Rankings/List

One of the biggest misconceptions in baseball is when people refer to teams such as the Seattle Mariners as small or mid market teams. A casual fan exclaims "The Mariners are going all pitching and defense given their lack of funds." The Mariners may have a fairly unique winning strategy, but that is in spite of their market size, not because of it.

Imagine you were chosen to select an all-time rotation and pitching staff for the Los Angeles Dodgers.  Who would you select?  Who would make your all-time pitching staff?

Your fantasy team would then have to compete against all of the other all-time rotations and teams selected.  How would it fare?

With spring training almost over, it’s time to take a look who is tearing up both the Grapefruit and Cactus Leagues.

Here are the Spring Training All-Stars...

(All stats are through Wednesday, March 24.)

C—Mike Napoli, LAA—.313/5/9/.405

If Mike Scioscia had any faith in Napoli behind the plate, he could hit 40 home runs during the regular season. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like that will ever happen.

Budding young stars seem to be a trend in not only baseball, but in numerous sports. There is something to be said for harvesting your own players and having them shine. It has been a long time coming in baseball, where again exciting youth have arrived to sell out ballparks.

One of the top organizations in the business the Los Angeles Dodgers, have been to the League Championships in consecutive years.

This is interesting given the fact that the third largest market in sports has spent relatively cheaply.

The credit is due to the players and the managerial staff.

With so much talk in Cubs' camp this spring training surrounding top prospect Starlin Castro, I decided to take a look back at so of the top rookie performances in team history.

I went back as far as 1947, which was the first year that the Rookie of the Year Award was handed out. I only looked at the stats that the player posted during their rookie season when ranking them.

At the beginning of the 2008 season, the bookmakers gave 250 to 1 against the Tampa Bay Rays winning the World Series that year. The Rays in fact failed to do so, but came a lot closer than almost anyone would have expected.

Going into the Fall Classics, the odds were 7 to 5 in their favor, which is to say that someone who had paid "$1" for the bet, could have cashed out for over $100 (instead of winning $250) before the final resolution.

In the last ten years, Cubs fans have seen their share of disappointing seasons, bad trades, over-hyped prospects and greedy super stars.

No other franchise in the entire MLB has experienced more disappointment then Chicago, and here is a tribute to the best players that graciously took the blame.

102 years of painful seasons has made the Wrigley faithful the most loyal and passionate fans in all of sports, though times may seem tough.

Though thousands of players have set foot into the hallowed walls of Wrigley Field, these athletes have proven to be the best since the Y2K.

In this article, like the Top 10 Pitchers article is a project given to me by Bleacherreport.com, I guarantee will forget some major personalities since I've been alive for roughly 1/4 of the franchise's history. I'm going to take a crack at it anyway. If I see I've forgotten significant enough people I WILL revise. That's half the fun in this assignment is that I get to learn about the history of the A's.

Some of these players are already household names. Some soon will be. As the past couple of offseasons have shown, older players are having a harder time finding work. Philadelphia's Dominic Brown has GM Pat Gillick breathing easier at the possibility of not resigning Jayson Werth. Tampa's Andrew Friedman can sleep a little better knowing Carl Crawford's impending free agency is met by the arrival of Baseball America's sixth-best rated prospect, Desmond Jennings.

Get to know these players. They represent the lifeline for small and midmarket teams.

It's been a long strange road, but the Orioles Top 30 prospects, my little "rip-off" of Baseball America's version, has finally come to a close.

And without a doubt, there is no better prospect to top it all off than Brian Matusz. Don't let those 45 innings he pitched last season fool you, the lanky lefty still qualifies as a rookie.