Colorado Rockies 2015 Season Preview

Apr 6, 2015; Los Angeles, CA, USA; San Diego Padres starter James Shields delivers a pitch against the Los Angeles Dodgers at Dodger Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports

The Opponents You Should Know About

The NL West race won’t be as tight as that in, say, the NL Central or AL Central, but the division has three good clubs, and probably two bad ones.

The San Diego Padres and general manager A.J. Preller have decided that they’d like to make a whole new baseball team, so enter James Shields, Matt Kemp, Wil Myers, every single Upton, Will Middlebrooks, Clint Barmes, Derek Norris, Craig Kimbrel, and probably ten other newcomers between the time I write this and the time it publishes. If only they’d take Dinger off our hands. He can play first base!

The Los Angeles Dodgers spend money better than anyone in the game, and this year, they did it with a better understanding of team culture and chemistry, though they are still awfully thin in the starting rotation if the injury bug hits them (and with old friend Brett Anderson in the rotation… yeah).

The San Francisco Giants didn’t get better, but they didn’t get too much worse coming off their World Series victory. It remains to be seen how they will do in this, their odd-numbered year after a World Series victory, because their track record in these isn’t that great.

The Arizona Diamondbacks will probably be worse than the Rockies this summer. But with Tony LaRussa and Dave Stewart now running things, they might be a club to watch going forward into 2016 and beyond, and Paul Goldschmidt is the real deal.

It’ll be fun to watch the Dodgers and Padres duke it out all summer in a new breed of southern California rivalry, but it’d be more fun if it didn’t feel like the Rockies were being left behind as an also-ran. The only way I can see the Rockies finishing higher than fourth is a crazy combination of great health and good luck from the Rox, plus poor health and historic bad luck from the Dodgers, Padres, and/or Giants.

Even then, how likely is this Rockies team to come close to winning the division with the pitching it has coming into the season?

Give the NL West a B+ for competitiveness and quality; the Dodgers might be the best team in baseball when it all shakes out at the end of the year, and the Padres and Giants are no slouches. The Rockies have their hands full this summer, especially with an early slate of NL West games.

Next: The Biggest Problems