching isn't any better, without a single hurler who won more than eight games in the majors last year.
If nothing else, Piniella has plenty of fodder for his famous tantrums, providing a touch of entertainment for Devil Rays fans, should such a species exist.
2. SAN DIEGO: Padres owner John Moores promised San Diego voters a contender if they built him a new stadium. The populace bought into it. The new park opens next year, but the only playoff-caliber teams playing in it will be wearing visitors' uniforms.
The Padres lost 96 games last year. They didn't trade for Griffey because they refused to give up third baseman Phil Nevin, or sign a single free agent of significance. They also dumped their two top pitchers, Bobby Jones and Brett Tomko.
Things got even worse when spring training started. San Diego's best pitcher, closer Trevor Hoffman, and Nevin, expected to anchor the lineup, were both done for the season by mid-March.
So were the Padres' hopes for losing fewer than 100 games.
1. DETROIT: If only Ty Cobb were still around. He'd be 116 years old, but he could probably still outhit most of the stiffs on this team.
Of the living Tigers, only outfielder Bobby Higginson offers any sort of consistent production.
When he's healthy, that is, which isn't very often.
The Tigers, another franchise that suckered the local citizenry into building them a new ballpark, fill the rest of their lineup with prospects who never quite realized their alleged potential, like Damion Easley, Shane Halter, Dmitri Young and Dean Palmer.
As for the pitching staff, rookie manager Alan Trammell initially planned to enter the season with a mediocre knuckleballer, Steve Sparks, as his Opening Day starter. As ominous as that was, the outlook became even grimmer when Trammell decided to go with an all-rookie rotation.
That wouldn't be so bad if any of the youngsters were any good. The most of acclaimed of the lot, righty Nate Cornejo, was 1-5 with a 5.04 ERA last year.
The best youngster on the staff is Franklyn German, penciled in as Detroit's closer. Since the closer's job is to protect late-inning leads, German should enjoy a pretty easy rookie year.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | April 1 2003 |