Best Slideshows - League

Yesterday, I took a look at 10 thus-far successful pitchers whose impressive starts I attributed to luck and declared that they would be unable to maintain their good fortunes for the rest of the season (click here for that article).

While I admittedly got some schadenfreude out of it, it was kind of depressing; as one commenter observed, the list was "almost every breakout pitcher this season."

In the interest of fairness (and not seeming like a complete rain

It was a different world back in 1987.

No one had a cell phone. The Internet had not been invented. GM wasn’t broke. Barry Bonds had a normal-sized head.

And that’s when I learned to hate baseball mascots.

Relief pitching in the 1950s was much different than the relief pitching of today.

It was still the general ideology of managers that the good arms were in the starting rotation and the duds were in the bullpen.

In a way it was true. However, the relief pitchers on this list broke that rule, they could flat out pitch.

Having said that, there weren’t many career relief pitchers in this decade and many of them had seasons where they were a starting pitcher and even had spot starts during their relief seasons.

Is that Mariano Rivera?

The arrival of Opening Day inevitably leads to speculation about which players will take home trophies at the end of the season.

In the MVP races, many have raised questions about Joe Mauer's ability to replicate his fantastic 2009 numbers and whether Albert Pujols can sustain his god-like pace for another year.

There is no consensus pick for the AL Cy Young, but in the NL it looks to be a showdown between incumbent Tim Lincecum and newcomer Roy Halladay.

As for Rookie of the Year—well, that's anyone's guess.

But the first round of individual recognitions—the All-Star Game&mdas

Last year I predicted that Zack Greinke would win the American League Cy Young award, and I nailed that one.

I thought Cole Hamels would win the National League version of the award, and, well, that didn’t turn out quite like I expected.

The Cy Young Award is an honor given annually in baseball to the best pitchers in Major League Baseball, one each for the American League and National League.

Some of these players are already household names. Some soon will be. As the past couple of offseasons have shown, older players are having a harder time finding work. Philadelphia's Dominic Brown has GM Pat Gillick breathing easier at the possibility of not resigning Jayson Werth. Tampa's Andrew Friedman can sleep a little better knowing Carl Crawford's impending free agency is met by the arrival of Baseball America's sixth-best rated prospect, Desmond Jennings.

Get to know these players. They represent the lifeline for small and midmarket teams.

The long running debate among baseball fans is just who has the best, most committed, smartest, (add superlative here) fan base. The fans of all 30 teams vary in commitment, knowledge, participation and attendance, but only one fan base can sit atop the list. Behind that fan base are 29 other groups who all jockey to separate themselves from the pack.

So let the debate, the hate and the trash talking commence with the power ranking of all 30 MLB fan bases.

Begin Slideshow

Home runs have been ingrained in baseball. We watch balls fly out of yards at high rates and multiple times per game. The balls have been made tighter, the fences built closer, and the bats lighters. All have combined for home runs to be an important part of a club's success. What also plays a factor is one's park. We saw how Yankee Stadium launched balls out into the seats at an eye-popping rate in 2009. That goes us thinking about which parks are the easiest and the hardest to hit a ball out of.