Phil Watch: Revising His Preseason Pshaws

Something's going on.

Something curious in that the Tribune's baseball columnist seems to only be posting a column on weekends for the Sunday print edition.

Could Phil be the 'failing Tribune columnist' that Mariotti referred to today?

'Lacking creative juices and originality' kinda fits? But that could be anybody really.

Possible reasons:

1. Vacation - strange that he would take it the first month of the season.

2. Repositioning - Sunday fits Phil's writing better. Musings for the semi-blurry, casual reader.

3. Buyout Coming - A move to Sundays is a clear sign management ain't diggin' ya.

4. A temporary schedule reshuffling - maybe they're just trying something new.

As always, probably a combo of all of them. Management is probably still deciding.

With that, Phil went all voluminous for Sunday, cranking out three (count them, three!) columns for the blurry-eyed just biding time until the crossword puzzle.

Let's get started with Phil's revision of the AL Central.

Perhaps the White Sox's neighborhood isn't so dangerous, after all.

The stumbling starts of the Detroit Tigers and Cleveland Indians force a reassessment of the American League Central. The feeling here is that it's too early to read much into the early problems of C.C. Sabathia and the Indians but that the Tigers have pitching issues that aren't going away any time soon.

Could this be the start of a national 'reassessment' of the AL Central? If it's reached the depths of Phil, maybe the rest of the world will jump on board. It is not head-and-shoulders above the rest of the Divided-Up Groupings in these Leagues that are Considered Major. It's not better than the AL East and probably not better than the NL West.

Anyone with a modicum of baseball acumen could have predicted Detriot's bullpen and rotation shortcomings while Cleveland added nothing to a team that had a few players enjoying career years last year (Byrd, Blake, Betancourt). If Cliff Lee didn't suddenly learn how to pitch this year, it could be worse.

After splitting a two-game series at the recently renamed Progressive Field in Cleveland, the Indians and Tigers entered the weekend at 11-21—and even that record shrinks to 9-19 (less than one victory for every three games) when the head-to-head matchups are eliminated.

Ding, ding, ding!!! New Phil-math. Not as good as this, but still pretty good in its utter uselessness to create a picture of badness. Analyze offensive numbers like how both teams were bringing up the rear in OPS 'entering the weekend'? Nope. Just look at the standings and come up with some dopey combined record that isn't that glaring outside of the original numbers.

And I love the 'entering the weekend'. It tells us when Phil is typing words. Something's goin' on, my friends.

What happened to the teams that won at a .551 pace over the last two seasons and were expected to improve that margin a little bit this season?

More? I'm gettin' a woody. Slight improvement, though. It probably took a calculator.

The Indians' fate will sink or rise with Sabathia and the recently disabled Joe Borowski or his replacement as the closer. They have a solid, deep pitching staff capable of complementing their well-balanced lineup, which makes it clear to identify Sabathia and Borowski as the primary reasons for the bad start.

Or the fact that they were hitting like .220 'entering the weekend'.

Solid and deep? Cliff Lee will come back down to earth soon enough. Jake Westbrook is still Jake Westbrook. Paul Byrd is already back to being Paul Byrd. Sabathia has major release and balance issues. Really. It's like he forgot how to pitch.

Well-balanced? Okay. They were a pretty darn good run-producing team that was good at producing more runs than the other team wearing different colored uniforms.

But with Franklin Gutierrez and David Dellucci anchoring the outfield corners, Casey Blake playing third and looking more like the Casey Blake we're all familiar with and Asdrubal Cabrera attempting to play regularly after an unspectacular minor league career and never rated high in the Mariner's organization before being dumped in the Eduardo Perez deal, they field a team with four positions being played by terrible average to below-average hitters.

How's that balanced?

And that's not even taking into account Hafner's strange decline at an age when he should be just destroying the baseball.

Borowski, who led the AL with 45 saves last season, picked up two saves the first week of the season but then blew his next two, giving up a game-ending grand slam to Torii Hunter and a monstrous two-run homer to Manny Ramirez. He had an 18.00 ERA and a .412 opponents' batting average when he went on the DL on Tuesday, the announced reason being a strained triceps muscle.

Can't we just shorten this? Joe Borowski is bad at baseball. He's always been bad at baseball.

He's like the guy who gets a promotion because everybody else just left the company and a warm body is needed to shuffle the papers. Never really qualified but cripes, someone has to do it.

Yes. He saved 45 games last season. And he also finished 149th among relievers in the league with 40 innings pitched last year.

Let's use Phil-math. That's about the average fifth-best reliever when you average all the league's team bullpen player averages and assessing just how below-average to bad a reliever is.

It's strange Phil doesn't know how bad he is. Borowski used to play for the Cubs.

The Tigers were the only AL team with an ERA higher than the Indians entering the weekend. Their pitching seems like the kind of problem that could haunt the vaunted lineup all season.

Something that could be seen by a deaf and blind gibbon entering the season. The pitching is bad. And they're not even good at being bad. Assuming the Tiger's pitching wouldn't be an issue this year assumed Dontrelle Wills was suddenly going to be good again, Kenny Rogers was going to be healthy all season at 43, Jeremy Bonderman was going to correct his abysmal second half performance last year and Nate Robertson was suddenly going to learn how to pitch.

Bullpen? Zach Miner and Jason Grilli? Todd Jones as closer? C'mon.

The Tigers have the potential to score a bazillion runs. But that assumes the pitching is going hold the opposition to a bazillion runs minus one.

After all, Dontrelle Willis (currently on the DL with a hyperextended knee after walking nine with no strikeouts in his first two starts) was the only significant addition to a pitching staff that ranked ninth in the AL in ERA and runs allowed a year ago.

Where was this shit before the season? Cripes!

More coming with the other two articles. I apparently have all week. But I'll get to them before we 'enter the weekend'.