Best Slideshows - Team

Brandon Wood will always remember his first Opening Day in the big leagues.

He might wish he could forget the week that followed.

The highly touted third base prospect for the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim went 2-for-22 with seven strikeouts and just one walk in six of the club's first eight games.

His performance was so poor, manager Mike Scioscia had to start backup infielder Maicer Izturis in his place—twice.

On April 2, we saw one of the Kansas City Royals' final bullpen spots get handed out to a young pitcher who has little service time.

Like most Reds diehards, I'm treading lightly on praise right now, but it is soooooo hard to hide the enthusiasm. Oh, and this from the Enquirer today on twitter: @Cincienquirer Aroldis Chapman will make his debut in Louisville Friday. Tickets are, predictably, going fast: http://bit.ly/csEHc0

No doubt, it's been a rough week for the Baltimore Orioles. The roughest.

Blown saves, surrendering four leads after the 8th inning, struggling with men in scoring position. It's been downright ugly.

Luckily, things have been far more optimistic down on the farm, where the O's have had several sensational starts from their standout prospects.

I know I sound like an old man when I say it, but the Detroit Tigers starters need to go deeper into games to give the bullpen a break.

Five times the starter has lasted only five innings, and twice the starter has lasted six innings. Starting pitching has not yet recorded an out in the seventh inning.

I understand that baseball has changed. Gone are the days where complete games are commonplace, and even eight full innings now is quite a workload, but lasting only five innings—75 percent of the time—is a good way to burn out your bullpen.

Of course mere hours after I glorified the White Sox lineup for their work two nights ago, Chicago goes out and gets one-hit by Ricky Romero of the Blue Jays in a 4-2 loss. All this after I had bashed the lineup just days before.

What I'm trying to get at is that the lineup is inconsistent.

The impressive pitching performance by Ricky Romero who walked two, gave up one hit, a two-run home run by Alex Rios in the eighth, and struck out 11, was not the story.

Look, the Oakland Athletics can't get half the number of fans to create one-quarter the amount of buzz that the San Francisco Giants get in the Bay Area.

If the A's could move to San Jose, to a new stadium, the thousands upon thousands of Giants fans in that city wouldn't just flock to the American League team. Fans aren't that fickle. I mean, look at the 7,000 loyal A's fans in Oakland! They never give up on their team.

Anticipation grew as the players exited the tunnel Monday to enter Citizens Bank Park to mark the 2010 Philadelphia Phillies' home opener against the Washington Nationals.

Above, Jimmy Rollins, the longest-tenured player among the Phillies, enters among adoring fans.

Moments later, however, a hush grew among the gathered fans.

Juan Castro, not Jimmy Rollins, took the field at shortstop.

Not since Lenny Dysktra broke his wrist on Opening Day many years ago did such a key member of the team go down on Opening Day.

After a matchup between two relatively awful teams left Cubs fans with high hopes Monday, deeper problems still plague the mind of seasoned manager Lou Piniella.

Piniella may have made his best decision so far in the young season when he decided to start 24-year-old Tyler Colvin in replace of the struggling Alfonso Soriano on April 8. The result? Colvin belted his first career home run in his first at-bat of the season. 

We all knew what to expect when the New York Yankees headed up to Boston to face the Red Sox in the Opening Series of 2010.

The games would be long, exciting, hard-fought battles.

Those expectations were met.

Along the way, the Yankees taught us a few things.

You can follow Ari Kramer on Twitter by clicking here: http://twitter.com/Ari_Kramer

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