Opinion

Ask casual fans of the Minnesota Twins who their best starting pitcher is and they'll probably answer Francisco Liriano.

No surprise here, the dynamic lefty captured imaginations with a dominating 2006 before losing all of 2007 to Tommy John surgery and spending most of 2008 at AAA Rochester.

This, of course, doesn't mean they are wrong. Liriano is a horse, no doubt, but whether he can recapture even part of his 2006 form remains to be seen.

All we have been hearing about all weekend is just how expensive Yankee tickets are for 2009. The AP took weeks old single-game price information and made it a fun, "look how expensive these tickets are, OMG!1!1!!!" story.

Dear fans of the Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees,

Keep praying.

Pray that the Rays are not for real, but I'm here to tell you they are.

The Rays finished with 97 wins last year, and will many will be quick to say they will regress from that number, it's not likely to happen.  Not with their young stars in the making.

The Rays lineup this year:

C - Dioner Navarro.  A 25-year-old All-Star in 2008 is likely entering his prime.  Sorry Yankee fans, you're stuck worrying whether or not Posada can still play the position.

I remember jumping up and down in front of my dad one evening in 1997. 

The Florida Marlins, Cleveland Indians, and a sour apple lollipop my mother reluctantly gave me after literally an hour of begging, which in turn probably made jumping up and down a bad idea. 

The stage was set.

While the majority of my fellow hardball junkies are busy overdosing on the latest, most obscure stat that quantifies the number of sunflower seeds consumed by Ross Gload per at-bat (adjusting for park factors), I’m staring at a map. 

John Maine's 2008 season was cut significantly short last year due to shoulder pain and stiffness which required surgery in late September to repair bone spurs behind his shoulder blade.

Maine missed his last seven starts, but remained with the Mets during that time to support his friends and teammates, though he was extremely frustrated that his contribution was limited to the role of dugout cheerleader.

If the Florida Marlins end up getting their new stadium, the baseball fans of this area, if there are any left, are still likely to have contempt for  the ownership. They'll probably resent them more when they find out the total cost of this project.

The proposed state-of-the-art baseball stadium and parking complex will probably cost the tax payer close to a billion dollars when completed.  We're in a recession, remember, or haven't your checked for 401K lately?

Johnny Bench will be 62 this year.  Pete Rose was thrown out of baseball 20 years ago.  Sparky Anderson is an old man with three rings from two leagues.  The team had two losing seasons from 1961-81—six less than they have had since 2000.  For a team whose future still seems a ways off, Reds' fans can remember the glorious summer of 1976.

Since going to a League Championship Series in 1969, only one team has swept the LCS and World Series in the same year—the 1976 Reds.  And they seemed to do it on cruise control.

This list was made after extensive research into the stats I believed to be the most important when it came to pitchers. I took a list of close to 200 candidates and looked at their career totals in Wins, ERA, WHIP, Saves, and Strikeouts. I then ranked each player in each of those categories. After that I looked at what they averaged in those stats per year. This ensures that we are looking at quality along with quantity. Next I weighted each stat accordingly, because lets face it, a save isn't as important as a win.

The Tigers' rotation is still somewhat in limbo.

Justin Verlander is the staff ace, and obviously Leyland's No. 1 starter. It appears that Edwin Jackson may have pitched himself into the No. 2 slot, to be followed by Jeremy Bonderman (if healthy) and Armando Galarraga.

It is the fifth slot in the Tigers' rotation that has Jim Leyland and Dave Dombroski scratching their heads.

Dontrelle Wills or Nate Robertson was supposed to be the answer for the fifth rotation spot, but until recently, neither has had a strong spring.