It's that previewin' time of year again...

Hey, there's a season! Lets do this again.

Been a while since I've done one of these...

The season previews walked into my office like a girl in a red dress: without an official appointment yet somehow late...

It's a previewy time of year...

Giddy up.

A quick and dirty look at some of the other divisions around baseball...

The good ol' wild west. One never knows what to expect. Since 2002 we've seen the Padres win twice, Diamondbacks three times, Dodgers three times (+1 WC), and Giants twice (+1 WC) while the Rockies claimed the wild card twice. So who will pull it off this year and will the 2nd & 3rd placers get a wild card?

The NL West finally produced a winner as the Giants won it all for the first time since they moved to San Francisco. But what to expect in 2011 from a division that seems to shuffle leaders annually?

3 teams with 88 wins or more last year after the winner in 2008 had just 84 wins, what to expect this time? All 5 teams have made the playoffs at least once between 2003 and 2009, so again, how to predict? Mix in that, vs 2008, the Dodgers were +11, Diamondbacks -12, Rockies +18, Padres -12, Giants +16 - most variable division out there - how the heck do you predict?

Over the weekend, John Northey and I had a chance to sit down and talk about the NL West. After our ghostwriter had condensed the multi-day rambling into a manageable chunk and thrown out the words that don't exist, it sort of resembled English. So we translated it into several dead languages, back into English, and the result, which may or may not be an NL West Preview, is shown below.

Neither rain, nor sleet, nor snow (where's that Global Warming we keep hearing about anyway) would prevent Liam from delivering his Giants preview. Although a cranky Internet connection delayed it somewhat.

Take it away...

I recall when the NL expanded in 1993 and created the Rockies and Marlins. It had been announced a couple of years before, and the idea intrigued me so much that my dad actually hunted down a Rockies' T-shirt for me in about 1991. The thing was pretty much worn out before the team played its first game. I guess the thing that captured my imagination was that there hadn't been any expansion since the '70s (the longest MLB had gone without expanding since they started expanding in the '60s), and that was before I was paying much attention to baseball.

(I also remember the FAN radio station broadcasting the expansion draft for the Rockies and Marlins. Dan Shulman was one of the guys doing commentary, and when Colorado drafted Kevin Reimer, Shulman said something like, “I don’t understand this at all. This is a National League team, and Reimer couldn’t catch the ball if you handed it to him.”)

Then I got over it.

San Diego has their own version of the Killer B’s with its (army) bases, beaches and babes. However, the Padres could possibly use a version of Houston’s Killer B’s from the late 1990’s and early 2000’s, as this San Diego team will rely heavily on pitching and may need an unexpected offensive performance or two to make the playoffs. Or at least that’s the common perception, with their outfield considered one of the worst in the majors. If nothing else Padres fans can take comfort in knowing that whatever happens, it will be tough for 2008 to duplicate the heartbreak of 2007 when the team missed the playoffs due to an unlikely triple by Milwaukee Brewer Anthony Gwynn Jr., son of Padres icon Tony Gwynn, and a phantom tag of home plate by Matt Holliday.

2007 was a disappointing year for the Dodgers as they missed the playoffs after playing in October in two of three previous seasons. Already boasting one of the best collections of young talent in the Majors, the Dodgers went out and brought in Joe Torre to lead the charge, and signed proven veteran™ Andruw Jones to anchor the outfield. Will Jones rebound from a terrible 2007? Will the Dodgers stop playing proven veterans™ and let their youngsters take over? How does Juan Pierre hold the fate of the Dodgers in his hands? All this and more, on an all new episode of Battersbox!