AMERICAN

EAST

NEW YORK YANKEES
2006 REC: 97-65
2007 (PROJECTED) 100-62

For all the stick the Yankees get — children have been born, grown, and entered second grade since they last won a championship — they have finished in first place nine straight years and probably will do so again this year. Under Casey Stengel, they never finished in first place more than five straight years. It was more difficult to win a pennant when there was only one in each league, but what Joe Torre’s men have done is more impressive.

I think this will be the best Yankees team since 1998. Excepting the ciphers who will play first base, the worst hitter in the lineup is probably Johnny Damon, a true star. The rotation, fronted by two men who finished in the top 10 in earned run average last year, is strong, and will be still stronger when Philip Hughes, the best pitching prospect in the game, joins on. The bullpen should pass its leads on to Mariano Rivera, as the team is glutted with hard-throwing strikeout artists and experienced situational specialists. Even the defense, not a strength in recent years, should be good; the Yankees are old, but only three teams did a better job of turning balls in play into outs last year. There are no obvious weaknesses anywhere on the club, and they are the best in the game by an order of magnitude, clear favorites to win the World Series.

BOSTON RED SOX
2006 REC: 86-76
2007 (PROJECTED) 91-71

The Red Sox are run by famously smart people who have overthought themselves into stupidity.

None of the injuries that have limited 31-year-old outfielder J.D. Drew to fewer than 500 at-bats in all but one year of his major league career have been chronic, for instance, and when he manages to play baseball he’s pretty good, so the Red Sox slyly signed him to a five-year, $70 million deal. Joel Pineiro strikes a batter out every other inning and has given up two runs per three innings over the last two years, so the Sox craftily signed him to a $4 million deal with the idea of making him their closer. Three-foot-six-inch rookie Dustin Pedroia has played well as a professional, so the Sox have not only committed to him at second base, but haven’t bothered with a backup. Each decision of this type is defensible, but because there are so many of them, the Sox look too clever by three-quarters, and you start to understand how they managed third place last year.

No team with the sublime David Ortiz, the ridiculous Manny Ramirez, and pitching talent like Daisuke Matsuzaka, Jon Papelbon, and Curt Schilling can at all be counted out. I still suspect that this year will show why the Sox would do well to make a new hire for their vaunted brain trust: The stupid guy at the bar who thinks Drew is a bum.

TORONTO BLUE JAYS
2006 REC: 87-75
2007 (PROJECTED) 85-77

Last year, Jays manager John Gibbons challenged one player to a fist fight and boasted about it in the press, and managed a few months later to goad another player into punching him in the face. That’s chump behavior, and Gibbons’s ridiculous posturing has no place in baseball. Only a weak, insecure man gets into fistfights with people who work for him, and no weak, insecure man leads an excellent team unless he’s also a baseball genius. Gibbons is not a genius. Keeping this clown around shows that the Jays are willing to accept something less than excellence, a bad choice in this division.

The pity is that, as last year’s second-place finish showed, Toronto can compete with their muchhyped rivals. Their ace/closer duo of Roy Halladay and B.J. Ryan is the best in the game, and from Vernon Wells and Frank Thomas to Troy Glaus and A.J. Burnett they have plenty of other talent to back them up. Until they get a real manager, though, this team won’t compete for anything but the title of best major league team in Canada.

TAMPA BAY DEVIL RAYS
2006 REC: 61-101
2007 (PROJECTED) 72-90

Toronto isn’t the only team plagued by institutional sickness. The Devil Rays have as much young talent as any team in baseball, and they’re squandering it. Delmon Young and B.J. Upton have each been regarded as the best prospect in baseball at various times. Young is now most famous for attacking an umpire. Upton, who was a major league caliber hitter at 19, is now 22 and still doesn’t have a position; he’s also been tagged for DUI. Elijah Dukes isn’t as talented as these two peers, but he’s a fine prospect when not being suspended for various wrongdoings.

None of this is really under the team’s control. It’s perhaps more to the point that Young and Dukes are outfielders, and Upton seems destined to end up there as well; meanwhile, the team already has two truly excellent young outfielders in the majors, and a few more useful ones. The Devil Rays have enough raw talent that they should be using this year to set up for a playoff run. As is, they’re going to be trying out how to play six or so young outfielders who deserve at-bats, while bemoaning their lack of pitching. The players aren’t to blame.

