MLB Weekly Power Rankings

By Kalen
Here we go for another dose of the weekly power rankings in Baseball. The Cleveland Indians have fallen all the way back down to Earth and more, throwing away their big lead in the AL Central. Staying in that division, the Twins are showing signs of life and getting Joe Mauer back soon will be huge. Lets now get to the top 5 and bottom 5 teams in my opinion. The rankings I have are based between both Overall record and how the team has played the last week. Lets do this.

Top 5
1 (2)  Boston Red Sox (40-27) - Hitting has been exceptional, pitching has been superb and this team seems almost unbeatable, hence why the Red Sox are 9-1 in their last 10 games. Adrian Gonzalez is making a case for AL MVP so far and Josh Beckett for AL Cy Young.

BE AFRAID, BE VERY AFRAID

2 (NR) Philadelphia Phillies (43-26) - Best record in Baseball, and they are finally getting hot with the bats. The team to beat in the National League for now. With this pitching staff it will be hard to stop them when they can hit too.


3 (5) San Francisco Giants (39-29) - May call this a 'homer' ranking, I will absolutely admit this is not the 3rd most talented roster, but my Giants just keep on winning despite big injuries to notable players at key positions. 7-3 in their last 10 and Aubrey Huff seems to be getting hot.

4 (NR) Milwaukee Brewers (39-30) - The Brewers have snatched the lead in the NL Central from the slumping Cardinals. All round good team, I look for the Brewers to be very active to add a piece or two at the trade deadline as they make a push for the World Series.

5 (NR) New York Yankees (38-28) - Keeping pace with the Red Hot Red Sox, suffered some notable injuries this week (Derek Jeter and Bartolo Colon), this teams depth at pitching will be put to the ultimate test. One stat to note is the Yankees are 37-20 against teams not called the Boston Red Sox.

Bottom 5

THIS SUMS UP THE CUBS FRANCHISE

26 (NR) Florida Marlins (32-36) - My how things have turned for the worse, lost 6 in a row, 1-9 in their last 10 games and Josh Johnson has been put on the 60 Day DL. They are also 3-17 since the game where Scott Cousins took out Buster Posey (Karma?).

27 (NR) San Diego Padres (30-40) - You know your team is in trouble when your home record is 14-26, yet they are 2 games over .500 on the road? The Padres have the fewest runs scored in the Majors.

28 (29) Chicago Cubs (27-40) - This team is the highest paid bunch of losers I have ever seen. Prince Fielder said he would be open to signing with the Cubs in the offseason? Why? (oh yeah the insane money he will get)

29 (27) Houston Astros (25-44) - Worst win % in Baseball (.362) and they have the worst run differential too (-77). What else is there to be said?


30 (30) Oakland Athletics (29-40) - They don't score runs, their pitching has struggled and they have injuries left right and center. Is it any wonder the A's have to offer $2 Wednesdays just to get people to show up to watch this team?

That's the rankings for this week. Let me know what you guys think, give your thoughts on my rankings and let me know where you'd rank the teams. Kalen from the Sports Cave.

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Baseball Realignment - My Thoughts

By Kalen
Personally I like how Baseball is with the number of teams going through, it makes it so the best of the best get in, unlike football where teams like Seattle with a 7-9 record get in or in Basketball where the 1st round tends to be a snoozefest the majority of the time. However, I can and do understand the arguments for adding 2 extra teams to the playoffs. And not only this but maybe realigning the divisions too. Is it really fair to have teams like Baltimore and Toronto have to compete with the likes of Boston and New York year in and year out? I think changes can be made without having to completely alter the game. The beauty of this debate is hearing all the interesting ideas people come up with. Here are my thoughts:

What to do with the Divisions? - I've heard arguments that have just 1 division in the AL and NL, and the top 4 teams go though and so on and so forth. This is an intriguing idea but not one I agree with. One of the beautiful things about baseball are the rivalries and division teams playing each other regularly, Boston vs New York, San Francisco vs LA Dodgers, St. Louis vs Chicago Cubs. Not only this, but having the Mets and the Padres in the same division means so much more travel in an already crazy schedule for the players.
Here is my idea, move 1 of the National League teams to the American League. The easy choice has to be the Houston Astros, they are already a team re-building, a great rivalry can be made with the Rangers and they can be slotted in to the AL West. Thus giving each division 5 teams. I never understood why so many thought it was fair having 6 teams in the NL Central but only 4 in the AL West?

