A tradition of sorts has developed here at Baseball Analysts. Each season, two outsiders and two of our own preview the six divisions. We kick off this season with what may be the very finest division in all of baseball, the National League West. We are thrilled to have Jon Weisman of Dodger Thoughts joining us once again this year. In the minds of baseball blog readers, Jon is as closely associated to the Dodgers as any blogger is to any other team.

Also joining us this season is Russ Oates of Purple Row, one of the more popular Colorado Rockies blogs out there.

Sully: This division is one of the very best in baseball. San Francisco is more or less irrelevant at this point. As I heard someone say (I can't remember who), the Giants biggest problem this season is that they have 162 games to play. That leaves the other four teams and really, it's anyone's division.  read more »

There is no more frustrating, exacting, and thankless fantasy baseball task than evaluating starting pitching. You can put in tons of work, examine flyball/groundball ratios, park effect, strikeout rates, and ERAs adjusted for defensive foibles, but one twinged ligament and your second round Chris Carpenter pick in 2007 just imploded your entire staff. Only ten starting pitchers were ranked in the top 50 in Yahoo standard 5x5 leagues. Only one was within the top twenty -- Jake Peavy ... who you should never forget has two mediocre years on his resume, one of them in 2006. Keep this dearth of pitchers in the top 50 list in mind when you're deciding how many premium selections to spend on starters.  read more »

New York Yankees' ace, Chien-Ming Wang, took his efforts towards his third consecutive 19-win season one step closer by throwing a 94-pitch, complete game gem against the Boston Red Sox.  At 3-0, he has to be considered the front-runner for this year's AL Cy Young.  He is helped tremendously by the slow/horrible starts of Justin Verlander, CC Sabathia, and Erik Bedard.

The Dodgers face a tough right-hander, and Joe Torre does what is obvious to everyone.  he sits RF Matt Kemp and starts Juan Pierre in his place.  Unfortunately for Torre's naysayers, Pierre went 3-4 and is now hitting .273.

St. Louis Cardinals ace, Kyle Lohse, moved to 2-0 on the season with a two-ER effort against the San Francisco Giants.  He did allow his first two earned runs of the season, so it wasn't all puppies and sunshine.  Man, I just wanted to call Kyle Lohse an "ace".  read more »

Amongst the various Gospels of Fantasy Baseball is the one that says fantasy players should not draft pitching at the values every rankings system assigns it.  I admit to being one of the faithful, but, recently, I have begun to rethink this.  Not in the first round, though.  The top position players are still much better relative to their peers than the top pitchers are, but, after the first round and a half or so, I am not so sure.

Should I take Carlos Lee or Grady Sizemore over Jake Peavy in the second round when I can get Torri Hunter or Brad Hawpe four or five rounds later?  Should I take Russ Martin in the third round over Erik Bedard or Brandon Webb when I can get Jorge Posada in the 8th round?  How about Bobby Abreu over Josh Beckett when a whole slew of potential 15 HR/15 SB outfielders who will play every day, like Lastings Milledge, Justin Upton and Adam Jones, are available 100s of picks later?  read more »

BY ADAM RONIS It has taken longer than expected but Mark Teixeria, a perrenial second half player, is starting to get going. He went 3-for-4 with three home runs and four RBIs. He has 13 homers and 55 RBIs. I would trade for him now. Brian McCann hit his 14th homer and is batting .310. Tim Hudson threw seven scoreless innings and allowed four hits, walked four and struck out two to improve to 8-5 with a 2.96 ERA. Mike Gonzalez allowed three hits and two earned runs in one inning. His velocity is down, but the Braves don't have many options to close right now. Jeff Clement should get time at catcher for the Mariners. He went 2-for-3 with a homer and should be owned in leagues that start two catchers and AL-only leagues.  read more »

BY ADAM RONIS Chad Tracy returned from the DL today and started at first base for the Diamondbacks. He went 1-for-4. He should see more of his time at third base since Mark Reynolds is hitting .225 and strikes out frequently. NL-only leaguers should consider Tracy. It might take him some time to get going. Brian McCann is bouncing back in a big way so far. He hit his ninth homer and has 32 RBIs with a .333 average to extend his hitting streak to 13 games. He should have a lot of opportunities in that potent lineup. Brandon Webb dropped his second straight game today in a loss against the Braves. In the last game, he pitched very well despite the loss. This time, he didn't as he allowed 10 hits, seven runs -- four earned -- three walks and struck out eight in 4 1/3 innings. He is 9-2 with a 3.01 ERA.  read more »

Arizona ace Brandon Webb's spring is not going as planned. Webb allowed five earned runs in 4 1-3 innings, giving up ten hits and throwing two wild pitches in the Diamondbacks' 9-8 loss to the Los Angeles Angels on Tuesday. Webb, the 2006 National League Cy Young winner, now has an 8.50 earned run average through 18 innings this spring.  read more »

In the time I've been looking at the pitch f/x data I've occasionally stumbled onto something I thought was so interesting and so cool that I couldn't wait to share it with someone. The run value of different pitches is one of these things and whatever enjoyment you've gained from reading and discussing these articles, you can probably double it for me. The research I did for last week's article was some of the most interesting work I've done with the pitch f/x data, and without any more introduction, here's this week's article.

In the comments on last week's article and elsewhere, there were some questions about the methods I employed for calculating the run value of each pitch. There were some suggestions made and while I'm not here to talk about the past and explain how I made the calculations last week, in the interest of transparency, here's what I did this week and will be doing in the future. Starting with the wOBA for every ball-strike count, I subtracted the league average wOBA (.332) from each count to determine how much above or below average each count was for wOBA.  read more »

Brandon Webb liked the result. He wasn't happy with how he achieved it. Webb gave up six hits in six innings to earn his major league-leading 13th win in the Arizona Diamondbacks' 2-0 victory over the Washington Nationals on Tuesday night. "Once again, it was a battle," Webb said. "I haven't had an easy inning in a month, it seems like." Washington starter Odalis Perez (2-6) had trouble of his own --...  read more »

Taking some inspiration from Major League Baseball, I'm here to construct a fantasy all-star team. This team is very draftable... I'm building it using ADPs, so it's totally reasonable that you could've picked every player on this team. I'll give you my rationale for each pick as we go through, position-by-position, the lineup.