BALTIMORE ORIOLES
2006 REC: 70-92
2007 (PROJECTED) 68-94

My 2-year-old son is really turning into a ballplayer. He loves to direct me around the room; I have to be the batter, the pitcher, the catcher, and the umpire in turn. When he’s the pitcher, he uses a full, Mike Mussina-type windup, complete with waist dip. He has good arm action and lively movement when throwing the ball, though his control and command will need some concentrated effort. I look forward to living a life of ease in rural Australia, bankrolled by his major league earnings.

Do I expect you, with all respect to young William, to really care about my toddler’s progress as a ballplayer? Not really, but I expect it’s more interesting than the Orioles. Jay Payton? Jaret Wright? Steve Trachsel? This team isn’t even trying. Miguel Tejada deserves to play for a real ball club.

MINNESOTA TWINS
2006 REC: 96-66
2007 (PROJECTED) 93-69

Since I’ve been harshly critical of baseball’s economic policies, it’s only fair to admit that commissioner Selig’s redistributionist fervor has a lot to do with the unexpected rise of the Central as the game’s most contested division. Last year the Indians finished in fourth place, at 78–84, and were probably the equal of any National League team.

Any of four teams could win this division. I pick the Twins because they have truly great players. Johan Santana is the best pitcher in baseball, in the midst of a run on par with Sandy Koufax’s best years. Joe Mauer, a 24-year-old Gold Glovecaliber catcher with a .321 career average, is in my opinion the best position player in the league. Justin Morneau, the defending MVP, is arguably the fourth-best player on the team, depending on how you rate exceptional closer Joe Nathan. The Twins have weaknesses, especially in the rotation, but baseball is about great players, and the Twins are behind no one there. Imagine how good they’d be if they hadn’t released David Ortiz!

CLEVELAND INDIANS
2006 REC: 78-84
2007 (PROJECTED) 92-70

I’m tempted to knock the Indians down just because I always pick them to do great things, and they never do. That would be a mistake, and not just on the principle that you shouldn’t let bad results discourage you from making sound bets. This team came within inches of winning the division two years ago, and last year they were unlucky and playing in the wrong division. Still, the Indians and their famed potential are in danger of shark jumping, and even now it’s worth asking why exactly general manager Mark Shapiro is esteemed as one of the game’s great savants. Is it because he’s young, has a fancy computer system, and reads Baseball Prospectus? The same is true of plenty of Army officers. None of them enjoys renown as baseball executives.

The Indians, despite this carping, are a very good team. Designated hitter Travis Hafner ranks with David Ortiz among the league’s best hitters, center fielder Grady Sizemore is there with Jose Reyes and David Wright in the baseball firmament, and C.C. Sabathia quietly became an ace last year. This is a deep, sound club that lacks only a great reliever, and if everything finally comes together for them this year, they’ll be monstrous.

DETROIT TIGERS
2006 REC: 95-67
2007 (PROJECTED) 85-77

I don’t mean to knock the defending American League champions by picking them third. This division is a three-way coin flip, and as Detroit is probably the deepest and best-managed team of these three, one can certainly argue they’re the best.

The problems with the Tigers are worth noting, though. Some among their best players — Gary Sheffield, Ivan Rodriguez, and Kenny Rogers — aren’t only old, but old enough that they could just fall apart at any time. Others, especially key pitchers Justin Verlander and Joel Zumaya, are very young, and very young pitchers aren’t reliable. The Tigers’ strength is a general absence of bad players, but players the Twins and Indians count on — aside from shortstop Carlos Guillen, who’s been doing an excellent Derek Jeter impression for three years. This isn’t a grave flaw, but it also means they probably don’t have the 100-win potential their competitors do.

CENTRAL

CHICAGO WHITE SOX
2006 REC: 90-72
2007 (PROJECTED) 82-80

This winter the Pale Hose took advantage of the high price of pitching by shipping off reliable starter Freddy Garcia and his heir apparent Brandon McCarthy for a pile of good, cheap pitching prospects. In isolation these were shrewd deals, but they don’t help this year, and the Sox need help, having finished in third place last year despite Jim Thome and Jermaine Dye unexpectedly hitting like David Ortiz and Manny Ramirez all year long. What gives?

