NL West

Vicente Padilla will get the nod to pitch Game Three of the NLDS on Saturday against the St. Louis Cardinals as manager Joe Torre chose to go with Padilla over the early season ace, Chad Billingsley.

He also was awarded the start over Jon Garland, who possesses post-season experience and even a World Series championship ring, but Padilla has done yeoman’s work in the final months of the season and has earned the right to toe the rubber.

They say that sometimes you can predict the outcome of a baseball game strictly from the first batter to take his hacks.

Unfortunately for the Colorado Rockies, that saying rang true in their opening bout with the Philadelphia Phillies in Game One of the National League Division Series.

When Dexter Fowler swung at Cliff Lee's first pitch of the game, flying out weakly to right field, it was a sad portent of things to come for the red-hot Rox in their eventual 5-1 drubbing at the hands of the NL East Champions.

The Colorado Rockies opened their postseason in Philadelphia, the same place that they did in 2007. Both teams are essentially full of the same players. Except for one.

With the smell of jet fuel still lingering from their trip back from Chicago, Arizona Diamondbacks manager A.J. Hinch had already set in motion his plans for next season.

Shortly after returning on Sunday night, Hinch met with third base coach Chip Hale and first base coach Lorenzo Bundy. Each coach was told he would not be returning for the 2010 season. And so began the rebuilding project that will ultimately become the Arizona Diamondbacks.

Take that finger off the panic button, Dodger fans.  The division race is over.

Finally.

After dragging their victory champagne from Pittsburgh to San Diego, the Los Angeles Dodgers were able to pop bottles on the second-to-last day of the season.

With the Los Angeles Times reporting that the Dodgers are in contract extension talks with Ned Colletti, now is as good a time as any to briefly address the elephant in the room before returning to your regularly scheduled playoff talk.

Six walk-off hits—four of which have been long balls.

That’s what Andre Ethier has done this season for the first-place Los Angeles Dodgers.

The six walk-off winners are an all-time high for a single player in the divisional era. In fact, he has the most walk-off hits in a single season since 1974, and his four walk-off homers are also the most since ’74.

Justin Morneau was the last player to hit three walk-off homers in a season, doing so in ’07.

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Workhorse.

In a season that has seen 12 different starting pitchers for the Los Angeles Dodgers thus far, that’s the only way to describe how Randy Wolf put the starting staff on his back from the end of June until early September.

Wolf, in 14 starts from June 29-September 5, tossed 93.2 innings—good for an average of 6.2 innings per start.

It had been 11 days since Tim Lincecum toed the rubber for the beloved orange and black.

Those 11 long days have seen the San Francisco Giants get back into, fall out of, and now kind of get back into the National League Wild Card race with the Colorado Rockies.

So with the Rockies opening a three-game set in San Francisco on Monday, it only made sense that Lincecum made his triumphant return to the Giants' rotation after his back spasms caused Madison Bumgarner to make a unexpected debut.