NL West back to worst status

Here a mess, there a mess, everywhere a mess.

“This,” Russell Martin said, “was supposed to be the best division in baseball.”

Ladies and gentlemen, children of all ages: Behold the worst division in baseball, the National League West!

“There’s always surprises,” Greg Maddux said. “There’s teams that play better than you thought, like Tampa Bay. And there’s teams that play worse than you thought.

“It seems like most of those teams are in our division.”

The Colorado Rockies and Arizona Diamondbacks played for the league championship last season. Maddux and the Padres lost a one-game playoff. Martin and the Dodgers finished fourth and still finished above .500.

No other division last year had four teams above .500. No other division this year has four teams below .500.

The “NL Worst” nickname is lame and tired. It also is valid.

The San Francisco Giants were supposed to be bad. They are. They’re on pace to lose 92 games.

They’re in third place.

The Padres are in fourth. They needed 62 games to win 23 this year. In each of the last two years, they needed 43 to win 23.

The Rockies have the worst record in the league. They finished last season 21-5, including the playoffs and World Series. They started this season 21-38.

“We’ve all had our share of issues,” Colorado Manager Clint Hurdle said, “with the exception of the Diamondbacks.

“I think they were overachieving early, but I still think they have a very potent offense. Everybody else has struggled dramatically in a couple areas.”

In April, we thought the Diamondbacks were the class of the league, until they started playing outside their allegedly strong division.

The Diamondbacks are 20-8 within the NL West, 14-20 otherwise. No team in the NL West has a winning record outside the division.

In May, the Chicago Cubs emerged as the class of the league, boosted by a schedule that tilted west. The Cubs are 17-5 against the NL West, 22-19 otherwise.

“You’d like to say the division is good,” said the Dodgers’ Mark Sweeney, who has played for every team in the division except Arizona.

“Offensively, I think it’s short top to bottom, especially with the injuries to Colorado. But there’s still a lot of talent.”

The Diamondbacks are the only team in the division that does not rank among the bottom five in the league in runs. The Dodgers are not the only team that can’t win those 3-2 games because they can’t score three runs.

That the Dodgers’ offense has collapsed in the absence of Rafael Furcal speaks volumes about the lack of organizational depth. Andruw Jones is injured, but he was hitting .165.

“There’s been an obvious lack of offense throughout the division,” Dodgers General Manager Ned Colletti said. “Some teams are lacking offense because they’re banged up.

“We obviously miss Furcal -- and Jones. He has yet to get on track, and now he’s hurt. That said, we’ve got some pretty good bats out there.”

The Rockies lost shortstop Troy Tulowitzki to injury, but he was hitting .152. They also lost outfielders Matt Holliday and Brad Hawpe to the disabled list, and the foundation of young pitchers upon which last October was built -- Jeff Francis, Ubaldo Jimenez, Franklin Morales and closer Manny Corpas -- collapsed. Morales is in the minor leagues, and Corpas is no longer the closer.

The Padres lost Jake Peavy, the reigning Cy Young Award winner, and Chris Young to the disabled list, but they were 17-31 before either was injured.

The bullpen ranks at the bottom of the league -- the Padres build around pitching in Petco Park -- and Jim Edmonds flopped in replacing Mike Cameron in center field. The Padres also have offensive holes at catcher, second base and left field.

“We’ll keep a close eye on the division,” Padres General Manager Kevin Towers said. “Two or three weeks from now, we’ll see if we have a run in us or not. How the rest of the division plays will dictate if we’re buyers or sellers.”

If the Diamondbacks take off again, Towers and his colleagues could have quite a sale.

The Padres could put Maddux, pitcher Randy Wolf and outfielder Brian Giles on the trading block. The Rockies could offer Holliday, third baseman Garrett Atkins and pitchers Aaron Cook and Brian Fuentes.

The Dodgers could dangle second baseman Jeff Kent and pitchers Brad Penny, Derek Lowe and Takashi Saito. The Giants have invited offers on veterans since spring training, and catcher Bengie Molina and outfielder Randy Winn could go.

But the Diamondbacks had the best record in the league in April and have the second-worst record since then, so who knows? They scored six runs a game in April, four runs a game since then. First baseman Conor Jackson hit .348 in April, .247 in May. Outfielder Justin Upton hit .340 in April, .216 in May.

The Dodgers lost 10 of 13 games but no worries: The Diamondbacks were busy losing 12 of 16.

“If they had played better,” Colletti said, “we would be 10 out.”

If the Dodgers had played better, they would be in first place. They still could get there with a good week, even as they’re under .500 right now.

We’ll see. The season could play out this way, another summer rerun. In 2005, the Padres won the NL West at 82-80.

“It may look like that now, but I don’t think it will finish that way,” Towers said. “I think there’s much more talent in the division than there was in 2005.”

Matt Herges has pitched for every team in the NL West. He pitches for the Rockies now, from last place.

“I think this should be the best division in baseball,” he said. “It hasn’t turned out that way.”

He is not upset at that. The Diamondbacks could have buried his team by now, and in that he can find a small blessing.

Could this division really be won with 82 victories?

“I hope so,” Herges said. “I hope it’s us. It’s still wide open. Thank God they cooled off.”

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bill.shaikin@latimes.com