MLB:  Finding the Winning Edge; Colorado Rockies // NBA: Intensity Doubled; Denver Nuggets.

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.  .  .   SPORTS NOTEBOOK posts its columns Tuesday and Friday of each week. Ed. & Publ., Marvin Leibstone; Copy & Mng. Ed., Gail Kleiner.

MLB    MOST of today’s sports have been around for more than a hundred years and no manager, coach or player has ever been one hundred percent sure about what it takes to stay a winning team deep into a season and then dominate in playoffs for a championship year. All keep trying to figure it out, and some get close to a few victory-prone ideas. Right now, the spotlight for answers is on baseball.

So, as an MLB team’s spring training gets underway for the 2013 162-game season, will greater emphasis be on pitching, that is, primarily on starter rotation and/or reliever + closer? Will batting order construction be the priority, with line-ups arranged and rearranged until it seems to managers and GM’s that power has been distributed for least outs and maximum runs? Will the emphasis be on individual player enhancements for hitting, fielding and throwing skills? Or, for a lot of teams will all known aspects for winning get equal emphasis?  

Probably no MLB team will have the same approach during pre-season days, but if there’s a constant it will surely be of attempts to identify vulnerabilities during spring training, with all-out efforts to correct those vulnerabilities, which implies that ball clubs with the least known weaknesses will have the better chance at keeping to the win side April through September. With more than luck, teams engaged at this will also learn to exploit their strengths, for example, getting the very best from that rostered MVP and Cy Young winner.

Were some stats-junkies to set up two columns, one for strengths, the other for vulnerabilities, and then add up characteristics to place in each, we’d probably learn that there are more vulnerabilities than strengths in baseball when it comes to team competency for being a winning club all season long. Maybe that’s why no team won 100 games last season, while two lost more than 100 (the AL’s Houston Astros lost 107, the NL’s Chicago Cubs, 101). We won’t try the data crunching here, but we can look at a few of the MLB clubs likely to kick in quickly as winning teams in 2013 and get a sense of what could keep them up front or drag them down, for instance, last year’s American League and National League winners, the Detroit Tigers and the San Francisco Giants, neither having won the most games in 2012 (the Tigers finished at 88-74, the Giants, 94-68). The Washington Nationals led both leagues, finishing 98-64. Without question, while Detroit’s starter rotation will probably be sharpened for wins by RH Justin Verlander (17 wins-eight losses in 2012, with a 2.6 ERA), plus Max Scherzer (16-7/3.7 ERA) and three other hurlers with ERA’s below 3.9, such could slip into oblivion from the Tigers NOT having a closer capable of stopping opposing hitters from racking up winning runs in a ninth inning, which is today's missing Tiger tooth. A strength factor, of course, consists of MVP/.330 Miguel Cabrera and .313 Prince Fielder, possibly offsetting any pitching vulnerability with their RBI’s, 139 and 108 respectively.  

And though the SF Giants won the 2012 World Series and showed steadiness in the win column nearly all season, few of the team’s players have had careers reflecting the top-of-the-line consistency of power and skill that they showed during the 2012 playoffs and especially during the WS. Too, another bad year for RH hurler, Tim Lincecum (10-15/5.3 ERA) could hold the Giants back.

Meanwhile, the talk about which club will soar highest/fastest in the AL has centered around the Los Angeles Angels line-up that will include Josh Hamilton (BA .285/43 home runs/128 RBI’s), Albert Pujols (.285/30 HR’s/105 RBI’s) and last year’s AL rookie of the year, Mike Trout (.326/30 HR’s/83 RBI’s), but this may not be enough to overcome a marginal pitching staff except for RH Jered Weaver (20-5/2.5 ERA) and LH C.J. Wilson (13-5/3.8 ERA).

The National League talk about top teams includes the Washington Nationals, possibly the NL’s most fit team if least vulnerabilities is part of the measure, its line-up now including Denard Span, traded from Minnesota, a .283 hitter last season (38 doubles, 17 stolen bases), in addition to .300 hitter, Jayson Werth (31 RBI’s), and .282 Ryan Zimmerman (95 RBI’s). Led by LH Gio Gonzalez (21-8/2.8 ERA) and RH Stephen Strasburg (15-6/3.1 ERA), the Nat’s have a strong starter rotation (one of the best ERA’s in both leagues). The Nat’s Achilles heel? As with the AL's Tigers, uncertainty re. a consistently effective closer, a problem that led to the Nat’s 2012 playoff-dropoff.

