2007 National League West Preview:

Two years ago the National League West was baseball’s laughing stock division; won by the 82-80 San Diego Padres. Last season it wasn’t a lot better, but it improved enough (and the rest of the league regressed enough) that with two 88 win teams, the West sent two teams to the postseason. While the Padres claimed their second straight division title, and the Dodgers claimed the Wild Card, the rest of the division each finished with 76 wins. This marked great improvement for the young, but suddenly relevant Colorado Rockies, mild disappointment for the equally young Arizona Diamondbacks, and great disappointment for the circus show that is the Barry Bonds led San Francisco Giants. Giant GM Brain Sabean once looked like one of the best in the business, but an over reliance on ageing (crystallized?) talent has produced only 151 wins in the past two seasons. In an attempt to jump start his team back to the top --- and to set up its post Bonds identity --- Sabean spent big money this off-season, dropping 126 million bones into the lap of Oakland’s Barry Zito. A championship this year, before Bonds rides off into the post-756 sunset would surely justify all those (including this scribe) who questioned the dollars, but in five, six and seven years time it may be money the Giants (although probably not Sabean himself) will be regretting.

The Giants real coup might have been stealing Padres manager Bruce Bochy, who, despite two straight division titles, was deemed expendable by the Padres. In an interesting move, the Padres tapped Anaheim pitching coach Bud Black to be their manager. While pitching coaches are highly regarded and hugely important, they have historically made for poor managers, the knowledge of pitching seeming to be centralized and somewhat incompatible with the rest of the game. It’s the reason that despite incredible coaching careers, neither Leo Mazzone nor Dave Duncan have ever been given serious consideration for a managerial position. Black has been seen as a top managerial candidate for several years, but the failure of previous pitching coach turned managers has kept the top job from him. It’s appropriate that an NL West team would align themselves with a pitching coach, because top to bottom the West has the best pitching staffs in baseball --- a division which was so dreadful two years ago, has re-gained credibility on the strength of its arms. Reigning NL Cy Young winner Brandon Webb headlines a division that has 11 Cy Young awards, nine twenty game winners, ten players to have posted the lowest ERA in their league, and another eleven who have led their league in innings pitched. There are old timers Greg Maddux and Randy Johnson, and there are youngster like Chad Billingsley and Matt Cain. In between them are perennial Cy candidates in their prime, Webb and Jake Peavy. So who has the biggest arms? Or in a division of strong pitching, does it really come down to who has the biggest bats? There’s really only one thing to do, so lets break ‘em down:

Arizona Diamondbacks (76-86 Last Year)

Projected Win Range: 88-92
Best Player: Stephen Drew – The younger brother of star crossed Red Sox outfielder, J.D. Drew, Stephen is a slick fielding, big bat wielding shortstop who enters his second season ready to lead the D-Backs from the field and the top of the order.
Best Pitcher: Brandon Webb – When Randy Johnson left Arizona for the Yankees, Webb was the future of the D-Backs pitching staff, a young sinkerballer who showed considerable promise, but had just lost 16 games. Two years later he returns to find that the 27 year old is all grown up, and the leader of what was once Randy’s rotation.
Best Kid: Chris Young – The Diamondbacks have done an excellent job of clearing out the decrepit wood from their lineup to free the way for the precocious talent in their farm system. Young offers gold glove caliber coverage in center, while showing 30-30 promise at the plate. He’ll start the season at the back end of the lineup, but don’t be surprised to see him batting second by season’s end.
Impact Offseason Move: Bringing back the Big Unit for Luis Vizcaino and three prospects, will help solidify the D-Backs rotation. For all the histrionics from the NY media about Johnson, he still lead the Yanks in both wins and innings pitched over his two year stint. A return to the friendlier NL West, will help his homers and make his ERA prettier.
Questionable Offseason Move: None, I have nothing to quibble about…
Bottom Line: After two years of stripping away the payroll bloating dead wood of their championship years, the Diamondbacks made only two moves of note in an otherwise quiet offseason. By adding the mercurial Johnson and sending former all star catcher, Johnny Estrada to Milwaukee for right handed starter Doug Davis, the D-Backs added a pair of inning eating hurlers, to solidify a rotation that now boasts four players who started opening day for their respective teams last year. While the pitching staff is now loaded with grizzled veterans, the lineup will contain only three regulars 26 or older (left fielder Eric Byrnes, 31, second baseman Orlando Hudson, 29, and third baseman Chad Tracy, 26). Youngsters Drew (24), Young (22), right fielder Carlos Quentin (23), first baseman Connor Jackson (24), and catcher Miguel Montero (22) will have to show incredible maturity for this team to fulfill its promise. They might still be a year away, but I think management’s faith in the youth --- and avoidance of overpriced, production declining veterans --- will show benefits with a division title in 2007.

