NL West Update

By The Crank

How fashionable it has been this year to decry the NL West as the weakest division in baseball; fashionable, yet so very accurate. Despite boasting the reigning Cy Young award winner, and a certain gentleman boasting the title of incumbent MVP, the pitcher of a perfect game, and ostensibly the league's best offense, the division is faring very poorly against everybody else.

Here's the division's aggregate record thus far against non-West teams:

Vs East: 36-46
Vs Central: 38-43
Vs. AL: 43-47

NL WEST VS NON NL WEST OPPONENTS: 117-136 (0.462)
The West played the AL East this year for non "rivalry" opponents, catching Tampa Bay during a hot streak, and of course the Giants got red hot Oakland A's. But the Padres got the Royals as their "rivals" among other oddities, so the tepid 43-47 interleague record must be taken appropriately.

The West has three mediocre teams (LA, SF, SD) and two very bad teams (COL, ARI) which the mediocre teams beat up on enough to appear to be better than .500 clubs; they're really .500 clubs if you take away games against Colorado and Arizona.

Which is to say, weakness is so endemic that a team that adds a player, hits a hot streak, or just plain gets lucky among the three contenders will be your likely division winner; which is also to say, while the baseball may not be at its most crisp, the division race is likely to stay interesting.

SAN DIEGO PADRES (46-37, even in All-Important Loss Column) Runs scored: 365 (tied for 11th in NL) Opponents OPS/ERA:.721 (5th) 3.74 (2nd)

Petco Park Opens; Hitters Whine
The Padres' new ballpark appears to be a good venue, if not particularly distinguished among the spate of new parks. One ought to expect a ballpark with favorable dimensions built at sea level just off the ocean in a warm climate to play for a pitcher's park, so it's a mystery why Padres' hitters were so surprised. It's a sign of the times that there was universal bellyaching among the hitters, dependent on inflated stats for their financial renumeration, about how the park played even as the team moved into contention for the first time since their 1998 NL pennant. Chief among the whiners was Ryan Klesko, always a bit of a suspect around the edges in his hitting game, who only managed one homer in two months. That this included road games, where the Padres are hitting respectably, seems to have been lost on Klesko.

The new ballpark was acccompanied by a new look for the Padres, who have dumped the Golden Brown color of overfried McDonalds for a more ocean-like blue. Gone, too, are any reminders in the logo of the California mission theme: a simple outline of home plate surrounding an ocean wave is the somewhat bland replacement.

Trevor Hoffman Returns to Form
After pitching a scant nine innings in 2003 following two off-season shoulder surgeries, some early observers suggested Hoffman, one of the headlining pitchers of the Closer Generation and the Padre of longest tenure now that Tony Gwynn has retired, was close to being done. He'd lost miles off his fastball, he couldn't find any bite to his balls, his location was off across the board. He couldn't get that change-up changing. The early reviews were premature: Trevor's been terrific, converting 22 of 24 save opportunities and approaching, if not quite capturing, his dominating strikeout and opponents' average numbers.

David Wells Heads up the Rotation
In the other celebrated renunciation of the Yankees by a 40-something pitcher, David Wells signed in the off-season with the Padres. Wells reported to spring training, if not exactly svelte, looking better than he has in years, and while his 4-5 win record doesn't show it, he's been excellent. The quality numbers have exceeded by far those of 10-5 Brian Lawrence. Jake Peavy, before an extended DL stint, was showing domination, and reclamation project Ismael Valdez is doing a Kirk Reuter impersonation.

Akinori Otsuka Jukes His Way Through the Eighth
Yet another 32-year old Japanese "rookie" made his way to the majors this year, and Otsuka may quietly turn out to be the best of the lot on the pitching side. A control artist and a dominant reliever for a decade in the JL, Otsuka may have been hired as insurance against a further breakdown by Trevor Hoffman, but with Hoffman's return to form he's lived in the eighth. He's been able to dominate with a surprisingly decent fastball and is doing better than a strikeout per inning and just around a baserunner per inning. Otsuka's presence as a connector for the rotation has been instrumental to the Padres' success thus far. A sideshow has been Otsuka's odd stutter-style delivery in the wind-up, a balk motion if he delivered it with runners on base that has garnered complaints from opposing managers but thus far no censure from the league.

