Mulling Over The NL West

The encouraging trend for the Phoenix nine is their unusually young team that led the NL in wins is now a year older, and All Star Game starter Dan Haren has replaced fading Livan Hernandez.  The bad news is that leading a major league in wins while being outscored by one's opponents has happened only once in baseball history for a reason. Teams that are seasonally outscored just arent very good and cant be relied upon to regularly contend.

Here's a macro picture of this year's Diamondback model:

• It will be better (RS/RA) than last year's team, but with a worse won lost record (sub 90 wins)
• The young hitting will almost certainly improve, perhaps significantly. There's no power failure, as the 07 squad hit as many homers (171) as the Rockies, but they need to get on base alot more. Coming off a league low team BA & OBP (in a very favorable park), there's no place for a more seasoned team to go but up. The question is: By how much?
• Pitching, despite the Haren upgrade, should decline.  Expect Danny's ERA to be about a run higher than last year, due to the huge park change (more than compensating for the NL's lack of DH), his propensity for yielding big flies, and a gaudy 2007 first half that outpaced underlying performance. Similar, latent concerns ( based on FIP, etc) linger about the rest of the staff; especially Brandon Lyon, Micah Owings and Doug Davis, whose collectively razor thin successes are largely expected to evaporate. Lyon, one of three "Brandons" pitching on the 40 man, will close in place of exiled All Star Jose Valverde, the NL's reigning seasonal saves leader.

Also:

• The bench should be worse (ie they will not lead the entire majors in pinch hit home runs again, will they?)
• The defense is good ( I think better than most stats suggest) and nobody absconded bags while preventing same quite as efficiently as Bob Melvin's boys. Barring an injury to Snyder, that relative asset shouldn't degrade much, even as the youngsters run more.

What about the competition?   

Apart from the Dan Ortmeier-led Giants (thank you, Brain Sabean!), conventional wisdom anticipates a tight division, with Dodgeball and our Desert Diamonds on the upswing and the Rockies and Padres tougher to gauge, independent of Colorado's fabulous September run. I wont bother with detailed roster analysis here to support that statement - god knows you can find it elsewhere.  Suffice it to say all NL West teams are flawed, most seriously.

LA and SD both appear to be grasping with unlikely fixes to the rear ends of their rotations. Prior, Wolf, Kuroda, Loaiza, Schmidt ? Big names, but I wouldnt start a season depending on any of 'em. Whether Randy Johnson flames out (Edgar Gonzalez) or not (ie Davis, Owings), advantage Diamondbacks.

The surprisingly effective Rockie staff lost no less than four valuable bullpen cogs (Herges, Affeldt, Hawkins and Julio) , lacks a #1 stopper and will rely on talented but fairly green starters to log significant innings. That's a lot of uncertainty to address. Anticipate a regression. The offense is solid (not great). The defense was great with Matsui - and is still excellent.      

The Padres are much better hitters than credited. The hopeful addition of rickety Edmonds and imminent gamebreaker Hairston to a solid infield quintet, might make this Gaslamp Gang the division's best with the bats, however the Pads are also the majors' worst at throwing out base stealers, and with Scotty and Giles flanking an aging Hollywood (or healthy understudy) instead of Mike Cameron, plenty of Padre pitchers will prematurely age, or possibly puke, perceiving pop ups passively plop in panoramic Petco.

Of course, leave it to the real Hollywood to capture maximum buzz, inserting a fresh batch of overrated stars (incl. Torre, Kuroda and Andruw Jones) to augment worn out celebrity "insertees", Tommy LaSorda and Alyssa Milano. That's not to say the Dodgers cant be good. Like a six course Italian feast or a high class call girl, they can be fantastic - in an expensive sort of way. 

It just wont be veterans leading the way. In complete contrast to the Diamondbacks, whose offense (such as it was) was driven by lone veterans Byrnes and Hudson, Dodger fortunes hinge on the youthful trio of Loney, Martin and Kemp. Kent can still hit and Andruw could rebound some, but veterans alone arent going to propel this team. Furcal has declined at the plate and there's a word for Juan Pierre and Nomar. Holes. If the kid trio struggles, these veterans arent collectively good enough to pick up the slack. Not across a long season.

Coming Soon: Predictions

(photos courtesy of AP/Morry Gash)