With all of the craziness in the NCAA Tournament, let's not forget that the baseball season is starting on Sunday with no less than our Chicago White Sox unveiling their World Championship banner. Minnesota Red Sox has provided a spectacular in-depth look at all of the baseball teams at his Siberian Baseball site, so I highly recommend checking that out. Here are my quick predictions for the American League this season (with the National League and playoff predictions coming up within the next few days):

AL EAST

1) New York Yankees – With a true leadoff man back in the fray with the Yanks again in Johnny Damon, this team is going to slug its way to the top of the division again. The lack of improvement in the starting rotation is going to kill them again in the playoffs, though.

2) Toronto Blue Jays – The crazy Canucks were tipsy in giving B.J. Ryan such an exorbinant contract, but A.J. Burnett is going to thrive under Roy Halladay (Burnett made a wise choice in picking a place where he wouldn't be the #1 starter). This team is going to leapfrog the Red Sox by virtue of having the best pitching staff in the division.

3) Boston Red Sox – The "Josh Beckett/Curt Schilling DL Watch" is a spinoff of the Chicago original of the "Kerry Wood/Mark Prior DL Watch." If Beckett and Schilling were guaranteed to be healthy all season, I would pick the Bosox to win this division. I'm not betting on that happening, though. Plus, the loss of Johnny Damon is going to hurt this offense more than Red Sox fans care to admit.

4) Tampa Bay Devil Rays – Honestly, the collection of young talent on this team reminds me of the Indians from last year. I would not be shocked if this team makes a quantum leap over the Red Sox and Blue Jays this season. Seriously – anyone that runs a fantasy baseball team knows that the Rays have some good talent on that roster.

5) Baltimore Orioles – This team has picked up both Corey Patterson and Latroy Hawkins. I foresee supreme suckage.

AL CENTRAL

1) Chicago White Sox – When the world champs have gotten deeper in both hitting and pitching, that spells a repeat. I've already gone in depth on how much I loved the offseason moves by the Sox. This is going to be another fun year on the South Side. The only area that concerns me is closer – I still don't have faith that Bobby Jenks is going to be as consistent as we need him to be.

2) Cleveland Indians – This team is a little bit weaker without Kevin Millwood, but that will be balanced by the growth of their phenomenal young players by the end of the year. This is my bet for the Wild Card team.

3) Detroit Tigers – They haven't improved at all, it's just that…

4) Minnesota Twins – … this is the year that the Twins fall off the table. Notwithstanding Johan Santana, who is the best pitcher in baseball right now, this team regressed substantially last year and they haven't made any improvements.

5) Kansas City Royals – Transaction wire yesterday: “The Kansas City Royals have been optioned to the Pacific Coast League. The Portland Beavers have been called up as replacements.”

AL WEST

1) The Los Angeles Angels of the Town Up the Road from Laguna Beach and Other O.C. Cities Cooler Than Anaheim – Still an incredibly balanced team. The only way the Angels don't win this division is if Bartolo Colon gets too hungry one day and eats Vladimir Guerrero and Mike Scoscia suspends Colon indefinitely for not leaving any scraps. Anyway, the Angels are really good.

2) Oakland A's – Moneyball continues to allow this team to compete, but the Angels have surged clearly ahead of Oaktown and the Wild Card is getting out of reach with the AL East teams and the rise of the Indians. I'm still a big Barry Zito fan, though.

3) Seattle Mariners – The pitcher everyone compares phenom Felix Hernandez to is Dwight Gooden, as if that was a good thing. Funny, a pitcher that became coked up to the point where the zenith of his career was at age 19 doesn't conjure up a positive image. Let's hope he doesn't go down this road. Ichiro continues to kick ass, but the rest of the lineup is pretty lackluster.

4) Texas Rangers – W's old team will once again lead the league (a) in batters that hit 30 homeruns with only 60 RBI and a OBA under .300 and (b) pitchers that strikeout more cameramen than hitters. This is a higher-rent older version of the Devil Rays.

The first autograph I ever received from anyone was from Minnie Minoso, a gracious ambassador for the White Sox and baseball in general.  A lot of Chicago baseball fans were hoping that he would get a call yesterday from a special committee of Negro League and pre-Negro League historians informing him that he would be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.  Unfortunately, it didn’t happen for Minnie Minoso.

