Baseball

Milwaukee 20, Pittsburgh 0. I nearly dropped my laptop when I saw that score-line the other night. Almost right away, I wondered if it was time for Major League Baseball to implement the mercy rule.

The Milwaukee win isn't actually the best case of a reason to bring in this ruling, also known as the "Slaughter Rule." It was "only" 10-0 after six innings, before the Brewers piled on ten more. (A better example would be the Texas Rangers 30-3 win against the Baltimore Orioles during the 2007 season.)

Los Angeles Dodgers right fielder Manny Ramirez is back on the disabled list, this time with a strained right calf.

Ramirez hasn't officially been on the DL since 2002, but the calf strain is just another injury in a string of complications experienced by the slugger over the past several seasons.

As the season moves in to full swing, the pace set by Manny seems to mimic last season's pre-suspension trend. Ramirez has now missed five of the Dodgers' 18 games, and when he is not in the lineup, the numbers certainly reflect his absence.

Last evening, Jayson Werth put on a "Baseball Tonight" highlight reel in leading the Phillies to a 3-2 victory over the Arizona Diamondbacks. Watching him continue to evolve as one of baseball's brightest all-around stars argues that the Phillies should sign him to a contract extension right now. 

There's no reason why the Rays shouldn't be in the top spot in this week's power rankings. They are the only team to be ranked in the top five in scoring and team ERA. They are also the only team that has won at least eight of their last 10 games.

The Royals' Jose Guillen (.352 average, 6 HR, 15 RBI) and the Brewers' Ryan Braun (.382 average, 5 HR, 20 RBI) take the top spots for the AL and NL MVP races while the Yanks' Andy Pettitte (1.29 ERA) and the Phillies' Roy Halladay (0.82 ERA) are on top the AL and NL Cy Young races.

The St. Louis Cardinals lost their first series of the year this past weekend in San Francisco.

How concerning is this to the Cardinals?

Let's try not at all. Or maybe 0%. Either would work.

Fans are understandably on edge. After all, the teams offense seems to be under the impression that they only have two options when batting: strike out or hit a home run.

While this approach isn't exactly preferred by baseball people, it has propelled the Cardinals to a comfortable first-place lead after three weeks.

Ever since the Yankees reacquired Javier Vazquez, fans have been cool to the once former Yankee. Quite a few have remarked how he isn’t a good enough pitcher and some think he brings less value than Melky Cabrera would have.

At the end of Spring Training, The A's surprised everyone by designating Cust for assignment, ultimately sending him down to Triple-A Sacramento. The A's had a healthy Eric Chavez and decided it was best to have him as the DH.

Our Top 75 Starting Pitcher rankings return, and it couldn’t come at a better time.  Many of the top pitchers in baseball are lined up for two-starts this week. 

Of course, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t plenty of attractive one-start options as well.  Let’s take a look at how things fall (two-start options are in bold):

Through the first 18 games, the Mets are at .500, and it is like the season is starting fresh. They still don’t have Carlos Beltran, but they do have Ike Davis and a healthy Jose Reyes, and some of the struggling players like Jason Bay and David Wright appear to be on the verge of breaking out.

Before the season began I wrote the "Fantasy Baseball: Top Value Picks at Each Position"

The players I calculated as solid value picks were as follows:

SP- Ryan Dempster

RP- Mike Gonzalez

C- Chris Iannetta

1B- Garrett Jones

2B- Kelly Johnson

3B- Jorge Cantu

SS- Alcides Escobar

LF- Josh Willingham

CF- Nate McLouth

RF- Jason Kubel

Here is an update on how all of these players are doing. Some are absolutely killing the ball and some have had very rough starts to the season, to say the least. Let's take a look.