The Sox would never admit it, of course, but they’re writing off 2007. This makes sense — likely declines from Thome and Dye would just offset any improvements they made this winter, leaving them a bit short in this division. Why not gear up for another run while fielding a team good enough to win if it catches some breaks? Other teams that have adopted this strategy recently are the famously well-run Athletics and Red Sox. Chicago GM Kenny Williams, by having the guts to not chase a probably futile chance at a flag, is showing why he deserves to be classed with the division’s more famous GMs.

KANSAS CITY ROYALS
2006 REC: 62-100
2007 (PROJECTED) 63-99

The Royals have lost 100 games in four of the last five years, and are thus not to be judged like other ballclubs. Promising new GM Dayton Moore needs to work on issues that take place out of the public eye: Hiring good scouts and minor league instructors, and making sure owner David Glass adheres to his promise that he won’t interfere in Moore’s baseball shop. On the field, the Royals should be respectably bad, which is an improvement. The players to watch are rookie third baseman Alex Gordon, a franchise player who hasn’t yet stepped into a major league batter’s box, and pitcher Zack Greinke, a potential Cy Young winner who’s had more troubles with what are delicately referred to as psychological issues than he’s had with hitters. If those two do well and Moore doesn’t quit in frustration, it will be a good season.

WEST

L.A. ANGELS OF ANAHEIM
2006 REC: 89-73
2007 (PROJECTED) 89-73

Stylistically, the Angels are the most virtuous of all teams. They win with contact hitting, savvy base running, and the well-placed fastball, and they eschew both dull walksand-power sluggers and the mindless overuse of relief pitchers late in games. Manager Mike Scioscia values the ability to play several positions, demonstrates loyalty to players who came up through the minor league system, and fully understands that in 2007 baseball is a bilingual game. For all these reasons and more, the Angels aren’t just a consistently excellent team, but one of the sport’s model franchises. Stalwarts like Vladimir Guerrero, ace John Lackey, and reliever Francisco Rodriguez will be backed this year by full seasons from players like second baseman/future batting champion Howie Kendrick and pitcher Jered Weaver, who went 11–2 in 19 starts last year. Longtime Halos Darin Erstad and Tim Salmon are now gone, but the culture of excellence they helped build should continue to thrive for many years.

OAKLAND ATHLETICS
2006 REC: 93-69
2007 (PROJECTED) 84-78

The plan was sound. The Athletics would hold on to Barry Zito and trade off star pitchers Mark Mulder and Tim Hudson and use the swag build a cheap young rotation. Third baseman Eric Chavez, a superb fielder and disciplined power hitter, and flamethrowing ace Rich Harden, would lead a new crew of young players like closer Huston Street, outfielder Nick Swisher, and shortstop Bobby Crosby, and the ‘s would emerge in 2006 as a tru- elite team, fully the equal of those that fell just short of championships earlier in the decade.

The plan didn’t work. Chavez never really reached his potential, and Crosby and Harden turned out be fragile as bone china. The team finally won a playoff series last year anyway, and even after Zito’s departure, the A’s remain a real threat to win the World Series. This shows that famous GM Billy Beane’s excellence was never the result of sabermetric gimmickry; the competition has caught on to his tricks and a sound plan didn’t go quite right, yet he’s still able to field an excellent club on a comparatively tiny payroll. Maybe new DH Mike Piazza will finally get that ring.

SEATTLE MARINERS
2006 REC: 78-84
2007 (PROJECTED) 78-89

Would it be too much to call this mess the Orioles West? Probably so, but only because they feature two baseball geniuses. Ichiro Suzuki continues to play with dead-ball era elegance in an age of irritatingly cowlike sluggers, and Felix Hernandez is so good he managed to disappoint the world by ranking as one of the two dozen or so best starters in the league while not being old enough to drink. The team is still largely a dreary morass, run with the imagination and energy you’d expect from a bitter turnip farmer. The capital of this team’s better years has been spent, and they need new leadership if they wish to keep whatever credibility they have left.

TEXAS RANGERS
2006 REC: 80-82
2007 (PROJECTED) 72-90

You would think that by now all clubs would have a good understanding of park effects. Not so the Rangers, who play in a bandbox and always think their pitching is bad and their hitting is good. Last year the perpetually pitchingstrapped club traded 26-year-old starter Chris Young to the Padres for 33-year-old reliever Akinori Otsuka. Otsuka was excellent, but Young enjoyed a breakout campaign and is now classed among the National League’s better young starters. Meanwhile the Rangers oddly treat first baseman Mark Teixeira, a good first baseman in the Sean Casey mold, like a franchise player because he hits well at home.

