As written in part 1, Florida’s ace lefthander Dontrelle Willis, who despite an off-year, is recognized as one of the best pitchers in baseball.  Behind him are, a 2nd year starter (I erred in part by callling him a 3rd year man — he only pitched in 4 games in 2005 with no decisions) who had a fine rookie season Josh Johnson (reportedly now sidelined with arm soreness) and 2nd year starter Scott Olsen and not much else tried and proven. There is also starter, reliever Ricky Nolasco and his near 5 ERA as well as reliever Taylor Tankersley who excelled, but the Marlins must find a closer to replace Joe Borowski in addition to at least two more quality starters to contend and become competetive with the Phils, Mets and Braves.

Offensively, outside of 3rd baseman, leftfielder Miguel Cabrera, shortstop Hanley Ramirez, 2nd baseman Dan Uggla and emerging catcher Miguel Olivo who had a relative breakout season offensively after a number of seasons of sparing duty, the Marlins are lacking power and the ability to score runs as of this reading.  As things currently stand, if the pitching shows behind Willis, they could give Atlanta a run for it’s money for 3rd place.  If not, they could have a problem with the Washington Nationals.

NL East Fearless Predictions @ January 29, 2007:

• 1st Place      Phillies
  2nd Place     Mets
  3rd Place      Braves
  4th Place      Marlins
  5th Place      Nationals

*********************************************

Add to:These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. | del.icio.us | digg | Furl | Reddit | YahooMyWeb |

This entry was posted on Monday, January 29th, 2007 at 4:17 pm and is filed under Real-Time Baseball News and Commentary, Phillies and NL East, Analysis, Predictions, etc. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.