MLB: The NL West… Still Horrible

Posted on | August 28, 2008 | No Comments

While many divisions have two or three great teams battling it out for first place, or at least one, the NL West has exactly none.

The Arizona Diamondbacks own a three game lead in the National League West. That three game lead is over the Los Angeles Dodgers who are an atrocious three games under .500. That means the Arizona Diamondbacks are just three games over .500. Put the D-Backs in any other division in baseball and they would be a minimum of 5.5 games back. And that’s only in the NL East. Put the D-Backs in the other divisions and they’d be 8, 10, or even 15 games back.

So all of these critics who are still hanging on complaining about the Wild Card, this is yet another reason why the Wild Card is a good thing. Neither the Diamondbacks or the Dodgers deserve to go the playoffs but whichever team in the National League wins the Wild Card will more than deserve to go to the playoffs.

It’s amazing that Arizona still finds way to lose games. They’ve now lost 4 straight games. But they don’t need win, apparently. Because the Dodgers are playing even worse baseball. They’ve lost six straight games. So together the top two teams in the NL West have lost 10 straight games and fourteen of their last twenty.

Well, at least these two teams play each other this weekend so one of them has to win each night.

But, in divisions that do contain good teams, there are great races going on. The Mets took back first place in the NL East on Wednesday night. Boston stayed just three and a half behind the Rays in the AL East. And the Twins pulled back within a game of the White Sox in the AL Central.

So while the NL West is an embarassment, the rest of baseball is looking good and should provide a lot of excitement as we head down the stretch.

Related posts:

1. MLB: Rays Do it Again + Races Shaking Out
2. March Madness: Looking East and West
3. MLB: Day One Hundred and Eighty-Two
4. MLB: Rays Are Caught… Races Are a Mess
5. MLB: Predicting the Second Half of the Season

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