During the last 15 years, and especially during the last five, central baseball policy has made it easier for a bad team to be good, and more difficult for a good team to be great.

Successive collective bargaining agreements have entrenched a redistributionist tax scheme; slotting in the amateur draft has discouraged rich teams from buying up the best amateur talent; the equal split of online revenues has left some teams with more money than they can spend, and the advent of the wild card has made playoff spots cheap and plentiful. These policies have worked: Only nine teams haven’t played in October this decade, and only one team has won more than one World Series.

Right now, all a team needs to compete is creative intelligence. This may be a good thing in the abstract, but it doesn’t necessarily translate into great baseball: The National League this year essentially comprises the Mets, seven rebuilding or badly run teams with little hope of a playoff spot and little need to worry that they’ll truly embarrass themselves, and eight 85-win teams.

Just as a function of random variance, some of these teams will make the glorious rush to 91 wins that no National League team managed last year, and some will end up struggling to break 80 wins. Any of these teams could be this year’s Colorado Rockies; any of them could just as easily list through the season doing nothing especially interesting. Which will be which is anyone’s guess, but there are at least signs to look for as the spring training returns come in.

In the National League East, the Mets’ main competition will be Atlanta and Philadelphia. The defending division champion Phillies are a known quantity; as long as their three MVP-caliber players are healthy, they should be fine. Atlanta is the more interesting team. John Smoltz and Tim Hudson are the best one-two in the league and each infielder, including catcher Brian McCann, should be among the better hitters in the league at his position. Their problem is their mystery outfield, as there’s no way to tell what to expect from it. Matt Diaz is a merely decent hitter by left-field standards even when hitting .338, as he did last year; he won’t hit .338 again, but can he manage .320? Will right fielder Jeff Francoeur, formerly an object of mockery for his free-swinging ways, break out as a star after managing to draw a walk every fourth game last year? Will Mark Kotsay continue to bear an unnatural resemblance to oft-injured hustling center fielder Darin Erstad? These are the questions on which their season rests.

In the National League Central, the whole game is between Chicago, which doesn’t have a closer, and Milwaukee, which doesn’t have a defense. The Cubs, like the Phillies, are going with a modestly improved version of last year’s division winner, which makes good sense; their biggest issue is seeing whether or not Kerry Wood can adapt to the closer’s role. The Brewers have a more interesting problem—a surfeit of infielders who can’t field at all. Ryan Braun and Corey Hart, who came up as third basemen, are both true butchers, and both will seemingly end up in the outfield, with Bill Hall, a shortstop, at third, and Rickie Weeks, another butcher, at second base. Spectators will likely be amused; Brewers pitchers will likely not.

In the National League West, parity (or mediocrity) reaches its apotheosis, as four all but indistinguishable teams will vie for the crown. Last year, Colorado and Arizona each won 90, San Diego won 89, and Los Angeles had a colorable case for being the best of the lot. Colorado is a very good young team and boasts Troy Tulowitzki, who may be better than any of the East’s vaunted shortstops; their issues mostly revolve around the comings and goings of their starters’ marginal stuff. San Diego’s worries revolve around an outfield that features Jim Edmonds and Brian Giles, better fits for a contender in 1998 than they are in 2008.

The power in the division, though, probably rests with Arizona and Los Angeles, in each case because of an embarrassment of young hitters. Arizona made the playoffs last year despite shortstop Stephen Drew, 25, and center fielder Chris Young, 24, posting on-base averages of, respectively, .313 and .295. If those two and 20-year-old prodigy Justin Upton hit, this team could be ridiculously good. But you can lose a lot of money betting on young hitters. Los Angeles is the biggest question mark of all, simply because it’s not clear that new manager Joe Torre will play his best players. It isn’t obvious why anyone would think about giving Nomar Garciaparra playing time at the infield corners with Andy LaRoche and James Loney on the roster, or starting Juan Pierre in an outfield spot at all, but this is where the team is. In the Bronx, Torre proved that he was quite good at breaking in young players, and that he could be quite reluctant to do so. In a league where some of the talent gaps can be measured in inches, that kind of reluctance could lead a team a lot closer to 80 wins than to 90.

tmarchman@nysun.com