SFist is Talking Baseball: Day 3
We continue with our raging discussion on this year's upcoming baseball season. The rest of the award-winning SFist sports desk will join in as soon as their stupid day jobs let them. Oh, how we long for the days when we were merely crack monkey's chained to computers in Jackson's basement dungeon. Anyways, Part I can be seen here and Part 2 here.
SFist Chris: The National League West?
Holy crap what a mess. There's only room for one Pacific Coast League fellas.
Of course it isn't that bad, but the NL West is pretty bad. By far the weakest division in baseball. Last year, the Padres posted a wobbly 82-80 record, and walked away with the division by five games, over the Diamondbacks, even. The next worse division winners in baseball were the Atlanta Braves, with 90 wins.
This year looks like more of the same.
The Rockies will never win anything as long as they play at 5,280 feet. Never. It's a pitching graveyard. Beyond Todd Helton, whaddya got? You got about 70 wins at best. Buh-bye.
The Diamondbacks, and I still don't know how they snuck into second place last year, are fronting with Russ Ortiz and El Duque, and they signed Terry Mulholland to a minor league contract in January. Yeah, good luck with that. Back up that impressive front line pitching with KO king Tony Clark; Mr. .260, Craig Counsell; the mercurial Shawn Green; and what's left of the once sweet-swinging Luis Gonzalez and it's going to be a long, hot summer in Sprawl Town. But, it is a dry heat.
In typical San Diego sports franchise fashion, the Padres took a decent team from 2005, and made it worse by trading their best hitter, Mark Loretta (career .300) and the best set-up man in the league, Akinori Otsuka, for basically nobody. Their replacement set-up man, Doug Brocail, just had angioplasty, and newly acquired Mike Piazza hasn't thrown out a baserunner in like three years. Piazza has always had great power, but Petco is not the place for an aging slugger with bad knees. Memo to Piazza and the Padres: think about trading Pizza Mike to the AL, where he can DH. Toronto? Even with their failings, Bruce Bochy can probably will this team to 75 wins. Any more than that will be on the players, and well, that may be a problem.
The Dodgers have some interesting pieces and every year seem poised to break out, but they can't quite escape the 1980s-Yankees-style karmic comeuppance period they're currently mired in right now. Look for Derek Lowe and Brad Penny to have pretty solid years, with Gagne coming back for about 45 saves. The infield has some pop with Nomar and Jeff Kent, but the outfield is going to drop the ball this year for the Dodgers. I think they'll be in the mix until about late August, then fade like a Kerry-Edwards bumper sticker to 80 wins .
That leaves the Giants by default. It's an old, vulnerable club that needs a few of the right kinds of breaks to have any shot, but it's possible. This is an all or nothing team. They're either going to have everything fall into place for them and win the West by eight games, or they're going to completely implode and stumble home with about 70 wins. The Barry thrives on negative energy, and right now the skies over China Basin are crackling. If Bud Selig and MLB let the Barry on the field this year, I think he's going to go nuts. I look for him to put up .315, 35, and 115, and singlehandedly carry the Giants to a relatively uncontested division title. Or, the entire Giants outfield, ages 39 (Moises Alou), 41 (Steve Finley), and 41 (Bonds), goes on the DL in May, and the G-men average about 1.3 runs a game for the rest of season.
So I guess I'm going with the Giants, although I'm hoping against hope for the Padres. The Dodgers are also a possibility. Look for the winner to eke out the division with about 85 wins. The good thing about this division is that it should be pretty competitive from top to bottom.