I love the stuff I'm hearing about Greinke. The improved attitude, the increased competitiveness, this is all good stuff. If he has a big year, which isn’t out of the question considering his previous level of potential, 70 wins or more is a possibility for KC.

Also, just to throw it out there, the Riske signing was a real solid move.

Over. Easily.

Basically a push. I think they're within 2 games of the total one way or the other

Under, sorry I think if they have a couple injuries to the starting staff - say oh, Hudson and Bannister - then they are back in the Duckworth zone.

70-72 wins in my book. So over, but barely. If they have a couple of key injuries, then probably just under.

68 wins isn't a bad guess, but if I'd have to pick, I'd pick the under.

Barely under. They play in the AL Central.

It'll take, what, an ~80 run improvement to get the pythag up to 69 wins?

I don't think there's a very good chance that the offense is significantly better. I thought the pitching had to improve over the previous year prior to the '05 and '06 seasons, too. There's even more room for improvement heading into this season, but, if the offense doesn't score more runs, they'd have to allow fewer than 900 runs to win 69 games. I'd love to see that, but I'd describe its likelihood as possible rather than probable.

I think the offense will improve marginally. Sweeney and DeJesus both missed significant amounts of time. They are both injury prone and could be hurt again, but if they are both reasonably healthy, that could help increase the run totals. Gordon will be a huge upgrade over Reggie Sanders. Ryan Shealy will likely be an upgrade over Minky. And I presume Berroa, the worst offensive player in baseball, won't be around to suck as long as he did last year. The only guys I would predict drop offs in performance are Emil Brown, Grudz and maybe Teahen. So I think the offense slightly improves, maybe up to 780 runs.

The pitching will drastically improve. They had to leave a lot of guys out there who had no business pitching. Jeremy Affeldt, Runelvys Hernandez, Mike Wood, Ambriorix Burgos, Andrew Sisco, Joe Mays, Denny Bautista are all gone. The arms we have now are better, and more importantly, they have more depth so that if Brian Bannister sucks balls, they don't have to throw him out there for 30 starts - they can try someone else. I think they can lower the amount of runs they allow to close to 900. That gets them right around 70 wins.

I'm a big Teahen fan, but you guys see him more- why do you expect a dropoff?

I'm a big Teahen fan, but you guys see him more- why do you expect a dropoff?

My expectations for him are tempered by (in order of importance) how awful he was over the first 600 PA of his big league career, my natural pessimism, and the shoulder surgery that ended his 2006 season prematurely.

I was going to say under. But then I read that Berroa might lose his job. So over. But then I read they were putting Teahen in CF. So I'm back to under.