2005 NL Central Predictions
Team, 2004 Record, 2004 RS/RA, 2004 Expected Record
Cardinals, 105-57, 855 RS/659 RA, Ex W-L: 102-60
Cubs, 89-73, 789 RS/665 RA, Ex W-L: 95-67
Astros, 92-70, 803 RS/698 RA, Ex W-L: 92-70
Pirates, 72-89, 680 RS/744 RA, Ex W-L: 74-88
Reds: 76-86, 750 RS/907 RA, Ex W-L: 66-96
Brewers: 67-94, 634 RS/757 RA, Ex W-L: 67-95
As much as I would love to predict the demise of the St. Louis Cardinals, I'm afraid I will have to do just the opposite: The Cardinals were the best team in the National League last year, allowing the fewest runs and scoring the most. The good news for Cub fans is that they won't be as good as last year; Chris Carpenter pitched way over his head last year, there are always questions about Matt Morris' health, and there are questions about Mark Mulder's consistency. However, if you look at Mark Mulder as a replacement for Woody Williams, it's reasonable to expect that the pitching staff will be just about as good as it was last year. The bullpen, one of the best in the league, remains largely intact, but they did lose Steve "We're Number One" Kline to Baltimore. David Eckstein represents a major defensive downgrade for a pitching staff that doesn't strike a lot of guys out. Still, with an offensive core that will bring four 1.000 OPS-caliber hitters to the plate every day, the Cardinals won't need much more than league average starting pitching. Barring crippling injuries to two or three of their Big Four (Pujols, Rolen, Edmonds, Walker), the Cardinals will win 92-98 games and remain the best team in the NL.
The success of the Chicago Cubs depends on a lot of "if/then" scenarios. If Mark Prior and Kerry Wood make 30 starts each, then the Cubs will have the best starting rotation in Major League Baseball. If Nomar Garciaparra stays healthy for 150+ games and Dusty Baker lets Todd Walker play every day, the Cubs might have the best offensive infield in all of baseball. If Corey Patterson can learn to stop chasing face-high fastballs, then the Cubs might have an actual leadoff man. If Dusty Baker starts Jason Dubois instead of Todd Hollandsworth, who will get hurt, the Cubs would have a pretty strong bench. Those are all really big ifs. But even if none of those ifs come true, the Cubs are still easily the second-best team in this division, with a depleted Houston Astros team and a soft underbelly in the division's second tier. With the losses of Sammy Sosa and Moises Alou, their offense has gotten worse, but with full years from Prior and Wood, the pitching staff could be better. The question for the Cubs is, will their new "more balanced" offense be able to score runs with more consistency than the feast-or-famine offense of 2004? Time will tell, but the answer is probably no. The reason the Cubs didn't score runs with consistency last year wasn't because they were dependent on the home run; it was because they never had men on base when they did hit the home run. The Cubs finished 11th in the National League in on-base percentage last year. All four 2004 NL playoff teams finished in the top half of the league in OBP. The Cubs organization has not shown much interest in investing in players with on-base skills, has not shown any interest in trying to teach on-base skills to their minor leaguers, and Dusty Baker certainly isn't going to start preaching the virtues of Moneyball anytime soon. That said, the Cubs should be a slightly better on-base team this year with (theoretically) full years from Todd Walker and Nomar Garciaparra. While their infield defense will likely remain average to slightly below average, the Cubs outfield defense has improved drastically by replacing Alou and Sosa with Hollandsworth/Dubois and Burnitz, respectively. The bottom line with the Cubs is, there's no reason to believe that they will be any better than they were last year. However, the National League Central isn't as competitive as it was last year, so the Cubs should have enough to win 84 to 90 games, which will be enough to compete for the wild card, especially if Hendry is dealing at the deadline.
