Last week, I considered where teams were in the American League when it came to making the 2009 playoffs. In this blog, with less than 60 games left in the season, I take a look at the National League. Here’s the way that things are shaking down on the senior circuit.
The MLB season is a month old. Let’s take a look around the league.
Red Sox and the AL East
After a slow start, the Boston Red Sox have gone 12-13 and taken over first in the AL East. That record includes sweeps of Baltimore, Minnesota and the New York Yankees. The Red Sox beat the Yanks every which way, including hammering them, in extra innings and simple eking out runs. Once again for the Yanks, their biggest problem resides in their pitching staff. Their other problem is associated with the age of the club. Most of these guys are injury prone. Nothing seems to be working for the Tampa Bay Rays. They are bedeviled.
I’ll write one more article about my tournament thoughts and reflections and so on in a day or two, but let me just sum up the final last night with three words – wow, oops, and yawn. Wow, as in wow North Carolina looked incredibly good. Oops as in, oops, I guess I was wrong when I repeatedly said that I thought North Carolina looked vulnerable coming into the tournament. Yawn as in that was a truly boring game to watch despite the Tar Heels’ laser precision. Ugly.
This season, the Chicago Cubs (97-64) finished atop the NL Central, winning more games than any other NL club. They led the majors in RS/RA differential with a plus-184 mark. The Cubs have scored more runs—855—than any other team in the majors. Their hit totals, OBP and SLG percentages are all in the top five in MLB. The Los Angeles Dodgers (84- 78) took the NL West, beating out the Arizona Diamondbacks by four games. The Dodgers won the West with just 84 wins—the fewest of any division champ. The bad news is they scored just 700 runs and had a RS/RA differential of plus-52. Both are the lowest in the majors. The good news is that they also possess the lowest runs allowed total—648. That bodes well for the playoffs where good pitching tends to rise above fine hitting.
Greg Schiano should have taken one of the jobs he was offered before he quit looking like a genius at Rutgers. That loss to North Carolina last night was very, very ugly. Butch Davis is going to turn NC around, but not that quickly or dramatically.
The Cubs are as hot as can be. They just capped off a seven game home stand with seven wins and now they head out to play easily winnable series against San Diego and the Dodgers. I’d like this team much better, though, if they could play on the road. They have the best record in baseball, and the best home record in baseball, but they are just 10-13 on the road. In their last three road trips they have gone 2-4, 2-4, and 2-3. I have faith that if anyone can turn that around it is Lou Piniella, but until he does I will have a real tough time buying into this team for the long haul. They were 41-40 last year on the road, so they do have the ability to be decent. The disparity between the two records in hurting bettors, too – they are the second most profitable home team behind the Red Sox, but they are significant betting losers on the road. If you want a plus side to it all, I suppose that their road struggles might keep their home prices a bit more reasonable.
