You cannot win if you have a horrible lineup, You cannot win if you have a horrible pitching staff.

You must at least be *SOLID* in both areas and excel in one or the other.

Look at the run Cleveland put together for years on awesome offense and mediocre defense. They won the division every year but struggled in the playoffs.

I believe what the Cleveland experience points out is that in the regular season you can win with average pitching and great offense; however, when the playoffs come you need to have a couple great pitchers if you want to move on.

In real life MLB you are probably going to use your four best starters in the playoffs. In Purebaseball if you are creative enough getting them out of the game you can get by with using your three best starters. Which leads me to the assertion that come playoff time you want to have two or three great starters and the quality of your #4 and #5 guys just doesn't matter.

Hence if my starting lineup is strong enough to win enough games in the regular season with my weak links at the back of the rotation then in a sense good hitting can beat good pitching.

As far as the Texas example is concerned they have not gotten pitching that could be considered *SOLID* in any way. So you can't blame Alex Rodriguez for the fact that all the pitchers are pitching like AA pitchers. Neither can you blame him that Ken Caminiti is injury prone, Gabe Kapler got hurt, and all the second base options stink.

I finished last in my division in Chall with Arod last year because I had no pitching and most of the rest of my lineup (except Eric Karros) stunk. This year the same team is doing well on the strength of one GOOD starter (Chan Ho Park), two SOLID starters (Lieber and Wolf) and pot luck on the other days -- and a potpouri of relievers to go with a lineup that has Ron Belliard as the only weak link on days when Mark McGwire plays.

On the topic of who you would trade straight up ..... I'll take Pedro over any hitter except Arod. But I will not give the likes of Chipper Jones or Manny Ramirez or Roberto Alomar for Randy Johnson because Johnson is so much older that he should be nearing the end of the line.

Even with Pedro though you are going to have trouble if you don't have the supporting cast.

The comparison of Ichiro to Randy Johnson really is not fair because Ichiro has not proven himself to be a star caliber player YET.