Monday, March 28, 2011

Off Base NL West Preview

Offbase editors Derwood Morris and MTD haven't had much luck previewing things lately-MTD incorrectly predicted Gary Discarcina would come out of retirement to help the Angels win the 2009 World Series and Derwood thought Teen Wolf 3 would be the 2010 summer blockbuster. But here are division previews anyway.

In this post, I look at the NL West. The West is of course home to the defending strikeout kings of baseball, the Arizona Diamondbacks. And some team that won some series.

San Fransisco (2010: 92-70)
The Giants just barely got past the Padres to make the playoffs. Once they got into the postseason, Cody Ross homered them to the World Series Championship. Tim Lincecum, Matt Cain and Brian Wilson also contributed. The Giants return just about everybody except they swapped out a couple of old short stops. They'll get a full season from blog favorite and 2010 NL ROY Buster Posey. Perhaps the Giants learned their lesson by almost missing the playoffs and won't mess around this season with top prospect Brandon Belt's service time. Pablo Sandoval reportedly lost 300 pounds after cutting entire deep fried pigs out of his diet and looks to rebound from a poor 2010 season. And hopefully, we'll get more of this...



Obviously, I mean Brian Wilson and not George Lopez who I'm trying to get deported for crimes against comedy.

Colorado (83-79)
The Rox rewarded their young stars by locking up Troy Tulowitzki and Carlos Gonzalez to monster contracts. CarGo displayed some uncanny home/road splits in 2010 to the tune of .380/.425/.737 and .289/.322/.453 but those home stats still count. Tulo is a fantastic player by all accounts but hasn't displayed a knack for staying healthy. But I'm not on the hook for any of that cash so the next few years look like pretty good deals. PECOTA thinks Ubaldo Jiminez comes back down to his 2009 stats but a tad worse and I'm inclined to believe that based on my scientific whimsy.

Los Angeles (80-82)
I think the Dodgers have a better rotation than the Rockies but they did let Russell Martin walk just when it looked like he was poised to give Jeff Mathis some competition for most incompetent LA catcher at the plate. So Mathis can go ahead and get that 2011 acceptance speech ready. Matt Kemp should have a better season unless having dated Rihanna turns out to be some kind of career killer. Which is why I have rejected her many advances. You know, for the sake of the blog.

San Diego (90-72)
I hear the weather is nice. And a zoo, right? So, that's cool.

Arizona (65-97)
The Diamondbacks struck out an impressive 1,529 times last year. The Marlins were the next closest with 1,375. The D-Backs shipped off Mark Reynolds who struck out over 200 times for the past three season in an effort to make me stop watching them altogether. Good job, Arizona. You just became less interesting.

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