some previews

[redsrbetter]

Some Previews and other stuff
Filed under: Regular Posts— Joel Luckhaupt @ 4:41 pm
Going into the last weekend before the season starts, it’s always fun to take a look at the “experts” predictions and previews for the season. Here are links to some of the major sites:

Yahoo:
Ryne Sandberg writes the NL Central preview and puts the Reds in at number four in the division, saying

To finish in the middle of the pack, this team will need surprise performances from the starting pitching to back up a possibly productive lineup.

This is a common theme in most of the projections…

ESPN (The Magazine):
ESPN’s predictions are built into a Macromedia presentation that also requires you to have ESPN Insider to get to it. To summarize, they pick the Reds to finish fifth behind the Brewers. An excerpt from them:

Enthusiasm is high in Cincinnati because the Reds broke the piggy bank and spent $27.7M on Eric Milton and Joe Randa. But they’re just midlevel vets joining a bunch of other midlevel vets.

First of all, they forgot Rich Aurilia. Secondly, the Reds aren’t all midlevels - Javier Valentin is clearly below average. If you can get into read some of what they write, I suggest you do. You know how you make a team sound like a fifth place team, only write about the negatives of the team. For instance: Adam Dunn - “Of record 195 K’s, 66 were called", Griffey - “Hasn’t played in 85 games since 2001″, Jimenez - “May bail on DP when he hears footsteps", Wagner - “Killer slider, but he falls in love with it” - It’s a surprise the Reds will win any games this year.

You can vote for how you think the Reds will do and other topics by going here. No Insider account needed, I believe.

CBS Sportsline:
CBS picks the Reds fourth and gives dream and disaster scenarios for each team. The Reds dream:

The monster mash outfield of Ken Griffey, Adam Dunn, Austin Kearns and Wily Mo Pena stays healthy long enough to combine for 120 homers, 350 RBI and 350 runs.

And their disaster:

The Reds realize how tough it is to find pitchers to keep the ball in the ballpark, becoming known as the Rockies East.

They also have an All NL Central team which even has a couple of Reds on it.

Fox Sports:
Fox Sports (with the Sporting News) picks the Reds to finish fourth, but this time behind the Brewers and ahead of Houston. Here’s something that Fox gives us that you won’t see at many other sites:

The front end of the rotation is strong, bolstered by the acquisitions of lefthander Eric Milton and righthander Ramon Ortiz. Righthander Paul Wilson still will be counted on to anchor the staff.

I’m not sure if I would call it strong, but it’s definitely improved. They consider the bullpen much improved also and they predict Austin Kearns to be the Reds breakout player in 2005.

Sports Illustrated:
Again the Reds come in at fourth in the division. At the preview page they spend most of the article recounting the story of Eric Milton’s signing. There’s not a whole lot of insight or news in the article, but you should still check it out so that you can hear about the amazing statistic that Adam Dunn did not have a sacrifice fly last season!

MSNBC:
MSNBC picks the Reds to be 80-82 and finish in 4th place. They tell us that,

It hasn’t happened yet – at least not for an extended period of time – but there could be plenty of offense if Dave Miley can write the names of Sean Casey, Griffey, Kearns and Dunn into the 3-4-5-6 spots in his lineup on a consistent basis.

and

Flyball pitcher Eric Milton got out of one bandbox by leaving Philly, but finds himself in another. Still, he’s a much better alternative than anything else the Reds have for the front end of their rotation.

Both very fair and true statements about the team.

There are still a plethora of sites that make more predictions, and I can’t possibly touch on all of them. For predictions from the Reds blogging community, check out these links:
Red Reporter - JD has also give us a space to post our own predictions for the record.
Reds Cutting Edge - Blade even goes so far as to encourage you to wager money based on his predictions. I’m not so sure I would trust him.
The GARB - You can also check out the rest of my divisional predictions here.
RedsZone - This is a thread of predictions featuring most of the famous faces of the Reds internet community.

Enjoy reading these now, because come Monday, everything gets thrown out the window and the predictions no longer matter.

http://reds.mostvaluablenetwork.com/

[CincyRedsFan30]

I think some of these predictions/thoughts are ridiculous.

How can Sandburg say we need "surprise performances" to finish in the middle of the pack?