Baseball

Don’t let Michael Jordan beat you.  

Double-team him.  Triple-team him.  

Make sure his tail hits the paint every time he drives to the basket.  Do everything you can to take him out of the game and if Scottie Pippen nails a jumper to put you away, so be it.

No matter what sport you are playing, you should always do your best to take the opposition’s best player out of the game.  In baseball, that means keeping the ball away from the hitting zone and not allowing the batter to get the fat part of the bat on the ball.

It’s easy to forget about Shaun Marcum, as he missed the entire 2009 season after undergoing Tommy John surgery.  On opening day, he once again made you pay attention.

Marcum carried a no-hitter into the seventh inning at Texas before giving up a single to Vladimir Guerrero with one out.  If you were simply looking at the box score, you might not be all that impressed by Marcum allowing three runs on two hits and one walk, striking out six over seven innings.  Yeah, it’s impressive, but the fact of the matter is the bottom fell out all in one shot.

This article is the final part of a five-part series of articles breaking down the Cubs' roster. You can view part four, which covers the starting lineup, here.

In the first four parts of this series, I laid out the Cubs' roster as it currently stands and projected out many of the different decisions that will need to be made during the season.

With last night's thriller between the Red Sox and Yankees, and a day chalk full of baseball action, the 2010 MLB season is officially here. All over the country, baseball players are hoping for hall of fame years and fans are dreaming of runs into late October. The beauty of opening day is the equality it provides for players and fans alike, a calm before the storm of a long and arduous season. This calm, however, has officially been broken.

Well, there are thousands of new skeptics-turned-experts out there. The controversy surrounding Torre's decision to tab Vicente Padilla as the Dodgers' Opening Day starter over the youngster Clayton Kershaw culminated in the struggle of Padilla to hit his spots in the early innings.

When people think lineup positions known for big bats and power, the first two that come to mind are first basemen and designated hitters.

As they should, since one position is not required to play defense, and the other is playing the easiest position on the field. For this reason, a first baseman in free agency with an .800 OPS is often considered a "decent piece" or a third corner IF option, while a catcher with the same hitting numbers becomes a sought-after free agent, destined for eight figure a year salaries. Position scarcity is important.

In case you missed the news, Monday night signaled the start of Fantasy Baseball Insiders’ journey to watch and score 162 games this season.

In addition to this, we’ll gather all of the fantasy-relevant info from every game each night and organize it in one post for your viewing pleasure. This will feature in-depth observations from our game of the day.

The new season is officially under way for the Milwaukee Brewers, and while they didn't come out of the day with a "W," they played some pretty good baseball in places.

The best performance of the day from someone in a Brewer uniform belonged to new center fielder Carlos Gomez.

He had four hits in five at-bats with a double, solo home run, stolen base, and two runs scored. Gomez also played well in center field to cap off a memorable Milwaukee debut.

All spring, the talk has been about how the Atlanta Braves want Bobby Cox's last season in the dugout to be a big one, hopefully leading to a World Series.

Monday's game against the Chicago Cubs showed they mean business.

The Braves smashed a few offensive Opening Day records en route to a 16-5 pummeling of the Cubbies, who some expect to contend for the NL Central, or at least the Wild Card.

Inside the numbers: