Rankings/List

The 2012 MLB Draft will be an opportunity for every team to find a player that can help them reach their goals next season.

This draft class is deep with quality starting pitchers, and since many teams are looking for a future ace to build their staff around, this could be an important draft for several teams in the top 10.

Let's look at a fresh first-round MLB mock draft.

1. Houston Astros (56-106): Mark Appel, RHP, Stanford 

While the 2012 draft class has tons of depth at some positions such as pitching (but what draft doesn’t?) and outfielders, it’s incredibly slim at others.

As I mentioned last week, the crop of shortstop prospects is less than impressive, and I think the fact that the Pirates have been linked to Arizona State’s Deven Marrero at No. 8 overall is a testament to this notion.

The Texas Rangers have been known for quite some time as a team that usually wins with their bats. They are third in Major League Baseball since 2000 in runs scored and this is a team that has only been to the postseason twice since the turn of the millennium.

Well, you can now add Dustin Pedroia to the growing list of injured Boston Red Sox players.

It is getting to the point of the year where MLB trade rumors are starting to pick up and more and more players are getting mentioned as possible trade candidates.

Most of the players that are mentioned in trade rumors will not be going anywhere, but their names will come up over and over again during the course of the next few months.

The Texas Rangers made an unsurprising yet intriguing move by signing free-agent pitcher Roy Oswalt for the rest of the season.

Clearly the addition of Oswalt gives the Rangers the potential to be one of the best rotations in baseball for the rest of the season. 

But what exactly will Oswalt accomplish with the reigning two-time American League Champions?

Here are 10 predictions for Roy Oswalt as a Texas Ranger. 

Everybody has been waiting four months for this day to arrive: The date that Manny Ramirez is eligible to rejoin a major league ballclub.

Last December, Ramirez hinted that he was interested in un-retiring from baseball, following a seven-month absence in light of his positive drug test result during May of 2011, while he was playing for the Tampa Bay Rays.

Magglio Ordonez is retiring after playing 15 seasons in the major leagues. He was a six-time All-Star during his time with the White Sox and Tigers. He won a batting title, three Silver Sluggers and was the runner-up for the 2007 American League Most Valuable Player award.

On Monday, two of the game's top young left-handers squared off as the White Sox' Chris Sale and the Rays' Matt Moore took the hill.

The White Sox came away with a 2-1 win, but both pitchers were impressive as Sale (7.1 IP, 15 Ks) and Moore (7 IP, 10 Ks) both pitched well enough to win.

Those two are not the only southpaws who have a bright future, as there are a number of good young left-handers on their way to making a big impact in the MLB.

After holding relatively steady for the past couple of weeks, we have some shuffling in the NL Rookie of the Year rankings. 

There's a change at the top, due to the previous week's front-runner fighting through a slump. That's created an opportunity for others to move up, including one guy whose bat has stayed hot.