It’s bad enough that the Tribune has started something called “The Morning Phil” which is really just Phil Rogers reminding us every morning that he knows shit about baseball.  But on Sunday, he sat in a pressbox in Glendale after the Cubs-Sox game was rained out and he wrote another column.  This one was just as confounding and backed up by zero facts as usual.

Screw it.  Let’s see what horseshit he came up with this time.

Headline: Rainman’s 10 baseball truths so far in spring training

Get it, because it was raining, and because Phil writes like Raymond Babbitt.  And by the way, Rain Man is two words, not one.  But why would the Tribune waste time getting that right?

GLENDALE, Ariz. — An umbrella?

Are you kidding me? The things you need to pack for spring training are sunscreen — SPF 30+ for Midwesterners — a cap and Baseball America’s Prospect Handbook, so you’ll know something about the players in the game after the fifth inning.

Yes, let’s all pack the $32 Baseball America Prospect Handbook, an overpriced annual that takes its job so seriously they let baseball dipshit Phil Rogers write the prospect capsules for the Chicago White Sox.  Next year, they’re going to let Seattke Sutton handle the Mariners write up.

1. Neither Chicago team will enter the season as a division favorite. The Cardinals winning the NL Central is almost as automatic of a choice as the Phillies, behind Roy Halladay, winning the NL East. Some people will pick the White Sox to win the AL Central, but not as many as will pick the Twins (assuming Joe Nathan’s elbow is OK) or Tigers. I’ve visited the camps of all five of these Central teams and believe the optimism in four of them to be well-founded.

Did you follow any of that?  Nobody crafts a sentence quite like Phildo.  Keep in mind this is a guy who two years ago wrote a game story for a Cubs-Dodgers game, got the score, and the winning team wrong in the lede.  He’s a trained professional.

2. Baseball Prospectus is dissing one of the two Chicago teams it picks to go 80-82. That’s the Sox, who are clearly the better of our two teams. After the unlikely spending spree that brought Jake Peavy and Alex Rios last season, Ken Williams and Rick Hahn have done what they do best — filling the cracks with solid players at bargain prices.

I’m sure Baseball Prospectus has factored in the fact that the White Sox answer to a bad offense in 2009 was to add the human out machine, Juan Pierre, and to take $58 million over the next five years and flush it down the toilet–Alex Rios style.  But please, keep giving Kenny credit for trying to win the pennant in 2009 by trading for a pitcher who was on the disabled list, and for getting stuck with Rios’ contract when he never dreamed the Jays would just make him eat the whole thing.

The best part of importing guys like Freddy Garcia, J.J. Putz, Juan Pierre, Andruw Jones and Omar Vizquel is they add a ton of low-risk depth while prospects like Jordan Danks, Dayan Viciedo, Daniel Hudson and Clevelan Santeliz continue a relatively low-pressure development. “I like our kids,” Ozzie Guillen said Sunday. “Before we’d bring guys here who were kind of an embarrassment. Now our minor-league system is better.”

That had better be the “best part” of importing those guys, because since none of them can actually play, there had better be a reason for tying up 20 percent of your roster with them.

3. $140 million doesn’t buy what it used to. The Cubs, who join the Phillies in spending more money than every team except the Yankees and Red Sox, somehow have themselves about half a pitching staff. They had big bullpen issues long before Angel Guzman arrived with a sore shoulder and failed to address them, instead spending the winter preoccupied with off-loading Milton Bradley. The rotation isn’t scaring anyone, either.

See, that’s where you are wrong Phil.  That rotation scares the shit out of me.

4. Andruw Jones, baseball’s most experienced 32-year-old, isn’t ready to call it a career. He has lost weight and is in the best shape he has been in for years, and it’s showing on the field. He last had double-digit steals in 2001 but is running great, as evidenced by steals in his first two games.

Wait, he’s stolen two bases already in two spring training games!  Holy shit!  He’s on pace to steal 200 bases this year, then!  Considering he hasn’t stolen more than eight bases in a season since 2001, that seems to be just about the worst possible way to evaluate him.  Great job.  Andruw also has only hit better than .265 once since 2000 (seriously.)  He’s been terrible for three years now, and doing a few sit-ups isn’t likely to change that.

