The Indians stink....

[Tavish]

edit - My Twins are still worse. The Central continues to be a joke.

Dang it you beat me to it, but I'm going ahead anyways....


At least they aren't the Twins.

[rjforlife]

Scherzer may strike out 300 in that division.

[ensanimal]

Scherzer may strike out 300 in that division.

Reynolds and Stubbs should be worth 30 at least.

[RocketsDWM]

Their rotation leaves something to be desired but there are flickers of hope in that lineup. I'm really keen on Carlos Santana this year. He had strong second half last season.

[jfg]

Indians and Twins both look awful. I wouldn't be surprised to see 200 losses between the two of them. I like the Twins chances better to be a little bit of a surprise this year. No playoffs, but if I had to pick one team between the Indians and Twins to win 80 games it would be the Twins.

I said it before in the Royals thread but I'm not sold on the Tigers running away with the division. They are banking on a lot of old players hitting in the heart of the lineup. Lucky for them, the White Sox are in a similar boat and the Royals would have to have a few pieces fall into place to contend this year.

[kab21]

VMart and Hunter might be old but they are replacing the awful seasons of Boesch and Young. I'm not sure how you can call that banking on them. The Tigers will go as far as Fielder/MCab/Verlander carry them.

[jfg]

True. Getting into the playoffs will be more difficult for them than going deep in the playoffs.

[OBPlover]

Don't think they stink at all.

Look at their team last year. Casey Kotchman was garbage. Shelley Duncan was garbage. Jack hanahan garbage. Travis hafner was ok..but was mostly injury plagued as usual. Cabrera, Kipnis and Santana all had Monstrously disappointing seasons. Choo was good but still missed a lot of time from injuries. Not using garbage and the likelihood of improvement from their established players is a good sign for optimism.

Pitching is no hell, but the improvement in defense will help. Bauer was the 9th highest ranked prospect in baseball at one time..he doesn't suck. Brett Myers and Zack attack. What do they have to replace? Josh Tomlin and Derrick Lowe and whatever dreck the Indians conjured up to pitch. Bauer would have to fall off the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down not to outpitch Josh Tomlin. Get rid of the ugly and replace it with something at least average and you will see improvement.

I predict 81-84 wins.

Look at their competition within the division:

KC - Too stupid not to use players that don't walk in their lineup.
CWS - Have a manager who declared War on his own Starting pitchers. The over/under on how many trips to the disabled list that Peavy and Sale have is 42.
Twins - a decent dark horse. But even playing a ton of fantasy baseball.. I still can't remember who their starting pitchers are.
Tigers - yeah will probably win.