AL East

There is a difference between being a great baseball talent, being a great player and having a great career.

Thurman Munson and Carlton Fisk were great baseball talents. Munson and Fisk were great players. Fisk had a better career than Munson did. As Helen Gamble of The Practice might say, "I wonder why."

If you're a fantasy player, you're probably well aware that the Boston Red Sox's David Ortiz is one of the only players in the game with no positional eligibility: he can only play designated hitter at a utility slot.

He's one of the few DHs so designated: others are designated third basemen (Edwin Encarnacion, Chris Davis), outfielders (Raul Ibanez, Kendrys Morales) or even catchers (Jesus Montero).

This past offseason Andy MacPhail left the Baltimore Orioles after spending over four seasons as the President of Baseball Operations, and upon his departure the feeling among Orioles fans was that he had failed miserably.

The signing of Vladimir Guerrero comes as a low-risk/high-reward move for the Toronto Blue Jays.  He was signed to a one-year deal worth $1.3 million, which will be prorated based on his time with the club this season. 

At 37 years of age, it remains to be seen how much Vladdy has to offer.

He is probably Hall of Fame bound as he is a career .318 hitter with 449 home runs and 1,496 RBI. 

Tim Wakefield recently told Jon Paul Morosi of CBS Sports about how he is settling into his retirement.

In his exact words as reported on Twitter:

"It's been difficult. The fire to compete is still there. But it's been fun to be home, be a dad, a husband."

2012 has been an up-and-down season for the New York Yankees thus far. Some players have been surprisingly hot, while some have been uncharacteristically cold. The team as a whole has gone on hot streaks and cold streaks as well, usually coinciding with the offense.

Players like Derek Jeter, Curtis Granderson, Nick Swisher and Raul Ibanez have been red-hot to start the 2012 campaign, and are really the only reason that the Yankees have managed a 20-15 record at this point in the season.  

At 36 years of age, David Ortiz is having the type of season that rivals his 2005, 2006 and 2007 seasons, at ages 29, 30 and 31 respectively.

In each of those seasons, Ortiz finished second, third and fourth in the American League MVP voting consecutively.

This season, he is absolutely raking for the Boston Red Sox. I must eat crow, I wanted him out of town during the winter and I was wrong.

The Boston Red Sox have managed to string together five wins in a row.

Over the course of the last several games, the team has only allowed eight runs, while scoring 34 of their own, showing that the offense is clearly clicking at the right time as well.

While I think it would be a bit premature to say that the team is set to tear up the rest of baseball, there are still some positives that can be drawn from the performance of the pitching staff.

Matt Snyder of CBSSports.com reports that the New York Yankees announced Tuesday afternoon that reliever David Robertson is being placed on the DL with a strained left oblique muscle.