He could wind up with a bigger role than he’s being penciled into, provided he stays healthy. “He’s played center field real good,” Guillen said. “If Andruw continues playing like that, we’ll find a place for him to play.”

That place figures to be Charlotte.

5. Jake Peavy carries himself the way a front man should, whether it’s in a band or a starting rotation. His stats could take a beating as he moves from the NL and Petco Park, but the only one that will bother him is if he can’t maintain the .583 winning percentage. His Woodjock concert Thursday in Scottsdale will show the results he gets when he puts his mind to a cause.

He carried himself that way, all the way to 101 innings last year.  He’s been injured in three straight seasons now.  That’s not a good trend.  And Phil, if you want to use win-loss record to evaluate a pitcher (which is dumb), how about the fact that he’s only won more than 15 games once in his career.  He and Carlos Zambrano have been full-time starters the same number of years and Carlos has more wins (105 to 95) and a higher winning percentage (.607 to .583).  Now what were you talking about, again?  Oh, yeah, Jake’s putting on a concert.  Great.

(And, oh, along the lines of the Adrian Gonzalez talk, don’t overlook his influence on Roy Oswalt, who might ask Houston for a trade later this season. How would you like a rotation with Peavy, Oswalt and Mark Buehrle at the top?)

Peavy’s “influence” on Roy Oswalt probably only works if the White Sox can actually produce some prospects to trade to the Astros for him.  Since you allegedly wrote the prospect capsules in Baseball America’s Prospect Handbook, you’d know they don’t have any.

6. No knock on him, but Marlon Byrd isn’t likely to be the Cubs’ starting center fielder for even two of the three years of his contract. Brett Jackson, a 2009 first-round pick from California, is the kind of college player who advances fast. He’s big, strong and can run. He has just as much of a chance to be a star as shortstop Starlin Castro. In Jackson and the Sox’s Jared Mitchell, Chicago’s teams both have center fielders to help build future teams around.

Why would that be a knock on him?  Just because he signed a $15 million contract, why would he be offended that you’re giving his job away to a guy who has played 53 minor league games, and none above low-A?  Just how much head trauma have you suffered in recent years?

7. The Cubs really might go 80-82, payroll be damned. They look more like a team in transition than one that will allow Lou Piniella to finish the job he was hired to do. How could they have invested in Bradley, not Adam Dunn? When they gave Bradley $30 million over three years, Dunn would have loved to have taken his $20 million from the Cubs rather than the Nationals.

Your insight is tremendous.  So you mean having a guy who posted a .928 OPS last year would have been better than a guy who had a .775 and who played just as much shitty defense?  Your crystal ball and its ability to see the past is remarkable.

8. The Mark DeRosa trade still looks bad. Cubs GM Jim Hendry really likes the pitchers he got in that trade (Jeff Stevens, John Gaub and Chris Archer), but now’s the time to get something out of the right-handed Stevens and the left-handed Gaub, and both are off to shaky starts this spring.

Sigh.  So you’re writing off the DeRosa trade, despite the fact all three guys they got for him had excellent seasons last year in the minors, none are more than 25 years old, and all have projectable big league futures, because you are giving up on Stevens and Gaub after two spring training games?

9. Sox players have more fun than Cubs players. Guillen is a big part of that. “He keeps the clubhouse loose, keeps things moving,” said Rios, who played for Cito Gaston in Toronto. “I think it’s a good thing.”

Pat Riley once said there are only two outcomes in professional sports, “Winning and misery.”  Most of the Sox smile and laugh around Ozzie because they can’t understand a fucking thing he says.  In either language.

10. Carlos Silva, not so much. I still think the Cubs should have just released Bradley instead of going through the agonizing process of trading him. Because the Mariners are paying $9 million of the $25 million owed Silva, the Cubs will save $5 million if they wind up releasing Silva, who looked like he was throwing BP against the Sox on Saturday.

This, is the essence of what makes Phil Rogers such a hack.  His point appears to be this.  The Cubs should have just released Milton Bradley instead of trading him for Carlos Silva.  Even though they saved money by trading for Silva and getting Seattke to give them $9 million.  Phil, does realize that they can still release Silva, and still save the money, right?  Oh, why would he realize that?  It’s only his fucking job.