Los Angeles Dodgers (88-74)

Projected Win Range: 88-92
Best Player: Rafael Furcal – The all star shortstop might not be worth the 13 million a year salary he commanded on the open market last year, but his first season with the Dodgers was a success. A smooth fielder, Furcal showed the requisite patience at the plate (73 walks) to be a top leadoff hitter.
Best Pitcher: Derek Lowe – Being underappreciated in two of baseball’s largest (and most ferocious) markets is fairly impressive. In the five years since the Red Sox turned Lowe from closer to starter, he has gone 80-50, with only one season below 200 innings pitched. His two season’s in LA have seen nearly identical 3.61 and 3.63 ERAs, with solid 1.25 and 1.26 Walk, Hits, per Inning Pitched (WHIP).
Best Kid: Andy LaRoche – If the 23 year old third baseman doesn’t win the job in Spring training, expect him to knock the leather off the ball in triple A, earning himself a mid summer call up to the big club. LaRoche isn’t the top third base prospect in the minors (that would be Kansas City’s Alex Gordon), but he could stake a claim to being the second. A claim fully supported by 19 home runs in slightly more than 400 minor league at bats last year, and an impressive .950 OPS in AAA.
Impact Offseason Move: Signing Jason Schmidt for a very reasonable 47 million over three years.
Questionable Offseason Move: Effectively blocking the path of centerfielder Matt Kemp to the majors, by giving the immensely overrated Juan Pierre 44 million over 5 years.
Bottom Line: In a division where that seems to be split between incredibly youthful teams (Arizona and Colorado) and lumbering old timers (San Francisco and San Diego), the Dodger seem to straddle the fence, maintaining a perennially top rated farm system (five straight years among the top five), while committing money to veterans on the wrong side of their career slope (Pierre, Luis Gonzalez, and Nomar Garciapara). Still, adding Schmidt means the Dodgers have the best rotation in the National League, with two lights out left handers making a rapid climb of the organizations farm team. The rotation figures to help keep the team in games while they figure out whether the team is better off with the kids (LaRoche, Kemp, James Loney) or the vets (see above) hitting. One thing’s for sure, if 38 year Jeff Kent remains the team’s most consistent power source, then the pitchers will have to be too lights out, too often.

Colorado Rockies (76-86)

Projected Win Range: 79-83
Best Player: Garret Atkins – Underrated amongst the game’s top young third basemen, Atkins had a .965 OPS last year while driving in 120 runs.
Best Pitcher: Jeff Francis – I don’t put Francis here simply because he was born on the right side of the border (although it obviously doesn’t hurt), but because as he enters his third season, Francis is the leader of the Rockies young rotation.
Best Kid: Troy Tulowitzki – Last September Tulowitzki claimed the starting shortstop role from the dear moving Clint Barmes, eventually he’ll be a middle of the order run producer and club house leader.
Impact Offseason Move: Trading number three starter, and impending free agent, Jason Jennings to Houston for centerfielder Willy Taveras, and right handed pitchers Taylor Buchholz and Jason Hirsh.
Questionable Offseason Move: Not finalizing a deal with the Red Sox for ageing, over priced first baseman Todd Helton, while it would have been hard to severe ties with the face of the franchise, getting Helton’s contract off the books would have been massively beneficial for the fiscally tight franchise.
Bottom Line: The Rockies were rotten for so long that nobody really noticed them last season, but their run differential was that of a .500 team. Gone are the days of the albatross contract, particularly amongst the pitching staff. High priced veteran pitchers have been replaced by youngsters bred in the thin air of Coors. The difference is an appreciable improvement amongst the hurlers, their 4.66 team ERA was the lowest in franchise history and the first time since 1995 that Rockies pitchers kept their collective ERA below five. They still aren’t lights out, but Rockies’ pitchers are now conditioned to keep the ball low, thus limiting fly balls, and the damage of the thin air. The hurlers don’t need to be lights out, because once again the Rockies can mash. With Taveras now creating havoc at the top of lineup, the Rockies should score a lot of runs. Atkins and left fielder Matt Holiday form a formidable middle of the lineup, and while Helton is declining, he still gets on base with the best of them. Winning 80 games for the first time since 2000 is a reasonable goal for the Rockies, an achievement that should only be a stepping stone to greater success in the next few years.

