Wow, you completely blew by like every other person’s response to you, as well as mine, pointing out that you are vastly overrating all of these other lineups.

I love people who cite one offensive category – especially when the guy has a career year in that category – to prove a guy’s worth. He also had a 9 VORP. That’s not good.

As for your second post – I still can’t decipher a single thing you wrote. You might want to try proof-reading. I mean, I’ll come up with an occasional typo, but cheez, is that English?

And no, I don’t want Bonds. Or Clemens. I just want actually good baseball players that will help the team, and Eckstein doesn’t fall into that category.

And I noticed that you failed in several attempts to actually address anything I wrote. I suspect that, like most Eckstein sycophants, you have absolutely no idea whether or not in fact Eckstein has superior “fundamental” skills, but you’ve read several columnists who say that he’s gritty or something. But exactly in what way is Eckstein better at the fundamentals than Reyes, Castillo, or any other middle-infielder for that matter? I breathlessly anticipate the font of baseball wisdom that will come from your computer in response.

The Yanks, Tigers and Phils might, but they will also allow about 800+ runs if they do. The Diamondbacks would have to improve an awful lot to get to 800 runs, and the Jays – well, see above.

As someone else noted, the lineup will at least be no worse. And the one position that some think might be a downgrade – catcher – i think will be better. The Castro/Schneider platoon will, in the end, put up slightly better numbers than what we got last year from the position.

Do you really want Brrady Clark playing the other 62?

He’ll be out 6 weeks minimum, before returning to baseball activities (i.e extended spring training, b/c he’s missing ALL of spring training). He’ll have to get himself back into “game shape”. Which will mean another couple of weeks of rehab (knowing his usual MO). Then a rehab assignment for 3-5 games. And if, by some miracle, he plays 3 games in the minors without getting hurt (crossing my fingers)… he’ll be back in about 8-9 weeks from now (which brings you to about May 7th/8th). Not a moment sooner…

It’s fine to have great pitching, but you need good offense to go along with it (and vice-versa).

All I ever hear from my phillie-fan friend is how horrible the Phils’ 3-5 starters are. The Phils are gonna have to score 8 runs/game to win for those starters.