A new beginning

While it's much too soon to officially give my heart to another ball club, it's never too soon for a fling. Thus, Sports With Steve's official preferred 2008 Major League Baseball team is the Chicago Cubs.

The Cubbies signed the recently-dispatched Reed Johnson, giving them an instant leg up. In an extra bit of eff-you to J.P. and those determined to destroy the Blue Jays, the Cubbies also found a place for another guy the Jays had no use for: Ted Lilly.

Lilly was a damn fine Blue Jay (except all that fighting-with-the-manager stuff), and his 15 wins in 2007 with Chicago may have propelled the Blue Jays into the playoffs, where the team would have made at least enough money to cover the difference between Lilly's contract demands, and the Jays' lackluster offer.

But hey, who needs a 30-year old left-handed starting pitcher that was not only the team's lone All Star in 2004, but also coming off a career-high 15 wins (as Lilly was at the end of 2006), when you can get a 38-year old designated hitter whose 2001, 2004 and 2005 seasons were limited to 128 total games, coming off a season in which he posted a batting average more than 30 points lower than his career average, and was generally regarded as finished (as Frank Thomas, given the money Lilly wanted, was at the end of the 2006 season)? But I digress...

In addition to these two great former Jays, and SWS favourites, the 2008 Cubbies also have a few others things this little area of the Net loves:

Big-time corners: Derrek Lee averaging nearly a hit a game in his career, and posting a gorgeous .994 fielding percentage at first base. That's good for two Gold Gloves, and if that's not enough, he was the first Cubs' first-bagger to play in an All-Star Game since Mark Grace, and first to start since Ernie Banks (oddly-symmetrically-enough in 2005, 1985 and 1965 respectively). How's that for a real Cub? At the other corner Aramis Ramirez, who joined Lee at the 2005 All-Star Game. Though Ramirez's fielding leaves something to be desired, he's averaging 159 hits, 30 home runs and 100 RBI over the last seven seasons. In that span, he's also cut his gaudy 100-ish strikeouts per season down to the mid-60 range.

Dirtbag pitchers: Carlos Zambrano is excluded from this group for being a true ace. This guy has some of the nastiest stuff around, is coming off a 19-win season, and has never won fewer than 13 games in a season as a full-time starter. The rest of the guys though, including Lilly, also include Jason Marquis, John Lieber, the seemingly immortal Ryan Dempster, and youngster Rich Hill, who started to make a name for himself in 2007. The Cubbies have a bullpen full of guys named Howry, Eyre, Hart, Lahey, and Wood (yes, that Wood, finally a full-time reliever) that you just know are going to get the job done.

Displaced superstar: Alfonso Soriano needs no introduction. Here's the bit you probably don't know, though. In addition to his frightening offensive numbers, Soriano can play some left field. He has 41 outfield assists in the last two seasons, cut his errors in half last season. And even though it's occasionally with a defensive error, this guy simply changes the course of ballgames.

Enigmatic and displaced potential superstar: Kosuke Fukudome has a name that may easily be mis-heard or mis-pronounced or mis-interpreted as a swear, and that's about all anyone actually knows about this guy. Maybe he's got a cannon like Alex Rios, maybe he's got wheels like a young Kenny Lofton, maybe he hits like Ichiro, maybe he throws, runs and hits like me. Who knows?

But as with all other things Cubbies this year, I'm excited to have 162 games to try to figure it out.