Opinion

There is no question that the 2010 New York Mets team is a force that no opposing team should take lightly.

While it is only mid-season, there is good reason to believe that the Mets will play meaningful baseball in October, something they have not done since 2006.

In June of 2006, David Wright won the NL Player of the month. He participated in his first All Star Game festivities, including the HR Derby, where he placed a close second to Ryan Howard of the Phillies.

Walks are annoying. Sometimes they are a necessary evil, but for the most part they make me want to jab a sharp object into my eyeball.

The Reds tend to have this penchant for giving free passes when there are members of the opposing team already occupying the base paths (I'm talking to you Coco!). Cincinnati is playing well, extremely well, but is on pace to exceed the amount of walks issued last year when the pitching staff used home plate as a well oiled turnstile.

That's not good.

Don't let your eyes fool you.  This bum look-alike will actually be worth more this off-season than you or anyone else who reads this will make in the rest of your lifetimes.  Philadelphia rightfielder Jayson Werth will command top dollar as a free agent after this season.  Outside of Tampa Bay's Carl Crawford, there are no other total package outfielders available.

Werth is so valuable the Phillies are viewing him as a possible way to upgrade their team via a trade.  Top prospect and heir-apparent Dominic Brown is starting to tear it up in Triple A.

If there is anything we've learned from recent baseball history, it is that the good teams make the obvious moves when the time comes to make them, but the great teams make the right moves when no one else sees them.

To my mind, the best recent example of the difference between obvious moves and good moves comes from the Ken Williams Era in Chicago.  After the 2004 season, Williams traded Carlos Lee to the Milwaukee Brewers for Scott Podsednik and allowed Magglio Ordonez to sign with the Detroit Tigers as a free agent.

Before writing this article, I had set out to prove that the Home Run Derby has no effect on a participant's second-half performance.

But after crunching the numbers, I'm not so sure.

Over the past decade, players competing in the Derby have seen their first-half at-bat-per-home-run ratio increase, on average, from 14.2 to 15.6 in the second half. This means they are going an extra 1.4 at-bats between dingers after the All-Star break.

But maybe that's normal; maybe all players get tired as the season wears on.

Well, not necessarily.

The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim stand at a very precarious spot in the season.

At 46-41, just slightly past the halfway point and 5 1/2 games behind the AL West-leading Texas Rangers, they must make a decision: give up and tough it out with the players they have, or make a move and wrest back control of a division they've owned for the better part of a decade.

37-48.

11.5 games out of first place.

Those are the numbers Brewer fans were forced to endure this morning when opening their papers or looking online to see the current position of their favorite team.

After a 15-2 loss to the San Francisco Giants, it's clear that the Brewers won't be sniffing the playoffs in 2010.

This article was written by Double G Sports contributing writer Marc A. Spallino.

With the Mets trailing the Atlanta Braves by only three games in the National League East , the Mets faithful are feeling cautiously excited.

We are officially less than a week away from the 2010 Major League Baseball All-Star Game.

The 81st annual midseason exhibition will definitely be one to watch, as there are several dynamics to look forward to: a cluster of new faces, a bunch of superstars coming back, and the question of whether or not the National League can beat the American League for the first time in since 1996.

Welcome to Tribe Talk, where Bleacher Report's Cleveland Indians fans weigh in on the ups and downs of the club each week throughout the season.

This week, we discuss the Tribe's terrible luck with injuries, Fausto Carmona's All-Star Game nod, and the long-awaited emergence of Matt LaPorta.