First off: Ravens played solid game overall but miscues hurt ‘em awful. Sorry about outcome, Baltimore. Also, in first quarter, bogus illegal contact call against Lardarius Webb gave Patriots eventual margin of victory.

Anyway – on to real sport. Not easy to find optimism this offseason for Team of Blog. But a Blog can try. So consider this your optimistic take on what’s possible for 2012 Cartoony Birds:

Maybe our friend Jake Arrieta will blossom and our bud Brian Matusz, under tutelage of Rick Peterson and Brady Anderson, will “snap back” to use an economic term currently en vogue.

Blog is relatively sure Zach Britton is going to be good and possibly great.

Maybe Tsuyoshi Wada and Wei-Yin Chen, Team’s new eastern imports, will bolster rotation and keep it from its traditional mid-summer collapse. Chen especially appears to have promise.

Maybe Adam Jones and  Matt Wieters continue to blossom. And maybe they extend Jones, who made some news at FanFest this week with an endorsement of Baltimore that went far beyond his previous truisms.

Maybe Nolan Reimold grabs his chance to become a power-hitting, defense-playing every day left fielder.

And maybe they get some productive swings from Chris Davis.

Maybe Jim Johnson becomes a good closer and maybe Kevin Gregg, out of spotlight, finds his feet as a set up man. In other words, maybe Team finally finds continuity at back end of bullpen.

And maybe, from inside out, Team — especially pitching staff — becomes stronger, tougher, grittier and less inclined to fall victim to listless horrible losing streaks. This is what J.J. Hardy is calling for when he says “step up.”

Baseball isn’t Hollywood movie, but there is value in having some fight in you.

Maybe Team really still IS in market for Prince Fielder. That could explain why Buck  preemptively cleared decks, sending Mark Reynolds back to third base in pre-Spring announcement that essentially came out of nowhere. Speaking of Reynolds, word is he’s lighter and intent on improving his batting average and fielding.

Maybe Brian Roberts is on track to recovery.

String together 78 percent of these maybes and maybe a couple of other maybes and you could be looking at something. Think of it as a three-pick parlay that pays $20 to $1 — it doesn’t happen often, but if you hit it it’s going to be sweet and you’re going to look a genius.

Also Blog of Team thinks Blog is buying ski hat with Cartoon Bird. It’s cold out!

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 22nd, 2012 at 19:27 and is filed under hOpe springs eternal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.