FanHouse NL Central

The Dugout is all about character growth. From day one we've watched Kyle Farnsworth evolve from a fan-kicking sociopath into the literal onion of psychological human study he has become. We've watched Jim Thome grow from a rosy-cheeked manchild with pee on his hat into a rosy-cheeked manchild with socks on his hat. Dmitri Young has eaten Fruit by the Foot and then forgotten what Fruit by the Foot is. Seasons change, time goes on, and life ebbs and flows.

This year, the Chicago Cubs will be different, at least in the multiverse of The Dugout. Dusty Baker is in Cincinnati. Mark Prior is in San Diego. And unless Kerry Wood walks too close to an unsupervised swimming pool or something the Cubs should be a young, talented, heavy-hitting force to be reckoned with.

After the jump: The Cubbies - positive and ready for action in a world where nothing could possibly go wrong.

One of the fun parts about blogging is that it puts you in touch with tons of other fans, both of your own team and other teams. Divisional bloggers tend to get to know each other pretty well because baseball teams play everyone in their division a million times. Because of this unique relationship, as primarily a Pirate blogger I'm very aware of lots of things that have gone on in the Reds blogosphere this off-season. That means that I know that Reds fans get very, very upset when you suggest that their final record out-performed their runs scored last year and that their near .500 record may have been a fluke. Since this is "Why the Reds are worth watching," I'm going to avoid that as well, especially because there really are some positive things going on in Cincinnati.

First things first. Guess who lead the NL in both wins and strikeouts last year. If you guessed Roy Oswalt or Brandon Webb or Chris Carpenter, you're wrong. The answer is the gentleman on your right, Aaron Harang. Even more impressive is that if you're a bit of a sabermatrician, you know that Harang was actually second on the team in pitching VORP behind Bronson Arroyo. The Reds inked both of them to long term deals this off-season, showing that while Wayne Krivsky may have some trouble making trades that help his team, he does understand the value of building a team around pitching, even in a homer happy place like Great American.

See if you can spot the incredible paradox created by this article from Brewers.com on Dave Bush's struggles to get command of his fastball this spring. This is the first paragraph of the article:

Dave Bush may have turned the tide in his battle to regain command of his fastball during a Monday morning "B" game against the Texas Rangers at Maryvale Baseball Park.

Fair enough. Now tell me why this is happening. That's where the second paragraph comes in (emphasis is mine).

Bush pitched four innings and allowed three runs on one hit -- a three-run homer in the first by Marlon Byrd. Bush struck out four and retired 10 of the last 13 batters he faced. The right-hander walked two and hit three batters, but took the loss when the Rangers held on to win, 3-2.

Wait, I thought this was supposed to illustrate how his command is returning, not how he walked two batters and hit three in four innings of a B game. Can the two possibly be related? Is Ned Yost sitting in the dugout going, "Nice work today, Dave. Not one wild pitch out there. I like what I'm seeing," or something to that effect?

The Reds have a bit of a baffling third base controversy going on this spring. On one hand there's Juan Castro who hit .251/.281/.351 last year but has a reputation for good defense, though he hasn't been much better than average in the past couple years. On the other hand there's Edwin Encarnacion who hit .276/.359/.473 as a 23 year old last and but made 25 errors, though other fielding metrics suggest he wasn't quite that bad last year. Plus, Encarnacion is trying to improve in the field :

"I want to be better, because I know I can hit," said Encarnacion. "I know my defense is what I have to improve. I know I have to be more consistent with my defense."

"He's worked extremely hard, and that gives him a chance to be better," Reds manager Jerry Narron said. "It all begins with his feet. If he'll just catch the ball and throw it, and not think about it, he'll probably make better throws, because he has worked at it. He gets after it pretty good."

The fact that there's much of a debate here is insane. Encarnacion is younger and a much better hitter than Castro. The way the Reds treat him because of his glove reminds me of the Pirates treatment of Aramis Ramirez earlier this decade. That situation ended with the Pirates trading Ramirez and Kenny Lofton for Bobby Hill, Jose Hernandez, and Matt Bruback. Reds fans have to be hoping for more than a little better than that.

Every year dads push their sons to play baseball, to pitch, to play shortstop, to hit home runs, all in hopes of fulfilling their own dreams of being the dad of a big league baseball player. The dads have it all wrong. All they really need to do is teach their kids to how to squat and stop balls with their chest and be just like Brad Ausmus. Despite any discernible offensive skills, only 16 players in major league history have caught more games than Ausmus has in his 14 (going on 15) year career.

Not to pile on Ausmus here, but let's look a little further into the stats than that Houston Chronicle article does. In three of the past four seasons, Ausmus has done something incredibly difficult to do: he's finished with a lower slugging percentage than on-base percentage. In his entire career, he's finished with an OPS+ of over 100 just once (OPS+ explanation here). I won't go all hardcore stat-head on you here (can you tell I'm just itching to do it?), but Baseball Prospectus 2007 estimates that the difference between Ausmus and an average offensive catcher (say, AJ Pierzynski) was about 30 runs at the plate or three wins on the field. That's a whole lot. Looks like giving up catching when I was 14 was the worst career move of my life.