Incidentally, a churl might note that between the five-year $80 million contract extension to which they
just signed shortstop Michael Young and the money they’re contributing toward Alex Rodriguez’s salary, the Rangers will soon be forking out about as much for shortstops as they would have had they simply kept Rodriguez. Young is a fine player, but does that strike anyone, even the lustiest Rodriguez-hater, as a good idea?

PREDICTIONS

DIVISION SERIES
Yankees defeat Angels
Red Sox defeat Twins

CHAMPIONSHIP SERIES
Yankees defeat Red Sox

MOST VALUABLE PLAYER
Joe Mauer, Twins

CY YOUNG AWARD
Johan Santana, Minnesota

ROOKIE OF THE YEAR AWARD
Alex Gordon, Royals

MANAGER OF THE YEAR
Mike Scioscia, Angels

NATIONAL

EAST

NEW YORK METS
2006 REC: 97-65
2007 (PROJECTED) 92-70

I don’t worry about the Mets’ rotation. It wasn’t any good last year, and they won 97 games.

“It was, too good,” you protest. “They won 97 games!” Yes, because of the offense and the bullpen. The rotation ERA was 4.67, while National League starters as a whole, few of whom pitched in parks as spacious as Shea Stadium, were at 4.66.

Further, the Mets finished in first place by 12 games, which is a lot. They have to get a lot worse, and at least one other team will have to get a lot better, for the Mets to lose their spot atop the mountain. Could it happen? Yes. Will it? Probably not. Jose Reyes and David Wright are still improving, and the likes of Jose Lima and Steve Trachsel won’t be kicked around Flushing this year. All this should offset any decline from the likes of Carlos Beltran and Tom Glavine. Mets fans, by nature, are fusspots. This year they needn’t be.

PHILADELPHIA PHILLIES
2006 REC: 85-77
2007 (PROJECTED) 85-77

Someone will have to explain to me why the Mets are supposed to be afraid of the Phillies. Their vaunted six-deep rotation? Nominal no. 2 starter Cole Hamels, though, by pitching 155.1 innings last year, exceeded the total number of innings he’d pitched from 2003 to 2005, while no. 5 starter Adam Eaton is both fragile and really bad. Their menacing lineup? Defending league MVP Ryan Howard and second baseman Chase Utley may be the tops, but they won’t be any better than they were last year, when the Phillies won only 85 games. The bullpen is spotty, the right fielder has hit 8 home runs in 210 career games, the third baseman is a career pinch hitter, etc., etc. They can win, but it will take good luck for them and bad luck for the Metropolitans. I don’t see it.

FLORIDA MARLINS
2006 REC: 78-84
2007 (PROJECTED) 79-83

Elsewhere in this preview I chide the Blue Jays for not taking a strong hand with bum manager John Gibbons. They should be more like the Marlins, who fired the skeevy Joe Girardi twice within a couple of months even though he’s well-respected and ended up winning the Manager of the Year in his first year as skipper. They had good reason. The former Yankees bench coach fraternized with the enemy, ignored the team’s philosophies on how to use pitchers, and carried himself like a colonialist bringing truth and light to a baseball backwater. (One that’s enjoyed more World Series triumphs this decade than the Yankees have, one notes.)

By firing him, the Marlins rightly expressed confidence in their successful system and the men who run it. With their usual assortment of top-tier youngsters, the Fish will be fine even without the onceesteemed Girardi hanging around. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised to see them for the third time win the World Series without winning their division.

ATLANTA BRAVES
2006 REC: 79-83
2007 (PROJECTED) 78-84

The weapons of war have perished!

This team is gaunt. Low budgets and the drying up of their farm system have eaten away their vital matter. Backstop Brian McCann, ace reliever Mike Gonzalez, the Joneseses, John Smoltz, and Tim Hudson are a championshipgrade group, but the team has nothing else. Mets fans can at least kick this dislikable lot when they’re down. From Andruw Jones’s immortal testimony (he once told a court he’d seen two women “doing lesbian action”) to Smoltz’s opinions on gay marriage (“What’s next, marrying an animal?”), this is a crew of yo-yos and scoundrels even by major league standards.