Khalil Greene Arrives
The Padres' top pick in the "Moneyball" draft of 2002 might've been overhyped as an offensive prospect, but is well on his way to establishing himself as the best Padre shortstop since Ozzie Smith was traded away. Greene epitomizes the kind of heads up fundamental baseball the Padres have been playing for the most part, that makes them genuine contenders in a weak division.

LOS ANGELES DODGERS (44-37, even in AILC) Runs Scored: 363 (13th in NL) Opponents OPS/ERA: .721 (6th) / 4.03 (7th)

Gagne's Streak Stopped at 84
Just this past week, Eric Gagne's dominating streak of consecutive save opportunities converted was halted at 84 on a tapper that squeezed between two diving fielders. The Dodgers managed to pull out a victory against the hapless DBacks anyway, and Gagne got back on the old horse with a new streak starting at 1 the following day. Luck certainly helped supplement tremendous talent during this streak, and such luck has buoyed the Dodgers to a virtual tie for the division lead approaching the break.

Alex Cora's Big At-Bat
On May 12, Alex Cora engaged Cub pitcher Matt Clement in an epic 18-pitch battle that ended with Cora launching a game-opening homer into the right field bleachers and sending Clement to the showers. The at-bat was so involved and intense that even veteran broadcaster Vin Scully called it "the best at-bat I've ever seen".

Beltre Steps Up to the Plate, Connects for a Change
The King of Promise Unfulfilled, Adrian Beltre, at the tender (and apparently accurate) age of 25, in his seventh season in the major leagues, is finally having the kind of year predicted for him seemingly since the invention of the horsehide sphere. He's already close to his career year-long highs in HR and RBI, is pacing a healthy .941 OPS, and has committed half the errors he normally does playing an excellent third base. More than anything else, the improved (though still quite tepid) Dodger offense has relied on Beltre to provide the oomph necessary to get to Gagne.

Lima Time -- Again?!?!?
When last spotted, Jose Lima couldn't hold down jobs in the Kansas City and Detroit rotations. That's saying something. Lima wormed his way into a spot in the rotation thanks to injuries to Hideo Nomo and early ineffectiveness by Kaz Ishii (and Wilson Alvarez' inability to sustain five innings an outing). While hardly sporting a great ERA for Dodger Stadium (4.42), Lima's fire and passion have buoyed the team and he's occasionally been the Lima of old.

Odalis' Bad Luck
At the other end of the spectrum, Odalis Perez continues to be the hard luck pitcher of the year. With only four wins to show for it, Perez has been among the league leaders in ERA (2.96), and baserunners (close to 1 per inning pitched). Collapsing middle relief and selectively poor offensive support have conspired to put Odalis off the radar screen in his free agent walk year, and a pre-break bout with tendinitis put him on the DL for the first time.

All Hail Cesar
Cesar Izturis is quietly having a quite decent year for a no-hit 24 year old, pumping his OBP to .329 and stealing a dozen bases before the break. His play at shortstop has been part of a relatively improved defense that's covered for some of the Dodger shortcomings on the mound.

SAN FRANCISCO GIANTS (45-39, -2 AILC) Runs Scored: 430 (4rd in NL) Opponents OPS/ERA: .767 (11th) 4.45 (12th)

Barry Passes Willie, Rickey, God...
Barry Bonds hits home run number 661. Barry Bonds becomes the career walk leader. Barry Bonds scores his 2000th run. Bonds has been passing more milestones than a fast dealer in a game of Mille Bornes, and despite the opposition walking him at a rate that, absurdly, puts him on pace for nearly 250 bases on balls, he's third in the league in homers and battling for the league lead in batting average. Even during an "off" month of May, even the threat of Barry hitting off the bench turned a few games in the Giants' favor. In an odd way, the Giants are playing a new form of little ball based nearly entirely on a threat, and their continued and otherwise inexplicable winning ways in the west have no other explanation other than the lurking presence of the B2 bomber.

The Rubber Chicken Coop
Fans started bringing rubber chickens to the ballpark a few years ago, to wave whenever the opposition issued an intentional pass to Mr. Bonds, and this year the practice has been insitutionalized with a wire running across the right field bleachers. Whenever a pass is issued, another rubber chicken is strung up. This practice is continued for all Giants, so when eighth-place hitter Neifi Perez recently received four wide ones so the opposition could pitch to the pitcher with two outs, a rubber chicken was duly added to the string -- a really skinny, almost anorexic rubber chicken. JT Snow nearly bust a gut laughing on the bench at that one.

