As Spring Training approaches, I find myself getting as excited as those ignorant Santa-believin' children (I have no patience for superstition at any age! Out with your Jesus AND your Santa!) get around Christmas. I'm just about ready to bust out the blue and white construction paper and make a good old fashioned countdown chain! Luckily for my nerves (and for this blog, which is bad enough when there IS shit to talk about), we are getting VERY close to the action! Pitchers and catchers are due to arrive in Tampa in just a couple short weeks, followed by the rest of the crew by the end of the month, and y'all know what comes after that: real live actual baseball playing!

Since the games are sadly still a solid month in the future, let's focus our attention for the time being on the pitchers, since they'll be comin' round the mountain first: