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WHY THE PADRES WILL WIN THE WEST ... (Update #3) posted 4/29/08 by Jason Martinez Before spring training started, I put all negativity aside for a few minutes and came up with my top 10 reasons the Padres would win the NL West. Just before the season started, I added an 11th reason because I was so impressed by what Chase Headley did in the spring. One month into the season, it looks like I'm batting well below the Mendoza line on my optimistic reasoning. Keep in mind that these weren't predictions, by any means. Just reasons why they were capable of winning the division. 1. They still have the best pitcher in the NL, Jake Peavy, at the top of the rotation. Peavy hasn't done anything to change my opinion of this one. His offense has let him down a few times and his bullpen has let him down as well. 2. They still have Adrian Gonzalez, one of the best young hitters in baseball. At just 25, Gonzalez can still improve upon his 30 HR, 100 RBI season of 2007. The problem is that he is the only offensive threat in the lineup and is limited as a left-handed batter playing at Petco Park. By my estimation, he's crushed at least three balls at home that would have been out of any other park in the league. He's currently on pace to equal his 140 strikeouts of last season but he doesn't have much of a choice but to expand his strike zone when no one else in the lineup is doing much of anything. 3. Chris Young is a dominant force. Although he's had a few clunkers, Young appears to be healthy. It took him a month to find his consistency and really get rolling last year. He was virtually unhittable from May 1st until late July when he suffered his first injury. 4. The 8th inning is safe with Heath Bell, the best setup man in baseball. I recall Bell having bad outings in about 5 or 6 games in 2007. He's only had 1.5 poor outings so far this season but, unfortunately, everything is magnified when the team isn't playing well. He has definitely regressed from being the premier set-up man in the game but he really has been the only bright spot in the team's bullpen in 2008. 5. The Padres should get 50+ homers and 180+ RBI from the left side of their infield. How's one homer and 15 RBI's? Not a very good pace but Kouz really heated up after April of last season and Khalil really didn't get going until much later, hitting 21 of his 27 homers after mid-June. Still a long ways to go on this one though. 6. All-time saves leader Trevor Hoffman, motivated by his late-season failure, will produce at least one more season with 40+ saves and a sub 3.00 ERA. With the way this team is going, Hoffman might not get 40 save opportunities all season. With the way Hoffman has been pitching, he might blow more saves this season than he has in the last five seasons combined. 7. Brian Giles and Jim Edmonds will come back healthier than either of them has been in years. Giles seems to be healthy and is doing a decent job offensively. He's not pre-2004 Giles, but he's easily been the second most productive hitter on the team. Edmonds is either not healthy or he's just done. He's not covering ground in center field. He's not hitting for average or power and he's striking out a ton. 8. The combination of Joe Thatcher, Cla Meredith, Justin Hampson, and Kevin Cameron will continue to make it hard for opponents to score runs past the 6th inning. Thatcher is 0-2 with a 7.82 ERA. Meredith is 0-1 with a 4.50. Hampson has been on the DL since spring training. Cameron has a respectable 2.35 ERA, but he has six walks in 7.2 innings. The Padres have won with bad offenses before. They've never won with a poor bullpen. 9. The speed, versatility, power, and veteran leadership that did not exist off the bench in '07 will be plentiful in '08. Michael Barrett has been hurt, which has given Manager Bud Black another player on the bench, Colt Morton, that he never uses. The fastest man on the team, Callix Crabbe, has been used sparingly. Scott Hairston is now a bench player after losing his job as the starting left fielder. 10. Randy Wolf and Mark Prior will bounce back from their injury-riddled pasts to give the Padres their best #4-5 starters ever. So far, so good with Wolf. Unfortunately, the Padres could be way out of it by the time Prior throws a pitch for the team. 11. After a torrid spring, Chase Headley was sent down to AAA to work on his defense but he proved that he can be an offensive force, capable of putting up big numbers in the majors. First, he's going to have to prove he can put up big numbers in AAA. Thus far, he's batted just .226 with 2 HR, 9 RBI's, and 24 K's. That's not going to get it done at the major league level. Not even on this Padre team, which might be the worst hitting team we have witnessed in years. |