Schmidt Recovers -- and how!
Jason Schmidt gutted through serious elbow problems at the end of the year, and it wasn't for lack of trying on his part that the team fell to the Phish in the first round of the playoffs. That's the kind of effort that can ruin an arm -- look no further than Robb Nen, apparently done forever after pitching through pain in the 2002 World Series. Schmidt was started very gingerly, but soon reached peak form and has been unstoppable for two months. A case could be made for him to be the NL ASG starter. Of some concern, Alou has let him accumulate multiple large pitch counts. Not a bright idea for a guy recovering from overwork and surgery, no matter how well he's beeen hurling.

The Hardest Working Bullpen in Showbiz
After Schmidt, the Giants' rotation has been wavering between ugly and awful. Dustin Hermanson, Bret Tomko, and Jerome Williams have vacillated between occasionaly good outings, stints on the DL, and being plain old bad. Kirt Reuter, even when on his corner-painting game, uses so many pitches to work his magic that he's virtually a six-inning man. The near-bottom ERA by a staff anchored by Schmidt and playing in a pitcher's paradise says it all. The net result has been overworking what should be a great bullpen to the point of exhaustion at only the half-way mark. The pen leads the league in both appearances and innings pitched, and of late has started to cough up leads with annoying regularity. The poster boy has been closer-pro-tempore Matt Herges, filling in for the now apparently gone forever Nen. Herges started the year without bite on his curve, but couldn't spend a lot of time in unimportant game situations refining it because he'd been named the stopper in spring training, and Felipe Alou sticks by his guys no matter what. Herges has an outsized 5.00+ ERA for a closer, but 21 saves, four wins, and three losses. The same story can be applied to pretty much every other Giant reliever: all work, no play left in their soup bones.

AJ's Big Yap
AJ Pierzynski started out the year as the Giants' new catcher on many sour notes. A well known yakker as an AL catcher, Pierzynski's volubility tends to endear him to local FoxSports hosts and local advertisers but rubs many teammates and opponent the wrong way. In a classic display of violating the tribal rules -- newcomers must shut up before they are fully accepted -- AJ continued his yapping. Several of the pitchers apparently thought poorly of Pierzynski's pre-game preparation and card-game playing habits, and mention was made in the local press, anonymously. It didn't help that the career .300 hitter started out his stint in a new league in a pitching-friendly park very slowly at the plate. Pierzynski for once clammed up at this trespass of the clan moires, and that seemed to be a turning point for both him and the Giants. The club recovered from an extremely poor start, put on a winning streak, Pierzynski added 30 RBI and 100 points on his average in six weeks, and when he got the right umpire crew rotation, he started getting some calls behind the plate he'd been missing earlier. A catcher is the linchpin of a club, particularly an offensively-gifted one, and as AJ goes I expect so too will go the Giants this year.

COLORADO ROCKIES (33-49, -12 AILC) Runs Scored: 446 (1st in NL) (AWAY: 170 -14th) Opponents OPS/ERA: .857 (16th) 5.96 (16th) (ROAD: .808 - 14th/ 4.97 - 14th)

Walker and Wilson Injured -- What a Shocker!
Larry Walker and Preston Wilson both started the year on the DL (Wilson managed to get in a few games in April, but had actually wrung his knee in spring training), and to the surprise of utterly nobody, spent much of the first half of the season on the DL. Did this keep the Rockies from leading the league in offense, even with a slow start by Todd Helton? Nope! Did their return in late June help the Rockies from a near-league worst road offense? Nooooo! The Rockies can lose without Walker an Wilson just as well as they can lose with them, apparently.

Vinny Castilla Returns
Other than perhaps Dante Bichette, no hitter has made more of Coors than Vinny Castilla. Castilla's OPS in two years at Turner Field was about .700; after three months back at Coors, it's back up to nearly .900. Vinny, to his credit, is no Dante in the field and is holding his own as a third sacker, and the fans love him in Denver, so we won't single him out as the current poster boy for lighter than air offensive inflation. Too easy.

