The Houston Astros might be the best franchise never to win a World Series. That should change this year.

Yes, that’s high, out-on-a-limb praise, but as Lou Brock once said, show me a man who’s afraid to look bad and I’ll show you a man you can beat every time. As my track record of predictions has clearly established, I have absolutely no fear of looking bad, repeatedly so in fact. All the same, the 2004 Astros have the look of a team that’s geared for a championship run. They need do only three things to achieve greatness: win the season series with the Cubs, fire their manager in May, and bench their incumbent centerfielder in June.

Everybody shooting from the hip, Everybody wants their Jays news.

Colby Cosh put a recent day off to good use and produced a new kind of baseball graph. It shows all the pitchers from last year who qualified for the ERA title and charts their strikeouts, walks and home runs (the 'Three True Outcomes' and the founding components of DIPS). Colby's graph plots k/ip on the y-axis, bb/ip on the x-axis and then uses dot-size to represent home runs allowed.

Some folks on the Red Sox Nation forum have taken the idea a step forward and have plotted career graphs for the Red Sox starters.

This is a very interesting project and offers the data in a form that is more intuitive than tables of data.

It's over. Over the last dozen years, the Braves have enjoyed the most sustained run of excellence in the post-Messersmith era. They've had as good a twelve-year run as any team, of any era, has ever had. And now is the time to appreciate it, because it's over.

-- Baseball Prospectus 2003

For twelve years, various people have predicted that this is the year that the Braves' run of division titles will come to an end. Some of these predictions have been based on accounting; others have been grounded in intuition. They've been made in newspapers, in private conversations, in baseball annuals, in blogs, and in every other sort of forum. And they've all been wrong. (Except in 1994, when the Braves were let off the hook by the strike, but we can't really count that.) Which makes it difficult to say that 2004 is the year in which they'll falter. However, the chorus of voices making that claim is an awful lot louder right now than it's ever been before; sometimes those who understand history are still doomed to repeat it.

We'll leave the T.V. and the radio behind and see what the papers are saying about the Jays.

Every new problem brings a stranger inside, but what do the newspapers bring?

First, beat longshot odds/
Then, beat three excellent clubs/
Shockingly, World Champs!

Our 2004 Preview series now turns to the improbable kingfish of 2003, the Florida Marlins.

Warning: Contained herein is very likely more information about the Diamondbacks than you'd ever want to know. In other words (as Sting once sang): "Too much information running through my brain; too much information driving me insane". Enter at your own risk.

Here's the latest Jays news on a quiet Sunday.

The Batter's Box Fantasy League closed its offseason trading window on the 28th. 15 BBFL owners combined to consummate ten trades. Five owners declined to partake in the festivities.

So who went where?

In the March 2004 issue of Esquire magazine (hitting newsstands right about now), you may be surprised and delighted to find a feature article on newest Blue Jay Talley Haines. No, he's not an immaculate dresser or a rising Hollywood star (not that I'm aware of, anyway), but he's the case-study subject of an article on the Rule 5 Draft, written by former National Post scribe Chris Jones. The article reveals that the Jays have had their eye on Haines for a year, ever since he retired the heart of their order in a game last spring. It looks like a good read -- pick it up if you can.

Here's the latest news coming out of spring training.

The bloom is off the rose.

Fans once packed Mile High Stadium and Coors Field regardless of how well the Rockies played, but too many years of mediocrity have driven them away. Attendance has fallen for an astonishing seven consecutive seasons, and season tickets sales have fallen from 34,000 to 16,000 in five short years. With the Broncos, Avalanche and even the usually awful Nuggets offering competitive products, the Rockies find themselves at the bottom of the local sports heap in terms of quality and buzz.

GM Dan O’Dowd and company certainly didn’t create any buzz this winter. Still burdened by the catastrophic signings of Mike Hampton and Denny Neagle as well as other contracts granted before the “market correction” 2002-2003, Colorado will pay $51 million to just five players (Helton, Wilson, Johnson, Neagle, Walker) this season and roughly the same amount next season. Colorado didn’t sign any marquee free agents this winter and probably won’t until after 2005 when the contracts of all but Todd Helton disappear. Jeromy Burnitz and familiar face Vinny Castilla top the list of free agents signed to help the team tread water while prospects develop.

No Dexy's Midnight Runners this morning, but please say hi to Eileen for me, Mick!

So what's in the ol' paper pile this morning?

Here's the Milwaukee Brewers preview for 2004.