central foes

For those of you that do not have Insider access on espn.com, Peter Gammons referred to the Brewers as the consensus NL Central favorite in a recent article about the Cubs.
Gammons writes of the Cubs, "Their fourth straight win Saturday put them at .500 and second to the Brewers, the team most everyone in the division believes is the team to beat. " As far as I'm concerned, Peter Gammons is the foremost media authority on major league baseball and this legitimized our successful start more to me than any media coverage we have received so far.
That said, I do believe that the Cubs are the central team that the Brewers will need to be the most concerned about as the season moves along. If you look at the teams in the central, the Cubs have the best combination of talent out of any of our opponents. The Pirates can't get enough consistency from their offense to be considered a long-term threat. Houston will be able to score runs but after not landing Roger Clemens their pitching is seriously suspect. Cincinnati strikes out too much and their bullpen has taken a major step back from last year, and the Cardinals seem to have lost most of their pitching (some to injuries) and seem to have gotten old quickly.
Rich Hill continues to pitch well and Jason Marquis has rediscovered some of the success he had in St. Louis. When they get Soriano, Derek Lee, and Aramis Ramirez all hitting at the same time they will be dangerous. Lee has been playing well but Soriano has just very recently started to come around. Brewers fans can hope that Carlos Zambrano remains distracted by his contract situation all year and that the Cubs don't pick up anyone to improve their bullpen but the baseball season is a long one and we can't be counting our money for playoff tickets yet.
This series with the Nationals is one that a legitimately good team should sweep, and I'm looking forward to our trip out east to see how we can perform in Shea stadium against a quality Mets team. Nice outing by Cappy tonight and I'm glad to see Coco coming in to get the save for my fantasy team.

peace out,
the brat