This incredible mind is capable of incredible things–including telepathy.
1. Cincinnati Reds
Hear us out. A year ago, we stayed loyal and picked the Cardinals to win the division, and look how that turned out. Plus, it’s not like we’re saying that the Reds are a better overall organization. The Cardinals are as well run as any franchise in baseball, and we wouldn’t trade being fans of them for anything, but the Reds have a very good chance of repeating as NL Central champs in 2013. One of the reasons why is just above these words, deep in thought as he plans his next mentally-powered long ball. Joey Votto is, for lack of a better description, an absolute bull-monster. He posted 5.9 WAR in 111 games a year ago. His OBP was .474. He hits home runs with his mind! He’s arguably the best overall hitter in baseball right now, and that’s quite a weapon to possess. The thing is he has plenty of help, too–the Reds are loaded all over the diamond. Acquiring Shin-Soo Choo over the offseason gives them a real center fielder and genuine leadoff threat, Ryan Ludwick is coming off a big year in left, Todd Frazier looks ready to beat around some baseballs for some time, Brandon Phillips always brings an interesting set of skills to the keystone, Jay Bruce has lethal power, and even Zack Cozart has upside at short. As for backstop Ryan Hanigan, well, he gets on base, and that’s all this team needs him to do. This offense is very, very balanced.
Unfortunately for Cardinal fans, so is the rotation. The Reds don’t have that one menacing shutdown ace (Johnny Cueto doesn’t count), but they do have reliability from top to bottom. Mat Latos is as talented as any pitcher in the game, Homer Bailey continues his steady ascent, and Bronson Arroyo released a terrible album once. There just aren’t very many holes to find here, either. At least it gets easier in the bullpen, right? Oh, never mind, it’s arguably the best in the game, mainly because it features someone who had one of the greatest (the greatest?) relief seasons of all time a year ago. Can Aroldis Chapman do it again? By “do it again,” we mean 3.3 WAR in relief, by the way. We mean a 1.55 FIP, a 15.3 K/9 rate. You get the idea. We certainly hope he can’t, and honestly, odds are kind of stacked against having two seasons like that in a row, but we’re also betting he won’t exactly be fun to hit, either. There’s always that chance he’ll go back to not being able to throw strikes, but that’s the only thing to hope for at this point. He has plenty of sidekicks as well, namely in the form of Sean Marshall (another nasty lefty) and the surprising Sam LeCure. Jonathan Broxton isn’t so bad himself, although his K rates are nowhere near what they were in Los Angeles. All told, it’s just hard to find a single aspect of this team that isn’t stacked, and that’s frightening. Too frightening, in fact, to bet against.
We love this man, and we don’t care who knows it.
2. St. Louis Cardinals
Well, we’re not putting them any lower than this. Make no mistake about it: the Cardinals will remain a very competitive team in 2013 and in the foreseeable future. It’s up for debate, however, if this year’s version is likely to improve over last year’s (disappointing) version. By run differential alone, the team should have won 93 games a year ago. In good conscience, we can’t project the current group to do quite that well. Everything’s mostly fine on offense: Matt Holliday is one of the best, most consistent run producers in baseball and should still have a few great seasons left in him, Carlos Beltran should continue to hit if he can stay healthy, Yadier Molina has evolved into perhaps the game’s best overall catcher with his greatly improved hitting stroke, and Allen Craig is set to mash in Cardinal red for the next five years at least. The problem is, none of these players, with the exception of Holliday, are likely to do any better than they did in 2012. It seemed that everything went right for the former Memphis graduates, and there’s no reason to necessarily expect the same performance from the likes of Jon Jay, Molina, Craig, or even the seemingly proven David Freese. We have the utmost love and appreciation for all of these players, but having them all perform so steadily as they did in 2012 seems like too much to hope for. Oh, and then there’s the middle infield situation, which doesn’t bode well unless you like watching a lot of extra outs being made.
