Musings on Spring Training

I took a short break while I took a vacation down to Arizona to visit family, watch some baseball, and celebrate the end of my winter quarter at school. I was able to catch a few non-A's games (since they were in Japan,) and here are my early reactions:

Giants: Are as bad as everyone says. Vizquel, Frandsen, and Durham are all fighting off injuries and may start the year on the Disabled List. The guys that are playing are doing so poorly. I saw Molina try to take 3rd from 1st on a single, and get thrown out badly. Randy Winn was picked like a booger sleeping at 1st. Lincecum looked ok, but the bullpen looked poor. It's going to take divine intervention to lift this team from an otherwise imminent 68 win season.

Rangers: Their pitching staff is terrible. Not just in the sense that they can't throw strikes that miss bats, but they're pretty poor fielders. I saw multiple errors in throwing, and on the aforementioned Winn pickoff, a hesitation that caused him to get back to 1st in an otherwise easy rundown. The Bats didn't have enough fire to carry the team, so it looks bad here too.

Dodgers: The young guys look good, the old guys look bad. Rafael Furcal was swinging for the fences and missing badly at changeups all over the place. Ethier, Loney, and Kemp all took their share of good at bats and hit the ball well. The bullpen looked a bit awkward, but I didn't get to see Saito or Broxton.

Royals: Looked surprisingly ok. Some are picking this team to beat out the Twins for not-last in the AL central, which would be an improvement. A lot of that rests on the starting rotation staying healthy, and their rotation looked ok. Unfortunately for my fantasy team, Joakim Soria didn't look ok. He wasn't hitting his spots, and barely survived his inning of middle relief work.

Rockies: An interesting mix, but disappointing overall. I saw Franklin Morales be lights out for 4 innings before blowing up in the 5th, and the bullpen didn't look good in relief. The lineup was dogging it in the game I saw--Matt Holliday hit a slow roller, expected it to go foul, and then was tagged out standing there when it didn't. It's hard to judge a lineup when they aren't trying.

White Sox: Looked better than I thought. If they get Brian Roberts, they could be a decent team. Probably not enough to compete with the Tigers and Indians, since they still have a terrible Starting Rotation.

On one last note, How 'bout them A's? I don't think many people had them picked to win either game, and they took one while barely blowing the other in extras. I like our chances if we can get that close to the defending World Series Champions in an unfamiliar park surrounded by mostly unsympathetic fans. Hopefully the crew can stay healthy and keep up this success.