“A San Francisco Chronicle reporter asked Giants manager Bruce Bochy to handicap the season – it’s apparently never too early for that – and he complied by pushing his way onto an already dangerously overcrowded bandwagon.

“Because of track record, I think you would have to look at [Philadelphia's] staff as the best in baseball,” said Bochy, who also manages a pretty good staff. “I think everybody in the National League would tell you the road to the World Series has to go through Philadelphia, with the quality of their staff.”

All these uneducated dummies talking about Philly like that… I heard some even dummer dummy Pat Gillick was saying they were a 100 win team too. He doesn’t know Jack, right???

I know it is just a t-shirt, but that doesn’t necessarily make it wrong:
WIN COLUMN&
WIN COLUMN&
WIN COLUMN&
WIN COLUMN&
YOU HAVE A CHANCE

Come playoffs, it’s a whole new ballgame, but for the regular season, I’d be SHOCKED if the Phillies don’t win the NL East by double-digit games. With this pitching, how does this team NOT win 100 games?

Winning in MLB is like weight loss; the first 20-25lbs are pretty easy, it’s the last 5-10lbs that are really hard. In baseball it’s much easier to get to 90-95 wins than it is to go from 95-100+ wins, especially when the only team in the NL that got significantly worse in the offseason is the Padres. As has been stated above, the Marlins and Braves both should be better, the Nationals (while still not very good), should be better. The Reds and Cardinals aren’t going away and the Brewers should be much improved. The Giants and Rockies should be at least as good as they were last year, and the Dodgers should be a little better too. Hell there’s even some buzz that the Pirates might be better this year. The point is, it’s a lot easier to talk about 100 wins in theory than it is to actually find them on the schedule.

Now back to the NL East: as much as I predicted doom and gloom for the Feesh last season (and was right in most particulars, especially about the boolpen), this year’s team is going to be better all around. Now that Scrooge McLoria has danced to the shots the union was ready to fire into the floor around his Guccis, I can’t be unreasonable and go on ticket strike again this year. It’s not exactly like I won’t have Scrooge and the Chihuahua to kick around anymore, but fair is fair.

Big question is whether the Iron Giant will continue to mature as a hitter or go on taking golf swings at balls in the dirt, how well Coughlan rebounds and whether Morrison grows a bit or sophomore slumps. The weak link is going to be Kindly Uncle Wes Helms at third; the gaps in the right side of the infield that Infante will fill are just gonna shift over to the left side now.

Overall the rotation and the boolpen will both be better, especially the setup guys, but frankly, I’m still just not sold on Nunez as the stopper. We shall see. But by and large the pen should give away fewer games this season.

They’ll definitely need Rollins to beat his recent .700 OPSes this year, that’s for sure.

Question: if the team wins 100+ games, how many of those will Jimmy Rollins actually be healthy enough to play in?