Pitching wise, things should be fine even with the disappointing news of Chris Carpenter‘s career likely being over. Adam Wainwright, who will hopefully remain in St. Louis for a long time to come, is set to follow up on a very successful but somewhat unlucky return from Tommy John surgery, Jake Westbrook should be good to deliver his usual boring but steady performance, Lance Lynn was a first half revelation a year ago, and Jaime Garcia is still very promising even if he no longer looks like someone who might beat the odds and wind up an ace. Should Shelby Miller crack the rotation, he has a chance to put it over the top assuming he pitches up to his potential. That’s a lot of ifs, but he’s every bit as good as the organization hoped when it drafted him in the first round of the 2009 amateur draft, and he could turn into something special as soon as now. Down in the bullpen, it looks like Mitchell Boggs will be the closer while the team awaits the return of freakishly nasty Jason Motte, and Boggs is certainly capable of holding down the spot in the short term. On paper, the spot may be better suited for Trevor Rosenthal, the young gun who blew away everyone in the post-season last year and then topped 150 MPH regularly in spring training. He can do anything. Incumbent lefty Marc Rzepczynski will be joined by specialist Randy Choate this season, and we can certainly hope they do a good job of retiring those pesky left-handers all year long. This is a fairly balanced team for certain, and it’s hard to see them being bad, but it’s equally hard to see them being dominant. Things may well be different when the top prospects start filtering into the big league level, but for now, the Reds have fewer weaknesses and a probable claim to the division crown.
3. Milwaukee Brewers
Yeah, we know; a boring, safe pick to make. The trouble is that the Brewers are a boring, safe team, and a third place finish seems pretty likely at this point. The left side of the field (Ryan Braun and Aramis Ramirez) will certainly hit, and when Corey Hart returns, that will certainly give the lineup a little more thump. Carlos Gomez, while not a safe bet to keep up his power surge in 2012, is still strong enough in the field and on the bases to be an above-average center fielder, and the latter part of that statement could also apply to Norichika Aoki in right, although he lacks the power of a good corner outfielder and that .355 OBP was helped a lot by his getting drilled 13 times. We could see a bit of a decline as far as he’s concerned, but he has production to spare from a very solid 2.9 WAR season a year ago. Rickie Weeks is perhaps the weirdest player ever, being extremely athletic and possessing an enviable skill set for a second baseman. The trouble is that UZR would have you believe that isn’t a position he can at all play. It’s never been quite as bad as it was last year, so if those stats normalize a bit, he could be much more valuable for the Brew Crew. It’s really a shame for any team to have to slot Alex Gonzalez in as the projected starting first baseman.
On the pitching end, Milwaukee is fresh off of signing Kyle Lohse to a three-year deal, and this move will help to fortify a rotation that could surprise you this season. As good as Yovani Gallardo is, he was actually tied for third place on the team by pitcher WAR last year–the Brewer rotation is deeper than you think! Even without Zack Greinke around, Gallardo, Lohse, and Marco Estrada are a respectable front three, and the intriguing Mike Fiers could prove to be quite an asset if he follows up his impressive 2012 with more of the same. The bullpen may be a different story, as it wasn’t very good last year and doesn’t seem to have been improved much in the recent months. Closer John Axford needs to stop being so wild; it shouldn’t be a struggle to hit a 2:1 strikeout-to-walk ratio when you’re whiffing over 12 batter per nine. Jim Henderson may actually be the better pitcher statistically, and he’ll be joined by two lefties, Mike Gonzalez and Tom Gorzelanny, both of whom have had success in the past but aren’t known for consistent production. Then again, what reliever ever is?
McCutchen is proof that Pittsburgh has something to offer besides fries on sandwiches.
