King Kaufman's Sports Daily

National League preview: As the steroid cloud starts to lift, an unjuiced look at the senior circuit.

Editor's note: Read the American League preview.

Read more: Sports, King Kaufman, Sports Daily

April 1, 2008 | Welcome to the first Salon baseball preview of the post-steroids era.

Yeah, I'm just declaring that, OK?

It's not that I think the juicers have stopped juicing to any significant degree, but it does feel like the worst of the hysteria is passing. Maybe it's the absence, for now, of Barry Bonds and all the hanky twisting over his breaking Hank Aaron's career home run record.

Roger Clemens, who only recently became a drug pariah, is also absent. Clemens doesn't appear likely to return. Bonds will be back when some team is willing to trade some rough P.R. for a big bat with an eye to the postseason and maybe it'll all start again.

Management and the players union are adjusting the testing program again and Congress is still stomping its feet around, but the season just seems to be getting underway without all that lamentation about the game being ruined and the children not being thought of.

Also, I'm off the juice myself, which explains why this season preview is appearing after the start of the season. We'll call it the midseason season preview. I admit it: I'm cheating. I already have some insights that fellow prognosticators didn't have in the preseason. For example, the Boston Red Sox and Oakland A's are both looking like .500 teams so far.

It's just something I'm doing once. Actually twice, because this is the first of two parts. But I really regret it.

Following recent habit, we'll start with the National League and move on to the big stuff Wednesday. And as always, we travel west to east.

WEST DIVISION

2007 finish: Arizona, Colorado (wild card), San Diego (tie), Los Angeles, San Francisco (Note: Colorado beat San Diego in a wild-card playoff game)

Let's get the easy part out of the way: The Giants are going to be terrible. Their steadfast refusal to rebuild while Bonds was on the payroll has left them with an old, bad team and almost nobody in the farm system. Even with talented young pitchers Tim Lincecum and Matt Cain, they could lose 100.

By Labor Day.

The Diamondbacks were the sexy pick last year and what do you know, they put out. They won 90 games and took the division despite being outscored. They're much the same this year, with a lot of room for improvement from future studs Chris Young in center field and Stephen Drew at shortstop, plus a full year from third baseman Mark Reynolds.

The D-Backs emptied their farm system to get Dan Haren from Oakland to pair with Brandon Webb at the top of the rotation. The Diamondbacks traded closer Jose Valverde to Houston in the offseason, but an excellent bullpen remains mostly intact. Arizona is sexy again.

Next page: Why the Cubs and Mets won't win their divisions. Plus: Ben Franklin and the Phillies