Both Carlos Santana and Buster Posey have paid immediate dividends for fantasy owners and have made an impact on our early 2011 rankings.  Let’s take a look at how things currently stand (remember, this an extremely early ranking and may change significantly as the season progresses):

Within the last 20 years, hundreds of articles have been written about Pete Rose's ban from baseball, so I will spare you what has all ready been said. Instead, I'd like to touch more on the effects of his punishment as opposed to the actions that warranted it.

The court of public opinion maintains that the time has come to reinstate him—and I agree, as far as the Hall of Fame goes.

Banning Rose from baseball not only penalizes the man himself, it hurts the sport and denies fans the opportunity to see one of the game's greatest heroes.

There is that third basemen for the New York Yankees who has a strange way of doing things.

Alex Rodriguez is sitting at 599 home runs on his career.

The Detroit Tigers are looking to acquire Boston backup third baseman Mike Lowell to temporarily replace the injured Brandon Inge, according to Danny Knobler of CBS Sports.

Inge had been hitting .263 with a .755 OPS and was wielding a decent glove before landing on the disabled list for six weeks with a broken hand.

While Lowell is still owed a little less than $5 million this year and has spent most of the season languishing on the DL, he represents one of the most affordable short-term fixes at the hot corner currently on the market.

LOS ANGELES-- The New York Mets are in Los Angeles to face the Dodgers in game two of their series, trying to fine some offense.

New York will have Johan Santana on the mound facing Vincente Padilla. Padilla has beat the Mets more than any other team in his career (10), and is having a solid season for Joe Torre's club.

There isn’t much to complain about this week when it comes to closers performances over the last week. With only six blown saves for the entire MLB over the last seven days, its nitpicking time. This week it was very difficult to separate an A from a D, let alone a B. If your closer gave up more than one hit look down the list. If he gave up a run, ha, look waaay down the list.

Grade A

Even before the 2010 MLB season began, almost every team in baseball was in awe of the offensive potential of the Los Angeles Dodgers powerhouse outfield.

With 2009 Silver Slugger Award winners Andre Ethier and Matt Kemp, along with a rejuvenated Manny Ramirez, the Los Angeles outfield was sure to wreak havoc on the best pitching staffs around the league in 2010.

It should be noted, as the Reds are seven games into the second half of their season, that division races are rather tense affairs.  Why do I point this out?  Simply put, we Reds fans aren't used to this.

In years past, as we approached this time of year, I'd start thinking about the Bengals. That, or just flat out question why I'm still watching every Reds games when .500 is out of reach, and they are 10-15 games back.

Last week, Yankee captain Derek Jeter honored the recently deceased Yankee owner George Steinbrenner and announcer Bob Sheppard.

For that minute-long speech, it was hard not to think back to Lou Gehrig's "Luckiest Man" speech, as Jeter's statements drew an explosion of applause.

These are the type of moments that transform this player into a captain, this shortstop into a winner, this Yankee into a legend.

Let's take a look at the other moments that have made Derek Jeter seem impeccable.

My four kids, like most all kids, hate doing chores at home. Over the past couple of seasons, the Diamondbacks have been much like my kids and doing chores, they just don’t get the job done. In the case of Arizona, the chore they have struggled at is getting the sweeping done.