Are there any starters in the last year of their contract who can reliably give us a 3.50 or under ERA and pitch into October?
At the risk of sounding like a broken record with the other thread - Greinke. The only question is how much you'd have to give up to get the guy who might be the NL Cy Young winner for a 3-month rental.
As for glaring weaknesses - it's the offense, really. The offense looks better now than it did a few weeks ago - we're trending back towards just below middle of the pack, rather than the bottom 3 or four. Harper's emergence has absolutely changed things in that regard. We're dead-on league average slugging now, where we weren't before. Even if you think Harper can't sustain this level for the whole year, Morse, Zimm and Werth's return should counter-balance somewhat. It may not be as "glaring" as it was, but LF is still a hole and will be at least until Werth gets back. And don't look now, but all of a sudden Espi and Desmond are about equal and producing at slightly below average. We've gotten a bit of a dead-cat bounce from being among the worst offenses in the league, but it could still use an upgrade.
If youre thinking about playoffs (and really, we should be), you've got to look at an NLCS where you've got Gio vs. Kershaw, ZNN vs. Billingsley, and EJ vs. Capuano. Meanwhile, their offense scores a half-run per game more than ours. There's room to get better.
Let's not kid ourselves - we've been playing great, and beating all of our expectations, which is great. But if you're serious about wanting 2012 to be "the year" then you've got some holes to try to fix.
Or, maybe you're ok with getting to the first or second wild-card spot, playing in the play-in game, and taking your chances with what you have, knowing you'll have the same roster mostly in 2013. I get that, too - but this latest winning streak has me wondering if we might not be really one of the two-three best teams in baseball this year if we just got one or two more pieces.
