Fan News

The Mariners trade for Russell Branyan is a valuable lesson for all fantasy owners: when you are out of contention, don’t start trading your future for the present, no matter who it is. If you are out of the hunt, realize that and start planning for next year.

It's almost unbelievable to comprehend, but the Boston Red Sox have suffered yet another injury—their third in two days, in fact.

It’s over folks. The winning streak has come to an end.

After winning 11 games in a row, the Chicago White Sox were finally defeated and once again, it was at the hands of the Chicago Cubs.

As the White Sox walked off the field as losers for only the second time in their last 17 games, what’s next for the South Siders?

The last time a White Sox team won 10 games in a row was in 1976. Good right? Well, that team also lost 10 games in a row that season as well. Uh oh.

Could this team possibly repeat that? Not likely.

This is a breakout season for Milwaukee Brewers rightfielder Corey Hart.

He's making amends for the bad first month of the 2010 season.

And, Hart is winning over the fans who thought he was too proud to take the club's $4.2 million offer.

Hart turned it down and forced the Brewers to go to arbitration.

He didn't even deserve that much because he was hurt last season, and his production declined.

Now, Hart looks like a genius, after not only winning a $4.8 million deal, but also staying hot at the plate.

The A's have had plenty of talent leave Oakland over the years.

Regardless of the fact that the team has had a three-peat of World Series wins in the 1970s, and remains competitive in a small-market, it seems that the Athletics get lost in a league that is dominated by big-market teams like the New York Yankees, Boston Red Sox, and Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim.

The departure of talent from the East Bay can be attributed to three things:

1) The city of Oakland. The A's need to separate themselves from the Raiders and Mt. Davis.

Although pitching has dominated the headlines and the landscape of Major League Baseball this season, there have still been some fairly potent lineups in the first two and a half months across the league, mainly in the AL.

They say pitching wins championships, but it doesn't hurt to have a good offense to go with a good rotation, and as evidenced by this list, having a good offense usually means you have a good team.

So which offenses are the worst in the AL? Which ones have room to improve? Which ones are over-performing?

These days fantasy baseball is loaded with crazy stats for everything you could possibly think of, from hits to Linear Weights Run Value . Some of them are completely worthless to most of us, and to be honest, if you have to go to something like Ultimate Zone Rating to decide between two players, you can probably just flip a coin.

Growing up listening to Houston Astros games in South Texas, I remember right-handed pitcher Danny Darwin very well. He came to the Astros in 1986 and was popular in many ways.

Darwin was a Texas native from Bonham and was nicknamed "The Bonham Bullet" for his great fastball.

The only Astros radio station I could pick up in Beeville, Texas (about 60 miles northwest of Corpus Christi) was KSIX out of Corpus. The transmission wasn't very clear and for the longest time, I thought Darwin was nicknamed "The Bottom Bullet".

NEW YORK— The Mets completed another positive home stand today, shutting out the Minnesota Twins 6-0 on their Major League-best 11th shutout victory of the season.