Our starting rotation can’t any worse than it was this year!

Jhonny Estrada

for the Mariners.

That one’s got me downright giddy.

The Pirates are the Pirates.

The Cubs good players are getting older and make plenty of personnel mistakes (Milton Bradley) and will probably be about as good as they were this year.

The Reds have Votto, Bruce, Volquez, Cueto, and kinda Philips. They don’t have anybody really good beyond that, which is why they always seem to fall short of what people think they will do.

The Astros are another team that is getting older and, unlike the Cubs, they have absolutely nothing in their farm system that will help them anytime soon except Jason Castro. They will probably do no better than this year, especially after Wandy Rodriguez had a career year.

Then there is the Cardinals. The hope there is that they have so many free-agents (Holliday, Pineiro, Wellemeyer, Greene, Ankiel and a few guys (Ludwick, Duncan, Schumaker) that they will have to spend money on in order to keep, while also keeping in mind that they are going to have to re-sign Pujols to probably the biggest contract in MLB history VERY soon. They don’t have unlimited money and will probably have to downgrade a couple of positions.

The problem is that both the Astros and Cardinals DO have around $40-50M to spend, but a lot of that (especially for the Cards) will be going to resigning there own players (as many as they can, anyway). And there aren’t a whole lot of compelling options on the free agent market for them to spend their money on either.

So, depending on the moves the Brewers make this season, next year could very well be absolutely winnable. The Crew did have the third best offense in the NL, and just need to improve their league-worst pitching, which shouldn’t be too hard to do since, even if we don’t acquire anyone else, most of the guys the Brewers do have shouldn’t do as bad as they did this year

Rickie, who my friends and I inexplicably and lovingly refer to as “Skittles”, has been my favorite Brewers position player since he was called up.

To see him finally making good on all that bat-speed-based potential and then go down for the season was devastating. Given that his wrist was injured (yet again), who knows if he’ll ever show that kind of power again. But if he can continue to adjust, and continue to improve defensively (4.7 UZR in 35 games this year), that could be a huge boost offensively. It’s a big questions mark, but it could be a big gain if he comes back healed, and stays healthy.

Granted, I seem to be overly optimistic when it comes to the Brewers - after all, I was calling for 90 wins before the season started. Just the same, I’m looking forward to 2010. I mean, we lost our middle infield early - one due to injury, the other due to just plain suckitude - and our entire starting rotation underperformed, and badly. Despite all that, we came within one win of a .500 season.

In 2010, we’ll likely have Escobar and Weeks in the lineup, which should be a lot of fun. We no longer are giving away ABs to Bill E. Hall, and we have a newfound fan favorite in Casey McGehee. (Not to mention a not-as-remote-as-you-think chance of back-to-back ROYs in 2009 and 2010.) Our offense was, what, 3rd in the NL, and if we want, we can bring everybody back - in fact, we have parts to spare in Hardy, Lopez, and McGehee/Gamel. (Plus, if we replace Kendall with someone who can, you know, hit, it can actually get better.)

Our rotation will be hard to fix, but overall, I think we have a lot fewer question marks than a lot of teams. As much as I was bummed out by our annual second-half fade, I’m looking forward to next season.

If nothing else, we’re less than a year away from Hall’s and Suppan’s contracts coming off the books. That’s something to look forward to, if nothing else. :)

I’m actually really excited for 2010. The prospect of Fielder/Braun actually improving on their incredible 2009 numbers, a full season of Escobar and maybe Gamel (or to a lesser extent McGehee), a chance to see if Weeks can maintain his pre-injury 2009 performance over the whole year, hopefully a resurgent Hart, are all more than enough to offset the uncertainty over CF and C.

And as far as pitching goes, I think Gallardo/Parra/Bush can all drastically improve on their 2009 numbers if given a chance. I’m a little worried Suppan will stay in the rotation because of his contract (he shouldn’t) or that they’ll exercise Looper’s $6.5 million option (they shouldn’t) – but I’m still optimistic that the rotation will be Gallardo/Mystery Pitcher 1/Mystery Pitcher 2/Bush/Parra – which to me actually has the potential to be actually really good, depending on the incoming pitchers.

With a team so young, I will continue to be excited about their potential going into every season.