Take the over, Delmon, Cano-verated

- In all objectivity, the line on the Red Sox win total is a gift. Its set at 91 wins which means you need to pound the over if you like winning money. Sox are gonna cruise to 96. They went out and broke the bank Yankees style and improved everywhere. You gotta remember last years team was on their way to win somewhere in the high 90's until they tanked at the end with Ortiz/Manny injuries. That team did not have a deep lineup. We depended on the 3/4 hitters for a significantly higher percentage of our output and it was evident when they went down. 86 wins last season with that tank job, Beckett sucking, and Jason Johnson starting? That was a 95 win team when healthy and this offseason we add DiceK, a good hitter for the 5 hole, and a shortstop who can hit. Then your looking at a healthy Crisp and a likely rebound year for Beckett, who people forget is only the same age as Papelbon. So the logic is we win 86 games with injuries, get better and healthy in the offseason, and only need to improve 5 games? 91 isn't even fair, take the over.

- I love outfielders with absolute hoses. Ichiro holds it down as the overall best when you add in his accuracy. Vladdy wins in the pure power arm category. Alex Rios is a young guy with one of the better cannons out there. Immediately thrown into the mix now though is Delmon Young. That kid is a Ken Griffey Jr type prospect and his arm is just as good as the rest of his game. He gunned some guy down at 3rd last year that blew my mind but I couldn't find the clip. I did find another pretty impressive one though. Go here and click 'Young saves a run' on September 16th.

- I want to talk about Robinson Cano and we'll start with his fluky.342 average. Looks can be deceiving and Cano's 2006 was a prime example. Luck in baseball can sometimes be reflected by a stat called batting average for balls in play. BABIP is used for both hitters and pitchers but lets look at it for hitters right now. It's basically just what percentage of the balls that you hit fall in for base hits. A random spike over one year with BABIP is usually due to luck as more of your balls happened to find the holes in the defense than normal, and your batting average will increase with it. In 2006 some people experienced a spike in BABIP that was not in line with their career numbers including Jeter, Freddy Sanchez, Tejada, Wells, and Cano. Notice that means those guys all hit for averages that were way over their career batting averages. Not always, but usually that means a regression is coming. Cano isn't going to hit .342 again, hes going to hit around .300 flat. And while your thinking that still makes him a good hitter, you need to look a little deeper again.

That Yankee lineup is scary good. They wear pitchers out by seeing a ton of pitches and getting on base for the power bats to drive them in. Only one hitter in that lineup is impatient, Robinson Cano. He might hit .300, but he will sucks at getting on base. Just how impatient is Cano? Well Cano saw 3.05 pitches per plate appearance last season which ranks him dead last out of all the hitters in major league baseball. Cano would need to hit .330 just to get on base at the league average. The high batting average looks nice and all, but in reality Cano actually hurts that lineup.

Add in the fact that Cano is an absolute butcher in the field (17 errors), and the overall picture doesn't look that great. See I don't think he sucks, hes a nice little player, but the fluke .342 season has everyone gushing while proclaiming him one of the best hitters in that lineup and a perennial batting title contender. The guy will hit for a decent average and will take the same number of walks as errors he'll make. The kid is far from being a stud.