Opinion

No, the bad news is that the Pittsburgh Pirates didn't exactly win the recent series against the division-leading Cincinnati Reds. The good news is that the two lost games were "ties" (at the end of nine innings).

Paul Maholm, Charlie Morton and Brian Burres all had quality starts going into the seventh inning and received no decisions. Late-inning surges won the final game outright, and gave the visitors chances in the other two encounters.

Picture this: a game lasts over four hours, uses 41 players, features 374 pitches, has two blown saves, and ends in a walk-off hit by pitch—by Mariano Rivera.

Welcome to Yankees-Rangers, September 11 (and part of 12), 2010

"It's not something I'm going to push at this point," Jay Bruce said Friday about his strained oblique. "I've taken the process this far. I'm going to see it through. When I come back, I want to be 100 percent ready to come back—not 90 percent, not 80 percent."

Read that real carefully.

Look at the calender, too. It points to September, and it has been a very productive year for the team, but by this point, no one is 100 percent.

The Philadelphia Phillies obstacle course of a season currently finds them one game up in the National League Eastern Division. The club's 2010 campaign has been akin to a season of The Amazing Race in terms of duration, complexity, and challenge. 

Where were we?

Oh, right, nothing about yesterday's game matters once today's game starts.

The Giants belted the Padres 7-3 to win the opener of the important four-game NL West series Thursday in San Diego. Giants fans were roaring that everything had fallen into place.

Then on Friday night, the Giants squeaked out a gut-wrenching and fascinating 1-0 win over the Padres to move into a tie for the NL West lead.

With only three weeks to go in the 2010 regular season, it's looking more and more like there will be postseason baseball in Philadelphia.   That doesn't mean that there weren't some difficult moments along the way.

Injuries and slumps are bound to happen, so rather than focus on the obvious, here is a look at six things that made even the most ardent Phils' fan consider switching to reality television for entertainment.

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Not since David Wright's May slump have there been any serious rumblings about the Mets trading their star third baseman, but the question has recently been posed: Would Wright match up well with the Boston Red Sox, and would a trade be possible this winter?

It is clear to me now, as if it wasn't before that the Mets ace, Johan Santana was using steroids in the early portion of his career. How do you go from being a Rule V draft pick in 1999 to getting a contract that pays about $23 million per season? How did he go from being a mediocre reliever to an All-Star caliber pitcher who won two Cy Young Awards? Please don't tell me it was because he watched game-tape.

 Ron Gardenhhire's Minnesota Twins are well on their way to winning the AL Central.

This would be Gardenhire's sixth division title in nine years.

Another division title in 2008 was within reach, if not for a 1-0 loss in game 163 against the Chicago White Sox in 2008.

Since he took over for Tom Kelly in 2002, Gardenhire's record is 792-644, a .551 winning percent.

While the majority of the Florida Marlins' first round draft disasters were before the Jeffrey Loria/Larry Beinfest/David Samson era and their pair of World Series victories (1997 and 2003) make no mistake the Marlins could have been a great team out of the gates. They had only one winning season between 1993 and 2002 which yielded the one World Series.