Vigilante Sports

1. Philadelphia Phillies – Cole Hamels is hurt to start the season. That’s a bad thing. But he’ll be fine, and the World Champs will ride their powerful offense all the way to the NL East division title. I think the addition of Raul Ibanez will improve an already potent Phillies lineup. They play in a very hitter-friendly ballpark. Ibanez is a butcher in left field, but his offense in that park will definitely make up for it.
2. New York Mets – Another New York team that’s always supposed to win. And they would have the past two years except they fell apart both years. GM Omar Minaya’s goal of the offseason was to shore up the porous bullpen.He definitely did that. He signed not one, but two top notch closers, Francisco Rodriguez and JJ Putz. KRod will handle the closing duties and JJ will set him up. Seems like quite a luxury to have 2 guys like that at the tail end of your bullpen. Minaya had to do it.He was going to be run out of town if he didn’t take care of the ‘pen. Unfortunately I don’t think they have enough to compete with the World Champs.
3. Florida Marlins – Good and young. They just seem to always be around. Ricky Nolasco is poised for a break out season. Hanley Ramirez is bigger and stronger and ready to take this team on his very capable shoulders. The Marlins biggest problem is that they play in the very tough NL East. They are probably a year away from competing for the division title. But it will happen.
4. Atlanta Braves – On paper this team looks pretty good. A strong core of talented players and mix of emerging and veteran pitchers. One problem I see is a lack of power and speed. If you’re gonna play small ball, you need a lot more speed than the Braves have. Chipper Jones and Brian McCann are the only guys in the lineup capable of approaching 20 HRs. I doubt both will do it this season. Derek Lowe is a gamer, and Tom Glavine the consumate professional but I have to wonder how long either of them are going to be able to pitch this year. I don’t think either one of them makes more than 20 starts.
5. Washington Nationals – They have pretty good offensive talent, but their pitching staff is brutal. They just can’t get it done in this division with those pitchers.

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 4th, 2009 at 8:00 am and is filed under MLB. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.