4. Pittsburgh Pirates
Even after all these years of being bad, the Pirates still aren’t very good. Oh, sure, the last few seasons they’ve done this little false alarm thing where every single steel worker thinks the Buccos are back and starts cranking up “We Are a Family” in the living room on an otherwise perfectly innocent weeknight evening in June. The problem is, despite a little bit of progress, this team still isn’t ready to compete at the big league level. They feature one very good player (pictured) and a whole team full of yawn-inducing personnel with varying degrees of badness. Pedro Alvarez? Well, he’s got power, but will he ever hit? Our sources tell us there’s no reason to believe so. Garrett Jones? He can be useful from time to time, but again, he’s very reliant on balls flying over the fence to even come close to justifying his status as a starter at a premium offensive position. Neil Walker hits well for a second baseman but isn’t going to find himself in the middle of any lineup. Now we’ve covered the only players in the Pirate offense that aren’t completely terrible. Again, only McCutchen is truly a star, and his supporting cast just isn’t strong enough right now.
We’d like to say it gets better on the pitching end; even the StanGraphs staff doesn’t support this many decades of losing baseball! The problem is, it really doesn’t. A.J. Burnett had about as good of a season as he’s capable of having at this stage in his career, but his track record of maddening inconsistency would seem to indicate he won’t do it again in 2013. Wandy Rodriguez is still a solid above-average starting pitcher, but that K/9 rate has dropped of late and he’s no longer deserving of anything other than three-starter status. James McDonald tailed way off down the stretch after a great start (opponents tagged him for a .940 OPS in the second half of the season) due to the fact that he’s James McDonald and not an actual breakout candidate, and do we really need to talk about anyone else? Jeff Karstens? Seriously? Let’s not. The bullpen, very middling a season ago, looks to be much of the same this season, led by the 36-year-old Jason Grilli, who somehow struck out nearly 14 hitters per nine innings a year ago. That’s a lot higher than his career 7.8 rate. Sorry, Pirates, but this season won’t be much different than all the other ones in recent memory–and not-so-recent memory, for that matter.
5. Chicago Cubs
In recent seasons, all NL Central teams not known as the Houston Astros could breathe a huge sigh of relief over the reassuring fact that they would not be a last place team. Now that they’ve been extorted (shout out to Lance Berkman) into moving to the American League, a certain unlucky team–we’ll call them the Cubs–has to grudgingly accept that last place torch. Hey, someone has to do it, and we just feel that the Cubs are the right team for the job. The main reason we feel this way is due to the fact that the Cubs aren’t very good at all. A season ago, the rotting, bloated corpse of Alfonso Soriano led the team in WAR (4.0) thanks to an almost average walk rate and a resurgence in the power department. Great job, Fonsy, but you still had just a .350 wOBA, and that isn’t very good. Add to that the fact that Soriano is highly unlikely to even repeat that performance in 2013, and you have the makings of a very uninspiring offense. Starlin Castro is always an intriguing talent at shortstop, Anthony Rizzo may well take another step forward (we don’t expect a big one, mind you), and uh, Darwin Barney is–well, he’s good at playing second base and having an awful name. The biggest problems with this offense, and there are many of them, involve Nate Schierholtz and Luis Valbuena being listed as the depth starters at two very important corner positions. To be honest, when StanGraphs infiltrates Wrigley Field later this season and poses as Cub fans, we won’t even really know who to root for; they’re all so awful!
Let’s talk about pitching, and how Jeff Samardzija actually did a very good job of it last season. We see nothing that leads us to believe Samardzija accomplished these nifty stats in a false way, so the Cubs can honestly be very proud of having finally brought along their very own pitching prospect, one that hopefully won’t be on the disabled list every other day. Travis Wood is also a very serviceable mid-rotation option, and Edwin Jackson can always be counted on to eat innings in a slightly above-average way. You know who can’t be counted on for anything is Carlos Marmol, whose pitches have ended up all over the stadium at various points in his freak career that includes very little batter contact one way or the other. We believe Marmol is just too wild to be effective for very long, but maybe he’ll calm down and have a useful season anyway. James Russell and Shawn Camp are solid if unspectacular options out of the ‘pen, but it’s hard to see the team that finished last in relief FIP in 2012 making that big of a leap forward in 2013. Yep, definitely last place, or as Homestar Runner might say, Worst Prize. Sometimes I miss 2003.