Dissecting the National League Playoff Bracket

Four teams with one dream and four teams with four different stories. That's what fans are looking at in the National League playoff bracket today as the postseason really gets underway. The Wild Card games are in the books and the final four NL teams are set. St. Louis and Pittsburgh will meet in a divisional showdown while Atlanta and Los Angeles will square off in a highly-anticipated series filled with young stars.

You want history? You got it. The four National League teams left have all been in existence since the 1880s. There is a combined 25 World Series victories among the four and plenty of Hall of Fame legends. More recently, the NL has belonged to the Braves and the Cardinals. St. Louis won a dramatic World Series in 2011 and also was victorious in 2006. Atlanta dominated the 90s and has remained the beast of the NL East with a fresh crop of talent.

Los Angeles enters the playoffs as the hottest team over the second half. At the beginning of the season, fans and analysts were discussing Don Mattingly's job, but LA turned it around and finished with 92 wins and ran away with the West Division. Yasiel Puig took the nation by storm with his you-gotta-see-this theatrics on the field and on the base paths, but it was Hanley Ramirez who really acted as the catalyst for LA's run.

LA's matchup with Atlanta is intriguing for multiple reasons. While the Dodgers were the focal point of the second half, Atlanta flew under the radar for much of the season. If it's possible, the Braves somehow won 96 games quietly. To make it even more impressive, Atlanta got nothing out of B.J. Upton and Dan Uggla during the regular season. Uggla batted .179 and was left off the playoff roster.

Still, the Braves lineup is potent with Justin Upton, Jason Heyward, Freddie Freeman and Chris Johnson. However, they are going to be facing a pitching staff headlined by Clayton Kershaw. Runs won't come easy for the Braves in this series. Kershaw finished the season with a miniscule 1.83 ERA and is one of the most decorated pitchers in the game today.

In the other series, the Cardinals and Pirates face off in a familiar matchup. The two teams played 19 times with Pittsburgh winning 10 games. While the matchup is familiar, the setting is not for one team. Pittsburgh hasn't been in the playoffs since 1992 when the lost in the NLCS. Still, there are players on the roster that do have playoff experience. A.J. Burnett and Justin Morneau are no strangers to postseason baseball, but for a star like Andrew McCutchen this is all new.

St. Louis finished with the best record in baseball behind little-known stars such as Matt Carpenter and Allen Craig and a pitching staff led by Adam Wainwright. The Cardinals are better than any team in baseball with runners in scoring position and that will come in handy during the playoffs when every run matters.

So who moves on? Count on the Cardinals to defeat the Pirates due to their experience and timely hitting. It's a toss up in the Braves-Dodgers series, but I'll take LA.

Legends are made in October and the team that gets that timely hit, run-saving catch or shutdown pitching performance is the team that wins. Let the games begin...

Dodgers Hoping New Stars Produce Wins

LA spent a combined $208 million to acquire Ryu and Greinke

Contrary to yesterday's post about the American League signing almost all of the big name players on the market, the National League's Los Angeles Dodgers have done just fine for themselves in the last calendar year when it comes to signing big talent. Near the end of last season they traded for the Boston Red Sox failures and this winter they signed Zack Greinke away from their crosstown rival in Anaheim.

New owner Magic Johnson has shown he isn't afraid to throw some cash around and it's obvious when looking down the roster. Josh Beckett ($17 mil), Clayton Kershaw ($7.75 mil), Ted Lilly ($11.6 mil) and Zack Greinke ($13.5 mil) are an expensive starting rotation and that doesn't guarantee they will be reliable. The Dodgers can be confident about Kershaw. The 24-year-old ace has been named to the All-Star team the past two seasons and also finished in the top two for the Cy Young. He has led the NL in ERA both years as well.

LA can also be confident in what they are getting with Greinke. The right hander split time between Milwaukee and Anaheim last season and finished 15-5 with a 3.48 ERA. He has a Cy Young on his resume and has averaged 14 victories per season since 2009. He is money well spent and will provide a dependable arm at the top of the rotation.

After Kershaw and Greinke the rotation gets a bit murky. Coupled with Beckett and Hyun-Jin Ryu, it looks like the best rotation in baseball, but there are reasons to be hesitant. Beckett is coming off a disappointing season and didn't leave Boston on good terms. In seven starts with LA he went 2-3 with an ERA below three. If he can pitch like the 2011 Josh Beckett rather than the 2012 version then the Dodgers may have something special. Ryu was not a cheap signing by any means and he comes over to LA from South Korea. Obviously there is plenty of hype around Ryu, but will his success translate over to the American game?

The good news for the Dodgers is that even if half of the rotation doesn't pitch to their potential, the lineup should cover the slack. Again, Magic has spent an awful lot on his lineup, but doubts surround some of the brightest stars. Adrian Gonzalez ($22 mil), Andre Ethier ($10.95 mil), Matt Kemp ($10.25 mil), Carl Crawford ($20 mil) and Hanley Ramirez ($15 mil) are a formidable bunch, but they come with a large price tag and even larger question marks.

