Cliff Lee

Cleveland was, once upon a time, a baseball town, featuring a team on the cusp of the World Series and perennial All-Stars like CC Sabathia, Cliff Lee and Victor Martinez.

Those days are a distant memory.

Maybe allowing Cliff Lee to go 10 shutout on innings wasn't such a good idea after all.

Just three days after his incredible performance against the Giants (which the Phillies still lost), Lee has been placed on the 15-day disabled list with a strained left oblique muscle.

The Philadelphia Phillies continue to lead the NL East and sit at an impressive 15-6 in the early-going. It seems highly unlikely that this team will finish the season without at least 100 wins. They have struggled to hit and yet they continue to win. They lead the NL East in runs scored with 88 and are second in BA at .265. They have shown that their lineup can play a little small-ball by being in the top five in MLB in singles since Opening Day.

A few weeks tardy, but here are my thoughts and analysis on the season that lies ahead. Thus far in the young season, there have been some big surprises. The Cleveland Indians and Kansas City Royals are a combined 23-11, while the Boston Red Sox and New York Mets trail their respective divisions. Okay, the Mets' early woes aren't much of a shock.

The Phillies' starting pitching rotation has drawn many comparisons to the 1996 pitching staff of the Atlanta Braves. The Braves pitchers had a very strong season from their pitchers, but they lost in the World Series to the New York Yankees, four games to two. 

So how will the Phillies finish this season? 

For the past decade, the All-Star teams have been highlighted by the same players year after year. Players like Derek Jeter, Alex Rodriguez, Mariano Rivera, Ichiro, Albert Pujols, and Chipper Jones have appeared in the starting lineups every year and it's starting to get old. Between now and 2014, a new generation of faces will emerge as baseball's best and brightest and the old ones will begin to fade.

The top two pitchers for the San Francisco Giants and Philadelphia Phillies are arguably the top tandems in the Major Leagues. 

Each of these pitchers is an ace in his own right, but combined with the other, they make a great one-two punch for their respective teams.

In baseball today, fickle fans have a fascination with speed when it comes to pitching.  Unless a pitcher can throw a fastball upwards of 94 miles per hour, it seems that he is not worth one's total attention.  While the fastball is certainly a fine pitch, I would prefer today to talk about a horse of a different color: the changeup.

In this past week in Phillies baseball, the Philadelphia Phillies won three of their five games, bringing their NL East-leading record to 9-4.

The week (defined for our purposes as Monday through Sunday) concluded with a hard-earned 3-2 win over the visiting Florida Marlins, who would have tied the Phils for first place with a win.

After all of the preseason hype, largely due to the return of Cliff Lee, the Philadelphia Phillies have come out red hot in early April like a fox escaping a forest fire.

The Phils' are off to a 7-2 start, capped off by 2-1 series win over the Atlanta Braves who are thought to be their main competition in the NL East.