Day 3 Pick: Cubs under 85.5
It's not unusual for there to be a ton of optimism around baseball during this time of year. After all, everyone's undefeated... at least for another couple days. But this year in particular I see more GMs walking around Florida and Arizona with their chest puffed out like they just went 12 rounds with Mason "The Line" Dixon. It seems this winter's drunken spending spree has convinced most teams that they are ready to contend.

That's bleeding over to the betting community. A majority of the over/under numbers lead to a gut reaction of "Oooh, that's low. That's an over." The problem is it's impossible for everyone to be an over. Somebody has to lose.

So I felt I needed an under today and when you go looking for unders, why not stop by and visit those lovable losers, the Chicago Cubs. After all, no one spent more drunkenly this offseason than the Cubbies. $136M for Alfonso Soriano, $40M for Ted Lilly, $21M for Jason Marquis, not to mention the $73M to hold on to Aramis Ramirez and $10M to secure a competent manager in Lou Piniella. OK, they're better.

But the question is how much better?

The Cubs were a dreadful 66-96 last year and that means for them to be an over, they're going to need to be 20 games better and I'm not sure even $300 million can facilitate that. The division itself is a question mark with the defending champs coming off their worst regular season in years and the Astros trying to be good enough to convince the Rocket to take one more flight at Minute Maid this summer. Those two teams could very well decide how successful a pick this is for me.

But on the field, I have concerns with the new-look Cubs. First the old concerns: Mark Prior and Kerry Wood are completing their spring ritual of finding new ways to be injured, while staff ace Carlos Zambrano spent the past week batting his eyes at the Mets as contract talks have stalled in Chicago. Imported starter Ted Lilly gave up 28 homers for Toronto last year; good luck in Wrigley, Ted. And speaking of good luck, I'm sure every Mets fan wishes Sweet Lou good luck in keeping Cliff Floyd in the lineup for 150 games this season.

And more than anything, I consider the Cubs to be the baseball equivalent of the Miami Dolphins -- the team that gets tremendous buzz each preseason because of its inexplicable national following. Much like the Dolphins didn't meet expectations last fall, I expect the Cubbies to disappoint fans nationwide all summer long.

THE PICKS
Monday: T.J. picks Minnesota over 83.5; Steve picks Arizona over 77.5
Tuesday: T.J. picks Kansas City under 67; Steve picks Atlanta over 80.5
Wednesday: T.J. picks Texas over 82.5; Steve picks Cubs under 85.5
Thursday: T.J. picks ?????; Steve picks ?????
Friday: T.J. picks ?????; Steve picks ?????