WASHINGTON NATIONALS
2006 REC: 71-91
2007 (PROJECTED) 62-100

The Nationals, who have no pitching at all and just a bit more hitting, will be terrible this year. This should make you happy, not because the team is in any way offensive, but because the stands of RFK Stadium are filled with congressmen, judges, ambassadors, aides, lobbyists, spies, consultants, think tank honchos, pundits, baseball columnists, and other dubious sorts — all who can stand to watch some really bad baseball. They wanted a team that reflected the federal, rather than the local, character of the District, and now they have what they richly deserve.

Mitigating factor: The solons and courtiers get to watch 22-year-old third baseman Ryan Zimmerman, who isn’t the least of a group of young third basemen that stands comparison with the group of shortstops who made their names in the late 1990s.

CENTRAL

MILWAUKEE BREWERS
2006 REC: 75-87
2007 (PROJECTED) 88-74

With this long record of miserable futility behind them, the Brewers might seem a bad choice to be the team of preference among people who want to appear clever, but they’re a good team in a weak division, and there’s a lot to like about them. Not least is the starting rotation. In Chris Capuano, Jeff Suppan, and David Bush, they have three pitchers who can be expected to pitch at least 200 average innings. And if oft-injured ace Ben Sheets actually makes it through a whole season, the Brewers will have perhaps the best rotation in the league.

The offense is strong, too. The Brewers have a solid hitter for every position on the field, most of them very young. Their oldest regulars catcher Johnny Estrada and left fielder Geoff Jenkins, are 31 and 32. Several, especially Prince Fielder and Bill Hall, are on the verge of establishing themselves as stars. This isn’t a great team. The defense is sketchy, the bullpen is thin, and they lack what announcers like to call a “game breaker” in the lineup. Still, the Brewers look more than a bit like the 2005 White Sox and 2006 Tigers in different ways, and I think they’ll follow their Rust Belt peers in making a great leap forward.

CHICAGO CUBS
2006 REC: 66-87
2007 (PROJECTED) 84-78

The Cubs are less a ballclub than an ongoing sitcom. What happens when the team shells out $136 million for Alfonso Soriano without deciding what position they want him to play? Whacky hijinx, of course! Come by Clark and Addison to share in the laughter and love as kooky sidekicks Mark “You idiots blew my arm out!” Prior and Kerry “I trusted you morons with my career!” Wood try to make their comebacks! Enjoy the comedy stylings of new cast member Lou Piniella — gruff on the outside, but a softy at heart, he’s a little bit Lou Grant and a little bit Lee Elia!

Easy as the Cubs are to mock (and these jokers are very easy to mock), the sheer blunt force of their free-spending ways has bought them some respectability. Any team, even one as inclined to run out the banjo-batting likes of Cesar Izturis as the Cubs are, will score some runs when they can send Soriano, Derrek Lee, and Aramis Ramirez out to the plate. And with a true ace in unhinged, long-arming, belt-hitching sinkerballer Carlos Zambrano, the rest of the staff just needs to be passable for the Cubs to compete in an impotent division. If the zany sidekicks actually do anything, the Cubs might even get an opportunity to humiliate themselves in October.

ST. LOUIS CARDINALS
2006 REC: 83-78
2007 (PROJECTED) 82-80

Yes, the Cardinals won the World Series last year. They also finished two games over .500 last year and didn’t improve over the winter. This year, Braden Looper has made the starting rotation. Yes, that Braden Looper, the skullfaced closer who turns every lefthanded hitter into Lou Gehrig. Mets fans bitter over last October are fully justified in taking a moment to savor this.

Tony LaRussa’s men are capable of strongarming the division, but they’ll need a lot to go right. Jim Edmonds will have to play like he’s 30 again; the various prospects, reclamation projects, and converted relievers that comprise the starting rotation will all have to pitch well, and so on. As always, the Cardinals are in a spot where they at least have a chance to win, but this is one year when the alleged best fans in America will probably have to content themselves with memories and the presence of the game’s best player at first base.

CINCINNATI REDS
2006 REC: 80-82
2007 (PREDICTED) 75-87

The Reds are, in all their glory, the quintessential National League team. They finished just 3.5 games out of first place last year, after all. If you squint, you might even mistake them for a team with something on the ball.