The NL’s L.A. Dodgers starter rotation will also be hard to unravel, consisting of RH Zack Greinke (15-5/3.4 ERA), LH Clayton Kershaw (14-9/2.5 ERA), and RH Chad Billingsley (10-9/3.5 ERA), though the latter pitcher has had an elbow issue. The Dodgers line-up this year will include .303/69 RBI Matt Kemp and .299/108 RBI Adrian Gonzalez, but the rest of the line-up will be iffy against a slew of starter rotation improvements throughout most of the NL, especially those within the NL West.

Colorado Rockies   ---    This team finished second from the bottom in the majors last year, winning 64 games and losing 98. That sealed the loss of manager Jim Tracy, replaced by first time as manager of any MLB club, Walt Weiss, a former Rockies shortstop with player experience on other MLB teams, notably under managers that any smart ballplayer would want to learn from—Bobby Cox, and Tony La Russa, and so Weiss won’t be a rookie boss in the traditional sense during the 2013 season. A good sign for the Rockies is that Weiss won’t be employing the four-man starter rotation/70-75 minimum pitch rule chartered during 2012, which had close to zero effect on game winning chances before the start of a sixth inning. Instead, better alignment of relievers-to-starters will exist, a strategized one-two punch before a closer enters in an eigth or ninth inning. As to line-up reinforcement, the Rockies will be counting on long-ball hitters Troy Tulowitzki and, in his last year before retirement, Todd Helton, both back from injury lists. Add power hitter, .303 Carlos Gonzalez being early in a line-up led by .300 Dexter Fowler, whose strong suit is his .389 on-base percentage (highest among Rockies hitters), though Fowler needs to convert more base-stealing attempts into achieved steals (he should work on this with Carlos Gonzalez, who led the Rockies with 20 steals in 2012). Yes, were the Rockies pitching staff even at the margin, the Rockies would have enough good hitters to reach playoff competition come September. Last year, the Rockies 15-man pitching staff included only four winning hurlers, and all were relievers, all having played in fewer than 10 games, Rex Brothers at the top, 8-2/3.8 ERA. Best among the starting pitchers was LH Jeff Francis, 6-7/5.5 ERA. Unless there are fixes vs. vulnerabilities within the Rockies pitching staff during spring training and in April and early May, chances for a Rockies comeback and winning status will remain dim (good hitters can do just so much).

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NBA  ---    After the All-Star game, it’s business intensified, all eyes strictly on the prize, “those playoff billets.” Second and third place teams will be strategizing for climbing up in the rankings, maybe surpassing today’s numero unos. And, it will be hard going. Presently, only two of the NBA’s six second place teams are fewer than six games behind their respective division leading franchises, the 31-22 Brooklyn Nets being two behind the New York Knicks, and the 30-22 Chicago Bulls one behind the Indiana Pacers. Third place teams are seven and more games behind their leading franchises. Ascending will only be easy if within the NBA Western Conference the consistently winning 39-14 Oklahoma City Thunder, 42-12 San Antonio Spurs and 39-17 Los Angeles Clippers loosen and fall back considerably, and, in the NBA Eastern Conference downslides occur for the 32-18 Knicks, the 36-14 Miami Heat and the 32-21 Pacers. Still at the very bottom are the 12-40 Charlotte Bobcats, the 15-37 Orlando Magic and the 15-36 Washington Wizards. Ironically, a team that is 21 games behind first place within its division is in third place, the Washington Wizards, and that’s because the East’s Southeast Division’s Bobcats and the Magic have been doing so poorly.

Denver Nuggets.   Of five games played since the 33-21 Nuggets nine-game winning streak ended, the Denver franchise has lost three, and tonight they will face a team that they lost to in a third overtime period on February 10, the 28-24 Boston Celtics, after which the Nuggets will have four games versus losing franchises, vs. the Wizards, the Bobcats, the 25-28 Portland Trail Blazers and the 25-29 L.A. Lakers, before meeting the Thunder. Being fourth now within the Western Conference and close behind the 33-18 Memphis Grizzlies, the Nuggets will want enough wins to leap ahead into conference-third and to then rise and overtake the 39-17 L.A. Clippers, thus achieve conference-second.

Winning the next five games can at least keep the Nuggets at the status quo if the Thunder, Spurs, Clippers and Grizzlies win their next five. For Nuggets head coach, George Karl, this and all other leaps forward mean rostering/fielding players for increases in power of defense, and for defense rebounds allowing ball recovery, fast-to-the-paint breaks and then the field goal, plus increases in free throw accuracy.

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