The Houston Astros will not have enough to compete this year, and it's mostly because they weren't able to retain Carlos Beltran. The good news first: Roger Clemens returns for yet another season, which immediately gives the Astros fifteen wins that they wouldn't have had if Clemens had retired. Roy Oswalt is a stud, and is heading into his age 27 season. That's about it. Now the bad news: The Astros didn't make any moves this offseason, mostly because they are paying Clemens $80 bajillion this coming season and because they are on the books for 37 year-old Jeff Bagwell's albatross of a contract (he will be paid $17 million this year). The Astros aren't quite sure to do with Craig Biggio; they seem to understand that he is an awful, awful outfielder, so they have moved him back to second base to get Mike Lamb some at-bats in left. The good news is that this will probably open up center field for the Astros promising young prospect, Willy Tavarez, at least until Lance Berkman gets back from his injury. The bad news is that Biggio's return to 2B will block Chris Burke from getting the job. Burke is 25 and a .300/.380/.450 hitter in the minors, so now is the time to promote him. This will stifle the Astros offense, as 39 year-old Biggio's numbers will continue to drop as he ages. Biggio's .806 OPS last season looks fluky - it was the first time since 2001 he'd posted an OPS higher than .800, and it looks like he was greatly aided by a hitter-friendly home ballpark (.831 at home, .781 on the road). More bad news for the Astros: Andy Pettite isn't nearly as good of a pitcher as they think he is. Pettite's a nice pitcher, but he's no ace. His ERAs have fluctuated wildly in his career due to his unspectacular strikeout rate (6.5 K/9 for his career). Last year, Pettite seemed to learn that he would need to strike more batters out after playing his entire career in a park friendly to left-handed pitchers, as his K rate increased to the highest in his career, 8.57 per 9 innings. We will never know if that was what caused his world famous "barky" elbow to act up, as he made only 15 starts. Even if the Astros get a full season from Pettite, he's basically a slightly better than average pitcher. The Astros have a lot of empty spaces in their bullpen, on their bench, and if they continue to let Biggio play every day, at second base. If Clemens and Pettite are healthy, the Astros will be good enough to win 82-86 games, but they won't have the offense to stick around for the playoff hunt. With aging players at catcher, first base, second base and in the rotation, and big bullpen and bench questions, don't be surprised if the Astros collapse this year.
The second tier of the NL Central contains three teams that do not have a prayer to contend this year. It may surprise some of you to see me predicting the Pittsburgh Pirates finishing fourth, but the Pirates have many players that we should reasonably expect to improve this year. Jason Bay, last year's Rookie of the Year winner, will be 26 is heading into his prime. Craig Wilson, 28, and Jack Wilson, 27, both performed well last year in a park that is unfriendly to right-handed hitters. Oliver Perez is just 23 and struck out 10.97 hitters per 9 innings last year. Kip Wells and Josh Fogg are both league average pitchers who are 27 and 28 respectively, so they could both improve as well. The bad news for Pirates fans is that the Bucs don't have much promise in the pipeline. What they have should be enough for them to win 72-78 games this year and claim first place in the NL Central's Tier of Mediocrity.
I don't think people realize how truly lucky the Cincinnati Reds were last season. The Red were the luckiest team in the National League, winning 10 games more than their Runs Scored to Allowed Ratio would have expected them to. The Reds pitching staff allowed a whopping 907 runs, the second-worst mark in all of major league baseball. The only teams that allowed more than 900 runs last year were the Rockies (923), the Reds (907) and the Royals. The Reds were the only team out of those three not to lose 90 games, and they came pretty close, at 86. The Reds recognized that they had a problem with their pitching, so they went out and got Eric Milton to bolster the rotation and Kent Mercker and David Weathers to bolster the bullpen. However, at the same time the Reds addressed their pitching problems, they ignored them. The Reds gave up 236 homers last year, the most in the National League; shockingly, they gave up more home runs than the Rockies. Jose Acevedo gave up 30. Paul Wilson and Aaron Harang both gave up 26. Eric Milton, the man who would save the Reds rotation, gave up 43 homers last year with the Phillies, the most in the National League. Meanwhile, the Reds keep praying that Ken Griffey Jr. and Austin Kearns will stay healthy an entire season so that the Reds can bob their heads above the .500 level. Griffey's never going to be healthy for a full season again, and there's little reason to believe that Kearns will be either. The good news for the Reds is that they have Willy Mo Pena to back them up, who is a good power threat if little else. With an awful, home run prone pitching staff in a home run prone ballpark, the Reds are going to allow a lot of runs, maybe just as many as last year. It's going to be a long summer in Cincinnati as the Reds starters give up home run after home run, the bullpen gets worn out quickly, and the Reds win 68-72 games.
