NL Central

Other predictions: AL Central, AL West, NL East, NL West

Onwards to the NL Central, home of the NL's best team by a good margin:

Cubs

Strengths: Deep and talented rotation; Soto, Aramis Ramirez, Soriano, Bradley, and Lee make for a dangerous middle of the order; back end of the bullpen should be pretty good with Marmol, Gregg, and Heilman (and possibly Samardzija).

Weaknesses: Some concern about starting pitchers underperforming - Harden is injury prone, Dempster had a career year (in a contract year), Zambrano has a lot of miles on his arm.  Center field platoon looks questionable both offensively and defensively.

Record: 95-67

Milwaukee Brewers

Strengths: Lots of talent, most of it young, on the field - Braun, Fielder, Weeks, Hart, Hardy.  Yovani Gallardo

Weaknesses: Not great fielding team; starting pitching after Gallardo is mediocre at best (and that's generous), relief pitching is worse.  As a team, don't get on base particularly well.  Everyone is still waiting for Weeks to "break out."  Gallardo missed most of last year due to injury.

Record: Gallardo can't overcome the loss of Sabbathia and Sheets, and the rest of the pitching staff is just older and worse.  84-78

St. Louis Cardinals

Strengths: Albert Pujols. Albert Pujols. Albert Pujols.  There are whispers that starting pitching could be surprisingly good, led by healthy Carpenter; they always do seem to get a lot out of retreads in the rotation.

Weaknesses: I'll believe it when I see it.  Several candidates for regression to the mean.

Record: Barry Bonds showed how much difference one amazing player makes, and I think Pujols does that for this team.  LaRussa always seems to get the most out of his players, but even with all that, I can't go higher than 82-80.

Cincinnati Reds

Strengths: Pitching depth; some good young talent around the field (especially Jay Bruce).

Weaknesses: Looking at little offensive production from SS, LF, and CF, so their young players will have to step up big time to carry the offense. Dusty Baker.

Record: They're a popular sleeper pick because of their pitching depth, but I don't see it being good enough to carry a weak offense to contention.  81-81

Houston Astros

Strengths: Berkman, Lee, Pence, Oswalt.  Valverde should be a solid closer.

Weaknesses: Everyone after Oswalt in the rotation.  C, 2B, 3B, CF

Record: In line for a major disappointment after last year's deceptively good record - 71-91.

Pittsburgh Pirates

Strengths: They're young, so there are plenty of breakout candidates.

Weaknesses: Most of the team.

Record: 68-94

The Dodgers

I'm going to interrupt the quickie analysis/predictions track to look at the Dodgers, my favorite team, in a bit more depth.  Traditionally, the Dodgers are a pitching first team that struggles to score; the common perception is that this team actually may reverse that - certainly there is more concern over the rotation than the lineup.  Here's one possible lineup:

Furcal SS

Martin C

Ramirez LF

Ethier RF

Kemp CF

Loney 1B

Hudson 2B

Blake 3B

Pitcher

It certainly does not have any particular weak spots - each player should be at least an average hitter for his position, with a decent chance of outperforming that, and Ramirez, Martin, and Furcal could all be top 3 at their positions.  There is some depth on the bench - Juan Pierre may be hideously overpaid, but he's not a bad option for a 4th outfielder and is certainly great to have as a pinch runner; Mark Loretta is a solid backup and Blake DeWitt, though he'll start the year in AAA, proved last year that he can at least do a decent job if needed at 3B.  Backup SS is a bit more troublesome, especially given Furcal's injury history, and unfortunately the likely backup 1B, Doug Mientkiewicz, hits like the utility player he may be used as.  The biggest concern here is that there isn't a remotely intimidating bat to use as a PH off the bench.

