I hear Big Poppa T-Ducc on the model for the white sox, and I appreciate he notes how many damn home runs they hit.  He talks about 4 points which led to improved records last year for the White Sox, Nationals, Angels, Blue Jays, and Indians:

1. They didn’t sink big money into a closer.

2. They resisted the urge to overpay for mediocre starting pitching .

3. They reaped the benefits of sticking with young starting pitchers (Garland, Lackey, Patterson, Lee), who are to baseball what young quarterbacks are to the NFL: except for the rare gifted ones, they must be allowed a long learning curve.

4. They hit the lottery on inexpensive relievers (Politte, Vizcaino, Howry, Majewski, Carrasco, Walker, Speier, etc.)…

I agree wholeheartedly with his assessment that the Diamondbacks may be one of those teams to surprise this year. Much how the A’s found an inefficiency in the market and courted big OBP guys at a discount, the D-Backs have been searching high and low for some excellent defenders on the cheap as another way of preventing runs. Ups to Caleb Peiffer for pointing this out a couple weeks back in BP.