Best Slideshows - Team

Luis Tiant. Jose Canseco. Mike Lowell. Jose Iglesias isn’t the first Cuban Red Sox, but he may have opened up the floodgates when he defected from the Cuban World Junior National Team in July, 2008.

Signed to an $8.25 million deal with a $6 million signing bonus, Iglesias was obviously the cream-of-the-crop and projects as the Red Sox shortstop of the future.

Agreeing to a $350,000 bonus, Cuban outfielder Jorge Padron falls short of such lofty expectations, but he remains an excellent offensive player with great upside.

With Opening Day on the horizon, River & Sunset once again offers Yankees fans a quick and easy way to get to know their team. We can verify that 91 percent of the information below is both accurate and relevant to this year's defending World Series champions. The rest is a mixture of hearsay and outright falsehoods.

STARTING ROTATION

Kris Medlen is listed at 5'10'' and even that may be a stretch.

His small stature and the fact that he played mostly shortstop at Santa Ana Junior College prior to being drafted had many questioning whether or not he could ever be a productive professional pitcher, which resulted in a 10th round draft selection in 2006.

Despite the slights against him, Medlen dominated the minors, posting an FIP (Fielding Independent Pitching) higher than 4.00 just once, and he saw even more success once he transitioned to starting pitcher in the summer of 2008. 

If you're a true Dodger Blue fan in Los Angeles or elsewhere, Monday morning can't have been a pleasant one. At least as long as Major League Baseball was on your mind.

Sure, you've got the bristling young talents of Matt Kemp, Andre Ethier, Clayton Kershaw, and James Loney to go with still-coming Chad Billingsley (I'm not sold on Jonathan Broxton). Russell Martin ain't too shabby behind the dish either.

Of course, you also have an owner in Frank McCourt who seems loathe to part with a penny to better the franchise unless it's for maximum return.

The name of the Cubs spring training facility, HoHoKam, literally means "those who vanished". That is appropriate as we embark on a journey of past Cubs spring training stars and "can't miss kids" who did.

The current spring star is Tyler Colvin, who is ranked third in the National League in hitting this spring, at .440. While this is great for the kid, and Paul Sullivan has Colvin making the Cubs' roster, let me remind you of one thing:

Spring statistics mean nothing. Zero. Zilch. Nada. As predictors for regular season performance, that is.

Spring Training is like Jesse James at this point- nobody wants it around.

A mere 2 weeks from Opening Day and I think we’ve all seen enough fake baseball for the year. We don’t want to watch fake baseball, the players don’t want to play fake baseball, and the announcers don’t want to announce fake baseball. It’s the dog days of spring training.

But now that we’re officially into spring we can look forward to real baseball in days. Bad for veteran pitcher X’s golf game, but good for the rest of us.

Opening Day in St.

The New York Mets have a history of over-evaluating prospects, of hyping up their rookies and top draft choices.

The franchise, especially back in the 80s, loved the "can't miss" studs coming up out of high schools and colleges, and just when they looked to be ready for the next big step, they exploded under the lights of New York City.

There are so many players in Mets history that were destined for greatness. Destined to lead the club for years to come.

In Seattle Mariners' history, there have been dry spells (see 1980s) and hot streaks (see late 1990s and early 2000s). In most franchise-changing moments, the winning play can be traced to a single at-bat that changed the course of the game.

In this article, I have identified what I believe to be the five most important hits in Seattle Mariners history. Some of these are milestones accomplished by the franchise's most prestigious players. Others are single at-bats in which one man turned the fate of a series upside down.

The White Sox have had very limited postseason performances and really the only great ones came in 2005.

Besides for Dewayne Wise's three-run home run game against the Rays in the 2008 ALDS, which Javier Vazquez promptly gave right back, and...I can't even find a good performance in the 2000 ALDS (the White Sox batted .185), the White Sox haven't had any great performances except for 2005.

I'm not going back to the 1906 World Series winner where the White Sox batted .198 and the Chicago Cubs batted .196.