Opinion

Dontrelle Willis was a young phenom with the Florida Marlins in 2002. Now, he is turning into a journeyman in the MLB.

Willlis was like Stephen Strasburg when he made his debut. He had a marvelous rookie year and was the ace of the Marlins' pitching staff.

In 2005, Dontrelle had 22 wins, but didn't win the National League Cy Young. He should have won though.

Then in 2007, Willis wanted to be traded from Florida. After that season he got his wish and was traded to the Detroit Tigers.

When Yankees fans woke up today and looked through the sports page of their local newspaper, they will see a friendly and familiar site. The New York Yankees are back in first place, albeit a tie with the Tampa Bay Rays .

While the Rays have gone just 5-5 in their last ten games, the Yankees won seven of their past ten to pull even with the Rays at 40-23 overall this season.

Last Week: 4-2
This Week: WAS (6/15-17); ARI (6/18-20)

So what happened?

You gotta love those Pittsburgh Pirates—Helping Teams Get Well Since 1993.

The Tigers were wheezing and gasping, having lost 12 of 18 after dropping two of three to the White Sox in Chicago.

Enter the Pirates...

The Pirates, who haven’t had a winning season since the ORIGINAL George Bush administration, came to town and all was good again in Bengal Land.

Going into the 2010 season, the White Sox starting staff of Mark Buehrle, Jake Peavy, John Danks, Gavin Floyd, and Freddy Garcia was thought to be a top three pitching staff in all of baseball.

So far, however, the starting staff has simply been awful, sporting ERAs of 3.27, 4.82, 4.93, 5.62, and 5.64 in 377.1 innings pitched, while the offense has taken most of the blame for the 28-34 record.

Over the last five games, of which the White Sox won four, we may have seen a sudden awakening to the starting five.

The Pittsburgh Pirates had a great farm team, with the likes of Jose Tabata, Neil Walker, Brad Lincoln, and Pedro Alvarez. As recently as early last year, that even included Andrew McCutchen. Not to mention, Garret Jones.

Now, with the exception of Alvarez, they've been called-up to fill some fairly big holes. Alvarez's arrival is anticipated as soon as he's ready

McCutchen replaced Nate McLouth, who was traded for pitching talent, and Jones was supposedly the "new Nady."

The Golden Baseball League seems to have this habit of generating headlines in a sport dominated by A-Rod, Derek Jeter, and the New York Yankees.

On Saturday afternoon, during the Fox Saturday Game of the Week, the Boston Red Sox were playing host to the Philadelphia Phillies.

Nothing out of the ordinary, except that the Phillies are in dangerous team slump where hitting and pitching have seemingly affected everyone.

The NCAA is powerless to stop the complete destruction of the Big 12. Nebraska has already joined the Big Ten (now the new Big 12 - or maybe Big 16 soon), and teams such as Texas, Syracuse, Pittsburgh and others could soon follow.

Other teams are being courted by the Pac 10.  

These big conferences are doing it for money, to create new rivalries, and gain leverage over other conferences with regards to bowl games and TV contracts (i.e. more money).

As fans, we see it every year. Players get off to hot starts, pleasing their fans and giving many a sportswriter a story to write about.

Of course, most of the time, the player reverts right back to the level of play we as fans expect, or worse. Maybe their overall statistics still look shiny, or maybe no one notices.

This season saw a large number of quick starters.

Mlbtraderumors. com reports that the Twins and Rangers are the two teams rumored to be most interested in acquiring Mike Lowell from the Red Sox.  Makes sense to me.

The current conventional wisdom is that the AL is the better of the two major leagues.  The Giants seem to be taking advantage of this fact.

Aubrey Huff, Juan Uribe, Pat Burrell, and Santiago Casilla are all AL cast-offs who seem to have rediscovered their old glory coming (or returning) to the NL.  In the case of Burrell and Casilla, in particular, the sample sizes are too small to draw any firm conclusions.  However, even with them, the changes have been so dramatic that they’re worth commenting on.