ALEX FRANCO
STAFF WRITER

The 2012 Major League Baseball season has begun to take shape as the World Series contender’s separate themselves from the postseason pretenders. Let’s take a look at how the Southern California teams have fair a month into this still very young baseball season.

The Angels thought to be playoff favorites have really struggled to get anything going offensively this season, sputtering to a dismal 7-15 record so far. The much publicized offseason pickup; Albert Pujols has yet to get his feet off the ground this season, struggling to hit a single homerun this season. Pujols is going through his worst homerun drought of his career, failing to go yard in 109 consecutive at-bats and hitting a very low .216 batting average. Pujols must be the feared batter he was in St. Louis if the Angels are going to go anywhere this season. The Angels lost 5 of their 6 games this past week being shut out twice.

The San Diego Padres have also not fared well this season posting a 7-16 record so far. The lack of run production and hitting has plagued the Padres this season. They were 2-4 this past week, but never scoring more than 2 runs in any of their games. The Padres offense must generate some form runs if they are to help their seventh best team earned run average (ERA) win any games this year.

Finally, the Los Angeles Dodgers have picked up right where they left off last season, winning 4 of their 6 games last week to improve their NL west leading and league best 16-6 record. The Dodgers have been hitting on all cylinders this season scoring whenever they need to and shutting down the opponents hitting whenever needed. Matt Kemp leads the way for the Dodgers’ offense and makes his early case for league MVP as he leads the league in homeruns (11) and batting average (.425) and is second in the league in RBIs with 24. The dodgers pitching staff has also helped them dominate opponents with a team ERA of 1.73.

The season is far from over, anything can change from here to October; let’s hope for Angels and Padres fans some things do change.