2011 MLB Spring Training

In professional baseball, unlike the other major professional sports, twenty years is a benchmark of sorts for a career. 

Sure, a player can go to the Hall of Fame having played 18, 15, or even 10 seasons, but 20 seasons is generally held out as the symbol of full career as a major league baseball player.

The final major pieces of the 2010-11 Major League Baseball offseason fell into place this past week. Former superstar sluggers, weathered but still talented, Andruw Jones and Manny Ramirez signed one year deals with the Yankees and Rays respectively. Both now older and fatter should be their teams' designated hitters.

Jose Reyes is one of the most dynamic players in all of baseball.  His combination of speed and personality makes him one of the most exciting baseball players to watch. 

When healthy, Reyes is exciting to watch.  The problem is that he hasn't been 100 percent in a while.  Whenever a player like Reyes isn't 100 percent healthy, it definitely affects his playing ability.

The 2010 baseball season was the Year of the Pitcher, at least according to pretty much everyone that wanted to shove that down our throats. In reality, 2010 was the Year of the Rookie. Many teams had rookies who had great seasons, and there were 7-10 rookies that would have automatically won the Rookie of the Year Award in any other year.

It's that time of the year when baseball publications and blogs far and wide weigh in with their opinions as to which players deserve mentioning on their respective teams' Top 10 prospects lists, and for the Los Angeles Dodgers, those number of listings are seemingly endless.

Periodicals such as Baseball America, Fangraphs, The Hardball Times, and a number of blogs from SB Nation are among only a few who have published prospect lists in the past week alone.

Spring Training will be here sooner than we think. The Phillies come into the 2011 season with some lofty expectations for themselves. They have mustered up one of the best rotations in the history of baseball with the surprising signing of former Phillie Cliff Lee.

Along with the rotation, the Phillies offense looks to get back on track after having a down year for what they've come to expect over the past few seasons. They still have the core group of players on the team, but they are all aging.

With their most recent acquisition of outfielder Marcus Thames, the Los Angeles Dodgers not only achieved an addition of power to the roster, but they also balanced the bats in the process. Thames will join a solid corps of outfielders who individually feature power, speed, and reliable defense.

With the 2011 baseball season right around the corner, a refresher course of who's hot, who's not and whose batting order is worthy of being the most feared is much anticipated.

Unless you live under a rock, you have heard Cliff Lee is coming back to Philadelphia. As familiar as this may sound now, think back to what your reaction was a little more than a month ago when this shocking announcement was made.

Phillies fans were in utter disbelief. They had many questions, all of which were difficult to answer.

A couple days ago, I took a look at the Giants non-roster pitchers that they invited to Spring Training, mainly because I believe that the lack of pitching depth is one of the biggest Achilles' heels of this team.

But as I stressed in the last post, there is always a possibility of someone making such a name for himself this spring that he works his way onto the Opening Day roster and contributes. Again, see Juan Uribe and Andres Torres.