Japan will be looking for a three-peat at the next World Baseball Classic in 2013.  They defeated Korea 5-3 in 10 innings Monday night at Dodger Stadium thanks to a certain Seattle Mariner.

The National League Central may be a fairly boring division to watch in 2009. The Cubs appear poised to run away with the division. After winning almost 100 games last season, the Cubs made a number of changes to the 25-man roster for 2009 in hopes of strengthening the outfield and bullpen. The club also brought back free agent and Canadian starting pitcher Ryan Dempster after a career year in his free agent season. The Cardinals have a solid veteran club as well, but injuries have already taken their toll on the club, which could hurt its chance of competing with the Cubs. The Astros, Pirates and Brewers do not look like very strong clubs on paper, and they could all lose at least 80 games. The Cincinnati Reds, though, could be a sleeper team - with a plethora of young, impact talent on the 25-man roster. The rise of the Reds could easily be the biggest story of 2009... unless the sophomore jinx bites too many second-year players.

Curt Schilling has thrown his last pitch.  The 42 year-old announced his retirement on his 38pitches.com blog today after 20 seasons in the bigs.

Over the weekend, John Northey and I had a chance to sit down and talk about the NL West. After our ghostwriter had condensed the multi-day rambling into a manageable chunk and thrown out the words that don't exist, it sort of resembled English. So we translated it into several dead languages, back into English, and the result, which may or may not be an NL West Preview, is shown below.

Season previews have been a popular staple here on Batter's Box for the past several years, and given that it's March 20, some Bauxites are starting to ask, "Hey, where the *&^% are the team-by-team season previews?"

Well, we're doing things a little differently this year, but it all starts on Monday. And we come to you now with an invitation to help. Updated (again) 3/30.

Casey Janssen's quest for freedom from the injury bug has hit a snag.  If Philip Gerard was a pain and Richard Kimble was a shoulder, Gerard forced Kimble to get Janssen to leave Thursday night's game against the Yankees.  Jordan Bastian of bluejays.com says Janssen left due to shoulder tightness caused by muscle fatigue.

Pronounced EE-muss, I figured that's close enough to "enormous" prospect.  I did pull a side muscle reaching for that one, thanks for asking.

Happy St. Patrick's Day, O'Bauxite Nation!  Ireland - the home of Guinness Beer where an occasional pint will probably be consumed today.  Where U2, Padraig Harrington, and Pierce Brosnan hail from.  Where sports like hurling, gaelic football, rugby and soccer dominate the sports landscape.  Ireland is not known as a baseball power yet but the sport has been picking up momentum as detailed in the DVD "The Emerald Diamond".

Time for a little story-telling, debate and meanderings down memory lane. In another thread this week, there was some mention of Roy Halladay's dominant nature (oh hell, that's been true every week this site has existed, hasn't it?) with sidebar mentions of Steve Carlton's 1972 season and others of that ilk. Which got me to thinking -- and now, gets me to asking, all ye loyal readers and posters in Bauxite Nation -- what's the most dominant pitcher season you recall ever seeing?

For the record, now -- screw the "records," now. Nobody say anything about statistical dominance or best ERA+ or anything of that nature. No mentions of Christy Mathewson or Ed Walsh unless there are truly elderly Bauxites out there who actually saw Addie Joss and Pete Alexander pitch. For me, there are four names that come immediately to mind ...

On the heels of the release of Vegas' over/unders, I got to thinking: Bauxites are pretty smart, think you can out-predict the oddsmakers?

Update: contest entry closes Monday, so get your picks in!

Update 2: Contest closed! Thanks for all the entries everybody!

The good folks in Vegas have come out with the Win total Over/Unders for 2009.

Canada has been eliminated from the World Baseball Classic thanks to a disappointing, disheartening, and soul-crushing 6-2 setback to Frank Catalanotto and the Italians Monday night at Rogers Centre.   That means two things.  One, Italy will take on Venezuela at 5:00 p.m. EDT today to determine who will join the U.S. in advancing to Round 2 and two, Scott Richmond doesn't get to throw a pitch for Canada for the second straight tournament.

No fancy headline today.  Italy must go down in baseball flames tonight when they play Canada at the Rogers Centre.  First pitch is 6:30 p.m. EDT.

Are you watching the World Baseball Classic? There's actually quite a bit of earnest early competition.

• Adam Dunn, not the most popular player in these parts, came to Toronto as a late addition to the U.S. team and homered to provide the American margin of victory in a 7-6 win over the hometown Team Canada.
• It was (har!) a "Dutch treat" as The Netherlands -- The Netherlands! -- nipped the heavily-favored Dominican Republic, 3-2 as Sidney Ponson outdueled Edinson Volquez.
• In a few somewhat less competitive games, Venezuela beat Italy 7-0; Puerto Rico knocked off Panama, also 7-0; China beat Chinese Taipei, 4-1; and Japan blew out Korea, 14-2.

Your thoughts, Bauxites?

After seeing the Dustin Pedroia commercial that's running for an MLB video game for the seventy thousandth time this week, I decided to see if we could build a Hall of Names team built entirely of players named "Dustin." And though there are nine men who have had that given first or middle name who've reached the big leagues to date -- and nine is a nice baseball number -- the simple answer is "no, we can't."

Just at a glance, we can see at least three -- McGowan, Hermanson and Nippert -- are pitchers, so there would not be a full eight on defense to fill out the lineup card.

Ah, but what if we include all those guys nicknamed "Dusty" or named "Dustan," etc.? Yes, if we expand our parameters a little ...