MLB

I'm an optimist.

I'm a New York Mets fan.

No, the two are not mutually exclusive. Yet this year, the latter is testing the former. 

The Mets are 6-8, soon to be 6-9. Going into today's game against the St. Louis Cardinals, the only starting pitcher with consistency has been Johan Santana. Jose Reyes has only two stolen bases and seven runs scored. David Wright has five RBI.

Welcome to the first edition of my new weekly section, South Sidings—my own views and opinions on the previous week's White Sox action. I hope you enjoy!

So, we're 14 games into the season and at 8-6, the Chicago White Sox are off to a decent start, with the positives greatly outweighing the negatives.

Let's take a closer look at this on a player by player basis:

Starters

Rumor has it that Orioles owner Peter Angelos has an insane man crush on outfielder Nick Markakis. So much so that he would have mortgaged the farm, so to speak, to get him in the 2003 Major League draft. Nick the Stick can do that to a guy, whether he's an 80 something attorney or a 20 something retail superfan. His list of skills and intangibles is off the chart: hitting power and acumen, plate discipline, excellent fielding ability, speed and baseball knowledge. Here's why you should be a believer too.

There’s someone that works for the state of New Jersey that I know and he always comes to visit me to see how I’m doing, since I’m disabled. We’ll talk about me for about five minutes and then the next 20 minutes we’ll talk about the Yankees. He’s a big Yankee fan.

He doesn’t think Jorge is a good defensive catcher. He thinks he is terrible. I didn’t think anything of what he was saying until he told me to check out stats of when Jorge starts to when Jose Molina starts. I did check out the stats.

The biggest rivalry in all of sports continues tomorrow night. The Yankees will visit Fenway Park for the first time this season, and the Red Sox will use their home-field advantage attempting to come out of the series ahead in the standings.

I always wonder about how managers deal with the various attitudes and personalities on a roster. Baseball is a marathon, not a sprint; which means there are going to be lots of ups and downs.

It's never too early to take a look ahead at what the 2010 San Diego Padres might look like. Here's the list of players that will be free agents after the completion of the 2009 season.

At 9-6, the Pittsburgh Pirates have gotten off to their best start since 2002. After sweeping the first place Florida Marlins this week, things are looking pretty good in Pirate-ville right now.