Baseball

Because they are against a tough, and often contending division rival, games against the Milwaukee Brewers are a reasonable "litmus test" of how the Pirates will fare in the National League Central.

And the only thing worse than being swept by the Milwaukee on the road is to be swept by them at home.

Worse, being all but shut out, scoring only one run in three games. While the Brewers scored 36 runs during the same stretch. Talk about a "kitchen sink."

To celebrate my father’s 70th birthday, I decided to take him to an Arizona Diamondbacks game.

Regular readers of this blog may wonder whether this was really a birthday gift, or whether I just forget to go shopping and decided to pick up a few extra tickets to the game while I was there.

As strange as it sounds, I actually planned this gift.

When I was growing up, my father, like many others throughout this country, gave up his time to coach Little League baseball. It was not just to spend more time with his son.

He is not the savior, and he was never a prodigy, but he was a talented right-handed pitcher who had a popping fastball and killer, knee-buckling curve.

The fact that Phil Hughes carried a no-hitter into the eighth inning of last night's game on the road, against an American League West opponent in his second start of the season, seemed familiar to Yankee fans.

Relief pitching in the 1950s was much different than the relief pitching of today.

It was still the general ideology of managers that the good arms were in the starting rotation and the duds were in the bullpen.

In a way it was true. However, the relief pitchers on this list broke that rule, they could flat out pitch.

Having said that, there weren’t many career relief pitchers in this decade and many of them had seasons where they were a starting pitcher and even had spot starts during their relief seasons.

When you think of top pitchers in the game, names like C.C. Sabathia, Tim Lincecum, Zack Greinke, Felix Hernandez, and Johan Santana come up.

Nowhere in the discussion does Philadelphia Phillies ace Roy Halladay come up...except with Phillie fans.

However, after what we've seen from Halladay in the first four games of the 2010 season, is it too early to give him the NL Cy Young Award?

Philadelphia fans would be happy for Major League Baseball to go ahead and do this, while others would be hesitant, especially San Francisco Giants and New York Mets fans.

Things are going as well as you could ever hope for the Yankees this season.

They have won each of their first five series this season, the first time they’ve done that since 1926, and are sitting in first place with an 11-3 record.

They also have their ace, CC Sabathia , on the mound today as they try to go for their seventh win in a row.

Here are some notes and quotes.

The booing of New York Mets third baseman David Wright is unfortunately becoming a common occurrence at Citi Field.

Here is a small portion from the NY Daily News’ Filip Bondy:

New York Mets starting pitcher Oliver Perez just didn’t have it, the bullpen finally failed and the offense once again failed to show up against Carlos Silva of all people, as the Mets dropped the third game of a four game series 9-3 to the Chicago Cubs.

It’s never too early to hit up a struggling owner in your league to try to fleece him or her out of a struggling player to help your team down the road. Here are some guys to target.

Catcher

The Atlanta Braves offense has produced less than stellar numbers so far this season. At the moment the majority of their offensive stats are in the bottom third of the league. Not the greatest beginning for a team that suffered from lack of run production during the first half of the season last year.

The subject of offense has been the biggest worry for Braves fans.  Still, before calling for the heads of hitters, lets look at what they've had to face this season.