San Diego Padres (88-74)

Projected Win Range: 78-82
Best Player: Adrian Gonzalez – While Gonzalez will never develop into a top flight Alex Rodriguez type hitter, he has done enough to justify his place as the first pick in the 2001 draft. A gold glove first baseman, who should provide a Bernie Williams type presence in the middle of the Padres lineup.
Best Pitcher: Jake Peavy – Peavy’s numbers last year don’t look good, an 11-14 record and 4.09 ERA certainly aren’t what you’d expect from a Cy Young candidate, but as lame as it sounds, the right handed flame thrower was actually extremely unlucky, expect his numbers to return to normal this year.
Best Kid: Kevin Kouzmanoff – The Padres desperately needed a third baseman and thought enough about the bat of the young Kouzmanoff to give up on talented young second baseman, Josh Barfield.
Impact Offseason Move: I questioned the move at the time, but if Kouzmanoff can deliver at the plate, then this deal could be one of those proverbial “worked for both teams.”
Questionable Offseason Move: I’m not wild about giving the fifth rotation spot to David “Boomer” Wells, but probably the Padres worst move was not finding another hitter for their lineup.
Bottom Line: After a second straight division title, the Padres said goodbye to manager Bruce Bochy and one year catcher Mike Piazza. While Piazza was far from his prime, the Padres found nobody to take his place in the middle of the lineup. Their offence finished fourteenth last year, and there is little chance of it improving by itself. The Padres farm system is largely vacant, so they aren’t likely to get a big bat from the minors. That’s why ace set-up man Scott Linebrink woke every morning to see his name in the trade rumor portion of the paper. What the Padres still have is great pitching. Peavy leads a staff that added all time great Greg Maddux, who wont pitch more than six innings an outing, but is still a model of consistency. Maddux’s presence should pay positive dividends with Peavy and youngsters Chris Young and Clay Hensley. For a third straight title, the Padres pitching will have to carry an even larger load than last year, when their 3.87 team ERA was the best in the league. That’s a lot to ask for a second straight season and I don’t see it playing out well.

San Francisco Giants (76-85)

Projected Win Range: 74-78
Best Player: Barry Bonds – Once again, the Elephant is the single most important player for the Giants. For them to have any chance of making the playoffs, Bonds’ bat will have to be in the Giants’ lineup in 130 games.
Best Pitcher: Barry Zito – Zito had better be the Giants best pitcher for this season at least, because, giant contract or not, he probably wont be for much longer.
Best Kid: Tim Linecum – The young right hander has made a meteoric rise up the Giants system, he’ll probably start the year in AAA, but if something should happen to Armando Benitez, I certainly wouldn’t be surprised to see Linecum have a Jonathon Papelbon type impact for the Giants.
Impact Offseason Move: Oh, it’s hard to have a bigger impact than dropping 125 million in the lap of somebody, but…
Questionable Offseason Move: Why give Zito 125 million, when you could have retained the more effective Schmidt for a third the price, and four fewer years?
Bottom Line: Just as the D-Backs are incredibly young, the Giants are likewise old. They gave Zito a big chunk of change, in hopes of creating a positive post-Bonds identity, but in this --- presumably the final year of Barry --- their lineup averages 35 years old. That’s a lot of mileage on the legs of hitters one through eight. Unlike the Dodgers, the Giants don’t have any young options to bring up should shortstop Omar Vizquel succumb to being 40. Despite the presence of Zito, the pitching staff looks shaky, with a lot depending on the production of Noah Lowry and Matt Cain. Can the Giants make a summer run? Well, I’d never say never, but I think we’re two years removed from Bonds being able to carry this team on his artificially inflated head, and general manager Brian Sabean has been unable, or unwilling, to surround the ageing Barry with fresh legs. I’d be more surprised to see the Giants finish .500, than to see them fail to win 70. Their projected win total comes somewhere in the middle of that, on the outside of the playoffs looking in.