Tim Lincecum

"First we'll use Spahn, then we'll use Sain, Then an off day, followed by rain. Back will come Spahn, followed by Sain, And followed, we hope, by two days of rain."

Boston Post sports editor Gerald Hern wrote a poem that led to the above hoped-for sequence in 1948. Spahn and Sain were the only two solid starting pitchers on the pennant winning 1948 Boston Braves.

With the the final game of the weekend's Giants-Padres series now played, and Giants find themselves 3.5 games out of first place in the NL West with 43 games left to play.

All season long, people have doubted whether the Padres would be able to hold onto their lead in the division, and with the Padres taking two-of-three from in the most recent match-up, the Giants now have some work to do if they hope to be playing in October.

(I would like to say first that I originally wrote this article for another sports website, so I apologize for the glitches in formatting. The original article is here: http://sportsflecks.com/?p=895)

The NL West hasn't gone the way most of the "experts" thought it would. The team leading the division, the San Diego Padres, was expected to be the bottom feeder, while the predicted leader, the Los Angeles Dodgers, sits in third place seven games back.

That sets up for a showdown in the bay area this coming weekend between the first place San Diego Padres and the second place San Francisco Giants who are just two and a half games back. The two teams have met eight times this season with the Padres coming out victorious in seven of those games.

Baseball managerial practices are organic. They change and shift according to knowledge into the laws of physics, culture, and economics.

In times of yore, a five-man rotation was thought to be useless, Cy Young started 49 games in a single year, and the concept of a closer would have been bizarre.

Getting back to the present, Stephen Strasburg's muscles flared a few weeks ago, and it seems he may be shut down for the year.

Two pitchers with heavily decorated resumes.

The first, CC Sabathia, has more of a track record and is completing his 10th full season in the Majors.

The second, Tim Lincecum, affectionately known as "The Freak," is in his fourth season, and has two Cy Young Awards.

However, both are known as workhorses, the proverbial baseball term that gives revered status to those pitchers who miss very few starts to injury and normally throw 200-plus innings per season.

Fantasy Baseball’s Pitching Line of the Week:

Paul Maholm (SP-PIT) 

SAN FRANCISCO—What the Mets wanted to do in the first half was hang around until they got Carlos Beltran back.

But unlike last season, the Mets didn't wait for their reinforcements to return, they treated them as a bonus. They did a good job of playing without their star center fielder, going 48-40, and being only one game behind of a playoff spot.

Tonight, almost exactly six months to the day of announcing knee surgery on January 16, Carlos Beltran returns to the Mets lineup, batting cleanup in center field.

The San Francisco Giants need a big bat to make a big run at a National League playoff berth.

Guess what?

They don't need to trade starting pitcher Jonathan Sanchez (whose still got a 75 percent chance of being a productive big league winner) to get outfielder Corey Hart (who'd come with 50-50 odds that his offensive numbers would diminish in the move from Milwaukee's cavernous Miller Park to San Francisco's cavernous AT&T Park).

The MLB All-Star Lineup has garnered a variety of reactions, ranging from cheers and sighs of relief to whimpers and shrieks of disbelief.

When the 2010 MLB All-Star lineups were released, there were undoubtedly as many elated fans as there were bitter fans.

No matter where the stadium is located, fans maintain an unceasing allegiance to their favorite teams and players.

Being chosen to play in the All-Star game represents the ultimate recognition that fans, coaches, and players alike have observed, reveled in, and appreciated every moment of a player's season thus far.