Last season Chicago,Houston and St Louis
were the only three horses in this race
of six and even with Mark Prior out
for the whole month of Abril the
Cubs look again to have all their
ducks in a row.

By Amaury Pi-GonzálezMark Prior probably won’t pitch until
May because of inflamation in his
right Achilles’ tendon and also a
stiff elbow, ouch ! Therefore Dusty
Baker’s Cubs will start with a
rotation of Wood,Clement,Zambrano
and Maddux still an excellent rotation
with veteran Maddux back at Wrigley
Field were he started his career.
Eleven wins shy of the magic #300.

The Cubs have to play at least .500
ball at the start of the season. Prior
was 18-6 with a 2.43 ERA and 245
strikeouts in his first full big league
season. He finished third in voting
for the N.L Cy Young Award and he
is without a doubt their #1 ace.
Cubs finished just 1 game ahead
of Houston who will have two more
arms in their rotation, Andy Pettite
and Roger Clemens and the Astros
are a better hitting team than the
Cubs with the St Louis Cardinals
in the mix with their superstar
Albert Pujols, the NL batting
champion. He could have won the
MVP, but Barry Bonds got that
honor -for an unprecedented
sixth time-. If the Cardinals would
have made it to the playoffs
Pujols might have won his
first ever MVP. The Cardinals
were second in combined
hitting in 2003 scoring the
second most runs (876) .
Atlanta was first with
907 runs scored.

Why do I say that Pujols had
MVP credentials ? Here is
what Dominican Albert
Pujols did last year:
.359 average -batting champion
137 runs scored -#1 in league
212 hits -#1 in league
394 total bases -#1 in league
51 doubles -#1 in league
30 Game hit strk. -#1 in league

This was the way these three
teams finished in 2003:
1-Chicago 88-74 .543
2-Houston 87-75 -1 .537
3-St.Louis 85-77 -3 .525

It was indeed the tightest
3-team race in any division
in baseball and It could be
the same this season.
Edgar Rentería the veteran
Colombian shortstop for
St Louis finished with
.330 13 home runs and
100 RBI and he is one of
the top clutch hitters in
the game. His fielding has
improved greatly, he played
157 games and made
16 errors.

The Cubs were five outs away
from reaching their first
World Series in 1,000
years and just think how
Dusty Baker felt when just
the year before he was
just about the same from
winning the World Series
with the Giants. If Dusty
didn’t have back luck he
would have no luck at all !

The Houston Astros who
lost the division to the
Cubs on the last week of
the regular season strengthened
their pitching staff and switched
Dominican reliever Octavio Dotel
to the closer’s role.

Many are picking the Houston
Astros but I am going to go
with the Cubs again, a team
with the potential to reach
the World Series. Sammy Sosa
leads all Latinamerican players
in home runs with 539, which
puts him 10th on the all-time
list.

The Cardinals do not have the
depth in the pitching of the
Astros and Cubs.

2004 Could be a repeat of
2003 in this division with the
Cubs winning the Central
Again. Cubs: First Place
————————————————————
Amaury Pi-González is on his second season as
Spanish Play by Play announcer for the
Seattle Mariners Radio Network doing all
81 home game from SAFECO over their
network(www.spanishmariners.net).
Also will broadcast selected weekend
games for the SF Giants, on his 10th
season as Spanish Voice of the Giants
over KZSF 1370 AM Radio (La Caliente).
Amaury was inducted into the Cuba
Sports Hall of Fame as Journalist/Sportscaster
this past February in Miami, Florida.
He is also the Vice President of the
popular Hispanic Heritage Baseball
Museum, a non-profit organization
founded in San Francisco in 1999.