This is another in our occasional series of posts wherein we update you on the status of the nonstop schadenfreude express which is the 2008 San Francisco Giants…

Philadelphia and San Francisco were tied at 4 in the bottom of the tenth inning. The Phillies had runners on first and second. Right fielder Geoff Jenkins grounded the ball sharply to the left of second baseman Eugenio Velez, who bent down to pick it up and…oops!…the ball went under his glove.

And that’s how the Giants lost Sunday’s game, with Howard scoring from second on the play.

Some Giants fans will point to the team’s talented young pitchers as reason for hope. But this optimism takes for granted that, when those pitchers induce ground balls and shallow pop-ups, that the fielders will be able to catch the ball and throw it to the appropriate base.

After yesterday’s game, we can no longer assume.

The Giants made three errors Sunday. The first was charged to shortstop Emmanuel Burriss, who threw wide of first base in the third inning. The second was charged to third baseman Jose Castillo. And then, of course, there was Velez.

Giants starter Tim Lincecum allowed four runs in six innings – none earned. But don’t feel too bad for Lincecum. He made a few mistakes of his own. He had two wild pitches. One led to a run.

Today, the San Francisco Chronicle suggests that fielding errors are the price you pay when you stack your team with young players:

Any team that pushes youth makes a Faustian bargain. There will be moments of uninhibited enthusiasm and excitement, but the payback will be lots of mistakes.

There’s some truth to this. A majority of the Giants’ errors this season have been made by the team’s younger players. But here’s the rub: just because you’re one of San Francisco’s younger players doesn’t necessarily make you young.

Castillo, who is 27 years-old, is in his fifth major league season and leads the team with six errors. Brian Bocock, who actually is young (23 years-old) and is filling in while Omar Vizquel is out, is second on the team with three errors. After Castillo, Bocock and Fred Lewis (who is 26), the Giants have no starters under 30. Moreover, the only reason those guys are playing at all is because of injuries to older players.

So let’s not pretend that the Giants are in the middle of a youth movement. The Giants are not a young team (they’re ranked 15th in average team age). They are not a good defensive team (they are among the bottom third of teams in fielding percentage and errors).

This weekend, all three games against the Phillies were decided by one run and two of the games went to extra innings. Of course, the Giants lost two of three — further proof that in close games defense makes the difference.

That’s more bad news for the Giants.

Jacoby Ellsbury has been suffering from an “aggravated groin” (Fenway West). The other night at the ballpark, my friend asked me, “An aggravated groin? What’s an aggravated groin? How did he get an aggravated groin?” I replied, “I’ll have to get on that.” What I meant, was, I’ll have to figure that out. Badump-CHING! Tacoby Bellsbury should be back in the lineup tonight.

With Noah Lowry on the DL and Barry Zito headed to the pen, talk of a six-man rotation in San Francisco has died down. This pleases me, because six-man rotations are one of the stupidest things I’ve ever heard of. Teams already have a tough enough time finding five decent starters, and as it is, the fifth slot on most teams is something of a revolving door. And the idea of a 25-man roster consisting of perhaps 13 pitchers is equally disgusting. But as Giants Win notes, the larger concern for the San Fran squad may be their utter and complete lack of offense—on pace to score fewer runs than a dead ball era team. Oh my God.

I, like many, thought Phil Hughes’ “oblique strain” was code for “needs to go work out his suckage in the minors.” But now they’re saying it’s a stress fracture in one of his ribs. Hughes says he has “no idea” how he got it. But how do you fracture a rib and not realize it? Given that he also suffered a strained hamstring and a sprained ankle last year, NYY fans have to be hoping this is nothing more than a run of bad luck. But on Bronx Banter, it sounds like hope (not to mention patience) is running out.

Lone Star Ball gives Mindy McCready’s dad an Inigo Montoya Award. Any cross-pollination between baseball and The Princess Bride is always appreciated.

