You can finally stop girding your loins – we’ve reached the final division in this position battles series. For reference, we’ve already covered the AL East, NL East, AL Central, NL Central, and AL West. Anyway, here’s some of the position battles to watch in the NL West:
Arizona Diamondbacks
- Center Field: Story time! I just had an in-person draft this weekend for my long-time hometown keeper league and one of the guys in this league loves to pick players with funny names. The best thing is that it kind of works since he ended up with Buster Posey years ago and now has Xander Bogaerts as one of his minor leaguers. Anyway, he picked Adam Eaton because he was hungry “mmm…Eaton.” Needless to say, Eaton will miss the first couple of months while Gerardo Parra covers center field, but my friend probably lucked out again.
- Fifth Starter: Tyler Skaggs was optioned to the minors, so that leaves Randall Delgado and Patrick Corbin. I’d love to see Delgado have the job, given his upside and pedigree, but it looks like Corbin may start with the job due to his previous experience in the majors. These guys are only worth a look in deep leagues at this point, like 20,000 leagues under the sea deep.
Colorado Rockies
- Third Base: Stud muffin prospect Nolan Arenado might be wishful thinking at this point, so that narrows this field to Jordan Pacheco and Chris Nelson. From my understanding, Pacheco looks to be a super-sub, kind of like a BLT, while Nelson gets the job by default, the two sweetest words of the English language. By the way, can you tell that I just ate and still have food on my mind?
Los Angeles Dodgers
- Fifth Starter: I discussed this a couple weeks ago on the Razzball podcast and said that Ted Lilly, aka “Serial Killer” as he’s known to Cubs fans, will murder the competition (at the time I though this competition was Chad Billingsley, Aaron Harang, and Chris Capuano). Sadly, he’s only murdered his ERA. Somehow, Hyun-Jin Ryu is now involved in this battle, while Billingsley is a lock for the rotation. Color me confused (which color would that be?). I don’t see how the Dodgers wouldn’t put Ryu in the rotation, considering the contract they handed to him, but money grows on trees in L.A., so who knows? I’d have to think Ryu makes the rotation and jaywrong covered him in voyeuristic detail here.
San Diego Padres
- Second Base and Third Base: Logan Forsythe and Jedd Gyorko were battling over second base and then Chase Headley conveniently (for non-Headley owners) got injured. It looks like Gyorko will play at second base, while Forsythe will play at third base. When Headley returns in a month, I expect that whoever is playing worse will lose their starting spot. My imaginary money is on Gyorko to be a hit. See what I did there?
San Francisco Giants
- Closer: Sergio Romo is technically the closer, but I have to qualify it because Botchy is tempted to deploy Santiago Casilla and Jeremy Affeldt into the mix. That they’ll all help your WHIP, ERA, and strikeouts is a consolation prize if this turns into a headache. What say you, bandwagon Giants fans?
