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NL West Snapshot The NL West has been in an interesting position this year- its quite likely that no division has had as many teams regress (talent-wise) as the home of Bonds and co. The division winning Giants have cut payroll by $10-15 million, waving sayonara to Sidney Ponson, Tim Worrell, Rich Aurillia, Benito Santiago, Andreas Galarraga, Joe Nathan and Jose Cruz Jr - while bringing in Michael "Sabean thinks I'm better than a No 1 pick" Tucker, and Dustin Mohr, in an attempt to collar the highly competitive 5 th OF market. Kirk Reuter's junkballing repertoire seems to have finally met its match, and the "cleanup" surgery that Jason Schmidt underwent is eerily reminiscent of Robb Nen. A.J Pierzynski qualifies as the only significant improvement, and every Giants fan lives in fear at the idea of an opening day lineup with Neifi "El Malo" Perez at SS. More so, Barry Bonds has to get old sometime- and while the thought is terrifying, it is somewhat ridiculous to expect him to have an OPS+ of greater than 230 once again. Outside SF, the outlook isn't much better. Dodgers GM Dan Evans has continued to show the decisiveness and management that makes him a favorite of Giants fans everywhere- the biggest addition to the Dodgers .243/.303/.368 offense this off season is Juan Encarnacion, he of the .313 OBP. Pitching wise, the team traded their best pitcher (Kevin Brown) for Jeff Weaver, whose performance was replacement-level at best. Given the lack of offensive improvement and the likely regression of the pitching staff from its previous level as one of the best of century, the Dodgers seem to have slid backwards as well. The Diamondbacks made significant moves, trading away Curt Schilling and Miguel Batista and using the savings to add Richie Sexson to the offense- a move that appears to be a downgrade - Casey Fossum may be a good bet to succeed in the future, but the odds of him outperforming Batista in 2003 seem remote (to say nothing of Schilling). Given that the two largest contributors to last year's offense (Luis Gonzales and Steve Finley with a VORP of 47.3 and 37.0 respectively) are on the wrong side of 36, an overall decline seems likely. In Colorado , plan # 3455 by Dan O'Dowd on how to win at altitude has been abandoned- somehow, somewhere, the idea of simply acquiring good players has fallen to the wayside. Under pressure to cut the payroll to $55 million, the Rockies biggest acquisitions have been Vinny Castilla and Jeromy Burnitz. Coupled with the brilliant idea of converting their best starting pitcher to a closer, and the Rockies are showing the kind of direction that would make the Mets blush. To some extent, they are a victim of their past excesses- the 6 yr, $75 Million Larry Walker deal and the 5 year, $55 million Denny Neagle deal take up payroll disproportionately to their benefit. That leaves us with one team- the San Diego Padres. While their divisional rivals have regressed, the Padres have improved significantly, and enter 2004 with better pitching, hitting, and perhaps even defense. The Padres 2003 Lineup:
It should be noted that the above is greatly differentiated from what the Padres planned- Phil Nevin injury problems limited him to only 247 PA, and Wiki Gonzales was probably expected to claim the catcher's job over journeyman (in the truest sense of the word) Bennett. To their credit, the Padres have made significant improvements to the 2004 Lineup. A full season of Brian Giles (.299/.427/.514) is a significant improvement over Rondell White- the same can be said of Ramon Hernandez (.273/.331/.458 in a pitcher's park in Oakland ) and Gary Bennett. The ZIPS projection system at Baseball Primer sees Phil Nevin hitting .283/.358./.490 in 2004- which would certainly constitute an improvement over Xavier Nady. At SS, Khalid Green is likely to replace Vasquez in what is likely to be a wash in 2004, given Vasquez' .256 EQA and Green's .237 translated EQA in 2003. The only real downgrade might be Jay Payton replacing Mark Kotsay, both offensively and defensively- Kotsay's VORP and UZR (my offensive and defensive metric of choice) was higher than Payton's, and given the three year age-gap, the difference is likely to increase. Pitching wise, the Padres have made a concentrated effort to improve a staff that was barely replacement level in 2003 (Team VORP of 1.5). Brian Lawrence, Jake Peavy and Adam Eaton are all likely candidates to improve over their 2003 performance and the removal of Kevin Jarvis is a clear example of addition by subtraction. In his place, the Padres signed David "Boomer" Wells- if he stays healthy (no mean feat with a 40 year old contact pitcher, ZIPS projects him for 193 innings with a 3.87 ERA, a 4.98 K/9 ratio and a K/BB ratio of 3.05. In the bullpen, a healthy Trevor Hoffman paired with Japanese import Akinori Otsuka should help improve the epic disaster that was the 2003 bullpen- Baseball Prospectus rates the bullpen as having an ARP of -70.5, making it the worst in baseball by a significant margin, and more help is still required. If Ismael Valdes returns to his 2002 form and Sterling Hitchcock is close to the pitcher he showed in STL (3.79 ERA in 6 starts and 38 innings with a 7.58 K/9, 2.29 K/BB) - the worst pitching staff in the NL could rise from god-awful to "mediocre", a distinction that may be enough in the new look West. In conclusion, the NL West looks like a division up for grabs in 2003. Despite my fondest hopes and dreams, the 2003 Giants were a 93 game winner disguised as a 100 game winner, who are likely to end up at 86-88 wins in 2004. In this division, that might just be enough to pull of an unlikely division title, but the team is one Barry Bonds injury away from 1 st to 4 th . Given the similar regressions of the D-Backs and Dodgers coupled with the dramatic Padre improvements, the only prediction I feel confident in is the continued inconsequentiality of the Rockies, resulting in a potential 5 th place finish. PREDICTED NL WEST STANDINGS:
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©Copyright 2003
Phil Orr
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