AGREE WITH DOMBROWSKI??

[05worldserieschamps]

I dont think its the biggest factor in seeing what type of year Dontrelle will have, but it is one indictation. My point is, good luck improving your ERA switching from NL to AL.

Also, I think you underestimate the Central. Yes, the Indians are an offensive powerhouse, but the Twins, White Sox and Royals have already showed they are going to be active this offseason. Ths Sox got O Cab and Quentien. Not huge additions but offensive contributors. And dont be suprised to see the Twins add more onto Delmon in what they get from Johan. And the Royals, though they still arent an offensive juggernaut by any means, are trying to make some cheap udgrades.

Plus, I think they White Sox will still have a pretty decent offense. I dont think it will work, but Kenny Williams is still trying to win now. I also think(much like 2005), 2007 was a freak year.(though they had very opposite results) I think the Sox still have a good offense, just had an awful year.

[The Loveable Losers]

The Marlins' defense was pretty bad last year though with a 29th best 0.669 Defensive Efficiency. Detroit had an 11th best 0.699. Now I'm not sure how swapping out Inge for Cabrera, Guillen for Renteria, and Casey for Guillen will affect the Tigers defense but it should still be quite a bit better than the 2007 Marlins. That alone should help out Willis quite a bit. Toss in that he got tattooed with a park adjusted 15% hr/fb (when the average is about 11%) and his era could have been quite a bit better. He's still going to have to improve quite a bit though since his expected era based on hr, k, and bb per game was still near 5 and the spike in hr/fb only accounted for about 0.50 points of era, much of which would be eaten up by the change in leagues. Just based on the numbers I looked at quickly here I think Willis pitched well enough last year to post a 4.40 era on an NL team with an average defense if he had average luck with regards to hr/fb. That's still a bit frightening with a change to the AL...just not as bad as some people may be thinking.