I like the Brewers. I have three of them on my fantasy team. I picked them to upset the Cubs for the NL Central title. But I don’t see how they’re going to do that without Ben Sheets. His first three starts filled me with hope. His subsequent triceps strain, despair. Now I don’t know what to think. Fortunately, I have the Hardball Times and pitch FX to tell me what’s what. Unfortunately, they also think the triceps tightness could be related to a rotator cuff issue. Nooooooooooooooo…..

Did you see Frank Thomas hit that triple a few days back? Did you wonder, whoah, when does Frank Thomas hit a triple? So did MopUpDuty. My favorite nugget from this post: Mark McGwire had only 6 triples in his entire career.

This week’s Metro column, on why the Rays are for real, but the other April surprise in the AL East, the Orioles, are not.

And finally, the Nats have a song. So Bugs and Cranks came up with hilarious ditties for all the other teams, too! I will now joyfully sing along to the new, awesome, Red Sox fan song:

We’re rawkous (raucous!) for the Red Sox!
We’re rawkous for the Red Sox!
We’re crazy and we’re awesome, brah!
We’re rawkous for the Red Sox!

Sully and Fitzy and Paddy Go Bragh
We’ll cut yer fuckin’ face if you look at us wrong!
So let’s go Nation of Red Sox fans!
Let’s throw some pizza in the stands!

Let’s go Red Sox!

As the lyrics of Jonathan Papelbon’s warm-up song (that *Dropkick Murphys tune from The Departed) sort of sound to me like, “I’m a sailor BRAAAAAH! And I lost my BRAAAAAH!”, I’m happy to see the emphatic syllable making the rounds in other Sox-related shanties.

*The lyrics were actually penned by Woody Guthrie. The real lyrics are, “I’m a sailor peg and I lost my leg.” The leg part, I get—but peg? Is that like, “I’m a sailor, Peg” (as if to his girlfriend, Peggy)? Inquiring minds want to know.

This is another in our occasional series of posts wherein we update you on the status of the nonstop schadenfreude express which is the 2008 San Francisco Giants…

As virtually everyone knows by now, $126 million man Barry Zito has been summarily banished to the bullpen after beginning the season 0-6. But what I still don’t get is why the Giants would do this, as it seems like the worst possible option. By all accounts Zito is fully healthy, and given that the Giants have no chance whatsoever of contending this season, the best way to get any return on their investment is to let him eat innings as a starter. Just put him on a 100-pitch count and run him out there, no matter how many runs he gives up. On the other hand, if they want Zito to work on his mechanics in a less pressurized environment, then they should get him to agree to go down to the minor leagues, where he can start every 5th day against AAA hackers and get his confidence back. And if he won’t go down, a third option would be to just do what every other team does and make up an injury so you can DL him and then give him “rehab starts” in the minors. But the last place you want a pitcher with an 80-mph fastball is in your bullpen, where he is going to be useless in anything other than once-a-week mop-up relief, won’t get enough work to work out his mechanics, and will be eating up a spot on the roster.

In other rotation news, Kevin Correia has gone down with an oblique strain which will sideline him until at least the end of May, and Noah Lowry’s recovery from a nerve injury in his forearm is going much slower than expected. Originally he was expected back in mid-April, but now Giants athletic trainer Dave Groeschner is saying, “We’re probably going to have to shut him down for a significant amount of time,” and his return date is indefinite. Pat Misch has been called up to replace Correia, but it is uncertain who will replace Zito.

Meanwhile, lone rotational standout Tim Lincecum was handed what should be the first of many losses this year, losing to the Rockies despite a strong 7-inning, 3 ER performance, because his offense could only muster 2 runs behind him.

As for that Giants offense, they remain last in the Major Leagues at 3.2 runs scored per game. Although they have somehow been able to compile a record of 13-16 so far, good for third place in the NL West, their run differential would produce an expected 19 losses, tied for worst in the game with the Padres, so the Giants have been lucky so far to do as well (?) as they have.

