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There are worse ways to spend a Sunday afternoon than watching Yu Darvish and Justin Verlander pitch. Especially if you're not at the ballpark and you can set up a laptop outside, put up your feet, soak in those first warm rays of early May and imagi...

Some quick reactions to Monday's fine major league baseball action ... The good news for the Giants: A 6-4 win over the Diamondbacks to snap a five-game losing streak and a win for the first time when Matt Cain started. The bad news: Cain scuffle...

With apologies to the nice starts of the Pirates and Rockies, the most important story line of April has been the Braves' opening up a 3.5-game lead over the Nationals in the NL East. Considering the importance of winning the division and avoiding...

Thoughts on Tuesday's fun night of baseball ... Matt Harvey has deservedly been stealing all the headlines, but Cardinals ace Adam Wainwright is quietly off to an amazing start. He pitched 8.1 scoreless innings in a 2-0 win against the Nationals,...

As you probably know, strikeouts continue to climb higher and higher. In the chart at the right, are strikeouts per game: As Dave Cameron wrote last week on FanGraphs, Over the past 30 years, the strikeout rate in MLB has gone from 14.0 percent...

Quick thoughts on Monday's games ... The Blue Jays' lineup on Monday included just three players who finished the game with an OBP over .300, and one of those was ex-Mariners backup infielder Munenori Kawasaki, playing shortstop for the injured J...

The Atlanta Braves sent a message this weekend: Don't forget about us. We all know the Washington Nationals were prohibitive favorites to win the NL East -- 38 of 43 ESPN.com experts picked them -- and only five picked the Braves. I think the Bra...

Mark Simon wraps up the struggles of the aces on Sunday. Here are some more quick thoughts on Sunday's action. OK, Matt Cain. He matched a career-worst with nine runs allowed. Even stranger, they all came in one inning and at home -- where he all...

I remember watching that first game in Miami Marlins history, 20 years ago today. That the then-Florida Marlins were introducing teal to Major League Baseball was as big a deal at the time as 45-year-old knuckleballer Charlie Hough drawing the start....

Quick thoughts on Wednesday's games: Three closers blew ninth-inning leads -- Phil Coke of the Tigers, Fernando Rodney of the Rays and Chris Perez of the Indians. The Rays and Indians ended up winning their games anyway, so no harm, no foul. Of t...

It's one of the best days of the year. Maybe the best. Especially if your team won. Here are 10 things to take away from Monday's action. 1. Bryce Harper loves the spotlight. While Opening Day is, technically speaking, just one game of 162, it ...

OK, here are my final AL standings. Here are the NL standings. Yes, we can all laugh at this at the end of the season. FYI: All runs scored and allowed totals add up, as do wins and losses. For wins and losses, I merely took each team's projected run...

Earlier, the SweetSpot bloggers overwhelmingly supported Mike Trout for AL MVP and Justin Verlander for the AL Cy Young Award. Let's see how the predictions line up in the NL. MOST VALUABLE PLAYER For the second straight, the SweetSpot bloggers s...

In my previous post, I ran down the American League poll results from the offseason report cards. Here are the National League results. As in the AL, fans are optimistic cross the board. For those who argue baseball lacks parity, tell that to base...

In our previous post we looked at the longest All-Star positional drought for each American League team. The longest: Oakland second base, where Phil Garner in 1976 was the last All-Star. Let's move on to the National League ... where we have to g...

OK, now that I've finished all 30 offseason report cards, we can essentially use my final grades to give us Power Rankings (you can get all the report cards at the bottom of this page). Washington Nationals: A Atlanta Braves: A- Cincinnati Reds:...