IP     ERA    WHIP     K     BB    HR
Bedard    184    3.76    1.30    170    63    16
Benson    186    4.76    1.42     88    56    31
Cabrera   181    4.16    1.43    185    88    14
Wright    145    4.50    1.48     87    50    11
Loewen    146    4.93    1.46    122    72    13

That wouldn't be the easiest group to win with, and given the innings projections for Wright and Loewen, someone would have to fill in for one or both of them. Again, this is where I think a guy like Rodrigo Lopez is useful to have around with these five, but preferably one that doesn't piss and moan about being in the bullpen and how it's a travesty that he isn't starting because he had a good season five years ago. With these projections, it would be natural to assume Hayden Penn (or Penn and a combination of someone else) gets 80 innings or so.

There's still no workhorse starter in this bunch, as Bedard and Benson are probably only slight favorites to reach their innings projection, and Cabrera might not even get close depending on how things go with his control early on. Plus, there's always injury (the worry with Bedard and Benson). Picking up Jaret Wright still seems a terribly strange move to me considering this front office's penchant for being absolutely stunned when a baseball player gets injured. That is, I've gathered, the reason we haven't had a winning season since 1997.

Of the five I like Bedard the best to better our projection, and I think Benson is the one most likely to really bomb out. Cabrera is a grey area -- projecting a pitcher like Daniel Cabrera is difficult enough in itself, as you never know what you'll get every five days, and he's shown no consistent pattern thus far other than he walks a lot of people and he can strike them out in bunches, too. Sometimes he does both on the same day and lasts five innings and gives up two runs and walks in another on 110 pitches.

We seem to agree that this team will need some serious offense to be any sort of surprise to us, or perhaps after last year's rotation projection debacle, the community simply hopes for mediocrity rather than the flaming bag of dung on the doorstep. Better safe than stupid, I guess.

These projections not only forecast a reliance on the offense and some spot starters to pick up slack, but on our revamped bullpen, as well. The only thing good about that is I'm pretty sure it can't be worse than the 2006 pen was.

We'll get to the hitters starting tonight.