The bloom is off the rose for emergency minor-league call-up John Bowker. After a blistering major league debut in which he batted .364 with 3 homers and 9 RBI in his first 9 games, inspiring hope in Giants fans that they might have secretly had a hitting prospect they never knew about, the guy who had never played above AA before this year fell off a cliff, going 3 for his next 31, and is now batting .193/.217/.404 as reality reasserts itself.

Your obligatory Brian Bocock batting update - .157/.280/.171 for a mind-bogglingly low .452 OPS.

In steroid-related news, one of the lone bright spots in the Giants organization this season - catcher Eliezer Alfonzo - who had been on the verge of a call-up after batting .306 with 3 homers and 14 RBI for AAA Fresno, was suspended by MLB for 50 games for testing positive for taking a banned substance, which Alfonzo has admitted doing.

How sucky are the Giants this year? Our ongoing occasional series, “San Francisco SuckWatch 2008,” keeps you up to date! So with out further ado, let’s dive right in and see what is sucky about the Giants this week…

- Someone named Brian Bocock has played every inning at shortstop except one so far this season for the Giants. His batting line so far? .179 / .303 / .196. And as ugly as that line is, it is unlikely to get much better. Last season Bocock did not play a single game above A-ball, and in 345 at-bats at high-A San Jose, he posted a batting line of .220 / .293 / .328. Even if those stats from last year were directly transferred to the major leagues, they would instantly make Brian Bocock the worst-hitting shortstop in baseball, yet those were the stats he compiled last year, in A-ball.

- Bocock has been so bad that the Giants are calling up his double-play partner from A-ball last year, Emmanuel Burriss. This has become necessary because Omar Vizquel, the 41-year old shortstop the Giants resigned after he batted .240 last season, is not healing as fast as was hoped from his knee surgery. If the Giants’ fallback plans at shortstop are two guys from A-Ball, and Bocock is the best of those two, you really have to wonder just how truly terrible the other guys they have playing short in the Giants system must be.

- Bizarrely, in calling up Emmanuel Burriss the Giants DFA’d Rajai Davis, one of their few major-league ready outfield prospects, and the prize they swiped from the Pirates for Matt Morris. Although in the long run Davis projects as a fourth outfielder type, he is highly regarded as a defender in the outfield, and is not entirely incompetent with the bat, so you have to wonder why the Giants are risking losing him to a waiver claim.

- As of this writing, the Giants remain last in the entire Major Leagues in runs scored with 61 runs in 19 games, an average of 3.21 runs per game.

- According to the USS Mariner, the average velocity of Barry Zito’s fastball in 2008 is 82.7 miles per hour. Yes, that is the average, not the lowest. And according to calculations by The Big Picture, Barry Zito will make an estimated $86,000 per inning over the life of his contract, and that is assuming an extremely generous 35 starts per season and 6 innings per start!

- Putative staff ace Matt Cain had the worst outing of his career this week, getting hammered for 9 earned runs in 3.2 innings of work.

- As noted by Baseball Digest Daily, the Giants presently have the third longest championship drought in baseball, at 54 years and counting, behind only the Cubs and the Indians.

- Also via The Big Picture, piling on the Giants has become so fun that even the automated computer feed that updates the scores of ESPN’s game tracker has joined the fun.

Many have been predicting the San Francisco Giants to suck, and suck hard, this season. Some have even predicted a 100-loss campaign. So how are the Giants doing so far? Let’s have a look…

As is to be expected, the Giants are last in the Major Leagues with 27 runs scored in 11 games, or an average of 2.45 runs per game.

Sole good hitter Aaron Rowand is struggling at the plate and in the field, due to the fact that he probably has a broken rib.

Centerfielder Dave Roberts will likely have surgery on his knee and be out for months.

In other injury news, top outfield prospect Nate Schierholtz is out with a wounded right shin, outfielder Randy Winn hurt his ankle by hitting himself with his own bat, and reliever Keiichi Yabu has blurred vision after hitting himself in the eye with a rubber band.

Switch-hitting outfielder Dan Ortmeier has been so sucky hitting from the left side that he and the team have made a mutual decision to make him an exclusively right-handed batter from now on.

Putative team ace Barry Zito (0-2) has already been so terrible that he was booed by the home crowd during his introduction at the Giants’ home opener in San Francisco.

Even The Onion is piling on the Giants now, with their article “San Francisco Giants Band Together To Score Run.”

Thanks to ESPN.com’s new “roster analysis” page, which automatically updates as teams’ rosters change, we can keep track of various averages for each major league roster all season long.

Baseball’s fattest team? The Chicago White Sox (and it’s not even that close) , weighing in at an average of 221 pounds. The biggest culprits include the mountainous Bobby Jenks, generously listed at 275 pounds, the bulbous Jim Thome (255), and the voluminous Toby Hall (also listed at 255).

The thinnest team is the San Francisco Giants, weighing in at a scant 195 pounds on average, proving that not only are the Giants the lightweights of the Major Leagues when it comes to hitting, but that they are also the lightweights when it comes to actual weight. (Although now with 180-pound Dave Roberts heading to the DL, their rank may change).

As for the average height of baseball teams, we see that it does not vary much, with 29 out of the 30 teams having an average height of either 6-1 or 6-2. In dead last at 6-0 is the puny Houston Astros.

Baseball’s youngest team is, unsurprisingly, the Florida Marlins, with an average age of 27.2 years, while baseballs oldest team is a tie between the Boston Red Sox and the New York Mets, at 30.6 years of average age.

This is one of a series of posts in which we lambaste each team for their befuddling offseason boondoggles, and possibly applaud them for their prescient preseason pickups.

The Giants have traditionally put very strong teams on the field year after year, and have had very few truly catastrophic seasons, but this year’s team will have a shot to be historically bad.

Last year the Giants lost 91 games, which tied for the 4th worst record in their 125 years of existence, and this year they could well be even worse. PECOTA is projecting the Giants to lose 93 games this year, and it with a few key injuries or some bad luck in one-run games, one could easily imagine a scenario in which the Giants would lose more than the 100 games they lost in 1984, and thus set a new record for the worst season in franchise history.

Consider:

- Last season the Giants were dead last in the entire Major Leagues with a .708 team OPS, last in the Majors with a .387 team slugging percentage, and 29th out of 30 teams with 673 runs scored. And ridiculously, that was including the contributions they got from Barry Bonds and his 1.045 OPS!

- By letting Bonds, Ryan Klesko, and Pedro Feliz walk as free agents, the Giants are losing 41% of the meager 131 homers they hit as a team last season. PECOTA projects that the 2008 edition of the Giants will hit a mere 93 home runs. The team leader is projected to be Aaron Rowand with 14, followed by Dan Ortmeier and Bengie Molina with 12 each.

- David Pinto of Baseball Musings is projecting that the Bonds-less Giants will average 3.99 runs per game this season, down from 4.22 last year. At that rate, it will be a year-long struggle for the Giants to even clear 600 runs scored on the season.

- The Giants do have a promising young starting rotation, but their awful bullpen was last in the National League last season with 33 bullpen losses, and has not been upgraded in any way this offseason.

Indeed, nothing seems to be more popular this offseason than making up zingers about how much the Giants will suck this year. A small sampling of a few of the better ones:

“One move to make: Release half the roster.” - Joe Sheehan, Baseball Prospectus

“Take the Fresno Grizzlies, spot them a league-average starting rotation, and what do you get? The 2008 San Francisco Giants.” - Nate Silver, Baseball Prospectus

“I think I’d trust Amy Winehouse to guard my bag of coke before I’d trust [Brian Sabean] to build my offense.” - Dan Szymborski, Baseball Think Factory

