How the National League West will be won ... by the biggest loser

John Kruk made a bold statement on ESPN’s SportsCenter on Sunday:

“No team in the NL West will finish with a .500 record.”

OK, maybe that’s not such a daring prediction since every team in the NL Worst is below .500 at the All-Star break.
Arizona is flirting with .500 at 47-48, but everyone else in the division is straight up struggling with half the season in the books.
The second-place Dodgers are one-game above .500 at home but are three-games under overall, and the third-place Giants are (gulp) 15-games under on the season.
So when was the last time a team won its division with a losing record?
A long look through the record books shows it has never happened.
The San Diego Padres tried their best to make a run at the dubious record in 2005 but finished the regular season 82-80 to win the NL West pennant.
In 1994, the Texas Rangers were on track to finish well below .500 with a 52-62 record before the strike mercifully saved Major League Baseball from a major embarrassment (wait a minute).
Since the leagues split into multiple divisions in 1969, only one other “biggest loser” has made a run at a pennant. The New York Mets came close in 1973 but finished 82-79 to win the NL East, eventually taking the A’s to seven games before falling in the World Series.
So there is hope, even for sub-.500 teams at the All-Star break.
In fact, since MLB went to a six-division format and expanded the playoffs to allow wild-card entrants, 27 of the 104 teams that made postseason had losing records in June or later – including half the playoff participants the past two seasons.
That's great news for the "Biggest Loser" candidates in the NL Worst.

It's gotta be the camo

Coming into today, San Diego Padres pinch-hitter Tony Clark had as many extra-base hits as I have this season.
Despite the big zero in the EBH category, the Padres went to the pinch-hit extraordinaire late and Clark delivered with a go-ahead, three-run homer off Billy Wagner to give San Diego its fifth straight win, 8-6, and a four-game sweep of the New York Mets.
So is it time to start celebrating in San Diego? Sure it is, the Padres haven’t won 8 of 10 in forever, it seems.
At the same time, the past four games came against the Mets, the fourth-place team in the NL East, who went 2-5 on their trip to Cali.
And the Padres are still nine games under .500 and seven games out in the NL Worst — so hold that ticker-tape parade Friar fan, you’ve still got some work to do.
AP Photo/Denis Poroy

Stat Geek: D’Backs Gain While They Lose

The Stat Geek's "Stat of the Week" goes well with BG’s previous post:
The Arizona Diamondbacks had lost 12 of their last 20 games going into Thursday’s game ... and increased their National League West Worst lead by a half-game.
I relate what the Diamondbacks are doing to what we here are doing at WCBias.com. We’re all sucking at our “day jobs” because we spend half our days posting to this site, but we keep moving up the ladder somehow. I guess it pays to live out West.

The Mild Mild West

One of my temps has the profound misfortune right now of being a Padre fan. After a wildly entertaining 2007 which saw the Pads and the Rockies tie for the NL Wild Card (with the D-Backs winning the division by a half-game!) things were really looking up for the NL West in 2008, especially when you considered the Dodgers were bringing in (cue sinister music) Andruw Jones Corpse. Yep, the ol' NL West really looked like it was on the way up, maybe it didn't boast the star power of the AL East but it projected as a four-horse race that wouldn't be settled until the final week of the season.

And then they started playing. Nearly one-third of the way through the season it looks like the D-Backs are the class of the division but even they are only 5 games over the break-even mark and have struggled since their blistering start. The three West Coast teams have been a colossal disappointment, primarily from an offensive standpoint; below is your all-California team based on the highest VORP per position, courtesy of baseballprospectus.com.

C-Russell Martin (LA)
1B-Adrian Gonzalez (SD)
2B-Ray Durham (SF)
3B-Blake DeWitt (LA)
SS-Rafael Furcal (LA)* Currently on DL
LF- Brian Giles (SD)
CF-Aaron Rowand (SF)
RF-Matt Kemp (LA)

That's not exactly Murder's Row, is it? By way of comparison, the Philadelphia Phillies infield (plus Catcher) ALONE has more HRs. The West has had the well deserved rep as a pitcher's league for the past 5 years and this year has been no different with Webb, Haren, Lincecum and Peavy all putting up excellent numbers but where are the sticks? The fact that Ray Durham is best second baseman of the bunch is flat out terrifying.