Padres reside in baseball's best division

In two 2008 baseball preview magazines at Barnes & Noble, the Padres are picked to win the NL West in one; yet the other selects them to finish in fourth place.

This is very representative of the way the division lines up for this season.

John Kruk of ESPN rightfully said Sunday that the NL West is the toughest overall division in baseball. Steve Phillips added that four of the five teams should finish over .500, which is exactly what happened last season.

(And to think the Padres won the division in 2005 with the same 82-80 record that placed the Los Angeles Dodgers fourth in 2007!)

Arizona probably peaked a year early when it won the division in 2007, and now All-Star Dan Haren joins Brandon Webb at the top of the pitching rotation.

Colorado made it to the World Series last year with an incredible run … but it wouldn’t be shocking to see the Rockies go from first to fourth place this season.

The Dodgers have a healthy Rafael Furcal at shortstop and Joe Torre to run the show … which makes them better on paper (but they always seem to underachieve.)

The Padres continue to have a great top-of-the rotation with pitchers Jake Peavy, Chris Young and Greg Maddux. Get left field straightened out and they should contend again.

Virtually all experts are picking San Francisco to finish last. But without troublemaker Barry Bonds around, the Giants have turned younger, happier … and could even escape the cellar if all goes right for them.

As the ESPN experts say, look for this to be the best division in baseball.

Colorado Rockies are rockin'

When Steve Phillips of ESPN picked the Padres to win the NL West this week, it was no surprise.

But the Colorado Rockies to earn the NL wild card?

Maybe Phillips is on to something.

The Rockies, who begin a three-game series tonight in San Diego, are starting to resemble the Blake Street Bombers teams of the mid-1990s that put the franchise on the map.

Vinny Castilla and Larry Walker are long-gone from the Rockies, but the current talent they have is quite impressive (including 13 of 25 homegrown players.)

Colorado has a batting order that can stand up to just about anybody with the likes of Willy Taveras, Matt Holliday, Garrett Atkins, Brad Hawpe, Todd Helton and Troy Tulowitzki.

Add starting pitchers such as Jeff Francis and Aaron Cook to the mix, and then you can see why the Rockies are talking playoffs for the first time in more than a decade.

Colorado is just two games behind the Padres in the wild card race and five games in back of Arizona in the NL West.

The Rockies could go a long way in determining their fate during this three-game series in San Diego.

ESPN's Phillips looks like a genius

Credit Steve Phillips for looking like a genius thus far in 2007.

The ESPN analyst more than went out on a limb before the baseball season when he picked Milwaukee to win the NL Central.

At the time, I’m sure most of us were laughing. But look who’s laughing now (Phillips) with Milwaukee leading the NL Central by seven games over the Chicago Cubs.

St. Louis was the obvious preseason pick in the division, coming off its 2006 World Series title. Houston can always be figured on to make a late-season run, and Cincinnati was hot most of last season. Then there are the Cubs who spent $300 million in the offseason; but are still the Cubs (see: losers).

Hardly anybody could have rightfully picked Pittsburgh to win the division, which left Milwaukee as a solid choice to finish fifth.

Obviously, Phillips saw something that the rest of us did not.