Baseball

In 41 games with the White Sox last season, Alex Rios had a line of 11/.199/3/9/5.

Gross.

In just 22 games this season, Rios has already reached his home run and RBI totals with the White Sox last season with 10 runs, nine steals, and a triple-slash line of .276/.326/.470.

Rios hasn’t had a SLG that high since 2007, and his .294 BABIP (career .319) suggests all three of those numbers should improve accordingly.

Javier Vasquez is struggling in the American League. Period.

Someone needs to send this guy to a National League as soon as possible.

Yankees General Manager Brian Cashman would trade him for prospects or a consistent arm for the American League.

Releasing him would be a big risk, as his salary is $11.5 million.

Yankees fans thought this guy could turn around and be a dependable No. 4 starter, but that proved to be wrong from what we've seen from him in April.

We have nearly a month of baseball in the books and many hairs have turned gray (if they haven't been pulled out) on fantasy owners of these 10.

These 10 are causing you to bite the bullet because they are undroppable, currently untradeable for the value they deserve, and yet simply incredibly bad at the moment.

The list does not include players who are hurting your team because of injury. Although I'm sure Ian Kinsler, Jimmy Rollins, Curtis Granderson, and Jacoby Ellsbury are hurting you on the DL, they weren't bad when playing.

That is just plain bad luck.

I know what you’re thinking.

“All Stars? It’s only the beginning of May!”

Well, believe it or not, All Star voting is well underway. MLB opened the ballots for this year’s game in Anaheim on April 20th, the earliest in the league’s history!

Before you fill out your ballot, let me show you who I think should represent the National League in this summer’s showdown with the American League.

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For Red Sox fans, there weren’t too many things to cheer about in the month of April.

The team got off to a horrendous start, plagued by a surprising lack of pitching and a not so surprising lack of offensive punch.

David Ortiz is once again showing himself to be “Big Pop-up” as opposed to “Big Papi,” and the offseason acquisitions of Marco Scutaro, Adrian Beltre, and Mike Cameron have provided minimal run production.

It sounds a little sappy, but I believe that I was meant to write “Public Bonehead, Private Hero: The Real Legacy of Baseball’s Fred Merkle,” which is available at:  www.sportingchancepress.com

To this day, many baseball fans still call Fred Merkle a “bonehead.”  I won’t rest until that stops. 

New York Mets (14-11)  at Cincinnati Reds (12-13) 7:10 p.m.

Oliver Perez (0-2 4.35) versus Mike Leake (2-0 3.25)

TV: SNY, Radio: WFAN

What To Watch

As we do each Monday throughout the season,  today we look at Accuscore's playoff forecaster to see how the previous week's games effected the NL playoff race.

J.D. Drew hit a home run Sunday afternoon.

While I'd usually make some sort of snarky comment about how difficult it is to hit balls out of the park without the use of a human heart, that turn of events this time instead brought home the reality of how upside down this season has been so far in Boston.

J.D. Drew has been the Red Sox's most durable outfielder.

So far in 2010, it's pretty safe to say that Javier Vazquez stinks for the Yankees.

He hasn't just been bad. He's been horrific—so horrific that every time he departs from Yankee Stadium, he gets by far the loudest boos of the team.

In his first five starts back with the team, he is 1-3 with a 9.78 ERA.

His longest outing thus far has been 5.2 innings. His innings totals aren't that high, but his hits, runs, walks, and ERA are extremely high.