1st—San Francisco Giants: The reigning World Series champs should continue to dominate a pretty weak division. Tim Lincecum had a down year last year, which he is sure to rebound from and the rest of the pitching staff is improving around him. Fitness-heads, rejoice!—formerly fat Pablo Sandoval lost 35 pounds this offseason. Now that the team has the confidence of champions he’ll have a bounce-back year as well. Miguel Tejada will put up another solid late-career year, and Freddy Sanchez will continue to be the most underrated player in baseball.
2nd—Colorado Rockies: One GM said that Troy Tulowitzki was the best player in baseball. He’s wrong, but the Rockies might be pretty good this year if everything goes right. I doubt Carlos Gonzalez will replicate his .335 batting average, 34 homerun and 117 RBI season now that everyone’s seen what he can do, but he is absolutely a franchise player like Tulo. If Todd Helton has one more great year, their hitting might be able to compete with San Francisco’s superior arms. Still Colorado’s pitching isn’t good enough to make the division anything better than “kinda close.” It will be interesting though to see how Ubaldo Jimenez bounces back from a terrible second half of the 2010 season.
3rd—Los Angeles Dodgers: For a little while, the Dodgers were really close to being a force in the division. Then Manny Ramirez faded and left, Russell Martin flamed out, and Clayton Kershaw took a year too long to develop. With a healthy and productive outfield tandem of Matt Kemp and Andre Ethier, they might be on their way back to relevance, but they need another impact hitter. They banked on last year’s World Series hero Juan Uribe to be that solid bat, but his career is winding down. After Kemp, Ethier, and first baseman James Loney all regressed last year, they need bounceback seasons from too many players to challenge for the division crown or the Wild Card.
4th—San Diego Padres: Fans of the Padres had better pray that Matt Latos’s shoulder problems are minor, because years of competitiveness will seem distantly past if he misses significant time with the injury. Last season’s 90 wins will look more and more like an outlier than a sign of things to come, but veteran all-stars like Orlando Hudson and Ryan Ludwick could go a long way in mentoring the team’s youth.
5th—Arizona Diamondbacks: Apparently Manager Kirk Gibson had to ban toys—that’s right, toys—as well as cell phones in the clubhouse this spring because players weren’t taking games seriously enough. When a team gives up on caring about the season before the season, begins the manager has a lot of work to do. Will Justin Upton finally become the fantastic hitter everyone expected? Frankly speaking, it probably wouldn’t make a difference anyway.
