NL West: Week in Review (March 31-April 6) « Intentional Blog on Balls

NL West: Week in Review (March 31-April 6)

April 7, 2008 — richardbrianwade

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Rk	Team	Overall W-L	Week W-L	Pythagenport Win %	Trend	Comment
1	Diamondbacks	4-2	4-2	.767		Led offensively by youngsters Chris Young and Justin Upton, the Baby Backs rebounded from a season opening series loss to the Reds to sweep the defending National League Champion Colorado Rockies in Denver over the weekend. Arizona has also benefited from solid starting pitching despite Doug Davis’ upcoming surgery to deal with thyroid cancer and an uninspiring debut from newly acquired ace Dan Haren. Tonight they open a three game series with the Los Angeles Dodgers whom they share the division lead with. Luckily for them they’ll miss L.A.’s top two starters while still throwing one of their own.
2	Dodgers	4-2	4-2	.722		Thanks primarily to outstanding pitching, both from the starting rotation and bullpen, the Dodgers opened the 2008 season with back-to-back series wins against NL West opponents. Their entire starting staff is sporting ERA’s under 3 and the bullpen has only two members with ERA’s in the 3’s. In three appearances, Closer Takashi Saito has allowed no baserunners and converted his lone save opportunity. Offensively, Rafael Furcal, Andre Ethier and James Loney are doing the heavy lifting. Their lineup save Blake DeWitt has no holes when Torre can stop himself from writing own Juan Pierre’s name.
3	Padres	4-3	4-3	.481		The Padres, thanks to a poor offensive showing over the weekend and uneven work from their bullpen, find themselves at 4-3 despite very strong starting pitching in all but one of their seven games. On the positive side of the ledger, Jake Peavy is still in Cy Young form, Scott Hairston has picked up where he left off last season and Heath Bell remains nigh unhittable. This has been mostly off-set by two bullpen collapses (one by Hoffman and another by Thatcher) and an inability to put runs on the board against the Dodgers. They have a good chance to pad their record, though, as they face off against the execrable San Francisco Giants.
4	Giants	1-5	1-5	.135		Barring any extreme circumstances, this is likely the last week we’ll find the San Francisco Giants anywhere other than last place in the West. They only find themselves listed fourth this week because they managed to get their lone win against an intradivision opponent. The Giants sit at 1-5 for two reasons. 1) They can’t hit. 2) Outside of young phenoms Matt Cain and Tim Lincecum, they can’t pitch either. This promises to be a long side for fans of the Giants as even getting to watch Cain and Lincecum will likely be spoiled by insufficient run support to get them the wins they deserve.
5	Rockies	1-5	1-5	.117		The defending NL champs are a better team than they’ve shown this week and are most unlikely to end the season at or even near the bottom of the division. Their lineup is a veritable murderer’s row, yet only Todd Helton has hit thus far. Their starting rotation is also more talented than the early returns would suggest. I’d say that you don’t fluke into the World Series, but hey, they kinda did. Still, they’re better than this and it shouldn’t take long for them to show it.