Baseball

For the entirety of the San Francisco Giants 2010 season, there has been an air of inconsistency that can only be described as Duane Kuiper has: torture. 

The team itself had a real good April (.591) followed by a .500 May, a sub-par June (.481), a torrid July (.714), and a dismal August (.464). 

This is the team that scored one run in three games against Oakland in May and then scored 11 runs in three straight games against the Reds in August. 

It was no less than Tom Seaver—”Tom Terrific”—who went to extraordinary lengths to protect his right arm, which he astutely realized was nothing more than his livelihood.

Seaver, while traveling as a player, wouldn’t carry any of his luggage with his right appendage. In fact, he tried mightily to do nothing with his right arm other than hurl baseballs at 90+ mph toward enemy hitters.

As the minor league season comes to a close, it’s time to start looking at each organization and determine who is the team’s Fantasy Baseball Minor League Player of the Year.

First, the criteria:

The 2010 MLB season has not disappointed, as competition is fierce but so is disappointment.

For playoff staples, like the Boston Red Sox and St. Louis Cardinals, things could not have gone any worse. As they say, "When it rains, it pours" and both the above two ball clubs will be noticeably absent. The presence of the Red Sox and Cardinals will be deeply missed, a true heartbreak for all fans of baseball.

So, which American League teams are in contention?

Since its opening in 1997, Turner Field, home to the first place Atlanta Braves, has seemed like hell to the New York Mets, with Bobby Cox playing the role of the devil. Even when the Mets have fielded competitive teams, they still have struggled in Atlanta.

In 116 contests over the course of 14 seasons, the Mets have won only 38 games while dropping 78 in the new "Home of the Braves."

The San Francisco Giants will rely on strong starting pitching, a struggling Padres team, and an easy September schedule to overtake the San Diego Padres and win the 2010 National League West.

The Schedule:

The Giants are currently three games back of the Padres with 28 games to play. 12 of the remaining games are against teams with sub .500 records, and another seven of those games are against the division leading Padres. The other games are against the struggling Cubs and the hated Dodgers.

It may be all over except for the crying.

With eight innings of one-hit ball on Thursday afternoon against the Oakland Athletics, C.C. Sabathia has become the front-runner for the AL Cy Young Award, and he may have even clinched it.

Why?

Well, I'll tell ya.  C.C. Sabathia will be the 2010 AL Cy Young Award winner because . . . 

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The Florida Marlins and the Washington Nationals engaged in a pretty ugly melee on Wednesday night, and the more I read about the events as they transpired the more I am beginning to think that something isn't right.

Chris Sale was one of the many top-level college pitchers being looked at in the 2010 MLB Draft.

I was hoping, as a Cleveland Indians fan, that they would select Sale with the fifth pick. Instead, they went with Drew Pomeranz.

The Arizona Diamondbacks and New York Mets then drafted Barret Loux and Matt Harvey, respectively, as Sale continued to fall.

After the Blue Jays drafted Deck McGuire, considered the most major league-ready pitcher at the time, the White Sox drafted Chris Sale with the 13th pick.

It’s time to continue our journey around the league, looking at each team’s closer situation. The National League West is home to one of, if not the, worst bullpens in the league, but also a few of the elite closers.  Let’s take a look at all the updated situations: