Opinion

When speaking about the competition for second base, New York Mets Manager Terry Collins said he wants to reduce the number of candidates by March 14.

Right now, the Mets have four players—Luis Castillo, Brad Emaus, Daniel Murphy and Justin Turner—trying to win a job as the Mets' starting second baseman.

Now that the initial shock is over from the news that Jason Castro will be out for almost the entire 2011 season with a torn ACL, the Houston Astros need to go into damage control and figure out what they want to do with the catcher situation.

They could head into the season relying on their current catchers, Humberto Quintero and J.R. Towles, but they have hit a combined .221 in their major league careers.

When Los Angeles Angels starting pitcher Scott Kazmir walked Juan Pierre on four pitches to start yesterday’s spring training game with the Chicago White Sox in Tempe, AZ, the 5,100 fans in attendance at Temple Diablo Stadium were probably thinking, “Oh, great, another stinker of a year from Kazmir.”

Heading into 2011, the Cincinnati Reds have a deep rotation, not necessarily loaded with aces, but with arms who are definitely strong enough to get a team through the 162 game ringer.

Yankees stud prospect Manny Banuelos may be just 19 years old, but his pitching arsenal already resembles that of a 10-year MLB veteran. Add to that a presence on the mound that screams “I belong here,” and the teenager has all the tools for superstardom.

Jody Gerut still insists I’m wrong. He’s told me time and again that he wasn’t reading historian David McCullough’s book John Adams when he and I met that midsummer in Buffalo a decade ago.

But I remember, Jody; I remember.

There you were in a corner stall, a book as thick as the Yellow Pages in your hands, reading it as your Triple A teammates on the Buffalo Bison had other things they preferred to do.

One guy already did it for the NL Central. Now it's time for the NL West!

There's many talented players in this division. And one of them happens to be the defending World Champions (Giants)

The division's been considered a joke for a little bit now, but let's see who the best and second best is.

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Has the Big Hurt done enough to make it to Cooperstown? If my calculations are correct, he will be eligible for his first ballot appearance in 2014.

He passes the eyeball test for sure. If you watched him play, it is easy to just say, “Yes, Thomas is a Hall of Fame player.”

He surely has very good numbers across the board, whether you grade him traditionally or using advanced metrics.

I've found, in my two-plus decades of baseball fandom, that the key to spring training coverage is to arm yourself with a ruthless filter.

The quicker you understand that 70 percent of news that comes out of camp is utter crap, the better off you'll be.

This isn't meant to be a dig on the beat writers on the scene—they're doing their job properly by and large, reporting on the minutiae of the day-to-day activities of each camp.

When Opening Day rolls around for the Philadelphia Phillies on April 1, one of the most anticipated teams in the lengthy history of Philadelphia sports will begin its 162-game crusade for postseason greatness, anchored by a starting rotation for the history books, including left-handed starter Cole Hamels.