The baseball season’s coming up and Mike Krukow thinks Yasiel Puig is dumb for not pegging the Giants as their biggest rival. In San Luis Obispo, I’d say they are, though the two teams have not met in the playoffs since the Wild Card round started.

I thought it would be fun to, over the next few weeks, go position by position and compare what personnel the two teams have in preparation for the 2015 season. Today’s position: First base.

First base is a big contrast. The Dodgers have one of the steadiest guys in the league and a bona-fide star at the position. The Giants have at least three players who could see significant time at the position. Back-up players will be in parenthesis.

Position by Position: Catcher

Adrian Gonzalez (Scott Van Slyke?, Andre Ethier?, ?)

Gonzalez is the start and the end of the first base conversation for the Dodgers. The 32 year-old led the National League with 116 RBI’s last season and finished seventh in the MVP voting. He played in 159 games — the most since he was traded from San Diego to Boston — and was one of the steadier Dodgers. He hit 27 homers, but his batting average “dipped” to .276, his lowest full season in the major leagues.

As Gonzalez gets farther and farther away from a shoulder injury five years ago, he continues to show that he is a very productive player in the heart of the Dodgers’ order. His dependability and durability last season played a big part in the team winning as many games as they did.

ZIPS projects Gonzalez to have a slightly worse year than last season when counting home runs, RBI, WAR, and other counting statistics, but an identical or better year than 2014 is within the realm of possibility. When he plays, it’s likely Gonzalez will contribute at the steady rate he has for most of the past two seasons. The question will be — can he stay healthy? Dodgers fans better hope so.

Brandon Belt (Buster Posey, Andrew Susac?)

The Giants’ depth chart is fun and hard to nail-down at this position. (Although I’m scratching my head to find out why a depth chart that boasts to have been updated today shows Travis Ishikawa as a first-base option…) The chart in question shows Buster Posey as the starting catcher and back-up first baseman, which makes a ton of sense. Posey’s ability to play first base and the team’s desire for him to do the same will make the position a really flexible one.

The issue is one of playing time at first base. ZIPS likes Belt and Susac to have roughly equal contribution this season for the Giants, but that dosn’t say anything about playing time or where that playing time will happen for either Susac and Posey. Presumably, Susac will play mostly behind the plate, giving Posey a chance to sit-out or man first base against left-handed pitchers while giving Belt the night off. If Belt is less effective or injured again, a scenario where Susac and Posey basically platoon between the two positions, excepting days off.

Belt will be turning 27 years-old in 2015. He should be right in his prime in his fourth year in the majors. Injuries limited Belt to 61 regular season games last year, perhaps contributing to a mild ZIPS projection of less than two wins. He could produce twice that, which would put him somewhere close to where Adrian Gonzalez was a season ago. He could also be closer to the two-win player that ZIPS projects him as.

One really good, steady guy vs. options

While I’ve been touting the Dodgers giving themselves lots of organizational flexibility and options during the offseason, they don’t have a ton of flexibility at first base. In a pinch, I suppose Juan Uribe could play there as well, though someone like Andre Ethier could also fill-in were Gonzalez to go down for any length of time.

The question when comparing the Dodgers and Giants at this position is one of flexibility. Would you rather be the Giants, who have a decent starter, a catcher getting off the position for 30-40 games, and a relative unknown? Or would you rather be the Dodgers, with the best player at the position between the two teams but with some question marks after that.

Because of Gonzalez’ season last year, I’ll take the Dodgers, but not by as big a margin as Dodgers fans would like to think. If Adrian stays healthy all year and has a season close to the one he had last year, it won’t be close. If something else happens, or if Belt improves significantly, then the difference could be marginal.

Advantage: Dodgers.

Sometimes Twitter- and podcast-contributor, Jesse Pereira, was had an interesting take on the baseball games of Friday night. I asked him to write a post about it, and he did so on Friday night. You can find Jesse’s Twitter account (@mind_butter) here. 

Yasiel Puig’s bat-flipping will set the stage for the tongue-lashing Brandon Belt is sure to get from fans and fellow players, right?. By Owen Main

The Nationals-Giants game was a treat, with all the crucial elements that make postseason baseball, particularly postseason baseball in 2014 — so exciting. Great pitching, clutch late inning heroics, extra inning, and a game winning home run. Brandon Belt not only hit a moonshot into the stands, but dropped a bat flip for the ages.

Tomorrow morning we will surely have to read all the articles decrying Belt’s obvious lack of respect for the game. We’ve been through this before, and the media doesn’t like the bat flip. Just ask Yasiel Puig.

Puig is arguably the most accomplished bat-flipper in Major League Baseball today. This skill has certainly attracted considerable attention from players and spectators alike. Belt will get an earful tonight, from the likes of Madison Bumgarner – a noted critic of Puig’s flipping talent.

Baseball has unwritten rules, and young players like Belt and Puig need to learn respect or be taught it with high heat, benching, whatever it takes to get the lesson across.

It wasn’t Matt Cain, Tim Lincecum, or even Barry Zito. Angel Pagan didn’t say it, nor did Buster Posey. Funny enough, it was Brandon Belt who lobbed the first verbal barb of the season in what is sure to be a hotly-contested race in the National League West.

Belt was (is?) a young Giant with a promising future. The lefty first-baseman hit .275 last season with 7 home runs in 145 games. He won’t be 25 until April, but has yet to hit with the kind of power or consistency the Giants had hoped for.

Matt Kemp is the Dodgers’ version of Buster Posey — a home-grown star who fans believe can take their team to the promised land. By Dirk Hansen (Own work), via Wikimedia Commons

On its face, Belt’s quote really isn’t that bad. Belt is absolutely right about chemistry, you can’t buy it. Giants fans would love to point to their home-grown team that has brought home the World Series trophy each of the past two seasons. While Cain, Lincecum, and Posey are from the Giants’ farm system, no team wins the World Series without spending SOME money. According to the Yahoo! article that I found Belt’s quote, the Giants will have the 7th highest payroll going into spring training.

The Dodgers, of course, will have the biggest payroll going into the spring.

Dodgers fans are probably good with that. After years of not acting like a big-market team, the Dodgers finally went and spent some money last year. Despite having three of what Grantland called the 15 worst contracts in baseball, traded-for talent and homegrown stars give the Dodgers hope this year.

Real hope and excitement are something that Dodger fans crave. The last number of years have had a pall over them that is no longer there. For the first time in years, there aren’t ownership questions in the back of Dodgers fans’ minds.

Who would you rather have at first base? Brandon Belt or Adrian Gonzalez? What about at third base: Hanley Ramirez or Pablo Sandoval? In center field would you rather have Matt Kemp or Angel Pagan? The only two positions where the Giants look like they’ll be clearly better are catcher and probably starting pitching. The Dodgers, though, have two aces (Clayton Kershaw and Zach Greinke) and have as much starting pitching depth as anyone.

All that being said, here’s the thing, Brandon Belt. The Dodgers and their fans will take their chances. There is talent on the Dodgers’ roster. In some cases, it might be overpaid talent, but it’s more than they’ve had in a long time. It’s true that talent will only get you so far, but I’ll take this Dodgers team over any they’ve had in the past 20 years. With the veteran group they have, here’s hoping that professionals find a way to build some chemistry. Even a little Dodgers chemistry should catapult the boys in blue to World Series contenders.

For now, though, I’ll be content with real, unfettered hope.