Baseball

If the competition for the Yankees' No. 5 starter's spot is truly a five-man race, frontrunners Joba Chamberlain and Phil Hughes would currently rank fourth and fifth on the depth chart.

After Chad Gaudin, Sergio Mitre and Alfredo Aceves each turned in two scoreless innings of work in Wednesday's spring opener against the Pirates, Hughes and Chamberlain both struggled in their first outings on Friday.

The Arizona Diamondbacks entered their first full decade as a team with the fifth highest payroll in the league. In 2001, just their fourth year in existence, they won one of the most emotional world series in the history of the game.

But after ten years of entertaining baseball fans everywhere, the D'Backs could not be a more different franchise from the one that came back and beat the Yankees in seven games.

From the fifth highest payroll in 2000 to the twentieth in 2009. From Jerry Colangelo to Ken Kendrick. From Joe Garagiola to Josh Byrnes. From Bob Brenly to A.J. Hinch.

Well, that isn’t how we wanted the 2010 season to begin.

After jumping out to a combined 6-0 lead in both games, the Lords of Reality reappeared and by the end of the day, the Nationals’ split-squad teams lost by a combined score of 25-9.

The scores are meaningless.

I've already taken a look at the strong bullpens of Seattle and Oakland. The Angels' bullpen is less set than either the Mariners' or the Athletics', however.

Candidates I'll be analyzing include:
Brian Fuentes
Fernando Rodney
Scot Shields
Kevin Jepsen
Jason Bulger
Brian Stokes
Matt Palmer
Rafael Rodriguez
Fernando Rodriguez
Francisco Rodriguez
Rich Thompson

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In yesterday's Spring Training game against the Philadelphia Phillies, New York Yankees fans got what was, for many, their first look at two young catchers in the Yankee organization.

Austin Romine took over behind the plate for Jorge Posada. Romine looked very steady behind the plate in his set up and how quiet he was receiving pitches.

He also showed good agility, blocking several balls in the dirt even though there were no Phillies runners on the bases.

After losing the 1964 World Series to the St. Louis Cardinals, the Yankees fired manager Yogi Berra and hired the manager who had beaten them in that World Series, Johnny Keane.

World Champions Again?

Keane, like so many others, failed to realize that the key Yankees' players were mere shells of themselves. He never got to know them, and they never knew the real Johnny Keane.

After looking at the Top 5 Reasons to look forward to 2010, I wanted to look back at the history of the Giants since their inception in as the New York Gothams in 1883.

As one of the oldest franchises in Major League history, the Gothams/New York Giants/San Francisco Giants franchise has a lot of boast about. They have the most wins of ANY franchise in baseball history, with 10,270 wins under their belt. They've won five World Series titles and 20 National League pennants.

The Pittsburgh Pirates have been trying.

For 17 years, they've been trying to get back to the playoffs, the World Series, and even to respectable status in the sports world.

They've been trying, and they've been failing.

Whether or not it was a huge mistake for Bob Nutting to make his now infamous "dynasty" comment a few weeks ago is not as important as this question:

Could he be right?

In front of a sellout crowd of 10 and videotaped with a video camera from 1988, some player you actually heard of pitched two good innings, giving up just nine runs on 12 hits to go along with 10 walks. 

"I literally just threw fastballs over and over again," player you heard of said. "Wait, there's how many more spring training games?"

Pitching the other seven innings were players numbered 80 to 100 with one guy whose jersey simply said "Who cares?" on the back of it.

Here are some news and stories of note from yesterday: