Personally, I was not very confident in Borowski heading into 2004. Sort of the way I'm not all that confident in Dempster now, except even more so amidst reports that his fastball was down to the mid-high 80's. Derrek Lee was considered a slightly above average offensive 1B at best, and Barrett was a huge question mark. Those two definitely worked out (although Lee much moreso in 2005), but I would very much dispute that we looked all that great on paper going in to 04. Also, like you said, shortstop was a HUGE weakness. Oh, and Aramis had yet to show the progress in his game that we have witnessed over the past two seasons. Of course, I was really optimitistic, because I was blinded by our 88 win team having made it to within 5 outs of the World Series. Still, the moves worked out far better than we should have expected (Barrett, ARam especially..then there was the fact that Alou had a season that lived up to his contract for once) and the 2004 team should've won more than 89 games. I think the blame for that lies with Dusty (pitcher overuse, misuse, bad lineups, bad attitude, all of it)...and Hendry seems willing to go down in flames with Dusty B. Goode..