OSUBasketballJunkie
Never Forget 31-0
Yahoo!
Diamond dominators
By Steve Henson, Yahoo! Sports
December 26, 2007
From the Mitchell Report to the Fehr retort, from the Clemens denial to the Bonds pre-trial, it's been an ugly December for baseball. In an admittedly contrived effort to distract attention from the 86 losers named in Mitchell's tome, a list of the game's Top Five teams:
The Colorado Rockies, Arizona Diamondbacks, Philadelphia Phillies, Chicago Cubs, San Diego Padres ?
No, wait. Wrong list.
Those names belong with the losers. Overly harsh? OK, maybe they aren't losers in the same wrong-place, wrong-era way as the luckless saps revealed as performance-enhancing drug users. But losers as in second-tier. Also-rans. Pretenders.
2) Cleveland Indians: As if anyone needed more evidence that Mark Shapiro is one of the shrewdest general managers in baseball, consider this: He surprised nearly everyone by trying to trade for Cabrera the first day of the winter meetings, even though the Indians don't consider a power hitter their most pressing need. The reason? Shapiro had a hunch the division rival Tigers would make a play for the young Marlins slugger.
Of course, Shapiro was right. And the Indians are ahead of the Tigers on this list only because the teams were separated by eight games in the standings in 2007. It's presumptuous to assume that Cabrera and Willis are worth enough W's to change the pecking order. Especially when the Indians should be improved as well, if only because they ought to play with the swagger of a defending division champion. Expect starters C.C. Sabathia and Fausto Carmona to discover the ability to exhale in their next whirl through the postseason.
The Indians seem poised to become baseball's next feel-good story, a mid-market grinder of a club that in 2008 could eclipse the behemoths in Boston and New York and slip past the re-tooled Tigers while they are still in the giddy stage. Has baseball ever needed a feel-good story more than it does now?
Upvote
0