MLB

The NL East has plenty of offensive firepower, especially at the top, but the emergence of young pitching and the performance of the divisions aces will go a long way to deciding if anyone can knock the Phillies off their perch.

The Phillies picked up a new ace; the Braves lost theirs. The Mets will ride the arm of their ace while the Marlins attempt to establish a new one. As for the Nationals? They will likely have have their future ace start in the minors while the big league club attempts to take baby steps and improve upon a dismal 2009 season.

The Mets have played their first spring training game and emerged victorious with a minor league team as the regulars were pulled due to the inclement weather yesterday.

Jerry Manuel, David Wright, John Maine, Jose Reyes, Johan Santana, and others have been interviewed at great length, and it's apparent that they are excited for this year. 

They want to win, and they know they have a lot to prove to themselves, the management, and the fans. 

This is the second in a short series of articles on my 25 favorite Mets players as a one-team roster. You can find the first part of the series here . A cursory look at my favorite Mets "team" makes something very clear— I have a special affinity for Mets players of the mid to late 1980s.

Paul Maholm may or may not be the best pitcher in the Pirates' rotation. But he is clearly the one to beat for front-runner.

A stalking horse, by definition, is a pretty good racehorse that may or may not be the best, but is certainly good enough to set the pace for the others. In short, his defining characteristic is reliability. That pretty much describes Maholm.

As late as the beginning of 2008, he was a distant third among Pirates' hurlers. But two more obviously talented throwers, Ian Snell, and Tom Gorzelanny, fell by the wayside that year.

The Arizona Diamondbacks are officially locking down their future in the signing of Justin Upton. The Diamondbacks and Upton agreed to a six-year $51.26 million contract extension yesterday.

The deal will carry him through the 2015 season, when he will be turning 29 years old.

Upton batted .300/.366/.532 with 26 homers, 86 RBI, and 20 stolen bases last season. He is expected to be well worth the money but only time will tell if he will really produce.

Any fan of sabermetrics or the Boston Red Sox knows that Jacoby Ellsbury was something of a defensive liability in 2009.

For those of you who aren’t hip to the latest statistical trends, Ultimate Zone Rating is currently the best available method of measuring fielding, providing an estimate of how many runs a player saved (or cost) his team with his glove.

The Mets organization may not think Ike Davis is Major League ready just yet, but the young first baseman will see plenty of action in spring training.

With the Mets resting most of their regulars in yesterdays spring opener, Davis got the start at first base against the Atlanta Braves.

There were some first day jitters as Davis misjudged a foul territory pop up. The first baseman did admit to feeling a bit uncomfortable in the field yesterday. Let's not pass any judgements just yet, it was after all the first spring game of the season and he wasn't expecting to start.

I am going to have to admit, I am pretty tired this morning.

Last night was the playoffs of my Team Trivia league, and it was a long night for a Tuesday.

Like the U.S. Olympic Hockey Team, we finished in second place and earned a silver medal.

While we didn’t accomplish our ultimate goal of finishing first, I will take solace in the fact that we finished ahead of a team that had a girl who was on Jeopardy! on their squad.

1. Introduction

Buster Olney of ESPN wrote an interesting article about the analysis of each team’s schedule and how tough it is for those teams. I personally think MLB should take the article into consideration in making future MLB schedule and try to make tough team facing tougher schedule and weaker team facing easier ones, especially early in the season.

So you didn’t land Zack Greinke or Chris Carpenter. That’s OK, there are still plenty of value pitchers to help you post a low ERA.

Brett Anderson, Oakland A’s 
Anderson had a solid rookie debut posting an 11-11 record with a 4.06 ERA. I expect the win total to increase and the ERA to dip below the 4.00 mark.