NL East

Though the "decision" did not have as much hype as that of LeBron James' over the summer, it's official: Terry Collins is the 20th manager in New York Mets team history.

As a fan, I find myself cautiously optimistic about this hiring. To be honest, I had no true preference among the four candidates for manager. Each one brought interesting qualifications to the table, but also had some drawbacks.

The New York Mets will reportedly offer reliever Pedro Feliciano arbitration, which puts the Mets in a very tricky situation.

If Feliciano accepts the Mets' offer, the Mets would have to sign him to a one-year contract for an unknown amount of money, somewhere around $4 million, most likely.

The 2010 season was just one more in a string of disappointments for the New York Mets. They finished the season 79-83 and 10 games under .500 within their own division.

The Mets have already begun to revamp their ball club, beginning with the front office and the hiring of Sandy Alderson as general manager and culminating with Terry Collins being appointed manager.

Now the Mets can turn their attention to their roster and begin to address the multitude of questions surrounding it.

Rumors rumors everywhere.  Where will Cliff Lee land?  The Yankees, duh.

It seems every off season that pitching is the biggest issue for those teams looking to make a big splash in free agency.

With Billy Wagner keen on retiring after the 2010 season, Frank Wren knew he would find himself this off-season once again shopping for bullpen arms.

Even with stellar rookie seasons by Jonny Venters and Craig Kimbrel out of the bullpen, Atlanta will seek at least one veteran arm to help out in late innings, as well as mentor the talented yet young relief corp.

I would like to start by saying congratulations to Terry Collins for winning the New York Mets vacant managerial position. He competed against three very deserving candidates and managed to come out on top. Therefore, I say good luck over the next two years.

That’s also an interesting point. Terry Collins reportedly will only be signing a two-year deal, through the end of the 2013 season.

Terry Collins has been selected as the new manager of the New York Mets, a source confirmed to MLB.com on Sunday evening.

He wasn't my first choice to replace Jerry Manuel, but I'll support him and trust that Sandy Alderson and Co. have made the right decision.

Now the Mets have a manager for the 2011 season, there's work to be done and Collins will have a busy offseason.

The New York Mets are expected to announce that they've selected Terry Collins as their new manager, signing him to a two-year contract. Collins was selected after weeks of searching, and beat out names like Bob Melvin, Wally Backman and Chip Hale.

The Mets had accumulated a long list of managerial candidates, each with something different to bring to the table, but the Mets feel Collins is the best choice to restore the Mets to relevance, and dare I say it, playoff contention.

Like George Costanza, the New York Mets are doing the opposite these days.

With Omar Minaya and Jerry Manuel running the show, the Mets had an undisciplined, laid-back, laissez-faire and for the most part dysfunctional organization.

Now they are doing everything they can to try to find the complete opposite of the things that went on over the past couple of seasons.

This is one of the oddest years for fantasy baseball owners, as after the first three picks the first round is extremely wide open.  It wouldn’t be a stretch to see someone selected fifth or sixth in one draft, only to be selected in the early-to-mid second round in the next.  Therefore we are going to analyze all of the potential first-round picks, looking at their pros and cons to determine if they should be selected in the first round or left for later rounds.

Up first, let’s look at Ryan Howard.