The truth is uglier. Last year they drew a royal flush, as (of all people) Bronson Arroyo and Aaron Harang ranked, easily, as the one-two combination in the game. They still didn’t even win as many as they lost. That’s because they’re inept. They started reserve Scott Hatteberg at first base all year. They continued wheeling Ken Griffey Jr., who made late-model Bernie Williams look like Willie Mays, out to center field. Comically, they even have a guy, Adam Dunn, who’s hit at least 40 home runs and drawn 100 walks in each of the last three years and yet is barely an average player, so bad is he at every other phase of the game.

If Arroyo and Harang again pitch like 1999-vintage Maddux and Smoltz and the rest of the team manages to improve by five games or so, the Reds will be in the running. Breath will not be held.

HOUSTON ASTROS
2006 REC: 82-80
2007 (PREDICTED) 74-88

Last year, the Astros’ offense ranked among the worst in baseball. There is no mystery as to why: They couldn’t get anyone on base. Fully half their regular lineup posted on-base percentages that looked like batting averages: Craig Biggio, .306; Adam Everett, .290; Brad Ausmus, .308; Preston Wilson, .309. And they did while playing their home games in a bandbox. Even granting that Everett and Ausmus are truly special defensive players (not necessarily true in the latter case), no team can win with half the lineup making outs this often.

Unfortunately, the litany of shame will continue this year. Everett will be back paying tribute to the memory of Mark Belanger (not a bad thing, it says here), while the ancient Biggio and Ausmus will continue their death marches. Less Roger Clemens (at least one thinks — who really knows?) and Andy Pettitte, and with an expensive fake slugger in Carlos Lee, a more durable but much fatter and slower Cliff Floyd, the Astros have probably run out of ways to forestall gruesome collapse.

PITTSBURGH PIRATES
2006 REC: 67-95
2007 (PREDICTED) 69-93

Many teams are consistently wretched. What distinguishes the Pirates is that they seem to be so intentionally. The Orioles, for instance, are always awful, but a lot of the reason why is that the owner interferes a lot. Everyone in Baltimore wants to win, they just don’t have an organizational setup that allows them to do so.

The Pirates are different. Over the last 14 seasons, all of them losing ones, they not only haven’t drafted any great players with their many high picks, they’ve rarely drafted anyone with the potential to be great, preferring polished college pitchers with good chances of becoming no. 3 starters. For a team like the Twins, with a strong base of great young talent and specific needs, this sort of policy would make sense. For a team like the Pirates, with no real talent base to speak of, it’s insane. Combine this with their general preference for mediocre journeymen over younger players with more potential to be great and more potential to be terrible, and every year has been exactly like the last, another turn of the great wheel of suck. The team has started to build a young rotation that may come to something, but it will take years to undo the damage done by the last decade and a half.

WEST

SAN DIEGO PADRES
2006 REC: 88-74
2007 (PROJECTED) 88-74

It’s hard for a team to win its division two years in a row and get less credit for it than the Padres do. It’s probably fair enough for them to be treated somewhat dismissively; they picked up the first of those division crowns with only 82 wins and tied for the other with 88 wins, so the baseball world can be forgiven for not trembling before the sand-and-aquamarine of the Friars. Still, they’re a solid enough club, with no obvious holes anywhere on the diamond and a notably strong bench. Far worse players than Jose Cruz Jr., and Russell Branyan are starting for contenders. The pitching staff is near equally as solid. Youngsters Jake Peavy (who despite a slight off-year in 2006 remains an ace) and Chris Young are matched by old, old men Greg Maddux and David Wells, neither of whom is done, and the bullpen is the usual eclectic lot of effective junk-heap finds, headed by the ageless Trevor Hoffman.

The Padres are strong in all phases of the game, but they’re also probably the least talented of the division’s top three teams. If all of these teams stay perfectly healthy and play to their best potential, the Padres won’t win. The Dodgers, though, are a bit old to play at their theoretical best, and the Diamondbacks a bit young. The Padres, with an appealing mix of players still in their primes and older players who have aged well, seem most likely to play up to their potential. This is a fine hair to split, though; the three teams are close in talent, and this division should feature the best race in the league.

LOS ANGELES DODGERS
2006 REC: 88-74
2007 (PROJECTED) 85-77

Los Angeles, appropriately, wins the race for name power. From Jason Schmidt and Nomar Garciaparra to Luis Gonzalez and Jeff Kent, they have a lot of famous guys. They even have a lot of good players who aren’t famous, like lategame tandem Jonathan Broxton and Takashi Saito, who between them struck out more than 200 men in about 150 innings last year

This isn’t, despite all the famous names, any sort of superteam. Players like Gonzalez and Juan Pierre might be well known, but they’re well known to be average among people who pay attention. The famous names also leave the Dodgers open to catastrophe; I wouldn’t bet too much on Nomar staying healthy or Kent hitting like a star at 39, and that’s why I give the Padres the nod. If you happen to think that the oldsters will all stay in one piece and that none of them will simply collapse in a pile of dust, this team is as good a pick as any to win the pennant.

ARIZONA DIAMONDBACKS
2006 REC: 76-96
2007 (PROJECTED) 81-81

The Snakes finished 12 games behind both the Padres and the Dodgers in 2006. That’s a lot to make up in one year, especially as neither team regressed over the winter, and in fact both probably improved.

Still, it’s hard not to like what the Diamondbacks have done. Other teams, like the Devil Rays and Dodgers, have had comparable minor league talent over the last few years, but none have done so well at turning minor leaguers into major league starters. At every position save left field and second base the Diamondbacks boast not only a young, homegrown starter, but a pretty good one. Several among them, especially shortstop Stephen Drew and rookie center fielder Chris Young, are near-locks for stardom. The young lineup is balanced by a veteran pitching staff fronted by defending Cy Young winner Brandon Webb, who’s backed by Randy Johnson, Livan Hernandez, and Doug Davis, three of the most durable pitchers in the game. This team is a model of how to build a long-term contender by investing in player development and picking up the right kind of veterans.

SAN FRANCISCO GIANTS
2006 REC: 76-85
2007 (PROJECTED) 79-83

I once read that House Speaker Pelosi’s San Francisco district not only has fewer children per capita than any other district in the country, but that it actually has more dogs than children. It cast some light on the Giants’ novel codger-acquisition strategy. I thought it was odd that the Giants’ youngest starter was 32, but I now see that they don’t want to confront the childless residents of Frisco with young hitters who might remind them of their immortality. Next to Bengie Molina and Rich Aurilia, everyone in the park feels spry! As a way to build a winning team, this isn’t much; I’ll assume it’s a good way to turn a profit at the gate, as the Giants don’t seem to lack for cash.

As to the left fielder, well, Hank Aaron is a great American. Did you know he actually came up as a shortstop? He was a hell of a defensive player by all accounts, and played the odd game at second base as late as 1967, when he was 33. Beyond home runs, he’s third all-time in hits and runs, first in total bases and runs batted in. There is a statue of Aaron in Milwaukee, and I get chills every time I pass it.

COLORADO ROCKIES
2006 REC: 76-86
2007 (PROJECTED) 77-85

For the first time, it almost looks as if the Rockies may have something approximating nearly being close to having maybe figured out a possible solution to the problems faced by pitchers who play their home games in Coors Field. Their no. 1 starter, Aaron Cook, tossed 212.2 innings with a 4.23 ERA last year, and no. 2 man Jeff Francis threw 199 innings with a 4.16 ERA. The solution, it turned, was as simple as, first, having good pitchers, and, second, storing baseballs in a humidifier. This ensured the balls would meet league specifications for weight. Storing them in the dry Colorado air had been turning them into billiard balls. Coloradans waved their rifles and snowboards in the air in delight.

The only problem of course was that the Rockies have been keeping their baseballs in a humidifier for years; people only noticed last year because scoring was temporarily down. Most likely this was just a statistical fluke, perhaps abetted by weather, and even with offense down in Coors, it was still the best hitter’s park in the league.

I predict the Rockies will, again, do nothing. If they managed to juice 600 innings of top-shelf pitching out of their best arms last year and still finished 10 games below .500, they’re never going to do anything. Baseball’s gods are angry and vengeful, they find the pinball played at altitude displeasing, and they will not be appeased.

PREDICTIONS

DIVISION SERIES
Dodgers defeat Phillies in a one–game playoff.
Mets defeat Dodgers, Brewers defeat Padres

CHAMPIONSHIP SERIES
Brewers defeat Mets

MOST VALUABLE PLAYER
Albert Pujols, Cardinals

CY YOUNG AWARD
Jake Peavy, Padres

ROOKIE OF THE YEAR AWARD
Chris Young, Diamondbacks

MANAGER OF THE YEAR AWARD
Ned Yost, Brewers

WORLD SERIES
Yankees defeat Brewers