You're being inconsistent in your own argument. You look at what Byrd and Soto did in 2011 and talk about this being about expectations on 12/16 last year. But then you talk about Rizzo having to beat LaHair's first half (btw - 1st base as a whole had a .796 OPS last year, Rizzo will beat that easily). You also talk about the actual performance of the pitching staff instead of what was expected of them going into last year. Let's make this about expectations then. But we need to compare expectations at the same point in the offseason to be fair. - Byrd did perform much worse than expected going into last year. But he had been declining. He's being replaced this year by a Schierholtz/Sappelt platoon that should out perform Byrd's 2011 .719 OPS easily - Soriano was hurt and pretty bad in 2011 - Most of us had very low expectations for LaHair - Samardzija was a big unknown heading into the rotation - We didn't even have Rizzo yet - We didn't sign Maholm for another month - Dempster was coming off a 4.80 ERA season and looked to many to be declining quickly - Zambrano was still in the rotation and sucked hard - We hadn't yet traded for Travis Wood So, fundamentally, our rotation was Garza, a lousy in 2011 Dempster, a lousy in 2011 Zambrano and an unproven Shark. We didn't even have a fifth starter at this point last year. On offense, expectations are much higher for Soriano than they were last year. We have much, much higher expectations for Rizzo than we did for LaHair. DeJesus is constant, but I expect more out of a Schierholtz + Sappelt platoon than I did from a declining Byrd. The only spot where expectations are lower is catcher. I'm not sure how you can honestly say expectations are similar to last offseason at this same point. The projections on offense are somewhat better and at this point last year the rotation was in shambles. I appreciate this post, but I still feel rather hollow with our progress so far. I was expecting more by now.