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Quarter Season Review – National League
Written by Akshay on May 28, 2008 – 10:13 amNow, onto the much delayed analysis of the NL and their surprises:
NL West: Looking at the standings, there’s one thing that really surprised me. The two teams that played a 163rd game last season are one and two wins ahead of the worst record in the majors (owned by the Mariners). Those teams are San Diego and Colorado respectively. San Diego has scored the fewest runs in the majors, understandable when they have absolutely no consistency in their lineup (other than Adrian Gonzalez who would be the fifth or sixth best hitter on the Braves by comparison), they have no power (12th in the NL in home runs, which is understandable considering they play in Petco, but surprising because they have less homers on the road than at home). Moving on up, Colorado is just struggling because of growing pains from their young pitchers. Other than Aaron Cook (7-3, 2.82) none of their other starters has a sub-4.00 ERA. The third place team in the division, San Francisco, is a team that some thought could be the worst offensive team in the history of the majors before the season started. They’ve done alright considering they’re just now coming off the Barry Bonds era and pretty much rebuilding from the ground up. As far as their offense, the only team in the majors that has scored less runs than the Giants are the Padres in the NL and the Royals in the AL. Arizona is a team that everyone expected to do well at the beginning of the season and they have. They are probably the best team in the NL and deservedly so, their young offense is getting better and their pitching staff has gotten better with the addition of Dan Haren from Oakland. The Dodgers are the enigma of the group, they are very streaky, but are also the victim of bad front office movies. Joe Torre being the new manager, in my opinion, wasn’t very different from Grady Little. I think the name and ticket sales they would bring in with a big name manager were the clincher for Torre in this case.
NL Central: Boy, this division really turned upside down after the Cubs. Last season, the Cardinals finished seven games out of first place in the Central and even worse in the wildcard race. The Astros finished 14 games behind the leader in the same division. This season both teams have gone through somewhat of a rebirth to the early part of the decade when they regularly battled for the central crown. This season both teams are battling with the Cubs for the lead in the division. St. Louis is one game out and Houston is two games behind the Cubs. All three teams have the offense, pitching or both to carry them to the divisional crown and I fully expect this race to go down to the end of the season.
NL East: I think we can call this a four team race down to the wire. We just outlined the Marlins a couple of days ago and we all know about the Braves. The Phillies will be in contention as long as they play at Citizens Bank Park and the Mets….well, yeah they’ll stick around, I guess. Honestly, I really don’t see them winning consistently outside of Santana’s starts. The Mets are 7-3 when Santana starts and 17-23 when everyone else does, kind of tells you something about their pitching staff. For the division though, I’m sticking with my preseason pick of the Braves. Here’s why: They are a third of the season without some of their major players (Smoltz, Soriano, Gonzalez, Moylan among others) and are only 2.5 games out of the lead. Soriano and Smoltz are expected back soon, meaning Cox won’t have to worry as much about going to the bullpen (which is still the third best in the NL) as much as he would have earlier in the season. The Braves bullpen has a 3.51 ERA, sixth in the league and a .229 batting average against, third in the league.
Predictions:
NL West: Arizona
NL Central: Chicago
NL East: Atlanta
Wildcard: Philadelphia
Tags: National League
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