Baseball

Even though I missed a week in documenting the race for Bryce Harper, not much has changed atop the leaderboard. To check out the Harper standings from two weeks ago, click here.

Without further ado, here are the current standings in the race for Bryce Harper:

Panic!

John Smoltz is hurt. Chris Carpenter has lost his “A” game. Ryan Franklin has morphed into a bad Brad Lidge slash Jason Isringhausen clone. Kyle Lohse is complacent after signing a big contract. The defense is poor. The hitting is worse. It’s time to stop the season right now and put this team out of it’s misery. We can’t let them perform any longer. We simply do not want the youth of America exposed to such blatant acts of cruelty. The kids, why doesn’t anybody ever think about the kids!

Easy, people. Easy.

The Chicago Cubs took the rubber game of their three-game weekend set with Cincinnati Sunday, winning 5-2.  Derrek Lee had three hits, including his 32nd home run of the season, and scored twice.

Ted Lilly got the win for Chicago, his team-leading 12th, after tossing six shutout innings.  Lilly threw 119 pitches, a season high.  He allowed six hits, two walks, and struck out seven.  The outing lowered his 2009 ERA to 3.05, a career best.

With all the hoopla surrounding the onslaught of the National Football League's Opening Weekend as well as a couple huge college football games, the San Francisco Giants' weekend series with the Los Angeles Dodgers flew almost completely off the radar.

In truth, I don't really have a beef with that—the return of such monsters as well as the renewal of storied college rivalries merit every drop of ink they got.

Now that Derek Jeter has finally passed Lou Gehrig as the franchise's all-time hit leader and the Yankees have completed an easy 17-game stretch against four teams with tee times this October, it's time for New York to come back down to earth and focus on the playoffs.

And what better way to do that than to face the second-best team in the league and recent Yankee nemesis, the Los Angeles Angels.

New York and L.A. could be headed for another postseason clash and the Bombers need to prove to themselves and the rest of the world that they can beat the Angels.

It's hard to believe that it's already mid-September.

School has started, college and pro football games have begun, and before you know it, the trees will be leaf-less and it will be time to carve some turkey.

While much of the sports coverage begins to shift this time of year to the beginning of football season, there is still plenty of great baseball left during this final month to satisfy even the most die-hard baseball fan. Unless, of course, you're a fan of the New York Mets.

Sept. 11, 2009 will be a day to go down in the history books for the Yankees and the entire MLB.

This is because it is the day that Derek Jeter broke the Yankees' all-time hitting record. Jeter surpassed Yankee legend Lou Gehrig to become the Bombers' career hit king.

He tied the Iron Horse on Wednesday, Sept. 9, against the Tampa Bay Rays. After an off-day on Thursday, the Yanks began their series against the Baltimore Orioles.

According to a recent article on MLBTradeRumors.com (seen here), the Red Sox had offered six of their best young pitchers (Justin Masterson, Felix Doubront, Nick Hagadone, Clay Buchholz, Daniel Bard, and Michael Bowden) to the Toronto Blue Jays for their ace, Roy Halladay, before the trade deadline of July 31.

This deal seems incredibly un-Theo Epstein-like. Since arriving in Boston in 2003, Epstein has repeatedly preached prospect development.

Yesterday, the Mets were down one run going into the ninth inning.  They were even down to their final out of the game.  All signs pointed to another loss to the Phillies.  Their fifth loss in a row.

Then David Wright came up to bat with a man on, and delivered what could be one of the best wins of the season, belting a two-run, go-ahead home run into the left field stands to put the Mets ahead.

The beginning of the game did not go as well as the end.

I have let my opinion be known regarding how I feel about the New York Yankees (which is funny, really, considering that the Yankees' provenance developed right in Baltimore, Maryland, 1901). The perennial team of "haves" and World Series titles and the most-prized free agents over the last few decades or so, Team Pinstripes has been an annoyance and the object of my disaffection for years—including when they won the 1996 ALCS over the Baltimore Orioles, 4-1.