Baseball

Jose Reyes is at it again. Already back from an early exit in the World Baseball Classic, he has resumed his support for the Mets to re-sign Pedro Martinez. Martinez, 37, is coming off a season to forget with the Mets. The right-handed Dominican player pitch just 109 innings last season and posted a dismal 5.61 E.R.A. "Unbelievable, unbelievable," said Reyes of Pedro. "He's fantastic. He's loose, comfortable on the mound. He threw a lot of strikes, bro. He throws hard, too. He looked great."

This probably won't be a popular article in Maryland, all the more so because a lot of baseball people are creating some irresponsible hype around the Baltimore Orioles.  I say irresponsible because Oriole fans deserve better than to be grossly misguided like that.

Make no mistake about it—Baltimore is done.  DOA.  Forget one fork, the Os have four protruding from their collective corpus.

One from the New York Yankees, one from the Boston Red Sox, one from the Tampa Bay Rays, and one from the Toronto Blue Jays.

This is a projection on the players that I believe will make up the Texas Rangers 25-man Major League roster come Opening Day.

Since Spring Training is still not over, obviously this is not my final list and I will make adjustments by the week and as we get closer to Opening Day.

Those players that are italicized are players that I believe are locks for the 25-man roster, and the stats listed with them are their 2008 season stats.

STARTING ROTATION

Kevin Millwood- 9-10, 5.07 ERA, 168.2 IP, 125 K, 49 BB

The Dutch were clutch in the WBC, sending the DR straight to the ER! 

Okay, that was a poor attempt to sound 'hip'.  However, let not anyone underestimate the profoundly stunning result that 2-1 victory by the Netherlands over the Dominican Republic was. 

The Dominican Republic was a team loaded with MLB all-stars (Miguel Tejada, David Ortiz, Jose Reyes, and Pedro Martinez...to name a few); however, the Dutch had not a single player on its roster who is currently signed with an MLB team. 

The St. Louis Cardinals took both split-squad games from the Orioles yesterday.  Let's take a look at who had a hand in the victories.

In the first game, Cards won 6-5.  It wouldn't have been quite that close, but Chris Perez struggled in his outing, giving up two runs before recording the save. 

Manny: "Ah mi Dios. Otro día en escuela", (Oh my God. It is another day at school) said nine year old Manuel-ito Ramirez from his squalid little tenement in the Washington Heights section of the Bronx.

Manny thinks: Oye tiene cuidado mi ventana. Estoy en las sombras del Estadio Yanqui... (Hey look out my window. I'm in the shadows of Yankee Stadium...)

Manny: "No quiero ir a la escuela hoy." (I don't want to go to school today)

Narrator: Excuse me Manuel-ito. This is Bleacher Report. Please habla in English.

This list was made after extensive research into the stats I believed to be the most important when it came to pitchers. I took a list of close to 200 candidates and looked at their career totals in Wins, ERA, WHIP, Saves, and Strikeouts. I then ranked each player in each of those categories. After that I looked at what they averaged in those stats per year. This ensures that we are looking at quality along with quantity. Next I weighted each stat accordingly, because lets face it, a save isn't as important as a win.

• AL Central
• Baseball
• Chicago Sports
• Fantasy
• Minneapolis Sports
• Minnesota Twins
• MLB