Good morning, baseball fans!

As we approach Spring Training and the beginning of the season, we’re going to be doing some questions for y’all about your thoughts about the San Francisco Giants and baseball in general!

Today’s question: How would you rank the 2026 NL West?

The Giants have the misfortune of being in one of the most difficult divisions in baseball at the moment. Aside from the outlier that was the 2021 season, they have not taken the division since 2012 and the last time they even managed second place was 2016.

So let’s do our best to see if we can rank the NL West teams for the 2026 season. You can rank them in a way that makes sense, or not. I’m not the boss of you, and I’m pro-manifesting success through sheer delusion.

This is an obvious ranking, of course. The Rockies have not been competitive in the division or otherwise since 2018 and at this point I’m not sure if they’re even still an actual team, or a group of LARP-ers who show up to take the field when the Giants are in town.

I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. But this feels realistic to me. The only reason they didn’t end up in fourth place last season, in my opinion, is the hot start to the season that they had. And while I think the 2026 team might be slightly better than the 2025 team, I don’t think it’s significant enough. Though I’d love to be wrong! I often am.

I struggled with this one, because I think the Diamondbacks are basically the Giants at this point so it could go either way. The Diamondbacks have been trending downward over the last couple of seasons after their World Series loss in 2023. However, I’m giving them an edge over the Giants because their ballpark is hitter friendly, and the Giants’ is where offense goes to die a slow painful death.

The Padres are tough to predict, but they’ve been pretty consistent over the last few years, cementing themselves as the given second place team in the division after having done so in four of the last six seasons. So I think this one is a fairly safe bet as well.

I hate typing this. I know you hate reading it. But it’s the reality we live in. Unless something catastrophic happens, I think it’s a very safe bet that the Dodgers will take the division once again. Just like they’ve done for 11 of the last 12 seasons. What a joy.

How would you rank the 2026 NL West?