The Blue Workhorse

Earlier this year, we individually previewed each and every MLB team giving you a team’s record from the 2007 season, key additions and key losses in ‘08, projected starting lineups and pitching rotations, an overall outlook, fantasy impact players, and our prediction for this season.

So were we right?

Well, we got some things right like predicting Josh Hamilton’s huge season, but we also got some things way off like saying the Florida Marlins would be the laughing stock of the league.

What did we get right? What did we get wrong? This week we’ll start in the National League with the NL East:

Mets, Phils, or Braves: NL East Preview (March 6, 2008)

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C.C. Sabathia throws a pitch in what should have been a no-hitter Sunday against the Pirates. He also should be given the Cy Young Award and be considered for the MVP Award (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar).

C.C. Sabathia has been absolutely remarkable since being traded to the Milwaukee Brewers on July 7.

Not only has he become only the second midseason acquisition to go 9-0 (Doyle Alexander went 9-0 in 11 starts for the Detroit Tigers in 1987 after being traded from the Atlanta Braves for some prospect named John Smoltz), Sabathia has been a complete workhorse (and you know we love those). Sabathia already leads the National League with 6 complete games despite only 11 starts.

On Sunday afternoon, Sabathia tossed his third complete game shutout since joining the Brewers, striking out 11 Pirates batters, and allowing only one controversial hit to Andy LaRoche on a slow roller Sabathia mishandled, which can be seen about 12 seconds into this clip.

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Most of this comes from a comment I made when Sports Dawg wrote on An Opinion On Sports about expanding the All-Star rosters after Clint Hurdle and Terry Francona nearly had to use David Wright and J.D. Drew as pitchers due to a limited number of innings available from the All-Star pitchers.

Sports Dawg isn’t the only one to make the suggestion as I’ve heard a lot of people talk about expanding the rosters because “now the game counts.”

However, I have to respectfully disagree.

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Earlier today, Major League Baseball announced the rosters for the 79th All-Star Game being held at Yankee Stadium, which is only appropriate since this is the final season for the historic ballpark.

The starters were determined solely by the fan vote once again, unfortunately.

Nevertheless, we wanted to do what we hadn’t seen anywhere else and break down the selections team-by-team, so that you could easily see who was selected from your favorite team (starters are in bold):

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Opening Day is one of the most glorious days in sports, despite the fact that MLB tried to ruin it by having an opening series in Japan and then by having a one game series (yea, that’s not even possible Major League Baseball - a series means multiple) in Washington.

Now that all the teams and players have each put on the uniform for the first official games of the season, and to honor the first true day of the MLB schedule, we make initial observations on every team about what we saw on Opening Day after watching some games and examining boxscores:

This year the battle could be just as highly contested as only the San Francisco Giants won’t bring a high-caliber team to the field each and every day. Arizona won the division last season but went out and made some huge trades. Colorado rode a late season hot streak all the way to the World Series. San Diego is determined to return to the playoffs after losing their last three games cost them a trip last season, and the Dodgers are looking to end one of the longest World Series droughts in the franchise’s storied history.

Here are our previews and predictions for all five NL West teams including last year’s records, key additions, key losses, projected starting lineup, projected rotation, overall outlook, fantasy impact players, and our prediction for this season: