Today on my nationally-broadcasted radio show on XM Satellite Radio, Minors and Majors, I made my predictions for the 2008 season. I also caught up with a couple of friends of the show, Jim Molony and Jim Callis.

Molony, a writer for MLB.COM, broke down each of baseball’s six divisions, and predicted that Chase Utley and Alex Rodriguez would win the NL and AL MVP awards respectively. Callis, an editor and a writer at Baseball America, talked about a handful of the prospects who impressed him most this spring.

Here were a couple of my favorite quotes from the fellas today …

1. Jim Callis on who caught his eye this spring —

“The guy that made the biggest impression on me is Clayton Kershaw with the Dodgers; The young left-handed pitcher [who threw] the curve ball that made Shawn Casey look really really silly on TV…even though he is still so young, and the Dodgers don’t want to rush him, he’s too good to keep down for long, and I bet he pitches his way to the big leagues by mid-season.  On the position player side of things, a guy who jumped out at me just by performing as well as we expected him to, Evan Longoria came up and looked like he’s definitely the real deal, not that that one him a major league job.”

2. Jim Molony talking about the feeling he got from covering the Tigers this week —

“There’s a lot of optimism.  They have one of the better lineups in all of baseball, but there’s also some concerns when you have guys like Fernando Rodney, Joel Zumaya, and now, Curtis Granderson all going to start the season on the disabled list.  They have some concerns, but they are a very strong team with an excellent rotation.  They have high hopes that they are going to have a very good season, and hopefully, one that will lead them to the world series.”

3. Jim Molony on what to expect out of Miguel Tejada in Houston this season…

“They think that he’ll put up huge offensive numbers here, and they had one of the best defensive shortstops in the game last year in Adam Everett, an outstanding guy the pitchers are going to miss, but his offense left a lot to be desired and he had some injuries and hadn’t performed well.  So, this is a trade-off that this organization was willing to make, and a lot of fans love it.  They want to see some offense out of shortstop.”