Baseball

WhatIfSports.com utilizes its award-winning baseball simulation engine to present the most comprehensive and unbiased ranking possible of all 30 teams in baseball each Monday during the regular season. To come up with the rankings—using only their statistical performance to date this season—each team is simulated against every other team 100 times (50 at home and 50 away) so that all five pitchers in the current rotation start ten times at each location.

Ever since I started following baseball and pretty much all four major sports, my favorite team has been the New York Mets. Why? I have no idea. But I have never been more disappointed with the Mets than the 2010 season. They have had so many bad memories and so few good ones.

The Mets have to make changes in the offseason and it starts off when Jeff Wilpon fires both Omar Minaya and Jerry Manuel. These two alone have been absolutely awful for the franchise. Here is a list of the good players Minaya has gotten:

Let’s take a look at three players who would be considered hot, as well as three who had their values take a hit:

Three Hot:

From the start of Tuesday's game, the Giants' bats were working. Andres Torres - who had been struggling - led off with a double, and two batters later, Aubrey Huff hit a two-run homer. Buster Posey then doubled and scored off a Jose Guillen RBI single. With three runs of support, Tim Lincecum began dealing, not allowing a hit until the fifth inning. Through six innings, he had struck out nine; but in the seventh inning, it all collapsed for the Freak. Kelly Johnson led off with a triple, followed by a Chris Young home run.

From the start of Tuesday's game, the Giants' bats were working. Andres Torres - who had been struggling - led off with a double, and two batters later, Aubrey Huff hit a two-run homer. Buster Posey then doubled and scored off a Jose Guillen RBI single. With three runs of support, Tim Lincecum began dealing, not allowing a hit until the fifth inning. Through six innings, he had struck out nine; but in the seventh inning, it all collapsed for the Freak. Kelly Johnson led off with a triple, followed by a Chris Young home run.

Before our very eyes, the Giants are only one game back of the Padres.

This comes only two weeks after trailing San Diego by six games in the division.

The biggest change in the Giants' fortunes was not Tim Lincecum finding his composure once more. It was not Juan Uribe's bat coming alive in September.

As the calendar turned to September, the Padres forgot how to win.

The Padres had lost 10 straight games before beating the Dodgers 4-2 on Monday night.

Another former Brooklyn Cyclone, Dillon Gee, made his Major League debut for the Mets tonight against the Washington Nationals. He was opposed by Cuban defector Yunesky Maya, who also made his Major League debut.

Before he even threw his first pitch in the big leagues, Gee was staked to an early 3-0 lead on a three-run first inning homer by Ike Davis. Davis crushed Maya's offering deep into the center field bleachers for his 18th home run of the year.

You can't get off to a much more auspicious start to your Major League career than Dillon Gee did tonight. In his debut, Gee held the Washington Nationals hitless through the first five innings. Though the baseball gods and the bat of Willie Harris would not allow Dillon to flirt with history beyond out number fifteen, he nonetheless posted one of the best debuts in recent memory.

Yahoo Sports and ESPN are reporting that there are six teams that are taking looks at Japanese star Yu Darvish. It is not a 100% decision by Darvish to make the move to the United States, but the teams are already lining up.

The system used to sign him would be very much like the Daisuke Matsuzaka system where there is a bidding war.  It takes up quite a bit of money as learned by the Red Sox, but it could all payoff. 

As the baseball season dwindles down to meaningless games, teams start to call up the youngsters or even the long journeymen of the minor leagues. However, the Colorado Rockies are still playing for something. The playoffs.

The Rockies used to be known for the big two: Larry Walker and Todd Helton. While Walker has since retired and Helton is hanging on by a thread, the Rockies have found their new centerpiece, Carlos Gonzalez.