Gonzalez and Crawford, like Beckett, left Boston on bad terms. Both were enormous free agent signings for the Sox, but neither performed as was expected of them and they became the focal points of the Red Sox demise. Crawford spent much of the year injured and never played a game for the Dodgers. Gonzalez got off to a slow start, but he recovered to have a decent year batting .297 with 18 home runs and 108 RBI. His home run total was his lowest since he became a regular player in the lineup.

Ramirez joined the Dodgers midseason and, like the trio from Boston, became the focal point of a team's failure. The Miami Marlins floundered through 2012 and Ramirez was shipped to LA after 93 games. When motivated, Ramirez is one of the best in the game, but he hasn't always been the most coachable player. His attitude will play a large part in this Dodgers' team success.

Kemp and Ethier are the foundation of the lineup and LA can only hope Kemp puts together another spectacular season like he did in 2011 when he led the league in home runs and RBI while batting .324 and stealing 40 bases.

On paper this is the best team in the National League and perhaps in the MLB, but will it translate to the field? Magic Johnson has spent plenty of money and Don Mattingly is a solid manager, but we have seen plans that looked like they couldn't fail fall hard. LA hopes to avoid being part of that category because, not only would a season without the playoffs be an embarrassment, it would also be a costly mistake.

Hanley Heads West to LA

It seemed like the Miami Marlins couldn't fail with the way their offseason went. They got the big free agent (Jose Reyes), hired a proven manager (Ozzie Guillen), signed two pitchers who have had success (Mark Buerhle and Carlos Zambrano) and had a new ballpark (Marlins Stadium) on top of that. All of that to join a team that already had Giancarlo Stanton, Josh Johnson, Logan Morrison and Hanley Ramirez.  Ozzie and Reyes were featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated and the Marlins were the talk of the MLB for all the right reasons. However, things haven't exactly gone as planned and now their often-disgruntled star, Ramirez has packed his bags for Los Angeles in a trade that sent him to the Dodgers for next to nothing. On top of that, the Marlins have struggled to put people in the seats at their new ballpark, proof that not all brilliant plans end up working out.

Look no further than Hanley Ramirez. His career has been in the spotlight since he entered the league and not always for the right reasons. Let us not forget though, just three years ago the 2006 Rookie of the Year was on top of the baseball mountain top. In 2009 he led the MLB with a .342 batting average while hitting 24 home runs and knocking in 106 runs. He had career-highs in OBP and slugging percentage and finished second in the MVP voting. He was named an All-Star and received a Silver Slugger at the conclusion of the season. From there it has been a steep decline for Hanley Ramirez. Not only have his numbers continued to drop, but he has become the face of the "lazy and egotistical club" in the MLB. His booted ground ball incident in 2010 made headlines everywhere, not because of the error, but because of the lack of hustle he showed in chasing the ball down. Naturally, news came out later that he may have hurt his ankle earlier in the game, but the damage was done. Run-ins with ex-manager Fredi Gonzalez became something of a routine and Gonzalez was shown the door during last season.

Entering 2012, hopes were high in Miami. As mentioned above, everything was coming together for the Marlins. That is, until Ramirez was asked to move over to third base so that Reyes could play shortstop. Ramirez turned down the idea and publicly refused to move. He later changed his stance and made the move, but again, the damage was done. That's all a precursor to how poorly Ramirez has played this season. His batting average (.249) is challenging his career-low from 2011 (.243 in a season in which he played just 92 games) and he has just 49 RBIs. He is in danger of setting career-highs in strikeouts and double plays while it's highly possible he could have career-lows in batting average, hits, and stolen bases. The 2009 Hanley Ramirez seems like a distant memory, so the question is: why did the Dodgers trade for him?

Precisely because of those number he put up from 2006-2009. He is an all-star caliber player who can be a serious threat wherever he is put in the lineup. Imagine the 2009 Ramirez in the same lineup as Matt Kemp and Andre Ethier. Through two games he has started at third and is 3-6 at the plate. If the Dodgers can somehow find the old Hanley then they are getting a major prize. There are some cases where athletes need a change of scenery. It could be for a variety of reasons and it appears this is a case of Ramirez needing a new home. Earlier in the year, a slumping Kevin Youkilis was traded from Boston to the White Sox and he has thrived in Chicago's lineup since the trade. The Dodgers hope Ramirez will be a similar story.

He will play for a manager, Don Mattingly, who knows a little something about winning and playing the game the right way and he is surrounded by stars who can take pressure off of him. The situation, again, seems like one that would be hard to mess up. He's already off to a hot start and it's a fair guess he is trying to outrun his negative image. Question is: will he hustle do so?