Well, I’m back from my first Astros game, they played the Cardinals and ‘shock’ lost. I ran into two Russians girls there surprisingly and they wanted me to explain baseball to them in 5 minutes or less. Let’s, just say they quickly lost interest in the game and left after the 3rd inning and then I turned to the baseball fan of choice for me, a mathematician who worked at MD Anderson. (for some odd reason it seems like the number crunching people are attracted to baseball like none other sport). He and I quickly dissected the Cardinals and the NL Central…in rather very rough terms. Basically we broke up the six teams in the division by management/ownership and their history involving building team recently.
1. Cardinals-Cardinals have a very impressive management and ownership group, they are perhaps the model of well run mid market team. Except for that minor feud with Walt Jocketty.
2. Cubs-Dear God, how the heck did this management team screw up so badly? They need a little stability.
3. Reds-New ownership group hired Walt Jocketty, their native, their smart and they stole Walt (aka Branch Rickey). I expect the Reds to once again rise as the Big Red Machine.
4. Brewers-Mark Attansio knows what he is doing, have you heard of this group doing anything dumb lately? I haven’t.
5. Pirates-Looking at how lacking their success is, it’s obvious there is failure in management…so don’t expect them to be in contention within a decade till management/ ownership changes philosophy.
6. Astros-This club is FUBAR till somebody comes up with a decent plan. Dayton McLane, God bless him, but randomly signing big bats without good starting and bullpen pitching is waste of money.

Anyway, that’s my long term analysis of the NL Central division and I pretty much expect only the Cardinals and the Brewers to be the only contending teams in the division for at least 3 year till at least the other teams figure something out. Short term analysis- the Cardinals better pray that they don’t get the Rockies because the Rockies are coming from perhaps the 2nd toughest division in the league to the weakest division in all of baseball. The Cardinals stats are simply inflated because their competition is that bad, Rockies in four.