And where do the Giants fit?
I’m breaking slightly from the question headline format, because Who will win the NL West was a question as idiotic as it was depressing. So instead, here’s a slightly more debatable — if equally depressing — prompt: predict the NL West standings in 2025.
At this stage in the game — which is to say, the stage long before any games — it’s pretty easy to divide the five-team division into four tiers. The Los Angeles Dodgers are, unfortunately, in the top tier, in a league of their own. The Colorado Rockies are in the bottom tier, also in a league of their own, just less admirably so. The Arizona Diamondbacks and San Diego Padres are the two teams sharing a tier, below the Dodgers but ahead of the San Francisco Giants, who sit in their own tier of extended mediocrity.
You’ve probably tried to predict my predictions based on those tiers, but I’m here to tell you you’re wrong. Those tiers are for now, and we’re trying to predict what happens in the mystical then. Despite my disappointment with the Giants offseason, I have a little more optimism than is medically recommended (call your doctor for optimism lasting longer than four hours). That, combined with my eternal belief that the Padres will find a way to mess this up, has me predicting that the Giants finish third in the division, behind the Dodgers and Diamondbacks, and ahead of the Padres and Rockies.
What are your NL West predictions?