• Sean Smith, aka Chone Smith, projects the NL Central a bit differently than I did. He has the Cardinals at 93-69, the best team in baseball.

• Matthew Leach has a mailbag up. He expects Brian Daubach will make the roster. I can't see LaRussa giving a spot to a 1B-only, though I don't see much point in roster spots for multiple backup middle infielders who can't hit. Leach also has the dimensions of new Busch:

LF foul pole -- 336 feet
LF power alley -- 375 feet
CF wall -- 400 feet
RF power alley -- 375 feet
RF foul pole -- 335 feet

• Remember when the Cubs' mighty farm system was going to steamroll the Cardinals? Corey Patterson was dumped, and the swag is slightly more valuable than Ernie Broglio. Of course the joke goes that Broglio is 70 years old. I don't know what you do with Patterson. He needs at-bats and he needs some good coaching, and the Venn diagram for teams bad enough to give him at-bats and teams with good coaching probably doesn't have a big intersection.

• I suppose I should care about the Hall of Fame candidacies, but I'm in a personal state of flux with regard to the Hall. If I want "best value" or similarly best statistics, then paying any heed to a BBWAA vote doesn't make much sense for me. I can churn through the Lahman database or Dave Studeman's Win Shares spreadsheet more effectively than Rick Hummel or Peter Gammons could.

That isn't to say there's no place for the Hall of Fame for stat-geeks. Actually Ken Arneson's line that "Awards are not measurements. Awards are celebrations." is more appropriate for the Hall of Fame than for MVP or the CYA. For example, Bruce Sutter's split-finger fastball seemed like it was from another planet when he started throwing it. I like to see that remembered. Bert Blyleven was a good pitcher who had some run-support problems (and maybe some choking problems), and that should be memorialized, even though I worry 26th century anthropologists will spend countless hours trying to understand the Cult of Blyleven. Andre Dawson was overrated, but let's not forget just how real collusion was. Who gets selected doesn't matter as much to me as good ballplayers getting some due.

• Carlos Lugo's Dominican Winter League report threw a little love Carmen Cali's way, implying Cali was a candidate for pitcher of the year. The Cardinals could have a very lefty-heavy bullpen at the end of 2006. I thought Hector Luna went to the DWL also, but I can't find anything, perhaps because SportsTicker has wiped out some regular season stats or perhaps because Luna didn't play. On the flipside to John Rodriguez's good news, Yadier Molina's 281 / 343 / 405 line against AA/AAA pitching probably falls in line with his unimpressive ZiPS projection of 264 / 315 / 369.