“Maybe management thinks the best way to celebrate the Giants’ 50th anniversary of their arrival in San Francisco is to have as many active players as possible who were actually alive the last time Willie Mays was on a major league roster.” - A.J. Mass, ESPN.com

The sad part is, as bad as the Giants are going to be this year, there seems little hope of improvement at any time in the near future. The Giants already have a payroll in the $100 million range, they are locked into bad long-term contracts with Barry Zito and now Aaron Rowand, they have no tradeable assets to speak of, and up and down the system they have one of the thinnest collections of minor league talent of any team. In fact, the highest-ranked prospect in their whole system right now is Angel Villalona, a 17-year-old Dominican youngster without a defensive position who was still playing in Rookie ball last year.

This is a team with so many holes at the major league level, that it could be legitimately said that they headed into this offseason needing to find a first baseman, a second baseman, a shortstop, a third baseman, an outfielder, a closer, and nearly an entire rest of a bullpen.

So how did the Giants get into this mess? Well, for the last 15 years, the team, led mostly by GM Brian Sabean, has systematically mortgaged their future in an attempt to win it all now, trading away, blocking, or simply failing to develop any young position-player talent they might have had, while repeatedly signing big-name “experienced veterans” to overly long contracts. In some sense, this strategy was understandable - after all, if you have arguably the greatest hitter of all time on your team in Barry Bonds, it seems reasonable to try to win now rather than waiting for some distant future which may not come. But the execution of the strategy has been very poor. Despite having Bonds on the team for 15 seasons, the Giants failed to win a championship, and only ever made one World Series, back in 2002.

But even worse than past mistakes is the fact that Sabean and the Giants continue to compound those past mistakes by imagining that they are only a veteran player or two away from contention. No team in baseball is farther away from contention than the Giants right now, especially after the departure of Bonds, and yet Sabean went out and signed league-average centerfielder Aaron Rowand to a gargantuan $60 million, five-year contract which will take him well into his mid-30s decline years, having signed a similar deal with Barry Zito last year. But even setting aside the mediocrity of these players, these kind of signings would only make sense if the Giants had any hope of reaching the playoffs within the lifetime of these contracts. Since that is almost certainly not going to happen, this is a case where the Giants would almost literally be just as well served taking all that money and dumping it into the San Francisco Bay.

Although the Giants are in no position to contend any time soon, at the very least they should recognize this fact, trade away or just eat the contracts of some of the horrible veterans on their roster, and start playing kids and searching through the waiver wires for some promising youngsters to at least start building toward a semblance of maybe constructing a possible contender in five or six years’ time.

Offseason Grade: F

Additions: Aaron Rowand

Losses: Barry Bonds, Pedro Feliz, Ryan Klesko

Projected Lineup, Rotation, and Closer:

LF Dave Roberts (36) - .260/.331/.364, 31 SB
SS Omar Vizquel (41) - .246/.305/.316, 14 SB
RF Randy Winn (34) - .300/.353/.445, 14 HR
CF Aaron Rowand (30) - .309/.374/.515, 27 HR
1B Dan Ortmeier (27) - .287/.317/.497, 6 HR
C Bengie Molina (33) - .276/.298/.433, 19 HR
3B Rich Aurilia (36) - .252/.304/.368, 5 HR
2B Ray Durham (36) - .218/.295/.343, 11 HR

LHP Barry Zito (30) - 11-13, 4.53 ERA
RHP Matt Cain (23) - 7-16, 3.65 ERA
LHP Noah Lowry (27) - 14-8, 3.92 ERA
RHP Tim Lincecum (24) - 7-5, 4.00 ERA
RHP Kevin Correia (27) - 4-7, 3.45 ERA

CL Brian Wilson (26) - 6 SV, 2.28 ERA

-Hot Offseason Action Index-

Yesterday, the Phillies signed 3B Pedro Feliz. But they got far more than just a gold glove fielder. The Phillies got a player who dabbles in unfortunate facial hair the way Charlie Sheen dabbles in Vegas hookers. The way Amy Winehouse dabbles in coke. The way Britney dabbles in crazy.Truth be told, I haven’t spent a ton of time watching Feliz, since he played for the Giants, a team that has always been in a different time zone and lately has been far from contention. But with yesterday’s trade, I had new reason to gaze upon the visage that is Feliz. And lo, what I did see!

