Skipper Charlie Manuel wouldn't say his team got lucky in their wild 4-1 win over the Chicago Cubs, but that was plainly obvious to anyone watching.

Geovaney Soto certainly isn't a scrub and is not a guy who will make many mistakes, so when he drops a perfect throw that would have allowed him to tag out Brian Schneider by a good 10 feet or so, a lot of it is luck.

Pitching wins championships, or at least that is the saying.  If this is the case, then the Yankees better start looking for some more help in that department.

While CC, Pettitte, and Hughes are having great seasons thus far, that can’t be said for the rest of the staff.

When it comes to the bullpen, the only reliable pitcher has been Mr. Reliable himself, Mariano Rivera.  After him the bullpen is a crap shoot.

The Setting: A Cleveland Indians publicist welcomes the sparsely scattered media to an Indians press conference. The club's owner, Larry Dolan, walks out and addresses them.

"Good afternoon, everybody. I called this press conference today to address the faithful fans of the Cleveland Indians."

"We are currently in the midst of another disappointing season, sitting in last place in the division and nearly 20 games from our rivals, The Detroit Tigers, and current division leaders, the Chicago White Sox."

I admit, I am a Toronto Blue Jays fan, that's why you'll notice that the picture of Halladay is in a Blue Jays uniform rather than the Phillies uniform. I grew up watching him play and truly loved watching the best pitcher in baseball completely shut down opposing offenses. As such, my opinion is a bit biased so I tried to stick to the numbers only when deciding that Halladay deserves the NL Cy Young.

With the recent release of George Sherrill by the Los Angeles Dodgers, one wonders whether Ruben Amaro, Jr. and the Phillies' front office will look to add him to their struggling core of relief pitchers.

Sherrill, himself, has struggled this year with an ERA of 7.17 and WHIP of 2.20, hence the reason for his outright release.  However, he was solid for the Dodgers last year and has a career ERA of 3.64 and WHIP of 1.32.

He also has late inning experience, serving as the closer for Baltimore and recording a few saves for both Seattle and LA.  

Ever since David Price's shut-down relief pitching a few years ago in the ALCS, teams have become more dependent on hot-shot prospects down the stretch.

And you just know that's going to be the case this season, especially with the sustained success of the rookie class of 2010, that includes Stephen Strasburg, Carlos Santana, and the possibly playoff-bound Buster Posey, Mike Leake, and Jason Heyward.

But aside from those big names, there's several of lesser known ones that could end up playing huge roles this September for the stretch run, and on into October, once playoff baseball arrives.

With the All-Star break concluding yesterday, I thought it would be a good time to look at the best players in baseball through the first three months of the season.

I decided the best way to do this objectively was to use the Wins Above Replacement (WAR) stat that is used on many sites, including the one I used (Fangraphs.com).

WAR is a stat that measures how many wins a player is worth over a replacement level player, or a player that any team can plug into a hole whenever is needed (think a AAA player filling in for an injured player).

This stat is calculated in a complicated way, but it

With the best record in baseball through the 1st half of the season, the defending champion New York Yankees look to be in prime position to make a run at their 2nd World Series Championship in as many years.

On the streets there are rumblings of the return of the, "Dynasty."

Years 1996 - 2000 hold a special place for every Yankee fan. To this day, I can remember the entire starting line up of the '96 Yankees, but I can't do multiplication to save my life.

I am sure many Yankee fans are the same way. To fans like us, baseball is more important than math.