National League

Twitter Mailbag

by on November 17, 2010 · 2 comments

In the short period of time that I’ve been contributing here at PH8, I’ve noticed that about half of my new Twitter followers are #stlcards fans.  Approximately 3-4 times each week, one of these new followers will tweet or dm an interesting sports question that requires a bit of time to reply, and 140 characters […]

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

Reds.  How can I get past the basebrawl thing and provide an unbiased preview of the Reds?  Easy.  There are a lot of players on that team worthy of respect, and I won’t let Cueto and Phillips detract from that respect.  On to the preview…  I expect a very slight decline from 2010 and a ceiling of […]

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

     The Pirates just finished their 18th straight losing season, and 2010 was by far the worst season of those 18.  At least 1997 was close to respectable at 79-83 and within shouting distance of .500.  Last season’s record was 57-105 which represents a .352 winning percentage.  How does a team accomplish such a […]

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

  Seriously, why not consider one Clifton Phifer Lee?  You’ve probably heard of him.  After all, Cliff Lee does own a postseason batting average of .308 which is pretty darn good.  Oh, and he can pitch pretty well, too.  Yeah, he can really pitch.  Try 7-2 with a 2.12 ERA in the playoffs.  For his […]

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

If you only look at the 75-87 record for 2010, the Cubs look a lot like…well, the Cubs.  To make matters worse, they don’t have a lot of flexibility going forward into 2011, because they are burdened with some horrific contracts.  Alfonso Soriano ($18M), Carlos Zambrano ($17.875M), Kosuke Fukudome ($13.5M), Carlos Silva ($11.5M), Ryan Dempster ($13.5M), […]

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

Looking back at 2010 should give Cardinal Nation a bit of hope for the future.  After all, this team was a full game ahead of the Reds on August 12th and fresh off of a 3 game sweep at Cincinnati.  A snapshot of 08/12/10 shows that the Cardinals were 64-49 and two games ahead of […]

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

For Part II of the NL Central Fall Preview, I’m looking at the Brewers (77-85) and writing pretty much the same thing everybody else is going to write about them (at first).  The team finished 2010 12th in runs scored (750), 11th in average (.262), 9th in OBP (.335), and 6th in slugging (.424).  Nothing […]

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

It’s never too early to start looking at the competition in the NL Central division, and it’s not a bad idea to take stock of things before free agency changes the competitive landscape.  I’ll begin by looking south of St. Louis at the Houston Astros – the team that surprised many by posting a 76-86 […]

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

The Gold Glove which is technically the “Rawlings Gold Glove Award” is voted on by the managers and coaches of each league.  Voters are not permitted to vote for players from their own team in an effort to eliminate bias.  That said, it’s probably fair to say that most voters don’t take the time to […]

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

I have had a hard enough time keeping up with with the Cardinals in late 2010 and into the off-season much less trying to watch much “other” baseball.  Thankfully, the tools at the disposal of an otherwise occupied blogger (FanGraphs, Baseball-Reference, Twitter) are more than enough to formulate the PH8 ballot for the BBA National […]

{ Comments on this entry are closed }