I can’t decide whether this is the worst division in baseball, or if that honor goes to the AL West. The AFC West and NFC West are similarly putrid. Why are all the good teams east of the Mississippi in both the NFL and MLB? I’m not sure. For the Rockies, 2007 just keeps looking […]
I can’t decide whether this is the worst division in baseball, or if that honor goes to the AL West. The AFC West and NFC West are similarly putrid. Why are all the good teams east of the Mississippi in both the NFL and MLB? I’m not sure.
For the Rockies, 2007 just keeps looking like more and more of a fluke. Even though a 5.14 ERA for the rotation isn’t too disgraceful in that park, it doesn’t matter if you fail to score 750 runs, as they did last year. How is that possible? How could that lineup possibly only score 747 runs in that ball park? Since then, they’ve shipped off Matt Holliday to Oakland, and imported Huston Street to close out the few leads they do see. This division is so putrid that anything could happen, but I don’t see them making a run.
The Padres are in rebuilding mode, even if they don’t admit it or know it. They’re also probably the most likely team in the NL to go into fire-sale mode if they’re out of the hunt in June. The trade rumors that swirled about Peavy all offseason will probably resurface if they’re well out of it, which reminds me: why do so many Padres players seem to hate the management team down there. Doug Mirabelli openly badmouthed them while he was down there, until they ripped off the Red Sox by prying away Cla Meredith in exchange for shipping The Stud Who Hits Bombs back when the freaked out because no one could catch Wakefield. Now, Mirabelli – who is now apparently a real estate agent in Michigan – was by all accounts kind of a jerk, so you can probably write that off. But then Khalil Greene shot his way out of town, and now Peavy has said he’s unhappy… I don’t know what the answer is, but three is kind of a trend.
There isn’t a whole lot of offense in this division, but the Dodgers have the best of what’s around. I know I’m supposed to have a strong opinion about the whole Manny saga, and write like 1,500 words on it, but I’m just tired of the topic. I’m tired of seeing Scott Boras’ face, tired of re-hashing the whole disgraceful way he shot his way out of town, tired of hearing the absurd argument that the Sox would have won the World Series if they still had Manny. (Note to the idiots who have made that ridiculous claim: Jason Bay hit something like .360 in the ALCS – the Sox didn’t lose to TB because of production out of left field, they lost because Josh Beckett wasn’t healthy, end of story.)
At this point, I’m just happy that Manny’s gone, not in the AL, not in pinstripes, and in a perverse way, that after all of that drama and willingness to smear feces all over his legacy in Boston, that it only got him an extra $5 million guaranteed. I like the rotation despite the loss of Lowe – particularly against the weak offenses throughout the West – and they’re the odds-on favorite to win the division.
However, I like the D-backs on the strength of their 1-2 punch of Webb and Haren. I think Upton is ready to blossom, and Jackson, Young, and Drew should all take steps forward in 2009.
That leaves me with the Giants, a team I don’t have a really good feel for. At last, they’ve stopped handing horrible contracts to people well past their primes. Look at some of the horrendous signings they’ve had over the years:
Barry Zito
Omar Vizquel
Aaron Rowand
Dave Roberts
Matt Morris
Armando Benitez
Randy Winn
Mike Matheny
You could argue that no other team has made as many bad signings over the last few years. At the very least, they’re trying to get younger now, with the exception of the signing of Randy Johnson. Obviously, Lincecum is the star here, and Cain is poised to fill in as a strong #2. Your $136m man, Barry Zito, is actually the #5 starter. (oops!) That’s a promising rotation, but I don’t have any faith in the lineup whatsoever, and I see them losing a lot of 2-1 games.
What can I say? A boring write-up for a boring division.
THE PICK: ARIZONA, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Colorado, San Diego.