We can debate all day whether he deserved to be enshrined in Cooperstown (his Major League stats don’t seem extraordinary until you realize that he was deprived of his prime years at the top level of the game because of racial segregation).  One thing is clear, though – Minnie Minoso has handled himself with grace and class for the past seven decades with nary a word, complaint, or campaign about the Hall of Fame.  He put it best in a statement yesterday: “I know that baseball fans have me in their own Hall of Fame – the one in their hearts… that matters more to me than any official recognition. If it’s meant to be, it’s meant to be, and I am truly honored to be considered. I’ve given my life to baseball, and the game has given me so much. That’s what matters the most to me.”

A certain broadcaster/former third baseman from the North Side of Chicago should take note.

During my teenage years, my room was plastered with posters and memorabilia of mainly two different Chicago athletes: Michael Jordan and Frank Thomas.  During much of the 1990s, it wasn’t that far-fetched to believe that Thomas and his contemporary Ken Griffey Jr. would redefine baseball for a generation in the same way that Jordan redefined basketball.

Indeed, Frank Thomas put up a ridiculous array of across-the-board offensive numbers at the plate for the first decade of his career with a rare combination of power and patience at the plate that could only be compared to Ted Williams.  In the 105-year history of the Chicago White Sox, Thomas holds the club career records for home runs, RBI, runs scored, on-base percentage, slugging percentage, walks, doubles, and total bases (along with the highest career batting average of any Sox player who played after 1950).

Even if he didn’t end up redefining baseball, judging by his statistics and physical dominance at the plate during the 1990s, Frank Thomas is the best player in White Sox history.  No other player in the American League in 2005 had been with the same team longer than him.  Yet, Sox fans seem to be more relieved than in angst over Thomas’ recent signing with the Oakland A’s.  It was as if what felt like a drawn-out divorce finally came to its conclusion.

From a team blueprint standpoint, not re-signing Thomas was the correct decision.  He had been injury-prone for the past several seasons and it would have been difficult for Kenny Williams to depend on the designated hitter coming back, particularly when the Sox clearly needed take steps to improve their lineup.  Jim Thome is the better risk in terms of being able to come back from a serious injury.

I don’t feel good, however, about two things.  First, as delirious as I’ve been about the White Sox world championship, it was tough to not see Frank Thomas as an integral part of that team.  Imagine if the ’85 Bears had gone through their romp to the championship but Walter Payton was injured on the sidelines the whole season (of course, the next worst thing actually did happen when the Fridge got a rushing touchdown in Super Bowl XX while Payton didn’t).  This is essentially what happened with Frank Thomas and the Sox last season.  It would have been nice to see if Thomas could be a major contributor to the White Sox bid to repeat in 2006.

Second, Jerry Reinsdorf has parted ways with yet another star athlete on negative terms.  Thomas said yesterday that he was most hurt by the fact that Reinsdorf never called him once in the offseason to let him know the direction the Sox were heading.  The City of Chicago could create a veritable hall of fame stocked with players that have had messy breakups with the Bulls and White Sox during the Reinsdorf era: Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, Horace Grant, Carlton Fisk, Jack McDowell, Robin Ventura, and Ozzie Guillen to name a few.  The only saving grace is that most of those guys have ended up mending their relationships with Reinsdorf over time (and in the cases of Pippen and Guillen, they actually returned to their teams as a player and a manager respectively).  I just wish Reinsdorf could find a better way not to have an acrimonious relationship with almost every talented player he’s ever had on his two teams.

As for the Big Hurt, there might be no place in baseball that he’ll be more appreciated than in Oakland.  Frank Thomas is the perfect portrait of the “Moneyball” player that A’s GM Billy Beane lusts for – a guy with a high on-base percentage that draws a lot of walks and hits for a lot of power.  Beane is the one person in the majors that truly doesn’t care whatsoever that Thomas has no speed and can’t play defense.  The A’s GM has finally been able to sign a player who arguably fits his Moneyball profile better than anyone in the history of baseball, much less just the players that are active today.  Beane has got to be ecstatic to have Frank Thomas, so at the very least the slugger will get some love from his new organization.

Hopefully, Frank Thomas will be able to return to Chicago within the next five to ten years and be able to look back positively on the greatest career in White Sox history.  On a personal level, he was my favorite baseball player for most of my life and it will be disheartening to see him in another uniform.  Mentally, I’ve blocked out the fact that Michael Jordan ever played for a team other than the Bulls (from my perspective, the NBA didn’t exist from 2001 to 2003).  I’m going to have to do the same for Frank Thomas – he’ll always be a member of the White Sox to me.

