Arizona’s sizzling start, Colorado’s dreadful begining, and the Marlins leading the NL East?, headline the first two weeks of baseball, in what has been a very interesting start to the 2008 season

SCOTT JACOBS

Hey everybody! Wow, saw the Florida State Seminoles Garnet and Gold scrimmage today, and yeesh, not pretty. If that team is going to score some points on offense, it sure wasn’t obvious from their play today. Anyhow, college football is a mere months away, and baseball has just started. Some crazy stuff happening too. Let me get right to it.

Arizona is Awe-some!
It’s early, but guess who has not only the top ERA in the NL but also the highest runs per game average? Yup, you didn’t guess it, the Arizona Diamondbacks. The season is young, but Mark Reynolds and Justin Upton have 5 home runs a piece and Arizona has been raking right through the NL Champion Colorado Rockies this year (5-0 as of Saturday night). Brandon Webb is 3-0, Dan Haren is 2-0 and Randy Johnson is about to come back and things are looking great for the D’backs who early on have justified my World Series pick. Only time will tell, but at 9-2 they are the hottest team in baseball and have won 8 in a row and counting. And because I said that they will probably lose their next game.

21 Million reasons to smile
Okay, so it’s early. Really early, but if you had the Marlins a 7-4 and with a cushy little 1.5 game lead in the NL East at ANY POINT in the season, go to Vegas, buy a lotto ticket, and buy a few raffle tickets, because you sir/ma’am have vision. Now, no one picked them to start this way. And if you would have thought that the Fish (who are basically playing with house money: no one expects them to win, no one even expected them to compete) would be in this position with the worst ERA in baseball, you’d be lying. It’s amazing what Fredi Gonzalez has done for the Marlins in this young season. And if the season ended and they made the playoffs, it would be the biggest mockery of baseball’s payroll situation in sport history. Just letting everyone know.

Rockie Start in Denver
We’ll get to Detroit’s stunning start in a minute, but its hard to overlook Colorado’s slow start. At 4-7, and 0-5 versus Arizona (a team they swept in the NLCS last year) the Rockies look more like a dud then last year’s stud. And if you count their sweep to the superior Red Sox in last year’s Fall Classic, the Rockies are 4-11 in their last 15. Not quite, uh, 21 out of 22.

Toothless Tigers in Detroit
World Series favorites? Division favorites? Playoff locks? It sure seemed like Detroit was in great shape after landing the biggest fish in the offseason when they dealt their star prospects for Miguel Cabrera and Dontrelle Willis. At 2-9, Detroit is the worst team in baseball right now, and just got shut out by the surprising White Sox 7-0. With their offense looking more like Detroit LIONS teams of the past, the Tigers are in danger of putting themselves in an insurmountable hole. Why the problems? Well, that amazing middle of the order (Cabrera, Sheffield, and Maglio Ordonez) are batting a respective .167, .167, and .244. Talk about numbers that scare no one. With the second highest payroll in baseball and massive dollars invested into a veteran club, this experiment which looked brilliant, could turn out to be a horrible failure. Too early to tell, but the early returns are not good.

Oops!…

Early looks at my pre-season picks

The A’s would be unwatchable (They’re in first place in the AL West, albeit very early)
The Cardinals would sink to dead last in the awful NL Central (they’re 9-3 and 8-2 in their last 10)
Kansas City would not finish last (with a strong early start and some early promise the Royals may not even finish 4th)
The Twins would be awful (They actually have a winning record)

A couple initial thoughts at the first two weeks
Who needs big free agent signings, Arizona’s Mark Reynolds and Justin Upton could be the Majors next great 1-2 punch
The Yankees look pretty, uh, mediocre. Then again, so does that entire division.
Andrew Jones is done. He’s batting under .200 and recently got benched in favor of Juan Pierre. O where have you gone Mr. Jones?
The two lowest scoring teams in baseball are… the Mile High Colorado Rockies and revamped Detroit Tigers (33 runs so far for both). Who saw that coming?
The two teams playing not to win are leading the way (Marlins, A’s, are a combined 15-8.)

One final thought
Arizona is the only team to win their division last year, and currently lead it this year. Of course, with 150+ games to go a lot of things could change.

If the season ended today…
Arizona, St. Louis, Florida, and Milwaukee (WC) would represent the NL in the playoffs
Oakland, Chicago White Sox, Baltimore, and Minnesota, KC, and Toronto (All tied at 6-5 for WC) would represent the AL in the playoffs.

A Florida-Oakland World Series anyone?
It’s a good thing the season doesn’t end today.

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