The Milwaukee Brewers' success won't come this year, but make no mistake, if the Brewers can retain Ben Sheets, they will be a pretty good team in 2006. By then they will have a rotation that inculdes Ben Sheets, Doug Davis (3.39 ERA, 7.21 K/9 ratio last year) and highly touted prospect Jose Capellan, who will be 25 in '06, and a lineup that will include Carlos Lee, Geoff Jenkins, Lyle Overbay, and youngsters Rickie Weeks, J.J. Hardy and Prince Fielder, all of whom have put up monster numbers at their positions in the minor leagues.
With the possible exception of Hardy, all of those guys will start the season in the minors, which means Brewers fans will suffer through another long summer in Milwaukee. While Carlos Lee will help the outfield production, 31 year-old Brady Clark's .280/.385/.397 season looks very fluky compared to his career numbers of .267/.353/.389, and he is slated to start in center field. Geoff Jenkins is what he is: a good bet for an .800 to .850 OPS and an even better bet to land on the DL. With the exception of Lyle Overbay, the infield looks awful from an offensive standpoint: Damian Miller, Junior Spivey, Bill Hall and Russ Branyan do not exactly strike fear into the hearts of opposing pitching. To make matters worse, they have no bullpen, and a bunch of question marks in the rotation after Sheets and Davis. With the team they have currently assembled, I can't see the Brewers winning more than 70 games this year. But keep the faith, Brewers fans... 2006 could be the year the Brewers contend.
Cardinals, 105-57, 855 RS/659 RA, Ex W-L: 102-60
Cubs, 89-73, 789 RS/665 RA, Ex W-L: 95-67
Astros, 92-70, 803 RS/698 RA, Ex W-L: 92-70
Pirates, 72-89, 680 RS/744 RA, Ex W-L: 74-88
Reds: 76-86, 750 RS/907 RA, Ex W-L: 66-96
Brewers: 67-94, 634 RS/757 RA, Ex W-L: 67-95
As much as I would love to predict the demise of the St. Louis Cardinals, I'm afraid I will have to do just the opposite: The Cardinals were the best team in the National League last year, allowing the fewest runs and scoring the most. The good news for Cub fans is that they won't be as good as last year; Chris Carpenter pitched way over his head last year, there are always questions about Matt Morris' health, and there are questions about Mark Mulder's consistency. However, if you look at Mark Mulder as a replacement for Woody Williams, it's reasonable to expect that the pitching staff will be just about as good as it was last year. The bullpen, one of the best in the league, remains largely intact, but they did lose Steve "We're Number One" Kline to Baltimore. David Eckstein represents a major defensive downgrade for a pitching staff that doesn't strike a lot of guys out. Still, with an offensive core that will bring four 1.000 OPS-caliber hitters to the plate every day, the Cardinals won't need much more than league average starting pitching. Barring crippling injuries to two or three of their Big Four (Pujols, Rolen, Edmonds, Walker), the Cardinals will win 92-98 games and remain the best team in the NL.
