Stats

Headaches for fantasy owners were the result of their poor production. Their names are recognizable. Their pictures are likely one of your top current baseball cards. The bench might be the right place for them to think about what they did this week to so many hopeful fantasy baseball teams.

1) Jason Heyward, OF, Atlanta Braves

Heyward has made his way once again onto the slump report. He went only 1-for-16 and ended last week with a .062 AVG.

Ubaldo Jimenez has been absolutely filthy through 16 starts this season, going 14-1 with a Bob Gibson-like 1.83 ERA. The 26-year-old flame thrower even tossed a no-hitter back on April 17 .

Right on the heels of Jose Bautista's 20 home runs is Vernon Wells with 18. Going into Sunday afternoon's game, the two men had nearly identical OPSs of .900 (Bautista) and .898 (Wells).

Wells' slugging percentage is actually .020 points higher than Bautista's, but the latter walks more, and has a .022 higher OBP.

Bautista has 47 and 49 runs and RBIs respectively. Wells' totals are 43 and 45. The difference between the two mens' offensive values is a statistical tie.

As the Blue Jays season approaches the half way mark, several positive and negative trends have carried along long enough that extra attention is warranted. By far the two most concerning trends are the continuing futility of Aaron Hill and Adam Lind. Both have been bad enough at the plate this year to generate serious concern about their futures.

The mystery is over.  No need to even have a vote.  We now know who the Most Valuable Player in the National League is.

It isn't Albert Pujols, Adrian Gonzalez, or Ubaldo Jimenez.  He plays in the National League East, but he isn't Hanley Ramirez, David Wright, Jason Heyward, or Ryan Zimmerman.  

The 2010 NL MVP plays for the Philadelphia Phillies, but he isn't Chase Utley, Ryan Howard, or Roy Halladay.

The 2010 National League Most Valuable Player is none other than Jimmy Rollins.

Tonight, the Toronto Blue Jays will begin a three-game series at Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia against the Phillies. However, this is no ordinary home series for the Phillies.

Instead, this series was supposed to be played in Toronto but had to be moved to Philly due to security reasons that arose from the G20 Summit being held in Toronto this weekend.

Yankees -Dodgers  is one of the most classic and enduring rivalries in all of American sports. These two clubs have had a unique relationship since the early 20th century when the Dodgers still played at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn.

I don’t know how this is going to turn out, but it is going to be interesting to find out.

When Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays were active, the majority of fans rated Mays ahead of Mantle, often with the disclaimer that if Mickey had Mays’ health, it might have been different.

Now that we have “experts” such as Bill James and his ilk, a bevy of measurements exist that have led to the conclusion that Mickey was better than we thought.  The primary reason is that his peak years were better than Willie’s.

The talk in Boston prior to the Red Sox-Dodgers series was how to treat Manny Ramirez. Should he be booed?  Cheered?  In the end, there were mixed reactions.  But nonetheless, fans paid more on the secondary ticket market to see Manny and the Dodgers play the Sox at Fenway Park.  

We looked at the Dodgers ticket prices at Fenway this weekend and it is pretty interesting:

At SeatGeek , we use ticket data from transactions on the secondary market to make many inferences about the sporting world and fan sentiment. Today, we took a look at the change in prices of tickets for each team in the MLB from 2009 to 2010. The teams with the largest percentage increase from last year to this year were dubbed the “Surprise Teams” of 2010.