By Kevin Kelly / The Cincinnati Enquirer

Even with all the additions to the Astros' pitching staff, Roy Oswalt will be the club's opening day starter. Associated Press file

KISSIMMEE, Fla. - The cinder-block hallway leads visitors to the new National League Central.

The Astros' spring training clubhouse is like most others.

Dirty laundry piled in shopping carts. Lockers stuffed with baseball equipment.

And laminated numbers.

Houston pitcher Wade Miller looks up and left to lockers identified by No. 44 (Roy Oswalt), No. 22 (Roger Clemens) and No. 21 (Andy Pettitte).

"I look at that and see a lot of wins," said Miller, one-fifth of the Astros' starting rotation that has won a combined 569 career games. "Obviously I'd like for them to give us the pennant right now.

"But we know it's not going to be easy. We know we have some work ahead of us."

The Cubs, Astros and Cardinals finished within three games of each other in a division decided on the final weekend of the 2003 season.

The NL Central since has undergone a remarkable pitching facelift - one sure to increase the division's competitiveness while also highlighting the undeniable chasm that exists in the six-team division.

"The tougher the division, the more fun it is," Cardinals manager Tony La Russa said. "As long as you're good enough to compete."

The NL Central has yet to produce a Cy Young Award winner since it was created in 1994.

It now can call itself home to two former winners.

Clemens and Greg Maddux bring with them 10 combined Cy Youngs to staffs brimming with young hotshots.

"I think it will be more pitching-oriented," Cardinals No. 1 starter Matt Morris said. "I think that's going to decide who wins this division; whoever can pitch the best."

Each of last season's top three teams supplemented their starting rotations via free agent signings.

"Everybody knows pitching wins championships," Astros general manager Gerry Hunsicker said. "The team that has strong pitching certainly has an advantage over one that doesn't.

"This has just been a period where some opportunities came our way and we were fortunate."

• Clemens, a six-time Cy Young Award winner and 310-game winner, came out of retirement to join former Yankees teammate Andy Pettitte in Houston.

The resident Texans bring with them to an Astros franchise that has never won a postseason series the experience of 56 playoff games, six World Series rings and more than 450 career wins.

"Our expectations are high," Clemens, 41, said. "You always want to win at the highest level.

"You want to get to the playoffs and win 11 games. We're accustomed to doing that. Anything less than that is very disappointing."

Think their arrivals haven't sparked interest in the Astros?

Team officials estimate between 2.8 million and 3 million fans will attend home games at Minute Maid Park. Houston drew 2.5 million last season.

"We added some very high-quality, established major-league pitchers to put in our rotation," Houston manager Jimy Williams said. "It's not that they're just major-league pitchers. They're outstanding major-league pitchers."

•  The Cubs signed four-time Cy Young Award winner Greg Maddux, 37, to a three-year deal worth $24 million.

The right-hander, who returns to the organization that drafted him in 1984, has won at least 15 games the past 16 consecutive seasons. He is 11 wins shy of 300 career entering this season.

•  The Cardinals attempted to sign Maddux but instead made a less noteworthy acquisition.

They added a serviceable innings-eater in Jeff Suppan for two years and $6 million.

"Houston and Chicago were already pretty strong," Morris said. "Chicago adding Maddux was a great move for their younger guys. With Clemens and Pettitte over in Houston, it's like the Yankees of the National League now."

What was statistically the worst division overall for starting pitching last season - despite possessing the likes of Oswalt and Miller in Houston and Kerry Wood and Mark Prior in Chicago - now has a decidedly different look about it.

"I'm not sure I could call it the best," Reds general manager Dan O'Brien said. "But I would say it's one of the best."

Preventing the NL Central from being recognized as the home to the game's best starters is an economic and philosophical divide.

The Pirates, Reds and Brewers finished fourth, fifth and sixth last season.

Neither made a significant splash in the offseason free-agent pitching marketplace though their starting pitching staffs ranked in baseball's bottom third last season based on an average of wins, ERA and innings pitched.

Those teams, which used 40 different starting pitchers among them last season, are committed to a cost-conscious approach.

It is a philosophy that values player development and trades for young players or prospects over gluttonous free-agent spending.

"Ultimately we have to focus on internal player development as our primary source," said O'Brien, whose Reds used a division-high 17 starting pitchers in 2003.

"There are prospective major-league pitchers that are potentially available that are not necessarily high-profile individuals who can and do pitch in the big leagues."

O'Brien was the Astros' director of player development and scouting when that team drafted two of its current starters.

Oswalt (23rd round, 1996) and Miller (20th round, 1996) are considered two of the most promising young pitchers in the National League. They have a combined 94-39 career record in 196 games.

Tim Redding, the No. 5 starter, was a 20th-round draft pick in 1997.

"I've always felt that if you're going to develop pitching you've got to overload the system with arms," Hunsicker said. "Most players never reach the potential you see in them when they're signed. Therefore it just seems to me that there's strength in numbers."

The Cubs drafted Wood (first round, 1995) and Prior (first round, 2001).

Wood was the 1998 NL Rookie of the Year and an All-Star last season when he led the league in strikeouts (266). Prior made his debut in 2002 and finished third in NL Cy Young voting last season.

The remaining two starters came to the Cubs either as a non-drafted free agent (Carlos Zambrano) or through a trade (Matt Clement).

Including Maddux, the Cubs have an average career ERA of 3.46, lowest among NL Central starting rotations.

The Cardinals rotation is a combination of one draft pick (Morris), two trades (Woody Williams, Jason Marquis) and two free agents (Suppan, Chris Carpenter).

It is the fifth-oldest rotation (29.6 years old) in the division behind Houston (30.2).

"The last three or four years we've been the team to beat," Morris said. "We're not going to sneak in the backdoor, because I'm sure Houston and Chicago will try to beat us up pretty good just to prove to themselves that they're the real deal."

The unusual circumstances surrounding the Pettitte, Clemens and Maddux signings suggest the construction of a pitching staff needs a certain amount of good fortune.

Pettitte wanted to pitch in his hometown, and then lured Clemens, who lives near Houston, out of retirement to join him.

"You can have a gameplan, but I think you have to have the flexibility to be able to change that plan when the circumstances develop and change," said Hunsicker, whose team's payroll this season will exceed projections by $10 million. "But when opportunities come, it's foolish not to take a look at them and take advantage of them."

Maddux spent his first nine professional seasons with the Cubs.

O'Brien's stance is that luck is the residual of hard work.

"We can all use some luck," he said. "And, yes, that's a component of any successful team.

"But the bottom line is, on a day-in and day-out basis, a team has to execute and work at it in order to be the recipient of that 'good luck.' "

Helping opposing offenses is the wealth of opportunities they will have against the division's top starters. Division teams will play each other more than a dozen times this season.

"The offenses around the division are going to challenge these staffs enough," La Russa said. "They're not going to walk through. I don't think you're going to have a Bob Gibson-like 1.00 ERA and 25-30 wins from anybody."

Besides, everything can always look good on paper. Reality and results are what matter most.

"You can have the greatest players in this game, but you've got to have great team chemistry," Reds catcher Jason LaRue said. "All the guys need to get along and play as a team in order to make it to the playoffs or make it to the World Series.

"If they don't all get along and are out there playing for themselves, they're not going to."