Baseball

This is do or die for New York's Javier Vazquez . Unfortunately for Javy, with the way John Danks has been throwing the ball lately, it is looking more like the latter.

Fans are not going to be kind to the man who is making $11.5 million and is being outpitched by 23-year-old Phil Hughes , who is making $447,000.

Hughes is far and away performing better than Vazquez this year, and Yankees fans are certainly going to let him know that.

Dontrelle Willis pitched arguably his best game for the Detroit Tigers Thursday night, earning his first victory since May of 2009.

This is only Willis's second victory since arriving in the Miguel Cabrera trade and signing a three year extension.

Willis has struggled since coming to the American league. This is a step in the right direction for Willis who is still a fairly young pitcher at 28-years-old. Its easy to forget Willis has pitched in the world series (2003,) won rookie of the year, and won more than 20 games in a year (2005.)

A week-and-a-half ago, nobody thought that the Mets would be the team in first place when they went up against the Phillies this weekend, but it’s true. The Mets have been winning at a better pace than the Phillies lately despite the fact that it is the Phils who are generally regarded to have the better lineup and rotation.

So what chance do the Mets have of coming out of this series maintaining possession of first place?

Every now and again, certain fans like to remind the sports' landscape that the word is short for "fanatics," which comes to us from the Latin "fanaticus ." The latter means "insanely but divinely inspired."

Yep, that about covers it.

Although I'm not sure Chicago Cub aficionados would agree with the "divine" bit.

Bill Ladson reported on twitter that Washington Nationals third baseman Ryan Zimmerman will be back in the lineup tonight as the club embarks on a three game series in Miami. Ladson also indicated that the weather has played a factor in the decision:

Yesterday, I took a look at 10 thus-far successful pitchers whose impressive starts I attributed to luck and declared that they would be unable to maintain their good fortunes for the rest of the season (click here for that article).

While I admittedly got some schadenfreude out of it, it was kind of depressing; as one commenter observed, the list was "almost every breakout pitcher this season."

In the interest of fairness (and not seeming like a complete rain

After a day off on Thursday, the Washington Nationals (12-10) will continue their road trip with three games against the Florida Marlins (11-11). The Nationals are coming off an extremely competitive three-game series with the Chicago Cubs in which they took the last two after dropping the opener.

The Yankees signed outfielder Marcus Thames this season to do one job—hit lefties.

So far, all he has done is destroy lefties.

Try these numbers on for size: 8 G, 16 AB, 3 R, 10 H, 3 2B, 1 HR, 2 RBI, 3 BB, 4 K, .625 AVG, .684 OBP, 1.000 SLG, 1.684 OPS.

Now, so far Thames’ outfield defense has been pretty atrocious, but nights like last night (3-for-3 with a double and an RBI) make it hard to stay mad at him.

It was a different world back in 1987.

No one had a cell phone. The Internet had not been invented. GM wasn’t broke. Barry Bonds had a normal-sized head.

And that’s when I learned to hate baseball mascots.

As the Mets’ bullpen has exceeded expectations in the early part of the season, the need for Jenrry Mejia seems to be diminishing.  However, Jerry Manuel remains adamant that the 20-year-old will be a bigger part of the pen rather than be pushed out and sent to tune up in the minor leagues for an eventual starting role.

According to ProSportsDaily.com Manuel was asked if the emergence of Fernando Nieve in the pen could free up Mejia to become a starter, Manuel declined, instead noting that he’d like to work him more into a late-inning role.