Of course I can poke fun at Ausmus all I like because the the joke will always be on me; according to his Baseball Reference page (see that link above), Ausmus has made over $28 million in his career.

By now you've probably heard that Mark Prior got roughed up in the Cactus League again yesterday. He gave up four runs in two innings and topped out at 89 on the radar gun. His 18.90 ERA this spring has even Cubs fans, the last people alive that were still optimistic about Prior, jumping ship and filing for divorce from the once promising righty. Matt at Lost in the Ivy has penned a long missive in tribute to Prior and the end of his hopes for the pitcher.

It's been great Mark. Really. But let's just move on with our lives and maybe we'll both find what we're looking for. I've sorta got my eye on somebody already...

It's always sad when a fan base loses hope in a former top prospect. It happens in baseball more than any other sport because the draft is such a giant crapshoot, but nothing is more depressing than putting all of your hopes and dreams as a fan into a player you've watch shoot through the minors, only to see them fall apart in the big leagues. I won't regale you with my boring stories of former Pirate prospects that have broken my heart, but trust me, I know the feeling, Cubs fans.

Link via Deadspin.

Well, this is scary for all non-Cardinal fans in the NL Central: Albert Pujols thinks that he still has room to improve himself. Cards third base coach Jose Oquendo says:

"He can get better, and he will, because he wants to."

and

"He's still a young player," Oquendo said. "A lot of people don't look at him that way because of what he's done. But he's learning, too. He is also a leader. And there are things that come with that."

The impressive part about Pujols is that he's been almost the same player from ages 21 through 26. It's hard to believe that he could actually be any better than he's been to this point in his career, though he is getting to the age that players tend to peak. That's terrifying.

The knock on the Houston Astros the past couple years (even in 2005 when they went to the World Series) has been that they can't score runs. They only scored 735 (25th in the league) last year and they scored 693 the year before. That's not really a big deal when you trot out the pitching staff the Astros have had the past couple years, but with Andy Pettitte gone and Roger Clemens seeming less likely to come back every day, offense is a little more important in Houston this year. The Astros solution? Teach the pitchers to hit.

"It can be an advantage," he said. "One of the things we stress with the pitching staff from the get-go is help yourself. Get in the cage and work, and even if you can't hit, you can do things like bunt and handle the bat to help yourself."

Maybe I'm exaggerating a little here, but after 20 or so years as a baseball fan, I still don't understand why NL teams don't do just a little more work with their pitchers hitting abilities. Where's Brooks Kieschnick when you need him? No, I'm seriously asking. Last I heard of him he was in the Astros system, but that was 2005.

All indications this spring seem to point towards Chris Duncan occupying the second slot in the Cardinals lineup this year.

Duncan, a second-year slugger coming off a 22-homer season, leads the Cardinals this spring with 24 at-bats, and in every start he's made this season he's batted second in the lineup.

Before last year, Duncan only batted second once before in his life, for one game while in AA when the lineup was computer generated.

For a game at Double-A Tennessee, Cardinals executive "Jeff Luhnow put everyone's stats into a program and spit out a lineup where it would determine the most productive lineup," Duncan said. "I came up batting second. I had a lot of walks."

LaRussa has his own sound reasons for batting Duncan second, namely that he killed the ball in that slot while hitting in front of Albert Pujols last year. A Duncan/Pujols/Rolen trio is a pretty fearsome heart of the lineup, which is another good reason to do it.

Some of you may remember Jody Gerut as a once promising outfield prospect with the Indians. Even if you do remember that, you probably have forgotten about Gerut and didn't even realize he's been in the Pirates organization for the past year and a half. Or was in the Pirates organization until he was released by the team yesterday. Here are some fun facts from Gerut's stint with the Buccos, courtesy of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and a calculator:

• Gerut batted 18 times over four games for the Pirates after being acquired from the Cubs for Matt Lawton at the 2005 trade deadline. After those 18 at-bats he went on the disabled list and hasn't played since.
  
• The Pirates payed him over $2 million in that time span.
• That's $500,000 a game and $111,111.11 an at-bat.
  

One might be inclined to feel bad for the Pirates in this situation, except that everyone knew Gerut's knee was injured when the Pirates traded for him. I hate to link back to my own blog, but this is what I wrote about Gerut after seeing him play in person three days after the Pirates traded for him:

[Gerut] does have a pretty strong swing, but the knee brace he wears on his left knee is ENORMOUS. He left around the 5th or 6th tonight with what's now being described as "irritation" in the knee. Hopefully this isn't another [Armando] Rios situation.

And that was gleaned from a post in which I was trying to be positive about Gerut. If you are unfamiliar with the referenced Armando Rios situation, he was half of the Pirates' bounty from the Jason Schmidt trade, who played two games for the Pirates in 2001 before blowing his ACL out (though he did briefly return for part of the 2002 season). Yes, Dave Littlefield was the *ahem* architect behind both trades. Time moves on but history repeats itself in Pittsburgh.