The pitching provides slightly greater concern - the rotation projects to be Billingsley, Wolf, Kuroda, Kershaw, and McDonald.  Best case scenario, the Dodgers get 200 innings each out of Billingsley, Wolf, and Kuroda, 170-180 out of Kershaw, and 150 out of McDonald, with adequate filler coming from a group including Eric Milton, Jeff Weaver, Eric Stults, and Claudio Vargas.  Billingsley and Kershaw pitch like #1s (they both have the stuff to do so) and Kuroda, Kershaw, and McDonald like #3s (probably the reasonable ceiling for all three).  Worst case scenario sees injuries or ineffectiveness from Billingsley (threw a lot of innings last year and broke his leg in the offseason), Wolf (injury-prone), Kershaw (first full year in the rotation), and/or McDonald (only a handful of major league innings).

The bullpen was a strength last year; it has lost Saito, Beimel, and Chan Ho Park, and Cory Wade has apparently looked bad so far this spring.  With that said, Broxton and Kuo both have great stuff and should be highly effective, and the Dodgers certainly have some strong arms and a number of possibilities to fill out the pen.  It's not as good as last year, and I don't expect it to be one of the top couple in the NL, but I can't say it's something I worry greatly about.

So what's the overall prognosis?  The Dodgers won 84 games last year; even in a worst case scenario, I don't think they'll do much worse than that - at the start of the season, they've improved at 3B, 2B, LF, and CF (given that they won't be giving any at bats to Andruw Jones).  If Furcal stays healthy, they'll improve at SS as well.  So worst case scenario, where they're hit hard by injuries, especially in the pitching staff, I'd go with 82-80.  Best case scenario, where the pitching comes along as advertised and the batting order has no major injuries, I think they could win 95 games.  Realistically, though, I'll peg them at 89 wins, and a narrow NL West title.

Spring Thoughts

An appropriate title, as given prior history it's likely to be the only post all spring.  Ah well, what better way to avoid grading papers that I should have done days ago?

It is, once again, that best of all times, the last few days of spring training before baseball season starts.  It is a time of hope for fans of all teams, when great spring performances are signs of an upcoming breakout season and poor performances are merely players working out the kinks or trying something new.  Every team has the same record, and no one knows what oddities lie ahead over the course of the season.  Personally, my hands itch to be throwing or hitting a baseball most hours of the day.  At the moment, of course, that's not an option, so some preseason thoughts and predictions instead; we'll start with just the NL East for the moment (other picks: AL Central, AL West, NL Central, NL West):

The NL East

Mets

Strengths: Top 3 in MLB at their position at SS, 3B, CF, #1 SP; star bats could carry lineup; rest of rotation has potential (besides Livan Hernandez) and bullpen now headlined by KRod and Putz.

Weaknesses: SP overall could easily underperform; will be over the hill at C, 1B, 2B - if Delgado in particular regresses back to his first half stats from last year, the offense may not be able to score enough to overcome mediocre pitching.  How would they overcome an injury to one of their big 4?

Record: 90-72

Phillies

Strengths: Chase Utley, Chase Utley, Chase Utley (he's that good). Hamels is also a stud, and Rollins and Howard are productive.  Excellent defensively, strong bullpen, deep lineup.

Weaknesses: Howard is likely to begin to decline - he already can't hit lefties.  While it's a decent group, there are no sure things among 2-5 starters.  Ibanez is weak defensively and is at the stage where one might expect offensive decline as well.

Record: 89-73

Braves

Strengths: Solid infield, anchored by McCann.  Reasonably deep pitching staff.

Weaknesses: Miserable outfield, quality of starters is questionable; how many games will Chipper be able to play?

Record: 81-81

Marlins

Strengths: Hanley Ramirez.  Lots of young talent in the pitching staff.

Weaknesses: Several questionable spots in the lineup (Emilio Bonifacio at 3B?!?) - will the young, unproven talent deliver?

Record: 79-83

Edit: Revised down 3 games after reading this.  I'm not going as low as the projections in that article because I think their young pitching will be ok, but it did make me rethink a little.

Washington Nationals

Strengths: Jim Bowden is gone.  Ryan Zimmerman (maybe).  Lots of depth at corner OF and 1B.

Weaknesses: Too much depth at corner OF and 1B, not enough elsewhere.  Pitching, pitching, pitching.

Record: 68-94