Miami Marlins outfielder Ichiro Suzuki collected a pinch-hit single during the eighth inning of Wednesday's game against the Philadelphia Phillies, bumping him up to 2,950 hits for his career.

Even more impressive, Suzuki started his career in Japan at the age of 18, playing nine seasons with Orix of the Japan Pacific League before finally joining MLB in 2001 as a 27-year-old with the Seattle Mariners. 

Our position-by-position MLB player rankings will once again be a monthly staple throughout the 2016 campaign, and it's time for another update as we've reached roughly the quarter mark of the season.

It's time for America's favorite game show, "Contender or Pretender."

OK, maybe it's not America's favorite game show, but we're still going to play, and you're invited to play along.

It works like this: We take a look at the teams with the best records in baseball and determine whether they're legitimate threats to make the playoffs (contenders) or if their early-season success is unsustainable (pretenders), which could be for a variety of reasons.

Under normal circumstances, a struggling pitcher with an ERA north of 5.00 wouldn't inspire feverish trade speculation.

But the Oakland Athletics' Sonny Gray isn't a normal struggling pitcher. And these aren't normal circumstances. 

The New York Yankees moved to 17-22 on Wednesday with a victory over the Arizona Diamondbacks, but owner Hal Steinbrenner is not happy his team is in last place in the American League East.

He specifically singled out the players while deflecting blame from manager Joe Girardi and the rest of the coaching staff, per ESPN.com:

In the wake of the Atlanta Braves firing manager Fredi Gonzalez on Tuesday, Bud Black has emerged as a top option to replace him. 

According to ESPN Podcasts, Bob Nightengale of USA Today called Black the "clear favorite" to take over in Atlanta.

Former New York Mets and Philadelphia Phillies star Lenny Dykstra stated Tuesday that he used to take performance-enhancing drugs with his breakfast.  

Jonah Birenbaum of theScore.com passed along comments the longtime outfielder made during an appearance on The Herd with Colin Cowherd about his PED habits:

High expectations lead to grand disappointments. For an alarmingly high number of MLB stars slumping in 2016, small sample sizes also don't help.

Any baseball player who sticks around long enough will endure a rough patch during his career. Most of these guys, however, are paid exorbitant salaries to avoid those ebbs and flows. It's one thing when the No. 7 hitter or back-end starter labors, but the award-winning star and nine-figure investment are supposed to rise above human fallibility.

The Los Angeles Dodgers definitely have problems in their bullpen, and they definitely need to seek out solutions.

What's not so definite is that Julio Urias is the one they're looking for.

Hype has such versatile usage in sports, like the English language’s version of Will Smith—a rapper, comedian and actor.

It’s employed to characterize a player, group of players, team, franchise, manager, executive and even owners. Basically, sports’ hype machine is applicable to any breathing organism in the world of sports.