NL East

The Atlanta Braves have gotten off to a rough start in 2011, going 9-12 through their first 21 games.

Despite the losing record, the Braves haven’t played bad baseball.  Their pitching has performed well and their defense has been exceptional.  Their big issue is their hitting.

Things will get turned around and the Braves will still compete for a playoff spot, meaning that they will be buyers come July 31^st.

Already, the Florida Marlins are in excellent shape to make a run at the postseason for the first time since 2003. The Marlins have gotten a Cy Young worthy performance out of Josh Johnson and solid outings out of Ricky Nolasco and Anibal Sanchez, who nearly repeated his gem from 2006. Yet, they're still waiting on Chris Volstad and Javier Vazquez to follow suit.

The New York Mets are only 6-13 on this young season, but the possibilities of a mid-season fire sale are quickly becoming a reality if the team continues playing uninspired baseball.

Honestly, the worst thing that could happen to the 2011 Mets is they play bottom-of-the-barrel baseball, and when the July trade deadline comes around, GM Sandy Alderson plays no favorites and puts a majority of the team on the trading block.

For those of you that have ESPN Insider, it is likely that you may have seen Eric Karabell's article yesterday going over some early performances among the league's rookies.

He states in the article that while the Atlanta Braves are "very committed" to Freeman, he had some worries about how well he has hit so far this year.

What's wrong with Jason Heyward?  He hasn't reached base in his last four games.  Wednesday night against the Dodgers he struck out three times.  However, the short answer is that nothing's wrong.

We all knew coming into this season that the Braves' pitching was going to be solid. But we also felt like that the offense was going to improve. With this combination, the Braves were thought to be one of the best teams in the NL. Well, at the moment, only one of those beliefs has come true.

Next season—the year of the new ballpark—was supposed to be the year the Florida Marlins would start making some serious noise.

The players and coaches apparently didn’t get that memo as the fish have won five of their last six to improve to 10-6 on the season. Their record would be good for a wild-card playoff birth if the season ended today.

Heading into spring training, Michael Morse had already proven that he was a major league hitter. In parts of seven seasons, the 29-year-old had batted .284/.347/.440 with 21 homers and 92 RBI in 661 at-bats.

If he had a good spring, he had a lock on at least half of the left field job, likely platooning with Roger Bernadina. His spring however, was a knockout. Morse batted .364/.421/.818 with nine homers (second in the Grapefruit League) and 18 RBI.

He won the left field job outright.

It's getting bad for the New York Mets—as if it wasn't bad enough already.

They're 5-13 (one win in their last 10 games) and six and a half games out of first place already. After finishing 47-34 at home last season, the Mets are a woeful 1-9 at Citi Field so far.

From top to bottom, this team is a mess.

They're 29th in baseball in team ERA (5.18), 22nd in batting average (.238).

Having completed an old fashioned double-header over the weekend, the Washington Nationals get set to  complete three games in a 24 hour span.

Sitting at 9-8 right now, a record good enough to sit on top of the N.L. Central, few notice because the Philadelphia Phillies and Atlanta Braves dominate the N.L. East ink.