NL West Round-Up: Not Terrible Unless You Pitch For The Dodgers

The Diamondbacks have played, will play, or are playing half the teams on this list in the past week. Here's the rest of what happened.

Colorado Rockies

• Record: 15-8
• Previous series: ARI, ATL, ARI
• Upcoming series: LAD, TB

There's not a lot to fill in here about what happened with the Rockies this week since most of it happened to us. We were there. We watched. And if anyone didn't watch, game recaps here are a good place to start. But since I can't skip the Rockies as much as I'd like to, here's what happened. After taking two of three from the Dbacks, the Rockies dropped the following series against the Braves. Game one against the delay was postponed for weather (agan, more, still) and the Rockies dropped both ends of the next day's doubleheader. They salvaged the series by squeaking through the last game on extra innings. Jhoulys Chacin and Todd Helton both went on the disabled list, resulting in call-ups for Tyler Chatwood and Ryan Wheeler. The Rockies may be in a stretch of bad luck, playing in four one-run games and losing three of them. Personally, I'm fine if this continues.

San Francisco Giants

• Record: 13-10
• Previous series: SD, ARI, SD
• Upcoming series: ARI, LAD

The Giants played approximately their thousandth series against the Padres so far this year. They swept the Padres over the last weekend, though they dropped the first game against San Diego Friday night. That loss nudged them into a losing record, giving the a 2-3 record going into Saturday's contest. Despite the record, there were plenty of positive signs for the Giants this week. Brandon Belt, who struggled to begin the season, seemed to show some life. Most of that came at the expense of the Diamondbacks when Belt had two huge pinch hit appearances. His batting average is up 56 points in the past week and he's knocked in six hits, including a double and home run.

The good news continued with the pitcher formerly known as "What's Wrong With" Tim Lincecum. In his past two starts, Lincecum has given up only two runs on only ten hits. Not a bad record even if he did get skip the Diamondbacks series and the terrors of Paul Goldschmidt to start against the Padres twice. This is exactly what the Giants want to see as Matt Cain scuffles. And can we talk about Barry Zito for a second? Specifically, have the Giants checked to make sure he's not a pod person. Because I don't know about the rest of you but the fact that Zito has only give up runs in a single game this year freaks me out. I'm not saying there's anything up but if it turned out that this Zito was a changeling and the real Zito is off in the eternal summers of Avalon while the stranger with his face throws shut outs, I wouldn't be surprised.

Los Angeles Dodgers

• Record: 11-11
• Previous series: BAL, NYM, MIL
• Upcoming series: COL, SF

The Dodgers had a much better week than the one they had last week, which is pretty good because their pitchers are basically held together with Bazooka bubble gum and hope. They went 4-1 this week while losing Chad Billingsley to Tommy John. surgery. They scored 27 runs, gave up 20 runs, and Matt Kemp finally hit a home run. Meanwhile, Adrian Gonzalez has more hits than Jerry Bruckheimer's production studio. One the other hand, Matt Kemp's batting average is still only nine points higher than Zack Greinke's and Dodger's desperation starter, Stephen Fife, who started against Baltimore is also now on the DL. Prospect Matt Magill will make his debut tonight for the Dodgers. Magill has a 2.84 ERA this year with the Dodgers' Triple A club.

San Diego Padres

• Record: 7-15
• Previous series: SF, MIL, SF
• Upcoming series: CHC, ARI

It's really tempting to say they were terrible and go back to watching reruns of the West Wing on Netflix. The Padres went 2-3 this week, dropping series against the Giants and Brewers. They had a lot of trouble scoring runs, getting shut out once and only managing to scrape together eight runs over that span while their pitching allowed 20. Not a good trend if the goal is to win ball games. Chris Denorfia leads the starters in batting average but hasn't had an extra-base hit since April 19. Andrew Cashner had a great start against the Giants yesterday, giving up just one earned run in six innings and striking out five while walking just one. Eric Stults, who had been off to a good start, has struggled and recently gave up five earned runs to the Giants on the April 21. Chase Headley is still settling back after returning from the DL. He's hitting .179 with five hits in 28 at bats since joining the team on April 17.

Did you hear about that guy who did that thing?

Everybody made jokes about Ken Kendrick but at least all he had changed was Dodgers' fans clothes and not the lineup. Unlike Miami owner Jeffry Loria, who insisted the starting pitchers for a day/night doubleheader be swapped.