When this columnist was a tot, roughly during the Don Draper generation, a popular saying in business circles went something like "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM."

Meaning that -- whether in reference to the company's stock, which might tank (as it did in 1973-74) or its products, for which cost-effective alternatives might become available (as they did in the '70s and '80s) -- buying IBM might be an unfortunate decision, but not a damnable one, because everybody else was doing it too.  Or so it seemed.

Over time I've been about as successful at selecting pennant races as at playing the market.  (There are still some Pan Am stock certificates in the back of my filing cabinet.)  But some of the predictions I've seen this spring have been real head-scratchers.

Why?  Not because they go out on a limb, but because they seem to go out of their way not to.

Sporting News Today is typical.  Here's who they think will make the playoffs in 2010, and what I think about what they think.

AL East:  Yankees.  (Nuts.  No matter how much money they spend, they're in too competitive a division -- no, really they are -- to be elected by acclamation.  They could even be edged out of the playoffs entirely, not for want of effort.)

AL Central:  Twins.  (Fine, but it's a pure guess.  This may not be the tightest race ever but it will be tight enough that Manny Acta's Indians could luck into an 82-80 record and slip away with the prize.)

AL West:  Angels.  (Another tight race, and I'm not sure who'll be first on closing day, but I'm picking Anaheim to miss.)

AL wildcard:  Red Sox.  (As predictions go that's just kicking the can down the road.  Why shouldn't they win the pennant?  And the Rays are not going away.)

NL East:  Phillies.  (I'm down with that, but not as confidently as I'd be if both Joe Blanton and Brad Lidge weren't starting the season on the DL.)

NL Central:  Cardinals.  (This is the hardest to argue with.)

NL West:  Rockies.  (Most likely, but I wouldn't rule out anyone but the Padres.  Especially with Huston Street and Jeff Francis on the Rox' DL.)

NL wild card:  Cubs.  (Breathes there the man with soul so dead, / Who never to himself hath said, / The Cubs could win a ring this year?  Yes, there does:  me.  The serious, thoughtful answer would be the Braves who -- granted, a bit unexpectedly -- are going all in on Jason Heyward, and are also strong in the bullpen and behind the plate.)

World champion:  Yankees over Phillies.  (Is it Groundhog Day at SNT?  The Phillies will win and it won't be over the Yankees.)

      

As this column reported last week, a number of Washington Nationals alumni have migrated to the Cleveland Indians' organization.  The best known, of course, is former Nats manager Manny Acta.

Two other ex-Washingtonians who went to the Tribe's spring training camp in Arizona were outfielder Austin Kearns and pitcher Saul Rivera.  Neither was awarded a major-league contract at the outset, but both would surely like to get back onto a 40-man roster.

What are their chances of doing so?  See if you can judge by their spring-training performances:

• Rivera has made eight appearances totaling 8 2/3 innings.  He's struck out six and given up six hits and three walks.
• Kearns has made 40 trips to the plate, during which time he has collected 13 hits (including five doubles and two homers) and seven bases on balls.  He's also struck out 13 times, staking an early claim to the chairmanship of the Cleveland chapter of the Three True Outcomes Club.  Summary batting line:  .325 / .417 / .600.  (He also had a hot spring in 2009, so don't get all excited.)

Surprisingly or not, there's at least one report of the Indians trying to pry open a spot for Kearns on their 40-man roster.

However, that same report says that Rivera -- that good-looking stat line notwithstanding -- "did not make the team."  It doesn't indicate whether he was waived out of the organization, or retained to bolster the triple-A bullpen in Columbus.  One would assume the latter but keep an eye on this Hutch in case it's the former or something else.

      

If there's one thing for which Manny Acta should be thankful about his new gig as manager of the Cleveland Indians, it's that -- unless ownership loses its sanity altogether -- he won't have to spend much time worrying what bizarre and futile move his general manager will perpetrate next. That's a win right there no matter how many games his team loses on the field.

While Acta's no doubt pleased not to have to report to Jim Bowden, he'll nonetheless be challenged as he skippers a club in transition.  Far from contending in the AL Central as had been hoped at the beginning of 2009, the team ended up being torn down by GM Mark Shapiro who proceeded to ship out as many over-30s (plus Ben Francisco) as he could find willing takers for.

Shedding Rafael Betancourt, Mark De Rosa, Cliff Lee and Victor Martinez didn't improve the short-term chances of the Tribe which slid to a final 2009 record of 65-97 and a tie with Kansas City for the division's basement.

But the players Shapiro traded did bring back some interesting young guys, among them catcher Lou Marson and pitchers Carlos Carrasco, Justin Masterson, Chris Perez and Jess Todd.  This is a far better situation than what Acta was saddled with in Washington, where excessive amounts of his time and the team's resources were expended on projects like Dmitri Young and Elijah Dukes, even as the Nationals' prospect pool had (and still has) far to go to recover from the desiccated condition into which it sank under MLB's ownership and Bowden's wayward fancies.

There will be some familiar faces in Acta's new organization. Nats-alumnus signees this offseason have included replacement-level infielder Anderson Hernandez -- whom Cleveland just acquired this past Wednesday off waivers from the Mets -- and sub-replacement-level outfielder Austin Kearns, neither of whom should cause Acta any difficult lineup decisions.

On the other hand, 32-year-old reliever Saul Rivera may be pitching his way onto the Indians' 40-man roster:  he's produced five scoreless innings in five relief appearances this spring, issuing three strikeouts, three hits and a base on balls.  With Kerry Wood now on the sidelines, Chris Perez' likely promotion to closer could open a spot for Rivera in middle relief.

Whatever the incremental contributions of Acta's ex-Nats, he's still apt to be leading an improved Tribe.  If nothing else, their spring performance has earned them a record of 11-5 so far in Cactus League play, although by no means does that translate into a winning record in the regular season.  All the same, if Manny Acta's Indians stay healthy in 2010, they should make their share of noise in what rates to be a tight AL Central race.

      

If there'll be anything striking about the National League East's left fielders in 2010, it'll be a remarkable degree of parity and few areas of abject weakness.  (At least defensively, especially since Adam Dunn has decided to concentrate on becoming a first baseman.)

The rankings below, from highest to lowest, account for both defense and offense.

• Chris Coghlan has impressed the Marlins enough to convince that penurious outfit to part with a salary some $50,000 over the league minimum.  He's certainly worth it, as he's apt to outperform his predecessor, current Washington National Josh Willingham, at the position.  Brett Carroll will be Coghlan's backup.
• Not that Washington will suffer.  Although Willingham's better known for his offense, you could do far worse than to deploy him in left field every day.  (Or almost every day, with supersub Willie Harris as the number-two guy in left.)
• The man Harris spelled in Atlanta, Matt Diaz, will most likely be a backup himself this year for former Pinstripe Melky Cabrera.
• Philadelphia fans will be hoping for another great year from Raul Ibanez instead of the more likely regression to the mean.  Ben Francisco, whom the Phillies picked up in the deal with Cleveland that also brought them two-plus months of Cliff Lee, will be the team's fourth outfielder and bench bat.
• Jason Bay was a smart and perhaps somewhat lucky pickup for the Mets, whose fascination with Bay's venerable backup Gary Matthews Jr. cannot be characterized so easily or hopefully.  (That fascination may linger for a while; Matthews is having a good Spring Training so far.)

      

Veteran right-handed reliever Tyler Walker, who spent last season in the bullpen of the National League champion Phillies, has been signed by the Nationals to a one-year, $650,000 contract.

Walker, 34, made 32 appearances for Philadelphia last season.  In 35 1/3 innings, he accrued a 3.06 ERA on a superb 1.132 WHIP, striking out 27 batters while walking just nine and issuing 31 hits.  Pending a physical, San Francisco native Walker will likely be added to the Nationals' 40-man roster from which another player will have to be removed to make room for him.

Washington also inked a contract on Monday with 27-year-old left-handed starter Chuck James, who was granted free agency last month by the Atlanta organization in which he had played his entire seven-plus-year career, and last Tuesday signed 29-year-old utilityman Chris Duncan -- son of St. Louis pitching coach and retired All-Star catcher Dave Duncan -- who had been released by Boston this past August, prior to which he had spent a decade in the Cardinals' system.  Both the James and Duncan deals are minor-league contracts with invitations to major-league Spring Training.

In what one hopes was not a portent of his performance for the coming season, it was Chris Duncan whose misplay of a Ryan Zimmerman pop foul with two out in the bottom of the fifth led to a four-run Washington inning in Shairon Martis' complete-game win at Nats Park on May 2 of last year.

Meanwhile, Chris' brother Shelley Duncan, who won the Most Valuable Player award in the triple-A International League in 2009 and was a member of the Yankees organization through this past season, signed a minor-league contract earlier this month with the Indians.  If both Duncans have the good fortune to make their respective major-league squads, they could find themselves playing against one another this season when the Nats visit Cleveland the weekend of June 11-13.

      

Hardly did the baseball world have time to digest the news of the signing of ex-Nationals relief pitcher Saul Rivera by the Cleveland Indians -- there to be reunited with his erstwhile manager Manny Acta -- than we are informed that outfielder Austin Kearns, who ended his D.C. career on a resounding note of anticlimax, has signed up with the Tribe as well.

Let it be noted that the Kearns transaction is a minor-league deal, with an invitation to major-league spring training.  Best of luck to all involved.

      

Last month saw the Nationals' front office under first-year GM Mike Rizzo fill in a number of gaps that should set the direction not only of the MLB team but also of the player-development system.

If improvement is to occur -- as it must if the Nats are to climb out of the hole of consecutive 100-loss seasons -- an essential part of the improvement will fall to the responsibility of newly designated minor-league field coordinator Bobby Henley.

Henley's role, in fact, may be as large as anyone's in the organization, for it will fall to him and his assistants to instill consistent expectations across the minor-league system.  Not least of these expectations should be acceptable defensive performance on the part of the Nats' prospects.

We've wailed in the past about the Nats' woeful defense on the MLB field, and also taken time to note that the farm system hasn't shown much in the way of good glove work.  Anyone who doubts that this is important should take a moment to consider the relationship between fielding and overall team performance.

Let's look at some numbers from the 2009 season:

• The Nationals finished 15th out of 16 National League teams in defensive efficiency, as well as last in wins.  The NL-West champion Los Angeles Dodgers finished first in both.
• On the American League side, the New York Yankees were first in wins and tied for second in defensive efficiency.  Meanwhile, the league's three worst teams in win-loss record -- Baltimore, Cleveland and Kansas City -- occupied three of the four bottom rungs in defensive efficiency.  (The fourth of those rungs was claimed by wild card Boston.  That might have something to do with their speedy ALDS dispatch by the Angels, in which the Sawx committed four errors and the Halos only one in three games.)

If you go back over prior seasons, there's a remarkable correlation between a team's efficiency in the field and its place in the standings.  This shouldn't be surprising:  a team wins games not just by scoring runs but also by preventing them.  Teams that needlessly give up runs by failing to make putouts can't usually expect their pitching or hitting to make up the difference.

Think of a baseball team, if you like, as a three-legged stool in which pitching, fielding and hitting are each one leg.  If all three of a team's legs are strong, it is poised to win -- but if one or more is weak, its chances dim accordingly.  Moreover, weak fielding will tax a pitching staff and drag down its performance as well, which about sums up what we saw at Nats Park this season.  (That the rotation was young and the bullpen uneven didn't help matters any, to be sure.)

The 2010 season will indicate, both at the major-league and minor-league levels, how much effort the Nats are willing to put into reversing the current state of affairs.  And even though Bobby Henley's name will never appear in the lineup of any Nats minor-league game, his leadership off the field of play will have much to do with the success of that effort.

      

Considering that former Nationals manager Manny Acta -- dismissed by Washington at midseason 2009 after accruing a 158-252 record over two and a half seasons -- was reported to be in the running for a number* of vacant managerial positions, it's not surprising that he has come to terms with the Indians on a three-year contract with an additional one-year club option.

Acta will have his work cut out for him.  Cleveland, which was AL Central champion as recently as 2007, has joined Kansas City in the division's basement just two seasons later.

What are the chances that he will be able to accomplish in Ohio what he could not in D.C.:  leading a struggling ball club back to success on the field?

Acta has two large systemic factors in his favor this time around.  First, while the Indians undoubtedly miss the services of players like CC Sabathia and Victor Martinez, it's hard to argue that their organization has been emaciated to anything like the degree that the Nationals' had been not too long before Acta arrived on the scene.  Second, he will be reporting to Mark Shapiro, a general manager who -- unlike Jim Bowden who was Acta's front-office boss for the first two years of his Washington tenure -- appears to enjoy both the confidence of his team's owners and the respect of his peers.

The determining factor in Acta's longevity in Cleveland, we feel, will be Acta himself.

If he has learned anything from his first major-league managerial experience, it's that he will have to remain engaged and to demonstrate active leadership with a visible bias toward accountability.  Not to do so would likely make his stay with the Tribe an unhappy one and a short one.

But if he can bring the right degree of intensity and involvement to his new posting, Indians fans may find themselves with a contending ball club quite soon -- and with an intelligent young manager to thank for it.

* Granted, that number was just two at the time of writing. It will, however, increase, even as the number of candidates has just decreased by one.

      

OK, so the Nationals won the Strasburg Sweepstakes. (May it not come back to haunt us.)

We're still thinking about that 2008 loss column, the one with the over-100 figure in it. Nobody saw that coming, not even Buster Olney.

Such a record is not without precedent in Washington.  Youthful Nats fans can quiz their parents and grandparents (ah, who the hell are we kidding, they'll Google it) about previous craptastic teams that have infested the region. Such as the expansion Senators, who even after more than a generation of reinvention as the Texas Rangers have yet to bring home an AL pennant.

Or the original Senators -- who, just as they were about to turn the corner, decamped to lily-white Minnesota.

Or the only team a lot of us ever had any connection to before the Expos relocated to D.C.

The Orioles had been a woeful lot in their previous incarnation as the St. Louis Browns.  Owner Bill Veeck had been forced -- thanks in large part to an eleventh-hour transaction in which the moguls of Anheuser-Busch gained control of the Cardinals -- first to cede St. Louis bragging rights to the National League and then to yield ownership of the Browns.  Upon relocation to Baltimore in 1954, the team was no threat to unseat the Yankees or Indians as top dogs of the American League.

The inaugural edition of the Birds lost an even one hundred games. Their least effective starter, an unheralded 24-year-old, went 3-21 on a then-yucky 4.37 ERA.

That man's engagement in Baltimore was mercifully brief. In the remaining 13 seasons of his career, he made a number of stops in both leagues, logging some decent seasons and some indecent ones.

One of those stops was in the Bronx -- where, just two seasons after his Baltimore stint, the hero of our story, Don Larsen, was the Pinstripes' most effective starter behind Whitey Ford, compiling an 11-5 record and 3.26 ERA in 20 starts and 18 relief appearances. And notching a perfect game in the 1956 World Series.

While Larsen never pitched for the Expos, plenty of his ilk and better slipped through that franchise's fingers in its declining years.  Meanwhile, back to those '54 Orioles, it took the better part of a decade for that club to reach contention (and, after a couple of strong decades, far less to fall out of it, though they look to be trying to rise from the ashes).

The Nats, despite their early D.C. sputterings, stand a chance to reach contention soon if the pitching can step up. Will it take a Strasburg to make that happen -- or, even though it might not look like it today, could the next Larsen (or Pedro) possibly already be in our midst?

      

In the lead-up to pitchers and catchers reporting to Spring Training at the end of next week, Nationals fans ponder, among other things, whether and how well ex-Met Lastings Milledge will patrol center field at Nats Park in 2009.

Perhaps, amidst our pondering, we forget that the team hoped to have the position sewn up in the early years of the decade. In the club's last two seasons in Montreal, Endy Chavez was the everyday center fielder, framed in 2003 by Brad Wilkerson in left and Vladimir Guerrero in right, and then in 2004 by Terrmel Sledge and Juan Rivera in the respective positions, Wilkerson having moved to first base for a season while Guerrero departed to free agency.

By 2005, manager Frank Robinson had seen enough of Chavez and heartily endorsed his trade to Philadelphia for Marlon Byrd, the story of which is related entertainingly by the Post's erstwhile Nats beatwriter Barry Svrluga in his saga of the team's inaugural season in Washington, National Pastime. Byrd assumed the left-field duties at RFK Stadium, as Wilkerson took over in center and garrulous trade pickup Jose Guillen (acquired in the 2004-05 offseason for Rivera and utility infielder Maicer Izturis) alternated between playing right field and covering the boss' back, as the Nats battled to a .500 record in 2005 and went south from there.

So how exactly have things worked out for Chavez and the Nats since his departure?

Chavez' career has settled down a bit.  Let go by the Phillies after being a part of their second-place 88-74 finish in 2005, he signed up with his old boss, Mets (and once Expos) general manager Omar Minaya, and recently completed his third year in Queens -- all winning seasons, and the first culminating in a division championship.

That was Chavez' third tour -- one a matter of hours -- with the Mets. Signed by New York as a free agent out of Venezuela in 1996, Chavez was picked up by Kansas City in the 2000 Rule 5 draft. The Royals not wishing to keep Chavez on the major-league bench, they returned him to the Mets at the end of spring training in 2001 and then promptly engineered his return to the KC organization for further minor-league seasoning by shipping career minor-league outfielder Michael Curry to the Gothamites.

Chavez' most recent adventure has been as a part of the mammoth three-team swap between the Mets, Indians and Mariners during this offseason's Winter Meetings in Las Vegas, a deal most notable for the Mets' acquisition of setup man J. J. Putz from Seattle.

Having served as a fill-in in the Mets' outfield during the 2006-08 campaigns, Chavez is now a member of the Mariners' 40-man roster and rates to share the left-field job at Safeco Field in 2009 with Wladimir Balentien and Mike Morse.

As for the Nats, they and Chavez' replacement Byrd parted ways at the end of 2006. Byrd went on to Texas where he's accrued two seasons of pretty decent performances as a part-time outfielder for the Rangers; he's likely to split the center-field duties in Arlington with Nelson Cruz in 2009.

If the Nats' outfield wasn't immediately enriched by the loss of Chavez and his successor, they can at least look forward with a measure of hope to seeing Milledge, Elijah Dukes and recent trade pickup Josh Willingham create some runs at Nats Park in 2009.

And if there's a lesson to be learned by the Nats, it could be that churning through young outfielders might not exactly be part of the recipe for building a winning ballclub. Unless, just possibly, they want to help create winning seasons for division rivals.

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