I just don't think we have the horses to be considered contenders at this point. On paper our starting pitching is not great at all: Hudson has been in a steady decline for a few years, Hampton is coming back from a major surgery, a long break, and wasn't great befrore going down. After Smoltz there is nothing but question marks.
Our offense is a bit scary as well. We can pencil Chipper, Druw, and McCann in as being really good for their postions. Renteria will be streaky and his end of the year stats will probably be mediocre. "The Natural"- well, we will have to wait and see what we get. LF and 2B will both be poor. 1B is impossible to guess.
Defense actually scares me even more than offense. The OF should be excellent, but the IF will be flat out bad. Chipper just doesn't cover a lot of ground and Renteria has no range at all. We lose a legitimate GG at 2B and get a rookie. 1B gets Thorman, who is a rookie and new to the position. With a bunch of ground ball pitchers, I am very concerned.
Our bullpen goes from one of the very worst in the entire game to, arguably, one of the very best. We have 3 legitimate closers with Wickman, Soriano, and Gonzalez. This is probably the single best aspect of our entire team.
Of course no one knows how things are going to shake out and that is why they play the games instead of just looking at things on paper. Injuries can decimate any team or leave any other almost completely untouched.
And, as was mentioned before, we will not be able to count on reloading down the stretch if we are somewhere in contention.
Looking at what we have right now, I just am not optimistic about our chances to even compete for the wild card. I have been proven wrong before and I really hope I am again.
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