The success of the Chicago Cubs depends on a lot of "if/then" scenarios. If Mark Prior and Kerry Wood make 30 starts each, then the Cubs will have the best starting rotation in Major League Baseball. If Nomar Garciaparra stays healthy for 150+ games and Dusty Baker lets Todd Walker play every day, the Cubs might have the best offensive infield in all of baseball. If Corey Patterson can learn to stop chasing face-high fastballs, then the Cubs might have an actual leadoff man. If Dusty Baker starts Jason Dubois instead of Todd Hollandsworth, who will get hurt, the Cubs would have a pretty strong bench. Those are all really big ifs. But even if none of those ifs come true, the Cubs are still easily the second-best team in this division, with a depleted Houston Astros team and a soft underbelly in the division's second tier. With the losses of Sammy Sosa and Moises Alou, their offense has gotten worse, but with full years from Prior and Wood, the pitching staff could be better. The question for the Cubs is, will their new "more balanced" offense be able to score runs with more consistency than the feast-or-famine offense of 2004? Time will tell, but the answer is probably no. The reason the Cubs didn't score runs with consistency last year wasn't because they were dependent on the home run; it was because they never had men on base when they did hit the home run. The Cubs finished 11th in the National League in on-base percentage last year. All four 2004 NL playoff teams finished in the top half of the league in OBP. The Cubs organization has not shown much interest in investing in players with on-base skills, has not shown any interest in trying to teach on-base skills to their minor leaguers, and Dusty Baker certainly isn't going to start preaching the virtues of Moneyball anytime soon. That said, the Cubs should be a slightly better on-base team this year with (theoretically) full years from Todd Walker and Nomar Garciaparra. While their infield defense will likely remain average to slightly below average, the Cubs outfield defense has improved drastically by replacing Alou and Sosa with Hollandsworth/Dubois and Burnitz, respectively. The bottom line with the Cubs is, there's no reason to believe that they will be any better than they were last year. However, the National League Central isn't as competitive as it was last year, so the Cubs should have enough to win 84 to 90 games, which will be enough to compete for the wild card, especially if Hendry is dealing at the deadline.
The Houston Astros will not have enough to compete this year, and it's mostly because they weren't able to retain Carlos Beltran. The good news first: Roger Clemens returns for yet another season, which immediately gives the Astros fifteen wins that they wouldn't have had if Clemens had retired. Roy Oswalt is a stud, and is heading into his age 27 season. That's about it. Now the bad news: The Astros didn't make any moves this offseason, mostly because they are paying Clemens $80 bajillion this coming season and because they are on the books for 37 year-old Jeff Bagwell's albatross of a contract (he will be paid $17 million this year). The Astros aren't quite sure to do with Craig Biggio; they seem to understand that he is an awful, awful outfielder, so they have moved him back to second base to get Mike Lamb some at-bats in left. The good news is that this will probably open up center field for the Astros promising young prospect, Willy Tavarez, at least until Lance Berkman gets back from his injury. The bad news is that Biggio's return to 2B will block Chris Burke from getting the job. Burke is 25 and a .300/.380/.450 hitter in the minors, so now is the time to promote him. This will stifle the Astros offense, as 39 year-old Biggio's numbers will continue to drop as he ages. Biggio's .806 OPS last season looks fluky - it was the first time since 2001 he'd posted an OPS higher than .800, and it looks like he was greatly aided by a hitter-friendly home ballpark (.831 at home, .781 on the road). More bad news for the Astros: Andy Pettite isn't nearly as good of a pitcher as they think he is. Pettite's a nice pitcher, but he's no ace. His ERAs have fluctuated wildly in his career due to his unspectacular strikeout rate (6.5 K/9 for his career). Last year, Pettite seemed to learn that he would need to strike more batters out after playing his entire career in a park friendly to left-handed pitchers, as his K rate increased to the highest in his career, 8.57 per 9 innings. We will never know if that was what caused his world famous "barky" elbow to act up, as he made only 15 starts. Even if the Astros get a full season from Pettite, he's basically a slightly better than average pitcher. The Astros have a lot of empty spaces in their bullpen, on their bench, and if they continue to let Biggio play every day, at second base. If Clemens and Pettite are healthy, the Astros will be good enough to win 82-86 games, but they won't have the offense to stick around for the playoff hunt. With aging players at catcher, first base, second base and in the rotation, and big bullpen and bench questions, don't be surprised if the Astros collapse this year.
The second tier of the NL Central contains three teams that do not have a prayer to contend this year. It may surprise some of you to see me predicting the Pittsburgh Pirates finishing fourth, but the Pirates have many players that we should reasonably expect to improve this year. Jason Bay, last year's Rookie of the Year winner, will be 26 is heading into his prime. Craig Wilson, 28, and Jack Wilson, 27, both performed well last year in a park that is unfriendly to right-handed hitters. Oliver Perez is just 23 and struck out 10.97 hitters per 9 innings last year. Kip Wells and Josh Fogg are both league average pitchers who are 27 and 28 respectively, so they could both improve as well. The bad news for Pirates fans is that the Bucs don't have much promise in the pipeline. What they have should be enough for them to win 72-78 games this year and claim first place in the NL Central's Tier of Mediocrity.
I don't think people realize how truly lucky the Cincinnati Reds were last season. The Red were the luckiest team in the National League, winning 10 games more than their Runs Scored to Allowed Ratio would have expected them to. The Reds pitching staff allowed a whopping 907 runs, the second-worst mark in all of major league baseball. The only teams that allowed more than 900 runs last year were the Rockies (923), the Reds (907) and the Royals. The Reds were the only team out of those three not to lose 90 games, and they came pretty close, at 86. The Reds recognized that they had a problem with their pitching, so they went out and got Eric Milton to bolster the rotation and Kent Mercker and David Weathers to bolster the bullpen. However, at the same time the Reds addressed their pitching problems, they ignored them. The Reds gave up 236 homers last year, the most in the National League; shockingly, they gave up more home runs than the Rockies. Jose Acevedo gave up 30. Paul Wilson and Aaron Harang both gave up 26. Eric Milton, the man who would save the Reds rotation, gave up 43 homers last year with the Phillies, the most in the National League. Meanwhile, the Reds keep praying that Ken Griffey Jr. and Austin Kearns will stay healthy an entire season so that the Reds can bob their heads above the .500 level. Griffey's never going to be healthy for a full season again, and there's little reason to believe that Kearns will be either. The good news for the Reds is that they have Willy Mo Pena to back them up, who is a good power threat if little else. With an awful, home run prone pitching staff in a home run prone ballpark, the Reds are going to allow a lot of runs, maybe just as many as last year. It's going to be a long summer in Cincinnati as the Reds starters give up home run after home run, the bullpen gets worn out quickly, and the Reds win 68-72 games.
The Milwaukee Brewers' success won't come this year, but make no mistake, if the Brewers can retain Ben Sheets, they will be a pretty good team in 2006. By then they will have a rotation that inculdes Ben Sheets, Doug Davis (3.39 ERA, 7.21 K/9 ratio last year) and highly touted prospect Jose Capellan, who will be 25 in '06, and a lineup that will include Carlos Lee, Geoff Jenkins, Lyle Overbay, and youngsters Rickie Weeks, J.J. Hardy and Prince Fielder, all of whom have put up monster numbers at their positions in the minor leagues.
With the possible exception of Hardy, all of those guys will start the season in the minors, which means Brewers fans will suffer through another long summer in Milwaukee. While Carlos Lee will help the outfield production, 31 year-old Brady Clark's .280/.385/.397 season looks very fluky compared to his career numbers of .267/.353/.389, and he is slated to start in center field. Geoff Jenkins is what he is: a good bet for an .800 to .850 OPS and an even better bet to land on the DL. With the exception of Lyle Overbay, the infield looks awful from an offensive standpoint: Damian Miller, Junior Spivey, Bill Hall and Russ Branyan do not exactly strike fear into the hearts of opposing pitching. To make matters worse, they have no bullpen, and a bunch of question marks in the rotation after Sheets and Davis. With the team they have currently assembled, I can't see the Brewers winning more than 70 games this year. But keep the faith, Brewers fans... 2006 could be the year the Brewers contend.
posted by Alex @ 10:03 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home