Baseball

Where were we?

Oh, right, nothing about yesterday's game matters once today's game starts.

The Giants belted the Padres 7-3 to win the opener of the important four-game NL West series Thursday in San Diego. Giants fans were roaring that everything had fallen into place.

Then on Friday night, the Giants squeaked out a gut-wrenching and fascinating 1-0 win over the Padres to move into a tie for the NL West lead.

Not since David Wright's May slump have there been any serious rumblings about the Mets trading their star third baseman, but the question has recently been posed: Would Wright match up well with the Boston Red Sox, and would a trade be possible this winter?

It is clear to me now, as if it wasn't before that the Mets ace, Johan Santana was using steroids in the early portion of his career. How do you go from being a Rule V draft pick in 1999 to getting a contract that pays about $23 million per season? How did he go from being a mediocre reliever to an All-Star caliber pitcher who won two Cy Young Awards? Please don't tell me it was because he watched game-tape.

While the majority of the Florida Marlins' first round draft disasters were before the Jeffrey Loria/Larry Beinfest/David Samson era and their pair of World Series victories (1997 and 2003) make no mistake the Marlins could have been a great team out of the gates. They had only one winning season between 1993 and 2002 which yielded the one World Series.

The Yankees are back in action tonight as they take on a possible playoff opponent in the Texas Rangers.

Here are some notes:

Yankees general manager Brian Cashman is not ready to reveal the Yankees' playoff pitching scene just yet. 

Cashman said that everyone besides CC Sabathia and Mariano Rivera is going to have to earn a role on the postseason roster.

Theoretically, rookie Ivan Nova could earn a spot over A.J. Burnett or Javier Vazquez.

No doubt the majority of Pittsburghers have moved on from the Pirates for the year, and many Reds fans are getting psyched for the Bengals on Sunday, but there is very important business to take care of this weekend at Great American Ballpark.

The Reds return home licking their wounds from the horrific 1-6 road trip, one in which they showed a great deal of lethargy and fatigue.

Closers are an unpredictable bunch, huh?  A month ago, would anyone have predicted that Jonathan Broxton would be out of a job?  You just never know what is going to happen, but it’s impossible to believe that he is not going to be viable fantasy closer in 2011.

With Game one of the Texas League semis in the books, the league's best team in the regular season finds themselves in a 1 - 0 hole, having lost in 12th as the semi-stable Patrick Keating gave up two earned on Peter Kozma's second home run of the night.

When the Minnesota Twins got Matt Capps in a trade with the Nationals, Twins fans cheered.

This ushered in the era of another fantastic arm in the bullpen, a fill-in or replacement for Joe Nathan if he can't return to form, and an upgrade from Jon Rauch.