First, on Philadelphia Inquirer baseball writer Todd Zolecki’s blog, I got a glipse of Feliz rocking the chin strap.

Then, I Googled a nice pic of Feliz with what looks to be a still-in-progress chin strap. I’ve seen 13-year-olds with fuller beards.

Then, I took to Flickr, where I discovered a photo of Feliz with a soul strip, a look he no doubt borrowed from one Doug Davis.

Finally, here he is with a couple of female fans, rocking a combination of barely-there mustache and chin fuzz. The chin fuzz says, “got a tin can I can munch on?” while the almost-stache says, “Hi, my name is McLovin and I’d like to buy some beer.”

The reaction to Feliz’s signing in Philly was a collective “meh.” But I suspect he’ll grow on the city of brotherly shove. And even if he doesn’t grow on them, I know something will grow on him.Welcome to the team, Pedro. The UFH team.

San Diego Padres - a left fielder

To say left field was a revolving door for the Friars last season would be generous. It was more like there was no door at all, and anyone could just walk through and play. After trying all manner of flotsam there last year, including castoffs like Jose Cruz, Jr., Paul McAnulty, Russ Branyan, Terrmel Sledge, Rob Mackowiak, the Padres have still not found a solution.

Although Scott Hairston did hit like a man on fire after coming over from the D-Backs in a late season trade (.981 OPS in 87 AB), and is the putative starter if the season were to start today, before coming to the Pads he had an awful .659 OPS in 176 at-bats with the Snakes, so it’s hard to have any confidence in him.

Another reason it would be useful for the Padres to add at least one more capable player to their outfield mix is that their starting centerfielder is the aging and injury prone Jim Edmonds, who is highly unlikely to make it through a whole season without several trips to the DL.

Arizona Diamondbacks - a fourth outfielder

After an offseason in which they did just about everything right, the team’s only discernable hole is in the outfield. The Snakes seem committed to going with youngster Justin Upton as their everyday rightfielder, despite his unsightly .221/.283/.364 line last season. But now that Arizona has traded away its two best outfield prospects in Carlos Quentin and Carlos Gonzalez, if Upton falters or if either of the other two guys go down for any extended period, the D-Backs’ only replacement option off the bench is some 28-year-old 4-A dude named Jeff Salazar, a guy who nobody would want to see playing in the outfield every day.

Colorado Rockies - a left-handed reliever

Like the Diamondbacks, the Rockies are another team with very few holes left, having fulfilled their promise to the fans to return last year’s World Series squad virtually intact. They did “lose” Kazuo Matsui to the Astros, but that may well be a blessing, as it opens up a spot for top infield prospect and purported defensive wizard Jayson Nix, and even if Nix falters, the Rocks still have several other options to choose from at the keystone, including prospects Omar Quintanilla, Jeff Baker, and Ian Stewart, and former Braves star Marcus Giles, whom they just inked to a minor-league deal.

The Rockies are set to turn over half their bullpen, however, with LaTroy Hawkins having already bolted for the Yankees and free agents Jorge Julio and Jeremy Affeldt set to depart as well. Although the Rockies were able to sign Luis Vizcaino to fill Hawkins’ shoes, they probably need to sign at least one more reliever, especially a left-hander to fill the situational lefty role Affeldt handled last season, as they have no particularly appealing internal options to replace him.

Los Angeles Dodgers - continue resisting the temptation to trade away their young guns

A good argument could be made that the Dodgers could have improved their team dramatically by making no moves whatsoever this offseason, and just letting their highly touted, major-league ready prospects have a chance to show what they can do.

Of course, Ned Colletti being Ned Colletti, he had to go out and sign at least a few big names, giving fairly outrageous contracts to outfielder Andrew Jones and Japanese import Hiroki Kuroda. But so far he has resisted the deluge of trade offers for coveted young players like Matt Kemp, Clayton Kershaw, and James Loney, and if he can keep on resisting those offers, as well as the temptation to block them any further with free agent signings, the Dodgers should be in pretty good shape to make a run at the playoffs this season.

San Francisco Giants - EVERYTHING

Here is a short list of the things the Giants need: a first baseman, a second baseman, a third baseman, a starting pitcher, a closer, and three other relievers of any ability. Outside of the outfield (Rowand, Roberts, Randy Winn), and the young arms in the rotation (Cain, Lowry, Lincecum), this team is going to be absolutely terrible, and they have no promising prospects of any real note on the way either. The Giants are well nigh a stone cold lock to have the worst offense in the National League this year.

This may not be a game everyone is interested in playing, but let’s face it: the World Series is over, the Red Sox won, and readers of this particular blog do not need further discussion to know how glorious and awesome the Red Sox are.

Now it is time to focus on the offseason and next year, and Item 1 on the agenda is A-Rod, thanks to the stunt he and Boras pulled last, announcing his opt out during game four of the World Series.

So let’s go ahead and start handicapping where A-Rod might end up…

3-1 New York Mets

Omar Minaya and the Mets are the reigning kings of offering massive, mindblowingly large contracts to whoever are the biggest names on the market at the time - just think back to Carlos Beltran, Pedro Martinez, and Carlos Delgado. Not only can the Mets definitely afford A-Rod already, but they are getting a new stadium and lots of new revenue in 2009. Plus, they’ve shown interest in A-Rod several times in the past, and you know that Minaya is going to want to do something big this offseason to appease the fans and the back pages after the team’s historically epic collapse down the stretch.

5-1: Anaheim Angels of Anaheim

Arte Moreno has shown repeatedly that he is the kind of crazy individual owner that will throw caution to the winds and order the signing of a big-name star to a ridiculous contract that a team under corporate ownership would be less likely to offer. He is much the same sort of gunslinging cowboy owner Tom Hicks was when he signed A-Rod to his last contract in Texas, before Hicks was reined in by his investment partners. Angels attendance and revenue growth have both been phenomenal in recent years, so they can definitely afford A-Rod, and with the way they use their players as interchangable parts, they can easily shuffle people around to make room at third base.

7-1: Boston Red Sox

Flush with even more cash from their World Series victory and facing a possible hole at third base with the free agency of Mike Lowell, it would be easy to imagine the Red Sox going after A-Rod. Although this would definitely anger many Sox fans, a certain subsection of Red Sox Nation has been crying out for the Sox to get A-Rod all season long, and Theo has shown in the past that he is willing to ignore the desires of the fans and go get long-running obsessions like Drew and Lugo. Considering how close the Sox came to acquiring A-Rod in 2004, it would be folly to assume that that option is not in Theo’s mind right now. I still think we are more likely to see Lowell manning the hot corner in Fenway next year, but if he dithers and doesn’t sign pretty much the first contract offer made to him, it might well be A-Rod instead.

9-1 Detroit Tigers

The Tigers are suddenly flush with cash the past few years, having cleverly marketed and leveraged their new ballpark, and owner Mike Illitch has shown that he is not at all afraid to take huge gambles and blow massive amounts of that cash on players nobody else is even trying to sign, such as Magglio Ordonez and his injured knee, or Ivan Rodriguez and his suspect back. Both of those deals worked out rather nicely for Illitch, so if for some reason all the other teams hesitate too long to sign A-Rod due to excessive contract demands or character questions, don’t be surprised if Illitch swoops in and make A-Rod a ridiculous offer even he can’t refuse.

