If chicks did the long ball, there's not going to be a whole lot of love if your team is squaring off against the Mets.

For all of the questions about Jerry Manuel's rotation coming into the season, it has been an unlikely group of pitchers who have helped New York remain in contention in a highly competitive NL East.

Every team has their faults in the division, and with no one team running away with things one-third of the way through the year, it is as wide open as it has ever been.

I’ve been writing about the Rockies on several sites, including My Team Rivals , My own site, the Rockies Reporter , as well as the Bleacher Report .

At the Bleacher Report, I’m already moving up the list of top writers and eventually hope to be a featured columnist in the future.

I’ve also been contacted to cover the Rockies at several sites already in my short time doing this.

Derek Sanderson Jeter made his major league debut 15 years ago today, May 29, 1995.

For any fan of the Yankees, and the game of baseball, it has been a great 15 years. We have all gone along for the ride with this great shortstop.

Jeter made his major league debut with the Yankees 15 years ago, when injuries to Tony Fernandez, and Pat Kelly, required the team to call up their young future star.

Of late, everyone has been talking about how terrible the Mariners are.

"Chone Figgins is a bust."

"Jose Lopez can't play defense."

"Ken Griffey Jr. should retire."

These are some of the printable examples of what fans have said on the Internet over the past couple of months.

Somewhere, sometime in the history of the baseball world, it was deemed that the Fourth of July holiday should be the benchmark to determine whether your team had a snowball’s chance in Hell of waving the pennant at the end of the season.

Not sure why July 4. Why not Flag Day, June 14? Seems appropriate; the pennant is sometimes called the “flag."

Labor Day is cheating; there’s less than a month left, so that’s hardly a step out onto the limb.

We have all been so impressed with the Reds starting pitchers and depressed about the ass-end of the bullpen, that we have not given notice to the rebirth of Jonny Gomes.

If you haven't looked at the National League stats lately, he is currently the fifth best hitter in the league, sporting a .316 average, which makes him currently the best hitter on the team. He is also fifth in slugging percentage and 10th in the league in OPS.

Friday night's game against the New York Yankees saw a lot of bad umpiring in the form of blatant hometown calls.

As if the latest meltdown from the bullpen wasn't bad enough, umpire C.B. Bucknor called Robinson Cano safe on a lead-off single that replays clearly showed Jason Donald's throw beat him to the bag.

Donald and Bucknor weren't done, though, as Donald was called out at first in the seventh inning on what appeared to be an infield single.

In November 2009, Tyler Colvin moved to Arizona to train with Cubs strength coach Tim Buss.

The training program add 25 pounds of muscle and Chicago Cubs manager Lou Piniella was very impressed with him early this spring.

"We noticed right from the start of spring training at Fitch Park that he was taking some really good batting practice and driving the ball to left-center, right-center," Piniella said.

Three players have started a game atop the Cubs batting order this season: Ryan Theriot, Kosuke Fukudome, and Marlon Byrd.

Theriot has led off 38 times, Fukudome 10 times, and Byrd once heading into Saturday's game against the Cardinals.

Among those who follow the Cubs, the choice between Theriot and Fukudome is a contentious one. Neither is the ideal choice for a leadoff hitter, but for a team without any better candidates, they have their own advantages.

Does anyone else remember the hype machine surrounding Jordan Schafer from about, say, 2007 up until 50 games into the 2009 season?

The sky was the limit for this kid.

He was (and still is) a superb glove in center and has the potential from a speed/contact standpoint to turn into something resembling an above-average Major League talent.

Pretty amazing what a 50-game suspension and a broken wrist can do to a career isn't it?