The Wheelhouse Preview: The NL West

With the signs of spring and baseball slowly approaching, The Wheelhouse will be unveiling its MLB division previews over the next couple of weeks leading up to Opening Day on April 5. Today, we begin with the NL West.

The recent signing of Manny Ramirez has apparently handed the Dodgers the NL West title already. I, on the other hand, am operating under the belief that the Manny signing has made the NL West a two-team race and not just a one-team runaway by Arizona.

While most of the attention this season will be on the Dodgers and Manny, the Diamondbacks will be the team quietly getting the job done. And they will be toward the top of the division the entire season because of one of the top pitching staffs in the National League. The D-Backs duo of Brandon Webb and Dan Haren will keep them from any significant losing streak plus the signing of innings-eater Jon Garland will help the staff. And keep an eye out for big-time prospect Max Scherzer, who probably will be limited as the team’s fifth starter, but he’s a future ace and could give the team a boost at the bottom of the rotation. Plus with Chad Qualls, Tony Pena and Jon Rauch coming out of the bullpen in the late innings, this team won’t have to score many runs to win thanks to its solid pitching. This is a good thing for the D-Backs because last year their offense hit just .251, tied for third-worst in the NL with the Nationals and Padres. Yikes. The good news is there’s nowhere to go but up and the young hitters should improve significantly. Justin Upton is a budding star waiting to emerge while OF Chris Young, SS Stephen Drew and 3B Mark Reynolds all are young 20-home run guys that should all improve their game. Arizona tanked late in the season and ended up losing the division to Manny mania and finished 82-80. If the hitting improves even slightly this season, Arizona should easily win 90 plus games.

The Dodgers should be just as good as Arizona this season as they proved last season that they are a different, offensive team with Manny in the lineup. Though the big question mark is what to expect from Manny this year? Will he hit .396 like he did in 53 games for LA last year when he was pissed off at Boston and wanted to show what he could do? Probably not. I expect him to be the down to earth Manny and hit around .300 with 30-40 home runs, but the Dodgers will desperately welcome that. Catcher Russell Martin, outfielders Matt Kemp and Andre Ethier showed last season that they are the new crop of Dodgers baseball. They struggled in the NLCS against the Phillies, but all they did was gain great experience for a very young group of sluggers.

The loss of Derek Lowe to Atlanta will hurt as they lose a solid and consistent pitcher on the staff. But get like the D-Backs, the Dodgers feature some young pitching prospects. Chad Billingsley had a tremendous 2008 season, emerging as one of the best pitchers in the NL while Clayton Kershaw should take a step forward this year after getting a taste of the Majors at a very young age last season. Kershaw is so promising that he’s drawn comparisons to some Hall of Fame southpaw in Sandy Koufax. But after those too, Los Angeles has Hiroki Kuroda, who was pretty efficient (3.73 ERA) in sprawling Dodger Stadium and then free-agent pickups in Randy Wolf and Jason Schmidt. Wolf has always been overrated, and I don’t know what the Dodgers front office saw in Schmidt, who hasn’t pitched in more than a year due to injuries, but I doubt he will have any sort of positive impact for this team in 2009.

Does is really matter who is the next best team in this division? Does anyone care? It might be the Padres or the Giants. Speaking of the Giants, they put off of the young guys for years to keep Bonds around to hit home runs and finish in the bottom of the division and then when they finally make that move to youth, they go out and sign Edgar Renteria and Grandpa Randy Johnson. How does GM Brian Sabean still collect a paycheck from the Giants? He should have been canned years ago when he traded Liriano, Joe Nathan and Boof Bonser for AJ Pierzynski, but I digress. The Giants actually might not be a terrible team this year thanks to a decent rotation, led by reigning NL Cy Young Tim Lincecum. Matt Cain, Jonathan Sanchez and the Big “Old” Unit should put together a formidable staff. And then there’s Barry Zito, who throws a stellar game about once every two months.

The Rockies have a chance to be horrendous after losing their most prolific hitter in Matt Holliday to free agency. And to make matters worse, their top pitcher Jeff Francis probably won’t be ready for opening day from his shoulder injury from last year. I don’t really see the Rockies being around .500 much this season. The Padres won’t be much better. This is a team that went 63-99 in 2008 and I don’t really think this team improves at all. They lost two starting catchers, Khalil Greene and future Hall of Fame closer Trevor Hoffman and they added David Eckstein. Oh boy, look out for the X-factor. He’s not going to turn this team around. Mark Prior is on this roster, which is never a good sign. Jody Gerut and his one knee probably will start in center field. The only thing this team has going for them offensively is if Chase Headley can bust out and join Adrian Gonzalez in a home-run fest. The Padres and Rockies should be competing for the NL West basement all season.

This division has gained a reputation over the past five or so years of being a close, weak division (four different champions in six years) where if you were hovering around .500, you could compete for the division title. That changed last year as the Dodgers and Diamondbacks broke away from the pack down the stretch, and I think the space between them and the rest of the teams will increase this year. This division is a two-team race, and I would be absolutely stunned if Arizona or Los Angeles didn’t end up winning it. I think both of those teams will win 90 plus games and have one of the closest pennant races in the bigs, but ultimately I like the Diamondbacks rotation better and believe it will be the difference late in the season to give Arizona its fifth division title.