11-1: San Francisco Giants

With Barry Bonds getting the boot, the Giants may well be looking for a new megastar to keep butts in the seats at Pac Bell, er, SBC, er Whatever-it’s-called-now Park. Their overpaying for Barry Zito last year certainly suggests that they are thinking along those kinds of lines. Plus, San Francisco fans have already proven that they are more than willing to embrace a superstar that the rest of the nation hates.

13-1: Philadelphia Phillies

The Phillies are not the first name that usually gets mentioned when people talk about where A-Rod might end up, and he is certainly not the kind of player that you would expect to be popular with the Philadelphia fans, but the Phillies have been on the edge of something big for years now and have been looking for something to get them over the hump, so Philadelphia might actually be the team who would be helped the most by adding A-Rod. The Phillies can definitely afford A-Rod, especially with their still-new stadium and several millions in contracts coming off the books over the next two years (including the $7 million they were still paying to Jim Thome this past season), and they don’t have a strong incumbent at third base (as Wes Helms could easily be shunted to the bench). Plus, as a baseball fan, it would kind of be exciting to see A-Rod added to an infield that already has 3 MVP types in Ryan Howard, Chase Utley, and Jimmy Rollins, creating what would indisputably be the greatest infield quartet ever assembled.

15-1: Houston Astros

Faced with a weak NL Central there for the taking and a gaping hole at third base, the Astros are another team which could really be helped immediately by adding A-Rod. They’ve already shown a willingness to drop ridiculous dollars on big-name star power with their pioneering the whole pro-rated Clemens contract thing, and Drayton McClane is the kind of owner with the actual authority to wake up on the other side of the bed tomorrow morning, decide he wants A-Rod, and make it happen. Plus it’s Texas, and Texans like big things.

17-1: New York Yankees

Common sense says that despite their repeated sworn statements that they would not pursue A-Rod if he opted out, the Yankees are the team that most can afford A-Rod, and perhaps the team that most desperately needs him, given their current state of disarray, so they should therefore eat some crow and humbly go back to the table with Boras. But I don’t think this is going to happen, because guys like Randy Levine and Hank Steinbrenner strike me as a men possessed of large amounts of pride, and not particularly excessive amounts of common sense.

20-1: Los Angeles Dodgers

The Dodgers always get mentioned, because we know they can afford A-Rod if they really want to, and plus, they have a huge hole at third base right now. But we have to remember that after the whole JD Drew opt-out thing, Ned Colletti has a huge hate-on for Scott Boras, to the point where he refused to talk to Boras for several months and foolishly didn’t offer Greg Maddux arbitration (thereby losing free draft picks), just because Maddux was a Boras client. Although Colletti has gotten over the worst of his hatred at this point, he is unlikely to have much patience for Boras’s negotiating tactics unless he gets a direct order from Frank McCourt or something.

25-1: Chicago Cubs

The Cubs showed last offseason that they are willing to drop big bucks on free agents. The don’t really have a need at third base, but shortstop has been a black hole for sometime now, so they could try to entice A-Rod with the chance to move back to the premier defensive position on the diamond. That said, one get’s the feeling that the Cubs blew their wad on Soriano last year and especially with the sale of the team getting a lot closer now, they are less likely to give Hendry the free reign to make such a huge financial commitment

30-1 or higher: Baltimore Orioles, Washington Nationals, Chicago White Sox, Pittsburgh Pirates

Nobody saw the Texas Rangers coming last time, so these four teams are my dark horse candidates this time around. The Orioles have always shown a propensity to make sporatic, unpredictable, and irrational plunges into the free agent market, but what they really need is pitching. The Washington Nationals don’t seem to be getting mentioned much, but they are getting a new stadium in a few years, and might see A-Rod as the perfect guy to have as their centerpiece going into their new digs. The White Sox could probably afford A-Rod, although Kenny Williams has not shown much of a tendency to go after guys like this in the past. I’m throwing the Pirates in here, because the Pirates as an organization are certifiably bat-shit crazy. Nobody has been able to understand what they are doing for the past 15 years, and nobody can ever predict what they are going to do next.