Division Races
Topic: Stretch Run
With all of the teams that are still in playoff contention, there are a number of close division races in the American League, and here are my predictions for the division winners:

In the American League East, it will be a close race between the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees, with the Red Sox just 1.5 games ahead of the Yankees as of September 16. It will be a close race for the remaining games of the season, but the Red Sox have a slight advantage with the remaining schedule and are slightly better on paper, so look for the Red Sox to break the Yankees' long streak of AL East championships this year.

In the American League Central, the Cleveland Indians and Chicago White Sox will duke it out for the championship of the division. The Indians are now just 4.5 games behind the White Sox and will most likely take over the division because they have the positive momentum whereas the White Sox have been steadily declining.

In the West is another tight race, this one being between the Athletics and the Angels. The Angels are superior in offense and the bullpen and will finish on top of the AL West.

Coming Soon: NL Division Races

July Surprises
Topic: Monthly Wrap-ups

There have been many amazing things going on in Major Leauge Baseball through July, from odd division standings in the National League to ironic steroid use revelations, it's been an interesting year so far in Major League Baseball. Let's start off with the National League East. After the games played on August 3rd, not one of the teams in the National Leauge East has a losing record, the worst of them being the New York Mets, with a 54-53 record. This is very surprising considering the fact that this division includes the Nationals (formerly the woeful Expos) and the New York Mets, who in the past couple of seasons have not managed to put a winning record together, yet the Nationals led the division for a while, and are currently in second place behind the perennial NL East Champion Atlanta Braves. Also noteworthy is the fact that Washington, Philadelphia, and Florida are second, third, and fourth in the NL Wild Card standings behind the first place Houston Astros, respectively. Now to the foil of the National League East, the National League West. The NL West is the exact opposite of the NL East: no team in the NL West division has a winning record, with the San Diego Padres (52-55) leading. This is a little shocking at first, but when you look at the rosters, it is not much of a surprise. The Padres haven't been very impressive these past few years, so it is a little surprising to see them on top of the division. What isn't surprising is how the other teams in the division are doing: the San Francisco Giants have been struggling this year, which can easily be attributed to the absence of slugging left fielder Barry Bonds (he didn't win those NL MVP's for nothing), the Colorado Rockies have been absolutely dreadful in recent years, the Arizona Diamondbacks have been steadily losing their best players (Kim, Schilling, Johnson), and the Los Angeles Dodgers' injuries certainly haven't helped. If the teams of the only all-losing division in Major League Baseball this year continue to lose, they will be the first division to contain all losing teams in National League history. The NL West came close to doing this back in 1994 when the Dodgers led the division with a 58-56 record. Another interesting fact is that in the NL Wild Card Race, the Arizona Diamondbacks, Los Angeles Dodgers, San Francisco Giants, and Colorado Rockies are eighth, tenth, eleventh, and thirteenth, respectively. Let's move on to some interesting trades and acquisitions at the Trading Deadline - oh wait, that's right, this year's Trading Deadline was just that - dead! Very few trades happened this year, with the very high number of teams still in playoff contention, but there were still some interesting trades to report. First off, the New York Yankees were desperate for pitching, and since I have already done a story about this, I won't go too far into it, but they made some very interesting acquisitions, including Tim Redding and Darrell May of the Padres, Shawn Chacon of the Colorado Rockies, Hideo Nomo of the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, and Alan Embree of the Boston Red Sox. The Yankees knew that they needed pitching very badly, but did not exactly get what they needed. Of the five pitchers listed above, none of them had an ERA below 4.00, the lowest being Shawn Chacon at 4.09, the highest being Tim Redding at 9.10. Another trade of interest was the Texas Rangers sending pitcher Chan Ho Park to San Diego for first-baseman Phil Nevin, whom they sought to use as a designated hitter. What's interesting about this trade is that the Rangers' big need was, and still is, pitching, yet they went out for a hitter instead. Getting rid of Chan Ho Park and his 5.66 ERA was not necessarily a bad move, what was bad was that they did not attempt to get a better pitcher for him, or possibly use Nevin as trade bait for a pitcher. If there was anything the Rangers did not need, it was more offense. It should also be noted that Nevin was a .256 hitter with just nine homers at the time of the trade. The next thing of interest is that just after Rafael Palmeiro gets his 3,000th hit, it is revealed to the public that Palmeiro tested positive in a drug test and has been suspended for 10 days. Palmeiro gave the all too common excuse that he did not know that he had taken any steroids, but that defense was destroyed when it was revealed that the steroid that Palmeiro had tested positive for was not some steroid you would find in a dietary supplement as he implied, but rather a very powerful steroid that could only be injected to enter the body. Palmeiro still denies that he knew he had taken steroids of any kind, but his hopes of making the Hall of Fame look slim now, and his 500 career homers and 3,000 career hits - a combination that only two others in Major League history have accomplished - may not be enough to get him in, as a lifetime ban from the hall looks, and hopefully is, likely. The 2005 season has been a very interesting season so far and will hopefully continue to be for the rest of the season. Hopefully the division races will get tighter and more exciting as we get closer to the home stretch of the season, and that players will figure out that it is not worth it to use steroids or any other kind of performance-enhancing drug, a lesson Rafael Palmeiro had to learn the hard way.

Yankees Getting Desperate
Topic: Trade Deadline

You may not have heard because of a lack of media coverage, but the New York Yankees have traded for two new pitchers in an attempt to "bolster" their pitching staff. The two newest Yankees are Shawn Chacon (1-7, 4.09 ERA), formerly of the Rockies, and Hideo Nomo (5-8, 7.24 ERA), formerly of the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. Shawn Chacon, who has spent his entire big league career with the Colorado Rockies, is not as bad a choice as he would seem to be in the past few years. His lifetime ERA of 5.20 is clearly an inflation of what it would have been in any park outside of Colorado, but his 2004 ERA of 7.11 is quite alarming. Still, his Ground Ball Outs to Fly Ball Outs Ratio is better than last year's, as well as his WHIP, slugging against, on-base against, and batting average against. The only thing that isn't favorable is that he does not tend to strike out a lot of batters (4.83 K/9 this season), which could pose a problem for the ever-changing New York Yankees' defensive lay-out. Other than that, Chacon seems to be a decent acquisition. On the other hand, Hideo Nomo is not a great acquisition. With the Devil Rays this season, Nomo was 5-8 with a horrific 7.24 ERA. Also, Nomo's Ground Ball Outs to Fly Ball Outs Ratio has continued to decline since last year, when it had a sharp decline from 1.00 to 0.59. His WHIP has increased to a career-worst 1.77, and his slugging against, on-base against, and batting average against are alarming, not to mention that his batting average against is also a career-worst. With the prime of his career clearly behind him as his numbers continue to become worse and worse, it is very surprising that the Yankees traded for him, when their high-spending owner George Steinbrenner expects nothing less of winning the World Series of his Yankees. While Chacon may have been a decent pick-up, the Yankees' pitching staff is clearly in serious trouble if they felt the need to acquire Hideo Nomo as well. The questionable pitchers that the Yankees have acquired so far include Darrell May (1-3, 5.61 ERA at time of acquisition), Tim Redding (0-5, 9.10 ERA at time of acquisition), and Hideo Nomo (5-8, 7.24 ERA at time of acquisition). With this current pattern of acquiring pitchers, one must ask, 'Who's next?' Ezequiel Astacio? Ervin Santana? Gavin Floyd?

Bobby Abreu = Home Run Hitting Machine
Topic: All Star Break

So far tonight, Bobby Abreu leads with 24 homeruns - after just one round! Abreu broke Miguel Tejada's single-round record of 15 homers by a longshot, a record that was set just last year. Abreu needs just three more homers to tie Miguel Tejada's homerun total over THREE rounds. Abreu, who is only in the Home Run Derby because of the international set-up, has 18 homers on the regular season and plays right field for the Philadelphia Phillies of the National League East Division. Having just 18 homers on the season, one would not expect him to hit so many homeruns in just one round, but he did, and he hit six more than his regular season total! With all of the homers Abreu hit, there was just one thing that did not go the way it should have - Abreu did not hit any Golden Homerun balls out, which means charity did not receive any money from any of his homers, which would have been $21,000 per homer using the Golden ball. 24 homers in the very first round of your very first Home Run Derby? Not too bad. Not too bad at all.

Clemens Deserves All Star Start
Topic: All Star Break

As we get closer and closer to the All Star Game, there has been increasing debate about who should start the All Star Game for each team. Most of the arguments that I have heard about starters have been about who should start for the National League. It seems that it is mainly about whether it should be Dontrelle Willis of the Florida Marlins or Roger Clemens of the Houston Astros. Based on statistics, it is Clemens who deserves the start, not Willis. In his second year with his hometown team, Roger Clemens is having yet another outstanding year that will most likely end with yet another Cy Young Award. Clemens currently has a 7-3 record, a microscopic 1.43 ERA, a 0.95 WHIP, and 112 strikeouts, not to mention he only gets an average of just over 3 runs worth of run support per nine innings in games he pitches, and he received an average of 1.67 runs per nine innings when he pitched for the first two months of the season. Despite this, he still managed to win seven games. Clemens also has outstanding numbers in batting average against, on-base against, and slugging against, which are .188, .248, and .261, respectively. Dontrelle Willis of the Florida Marlins is also having an outstanding year with a record of 13-4, a 2.39 ERA, a 1.14 WHIP, and 95 strikeouts. Willis, unlike Clemens, gets pretty decent run support with an average of 4.83 runs per game in support. Willis' batting average against, on-base against, and slugging against are .252, .293, and .352, respectively. When you compare the two sets of statistics, there is no doubt that it is Roger Clemens who deserves this start. Clemens' ERA is 0.96 lower than Willis', he has a lower WHIP than Willis, he has seven more strikeouts, and his batting average against, on-base against, and slugging against are all much lower than that of Willis. Especially considering the fact that Clemens pitches half of his games in a homer-friendly park and still puts up these incredible numbers, Roger Clemens deserves the All Star Game start over the "D-Train".

International Weak Hitter (I mean, Home Run) Derby
Topic: All Star Break

I'm sure that everyone has heard about what is going on this year at the Home Run Derby by now, but I need to have my say as well: This year's Home Run Derby is going to be international, meaning that there will be eight different countries represented during this year's Derby by MLB players: Venezuela, Canada, the Netherlands, Panama, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Korea, and of course, the United States. There are several problems with this new setup, which I will go into detail about. First Problem: Not Fair to More Deserving Players By having just one player from each country, MLB is eliminating many players who are more deserving, such as Miguel Tejada, Albert Pujols, Manny Ramirez, and Vladimir Guerrero. Since David Ortiz of the Red Sox has already been named for the Dominican Republic, the four players I just mentioned will not be able to go, even though they have many more homers than Canada's representative Jason Bay, Puerto Rico's representative Ivan Rodriguez, who has a laughable five homeruns, and Korea's Hee Seop Choi. Second Problem: Leagues Not Equally Represented Another problem with this set-up is that the American League and the National League are no longer represented equally. This could probably fall under the first problem, but something that was always done was that four hitters from each league go to the Derby, but now the National League has a 5-to-3 advantage. If MLB had been able to get Carlos Delgado and Derrek Lee to participate as they intended, it would be a horrific 7-to-1 National League advantage. Third Problem: Puerto Rico Is Not A Country For some reason, Major League Baseball thinks that the United States has released Puerto Rico from its control. Newsflash: we didn't! Puerto Rico is a U.S. territory, not its own country, which means that the MLB is unfairly awarding Puerto Rico with a representative when the U.S. already has a participant (Mark Teixeira of the Rangers). Major League Baseball could just as easily have awarded that spot to Japan's Hideki Matsui, but they had to give it to Puerto Rico's Ivan Rodriguez, who has about ten fewer homers than Matsui. This raises another question: should each individual U.S. state be represented? The obvious answer is NO, but when you allow a U.S. territory to have a participant in addition to an overall U.S. participant, it raises these kinds of questions. Fourth Problem: Entertainment Value Will Probably Drop When fans go to the Home Run Derby, they expect to see a lot of homers hit by their favorite home run hitters. They want to see the players that actually hit homers during the regular season. However, when you let players like Ivan Rodriguez, Hee Seop Choi, and Jason Bay participate (no offense to Bay or Choi, they're at least SOMEWHAT close to the rest of the pack), fans won't be able to see the big home run hitters, and many will not be interested in watching it, except for baseball fans like me who watch it regardless who participates. The lack of a promising show will not attract viewers like last year's Derby did, which had four 500 HR Club members participating.