With pitchers and catchers reporting in just a little over a month from now and the White Sox and Cubs fan conventions taking place over the next couple of weeks, I’ll be posting a three-part series on the offseason moves of each of the Chicago teams and the rest of Major League Baseball. First up are the White Sox.

It’s amazing – my baseball team has not only won the World Series, but it is actually making aggressive yet shrewd moves to try to win another one. I’ve got to give Sox Chairman Jerry Reinsdorf credit. Unlike his seeming eagerness to see Michael Jordan to walk away so that he and Jerry Krause could reconstruct the Bulls (we’re only now recuperating from that dark experiment), it looks like he’s stepping up the commitment of the White Sox organization to build upon the team’s success. At the same time, Kenny Williams has been doing a phenomenal job this offseason – he’s ripping off everyone in sight. Here’s my review of the major moves by the Sox:

1) Trading for Jim Thome – It was tough to see a great character guy (and noted Bears nut) in Aaron Rowand be traded away, but the Sox needed to get another bopper in its lineup. Despite Jim Thome’s injuries last season, he has been one of the top 10 hitters in baseball over the past decade. If the Sox hadn’t made this trade, we would be seeing Paul Konerko being walked every other at-bat a la Barry Bonds circa 2003. Instead, Konerko is going to see even better pitches to smack in the 2006 season. If Thome comes anywhere close to his 2004 production, the Sox offense might be talked about as much next October as the team’s pitching staff.

2) Re-signing Paul Konerko – A lesser Paulie would have told the Sox, “F–k you – pay me.” Instead, our Paulie turned down a bigger contract from the Angels in order to stay with the Sox, which just goes to show you how he’s a rarity among professional athletes today. Konerko’s got the physical skills and the leadership skills (not to mention the numb-chuck skills) to build a franchise around for a long time. Keeping this guy was the most important move the White Sox could have possibly made this offseason.

3) Trading for Rob Mackowiak – How Kenny Williams jacked the Pirates on this trade I’ll never know. Not only did he get rid of Damaso Marte, the biggest piece of deadweight on the roster, but the Sox also received in exchange arguably the best bench player in baseball. Mackowiak has a solid bat and can play all of the infield and outfield positions. More importantly, his versatility allows the Sox to carry a 13th pitcher on the roster instead of another position player, which means the team’s dominant pitching depth will go even deeper.

4) Trading for Javier Vasquez – Speaking of pitching depth, Kenny Williams pulled off another no-brainer with the El Duque-for-Vasquez trade. El Duque will live on forever on 2005 Sox DVD retrospectives with the miracle shutdown of the Red Sox after entering the game with the bases loaded in Game 5 of the ALDS. However, he was hardly playing at all in the second half of 2005. To receive Vasquez, a 200 innings per year guy in return for a pitcher with an unknown birth date that’s breaking down before our eyes could very well be Kenny Williams’ coup de grace. Sure, Vasquez struggled with the Yankees and Diamondbacks, but both of those clubs were trying to make him into a #1 or #2 starter. On the White Sox, he’s going to be the fourth or fifth starter! Baseball’s best rotation just got even better.

5) Re-signing Jon Garland – Locking up Garland beyond 2006 has me dreaming of a rotation primed for a multiple-season run along the lines of the Braves of the 1990s. I just hope his 2005 season wasn’t a flash in the pan and that he’s truly living up the potential everyone was talking about when he was traded over as a young prospect from the Cubs back in 1998.

Something tells me Kenny Williams isn’t finished yet. The addition of Vasquez gives the Sox six viable starting pitchers. The young Brandon McCarthy was lights out in the number five slot after the 2005 All Star break. If this were fantasy baseball, the Sox would keep McCarthy as a long reliever in the bullpen. However, I doubt they are going to essentially demote such a stud young kid after having so much success as a starter last year. Look for Williams to trade Jose Contreras (the only starting pitcher who isn’t signed past next season) for another big bat in the lineup.

Regardless of what the Sox do from now until pitchers and catchers report, they have to receive mad props for not resting on their laurels and continuing to make hungry and aggressive moves. They’re finishing off the types of deals that a team that hasn’t won anything (like the Cubs) ought to be making.

In the wake of the Corey Patterson trade, stay tuned for my Cubs offseason analysis…