Baseball

The Cleveland Indians may be rebuilding again, but it's hard not to be optimistic when CHONE predicts the team to win at least 81 games and finish second in the division.

Let's take a closer look at those projections, using WAR—Wins Above Replacement.

"28 in 2010" is the newfound battle cry of the resurgent Yankee dynasty.

However, "27 since 2007" might be a more meaningful one this week.

Just 28 months ago, on a Wednesday evening at the team's Legends Field training complex in Tampa, George Steinbrenner gathered his two sons, team president Randy Levine, Brian Cashman, and several others around him for a salary discussion requested by a leading member of the Yankee team that had won 10 AL East titles and four World Series in 12 years.

2010 Top 50 Twins Prospects | #12 | BJ Hermsen

Position | Pitcher

Bats/Throws | Right/Right

It was the summer of 2008. The first time I saw Daniel Bard pitch, he was holding down the back end of the Portland Sea Dogs (Double-A) bullpen.

He was summoned in the eighth inning of a close contest between the Sea Dogs and the NH Fisher Cats (TOR) with runners in scoring position.

From my perch in the third base dugout at MerchantsAuto.com Stadium in Manchester, NH, I took a couple photos as Bard warmed up and then snapped one more picture as he threw his first pitch.

Last year was a great year for some top Giants prospects.

When most people think of fantasy sports, they think football. Sure, it’s the most popular, but it’s also probably the easiest to win and requires the least amount of attention. But by no means is that all there is.

Considering the time of year, why not give fantasy baseball a try? In fact, go one step further and join a league with an auction draft. It involves much more strategy than your standard league (with its random draft order).

The Tampa Bay Rays organization has established itself as one of the best-run systems in major league baseball.

The scouting and player development have been especially top-notch over the past five years, which has allowed the Rays to put together a very talented young ball club despite limited resources.

Even with the plethora of young talent that has been brought up in recent years and the failure to sign their top two picks in last year’s draft, the Rays farm system is still loaded with talent.

In June of '09 I wrote a story recapping Tommy Hanson's major league debut in Atlanta. In that article I talked about the Hansonmania that had taken Atlanta by storm in a losing effort.

In 2010, still days away from the first exhibition game of spring training, Heyward-Hype has made Hansonmania look like my seventh birthday party—the one when the clown didn't even show up.

There has been a lot of hype about the Red Sox and their pitching and defensive upgrades this year, but because of all the focus on the defense, many people are claiming that the Sox will have a lower caliber offensive season. While the Beantown boys may have lost a key player this offseason, they spread the offense out among multiple players, while improving the defense as well. Overall, the offense will not be worse, and may in fact be better than the 2009 version. Ahead is the 2010 Red Sox projected line up, 1-9, compared to their 2009 counterparts.

Considering that baseball's spring training camps have just opened, and that this is Black History Month, it would be a mortal sin not to call attention to an institution that is a significant part of the game's lore.

This is a part of baseball history that's as big as Babe Ruth and Yankee Stadium, something that for the first half of the 20th century served a portion of America that was criminally excluded from Major League Baseball due to racial bigotry: the Negro Leagues.