I know, I know. This is a very late post. The season has started for blogs sake. Well you plan a wedding, have the thing, take a honeymoon and before you know it's been two months since you wrote anything and hey, why start back up? Well, I want to that's why. To start I'm going to throw out a couple of general feelings I have as the off season ended. I'll keep it short and sweet since teams are already on their second series (catching Red Sox-Angels as I type). You know what, it's not even worth it so I'm going to write about what's on my mind.
The Phils are in trouble. I already covered my feelings on the upcoming season a bit earlier, but it now appears as if one of the biggest possible problems is reality-Cole Hamels is hurt. Not only did he have his first start pushed back 5 days, not only did he get rocked, but he was only hitting mid 80's with his fastball. I will be surprised if Hamels is not on the DL by the end of the month, and Hamels being hurt, bad or both will kill this teams chances of making the playoffs. Combine Hamels injury with the almost certain downtick in bullpen performance and Ryan Howards continued decline and you're looking at an 85 win team. Don't get me wrong, there will be days when they put 12 runs across and Utley/Howard/Ibanez can kill RH starters, but I still feel as though this teams flaws will be more exposed than last year. Howard can't hit lefties, Werth can't hit righties, Ruiz can't hit anything. Moyer has had one above average season in the last 5, Chad Durbin had one of the best relief seasons in the NL last year and still has an ERA+ under 100. Point being is that management has created a "live off our success" not a "build on our success" team. All in all this team has a strong smell of "2008 Rockies" to me. Not a good thing.
Everyone points to the Mets as the main competition for the NL East crown but the Braves should not be written off. The addition of Lowe and Vazquez to the rotation greatly increased their ability to contend. The Braves are strong at MI (not as strong as the Phils), have the best catcher in the NL, a strong rookie of the year candidate in CF, Garret Anderson should increase their LF production and RF can't be worse than last year. Oh, and Chipper Jones is having the best late career surge this side of Barry Bonds. Now before I give them the crown it should be pointed out that almost every member of the bullpen has injury issues and getting Jones to 145 games might take a miracle. Still it's not hard to see the Braves winning 88 games and sneaking into the playoffs, or at least ahead of the Phils and into 2nd. Who knows, maybe the Braves will be the ones running down a collapsing Mets team?
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