Morning In The Central

Indians:

Paul Cousineau of The Cleveland Fan articulates in a lengthy piece the reasons why the Chad Durbin signing is a good one.

Over at Let's Go Tribe there is some unfortunate news about Austin Kearns' recent arrest for DUI.

Tribe star Shin-Soo Choo is dealing with some elbow soreness. Just what the Indians outfield needed, more injury news.

Tony Lastoria of Indians Prospect Insider is up with with three new profiles on Chun-Hsiu Chen (#20), Kelvin De La Cruz (#19), and Chen-Chang Lee (#18).

Royals:

Mike Engle Mythbusts the Royals. He also links back to Central In Focus' payroll data, so yeah, that's awesome. In addition, make sure to check out his breakdown of the Royals prospects who he just got done doing so many profiles of. Kevin Scobee, also of Kings of Kauffman discusses the Royals emerging depth at many positions including first base, second, center, and in the bullpen.

Josh Duggan of RoyalsCentricity discusses the incredible depth of the farm system as laid out by both Baseball America and Baseball Prospectus and begins to chart the future of Royals baseball with a roster composed almost entirely of players currently in the minors. There really aren't many teams that could do that - project an entire roster MLB players currently in their system - but the Royals legitimate can.

Over at Royals Authority, Clark Fosier gets as close as he can to the Royals opening day 25 and Craig Brown has some awesome video from spring training with some snippets of lots of the Royals best and brightest playing some best-and-bright baseball.

Tigers:

Over at Bless You Boys - a CiF Favorite - they have a good look at Victor Martinez vs some other catching combos from around the League and a Q&A with prospect Adam Wilk.

Allison Hagen of No Run Support has all the game breakdowns from the Tigers hot 5-0 start.

Friend of CiF, Austin Drake, who runs Detroit Tigers Scorecard has a bevy of awesome Q&As with Tigers prospects, including one with top prospect Jacob Turner. Make sure to stop by and check out those interviews with all of your favorite Tigers prospects.

At Motor City Bengals, the have a good breakdown of the Tigers backup outfield candidates, and the emergence of Andy Dirks, who is having some kind of run to open the Cactus League season.

Lee Panas breaks down the weighted component ERA of the Tigers relievers.

Lastly, at Old English D they have a highly recommended read of Justine Siegal's path through baseball and how, though difficult, the path to a career in baseball is open to women. Hopefully more will follow in her inspiring footsteps. I know many tend to marginalize the importance of women at baseball games - they aren't the same type of fans as the men, right? I know I've done it. Don't.

Twins:

Parker Hageman, who for some baffling reason still isn't employed by a MLB team has two great posts up on a pair of players Twins fans should be excited about. The first is Tsuyoshi Nishioka, and the second is Kyle Gibson. Both pieces are absolute must-reads for the serious baseball fan.

Andrew Bryz-Gornia, one of my colleagues from 612Sports.net, has a fantastic post up showing just how amazing Francisco Liriano was in 2010, and how insane the Twins would be to trade him.

Nick Nelson is also up with a pair of good posts including one that answers five pressing questions the Twins face heading into 2011, and another discussing the four players providing the thump in the middle of the Twins lineup.

Cody Christie talks about the Justin Morneau/Jesse Crain kerfuffle, and reminds us that spring training numbers just don't mean a heckuva lot.

And in the most comforting bit of news, Buster Olney confirms my expectations: The Twins aren't going to trade Franciaco Liriano. At least not to the Yankees, and almost certainly not to anyone else either.

White Sox:

Kevin Pajor over at Southside Showdown argues that with the encroachment of Sabermetrics on the evaluation of baseball players, spring training is the last real bastion of traditional scouting. I can pretty easily think of about a dozen other areas where sabermetrics plays second-fiddle (or no fiddle at all) to traditional scouting. But his point that sabermetrics is aking over front offices isn't incorrect.

Jim Margalus discusses Dayan Viciedo's switch from third base to the outfield. One game in, so far so good. Colintj who does some really good sabermetric evaluation for that site also has the follow up to his previous breakdown of the AL Central offenses by WAR with his breakdown of the rotations by WAR.

Over at My Sox Are White they have a great interview with Sox relief prospect Anthony Carter who I profiled on this site about a month ago.