There are still 153 days until Opening Day, but that's not gonna stop us from starting to look at what the 2015 season has in store. We're going to take a look at each team over the next few weeks and give some (not always but most of the time) bold predictions. Hopefully we can do better with this than with our postseason predictions (we took the Royals in 4), but I guess we won't know until next October.
Starting from the bottom, so first up is the Arizona Diamondbacks.
Arizona finished the year 64-98, the worst record in all of baseball. Paul Goldschmidt was a bright spot for the D-Backs however, hitting .300 with 19 homers before a season-ending hand injury. Next year, we don't expect the Diamondbacks to grab the NL West title nor a Wild Card spot, but here are a few things we think will happen:
- Aaron Hill will be hitting .300 into the All Star break. Hill was especially terrible this past season; his .244 batting average was his lowest ever as a Diamondback. I personally have a bittersweet relationship with Hill. When he hit for the cycle twice in 2012, he was on my fantasy baseball team, and in the league I was in, teams got huge bonus points for players hitting for the cycle. Hill was on my team again this past season, and I couldn't get myself to drop him because I knew he would hit for the cycle as soon as I did. He didn't.
- Josh Collmenter will win twice as many games as he did in 2014. That means he will win 22 games. Collmenter was outstanding the last month-and-a-half of this past season, and in 2015 he will be on the starting rotation right away. The last 22-game winner for Arizona was Brandon Webb in 2008. Before that? The Johnson-Schilling duo in 2002. Which reminds us: Read our Randy Johnson Fun Facts article!
- The Diamondbacks will finish third in the NL West. Arizona does not have what it takes to hang with the Dodgers and Giants, but third place will be a huge improvement from their 2014 campaign.
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