The Four Man Rotation
Manager Clint Hurdle continued the tradition of trying a new flavor of pitching experiment this year by trying out a four-man, short-rest rotation for a while, supplemented by extra bullpen assignments and early hooks around the 80-pitch mark. Tony LaRussa's celebrated experiment with a nine-man rotation of three pitchers starting as an ensemble during the dark days for the A's just before he decamped for Saint Lou-ie were the last serious attempt to rethink the rotation. That experiment failed largely because of the Win rule, wherein the starting pitchers bellyached they'd have no shot at a W while the middle guy would be in line to benefit from their work. In Hurdle's case, the backfiring seems to have come not from the starters so much as the bullpen, which failed its part of the experimental bargain. Hurdle claims the experiment is still alive. The only thing Rockies' management has learned is that it's cheaper to take on other teams' failed reclamation efforts, like Joe Kennedy and Shawn Estes, and pay them next to nothing to pitch badly, than to hire expensive free agents to do the same. Alas for the Rockies fan, they have not yet learned that signing young pitchers in the draft for large sums and sending them to Colorado Springs for acclimation to the altitude isnn't any more effective.

Walker on the Block
Larry was no sooner off the DL than he hit his 2000th career hit, quite an achievement for a walking hospital ward. Walker, of course, when healthy is among the elite hitters of the past decade or more, in or out of Coors, and is rumoured to be left-handed. As such, he's been rumoured to be heading out of Coors every July for the past five years. This year, though, the 10/5 man could actually be on his way, as Rockies' management realizes at long last he has an expiration label on his forehead with a date in the near future, and Walker realizes if he wants a ring it's not going to happen on Mountain Standard Time. The only player who's really established himself as a "Rockie" will be missed -- and soon -- by many disappointed Denverites.

ARIZONA DIAMONDBACKS (30-54, -17 AILC) Runs Scored: 365 (tied for 11th in NL) Opponents OPS/ERA:.784 (13th) 4.97 (15th)

Forty, and Perfect
The big headline for 2004 for the Diamondbacks, of course, was Randy Johnson's perfect game on May 18th in Atlanta. Johnson followed up the achievement with his 4000th career strikeout on June 28, and in general has demonstrated he may be the second pitcher worthy of a multi-year contract at 40. Rumors had Johnson heading to the Yankees, with Yankee owner George Steinbrenner bordering once again on tampering, but the Diamondbacks are so hopeless that Johnson's pretty much their only gate attraction.

Sexson Out for the Season
Virtually the only good middle-career bopper the Diamondbacks have, Richie Sexson, put himself on the DL twice while checking swings. Such is not a good sign, and Sexson opted for season-ending surgery to repair labrum tears. On a club which has thrived on order in its order, and which trade three current starters for the Brewers for Sexson, this seemed to unhinge the team and send it on a downward spiral. A ten-game losing streak spelled a sea change coming, while Sexson looked on each game forlornly spotlighted by Fox Sports Arizona, where the conversation increasingly turned to the weather and golf during broadcasts.

Brenly Fired
Following in the tradition of broadcaster-managers before him from Larry Dierker to Buck Martinez, Bob Brenly discovered failure makes an orphan of the skipper in short order. Brenly was a fairly traditional manager, a player's manager, during his tenure with the DBacks, and it was probably his affable predictability that helped the team over the hump in 2001 to its World's Championship. The Diamondbacks are old, old, old, and need to get younger, and Brenly's no Buck Showalter with young talent. That said, he was probably just the usual sacrificial goat to Garagiola, Jr. and Colangelo's big-ticket style of management, which almost never works, the 2001 season notwithstanding. Brenly's departure may well be followed by that of Steve Finley and Luis Gonzalez, as the Diamondbacks make way for a number of decent young players in their system. One bright spot has been the emergence of Chad Tracy as the everyday third baseman. This well-thought of prospect made his major league debut in Milwaukee in May on short notice, and his Mom was lucky enough to be in Chicago on business at the time so was able to drive up to see him play and go 3 for 6. This particular debut sticks out in one's mind with this image: Mom scoring every play, and only stopping to cheer her son after the play had been recorded on the scorecard. Now that's a great mom.

Closer Rotation
In the space of less than two weeks, the Diamondbacks seemingly had five different closers named or rumoured. Matt Mantei never returned to full effectiveness, and replacement Jose Valverde struggled at times before succumbing to injury. The great roulette wheel kept spinning before landing, at least temporarily, on the head of Ivy leaguer Mike Koplove. It was a perfect illustration of how pointless having a named closer was when neither the starting rotation (after Johnson) nor the middle relief corps can get anybody out. Without Johnson, the club certainly would be among the utter worst in the majors, and all the hue and cry over the closer's job is surely signifying nothing but that ashes will be aplenty before there's a new day rising for Phoenix.