NL East

Spring is in the air, and the smell of baseball couldn't be sweeter.

New York Mets starting pitcher Jacob deGrom is refusing to sign his contract for the 2016 season as a form of protest due to his disappointment in the salary the team assigned him.

Yoenis Cespedes enjoys the finer things in life, like custom whips and expensive county fair pigs.

Yesterday it was a Lamborghini, the day before that it was a Polaris Slingshot. 

Even out of context, the numbers were fine. Matt Harvey finished 2015 with the sixth-lowest ERA in the National League (2.71), with a strikeout an inning. He had 10 starts where he didn't allow an earned run, and three others where he allowed only one.

In his first comments since an Al Jazeera America report linked him to alleged performance-enhancing drug use, Washington Nationals star Ryan Zimmerman was defiant Tuesday.

Put Scott Boras, Jeffrey Loria and David Samson in a room, and a reality television producer would salivate at the possibilities. It's a group with so much potential for dysfunction that Bravo might consider ditching The Real Housewives series just to acquire the rights.

The outspoken, bullish agent (Boras), the wacky owner (Loria) and president (Samson) have the kind of volatile personalities that could cause a kerfuffle in 2016.

Jeff Francoeur is heading back to the South, as the free-agent outfielder signed a minor league deal with the Atlanta Braves on Monday, per Mark Bowman of MLB.com.

For many teams, spring training helps gauge what to expect in the upcoming season. For the Atlanta Braves, however, it’s clear that this spring training is more about the seasons to come.

The Washington Nationals roll into the 2016 season focused on a single question: Can they zap the memory of last year's embarrassing implosion and claw back to the postseason?