NL East

Stephen Strasburg had another excellent quality start last night in Washington but was a victim of no run support in the 2-1, 11-inning loss to the White Sox. The Nationals didn’t score a run until Strasburg made his exit after the top of the seventh.

The Nationals had defeated the Pirates 5-2 and the Indians 9-5 in his two previous starts. Strasburg had issues with the mound in the game with the Indians which probably caused him to walk five batters. He struck out 14 while walking none against the Pirates and struck out 10 while walking none against the White Sox.

Since John Maine left the rotation for the DL, the Mets have led the league in wins, going 19-5. Why? The rotation leads the league during the same stretch of time with the lowest earned run average.

With John Maine coming back from the DL soon, everyone is wondering whether Jerry Manuel will leave Takahashi in the rotation and ask Maine to go into the bullpen, or the reverse.

People can keep telling themselves "oh, it's only one game," but soon the doubters will have to accept the fact that the New York Mets are a legitimate threat in 2010.

They shut out the Yankees for their third straight victory over their cross-town rivals on Friday night, and the Mets are putting more weight behind the idea that their road sweeps in Baltimore and Cleveland were no fluke.

With the Subway Series rolling back around this weekend, the Yankees will look to avenge a lost series to their crosstown rivals from May.

While the starting pitching matchups might be the same, the venue has changed.

With the Arizona Diamondbacks sitting at 26-41 and 12.5 games out of first place in the NL West, it is obvious that they will be sellers when the trade deadline arrives.

The Diamondbacks have already started trading players. They swapped Connor Jackson for minor league reliever Sam Demel on July 15.

Another player that the Diamondbacks are rumored to be looking to move is Kelly Johnson.

A Phillies fan leafing through his Philadelphia Inquirer on May 23 would have seen his team sitting atop the NL East with a 26-16 record—the best in the NL. The Phillies had a fairly comfortable 3.5-game lead on the second-place Atlanta Braves, and that was only after the Tomahawks had amassed a five-game winning streak.

The Phillies were the all-but unanimous favorites to win the division, if not the pennant, for the third year in a row. Nothing had happened in the team's first 42 games to change that.