WOULD MOVING THE ASTROS TO THE AL BE GOOD FOR BASEBALL?

What to do with the Playoffs? - As I said before, I quite like how Baseball is done with the playoffs, but I can't help but think it can be improved. Hear me out on this, 10 teams go through, 5 in the AL and 5 in the NL. The winners of each of the divisions automatically go through to the 2nd round, so in both the AL and NL you have 2 teams play each other. 1 game, and whoever has the better record gets the home field advantage. Can you imagine how exciting this one game would be in each League? Imagine the Phillies, Cardinals and Giants win their respective divisions and then you have the Braves travel to the Brewers to play sudden death. How great of a start to the postseason would that be? What a way to kickstart it.

Minimum Team Salary - First off I want to say that Baseball will never be like the NFL where you can have 1 salary cap figure for every team, its just impossible. What my idea is to implement a minimum team salary that owners must spend. MLB needs to do this on a team by team basis, and the number is based on how much income the team gets. Example, the Yankees make so much more than the Pirates, so the minimum salaries are going to need to be significantly different. I just don't think it's fair or reasonable to fans of say the Pirates to look at their awful team of 18 straight years losing, most owners should wanna spend money to win and therefore make money. In recent years, all the Pirates have done is dump contract after contract and spend so little on the team and they just keep losing. I feel that owners of each team need to be serious about the team and not just in it to make money. This would be good for all the smaller markets like Kansas City, Florida, etc.

WHILE HAVING A SOLID 2011, THE PIRATES HAVE NOT SPENT ENOUGH TO KEEP THE TEAM COMPETITIVE

All in all I think Baseball is in a great position and with the pending Lockouts of both the NFL and MLB, they can hope to expect a big surge in interest. By possibly implementing my ideas I feel it could vault Baseball to be right there with Football and ahead of Basketball once again. The one issue you can say about Baseball, is the refusal to alter the game for the better. This is something that Football has been great at.

Baseball is my 2nd favorite sport behind......you guessed it Football. Who knows how that will go in the future? Giants are playing great and the 49ers have been tough to watch. I like the direction of the 49ers and the Giants and Bulls are all in great positions going forward. God it's good to be a sports fan.

Kalen from the Sports Cave. Check in tomorrow when I update my weekly MLB Power Rankings.

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Input from YOU!

So I'm looking for as much input as I can get with my blog. Feel free to leave suggestions to improve the blog, make it more popular, what I should write about, what polls I should put up and I am closing in on 1000 hits. May even look to give out something to the 1000th visitor. Exciting times here at the Sports Life. You guys know the drill, visit daily, and spread the word!

Reviewing the Day in Sports

What a busy Monday in Sports, you don't hear that too often, but today was jam-packed full of action. From the Stanley Cup Finals, NBA Head Coach  move and a bunch of Baseball, I'd say that is a great day. Lets get this started

NHL Stanley Cup Finals
The Boston Bruins were down 0-2 in the series to the Vancouver Canucks, I love hearing all the sports radio talk about how the series is over blah blah blah. Well guess what? Boston comes in today and kicks the Canucks ass 8-1. This game looked like it would be another nail-biter after the 1st period was scoreless, but then it was all Boston. By the end of the 2nd period the game was essentially over as the Bruins scored 4 goals. I was extremely glad to see the Bruins get back 1 game in this series. As I wrote in my post "NHL's Time to Shine" I really think Hockey needs an exciting 7 game series to get momentum going in to next year. I was glad also because I do have a soft spot for the Bruins, as much as people would say that all 7 games need to be close, I disagree, I think a blowout game like this can be great. It brings a lot of National attention when you hear a score of 8-1 in the Finals, people will come flocking to check it out when they hear these kind of scores.

Expect an action packed 7 game series between the Boston Bruins and Vancouver Canucks

Going forward in this series I do expect nothing less than an exciting 7 game series. I do think that the Bruins will eventually come back to win this series. Timmy Thomas looked great in goal tonight and can build on this and get hot, whereas Roberto Luongo, uhmm not so much. Hockey comes down to having a hot goalie and being able to eek out some goals. Boston to me has the advantage at goalie, while the Canucks have some great players in Kessler, and the Seguin twins, I think Boston will be able to get enough out of enforcer and talented Zdeno Chara, also guys like Mark Recchi and David Krejci are more than capable of getting the job done. Lace up your skates, put on pads, because the next 4 games are gonna be a heavy hitting, bumpy ride.

Mark Jackson lands with Golden State
The ESPN game announcer and former NBA Point Guard Mark Jackson has become the next Head Coach of the Golden State Warriors. Just when I thought the Warriors couldn't get any dumber, they go and TOTALLY REDEEM themselves. Well I don't know if I will go that far but I recently watched Dumb and Dumber and what to put that line in my blog somewhere. I really think this is a wait and see hire. You can look at the good and bad points to hiring a guy like Mark Jackson, he doesn't have any Head Coaching or Assistant Coaching experience in the NBA, however, he was able to play the PG position extremely well, which is essentially the coach on the court. One thing I did like hearing from the Warriors brass was that they are committed to surrounding Jackson with a great supporting cast.

     Does Mark Jackson have what it takes to be the Warriors Head Coach?

The Warriors seem determined to lure Mike Malone from the New Orleans Hornets to add to Jacksons staff. A guy the Lakers are reportedly very interested in and have already interviewed. Mark Jackson will do a great job with both Steph Curry and Monta Ellis (assuming neither are traded), and according to ESPN experts, expect the Warriors to play much better defense with an up-tempo offense. I like the sound of that. While I am a bigger Bulls fan, the Warriors being the local team are definitely my Western Conference Team. I want to see the Warriors be competitive, I want the Bay Area to have a winning Basketball team but changes not just to the coaching staff need to be made.

Look, I as much as anybody love watching the Curry - Ellis combo but I just don't know if it will ever work. This will be the first challenge of the owners and new coaching staff, what to do with these two players. Do you keep both and hope they can form a winning Guard tandem? Or try and build a more conventional team? I will touch on my opinions of this in a future post. Leave comments on what you guys would wanna do with the Warriors if you were in charge?

MLB
Here come the Detroit Tigers! The Cleveland Indians had a great great start to the season, and by all means are still having a good year being 8 games above .500 with a record of 33-25. However, their once huge lead in the AL Central is all but gone now that the Tigers have been playing excellent ball. The Tigers crushed the Rangers today 13-7 lead by Brennan Boesch who has 2 HR's, 5 RBI and went 5-6, to improve their record to 32-27. The Indians once had an 8 game advantage, it's now down to 1.5 games and this will be an exciting race all through the Summer. In other news the Milwaukee Brewers just completed a 4 game sweep of the Florida Marlins in Florida. Zack Greinke had an outstanding performance for a Milwaukee team which has been red hot as of late.

Tim Lincecum is a World Champion, 2 time Cy Young Winner and now has 1000 K's in less than 5 full seasons. Impressed?

Would like to end off by Congratulating Tim Lincecum by getting his 1000th career Strike Out today. The Freak joins some big company by getting his 1000th K, in only his 5th year in the Majors, and we all know he has a lot more of those to come, not only this year but for the foreseeable future. Matt Cain is only 31 K's away from reaching 1000 himself, next up for the Giants will be Jonathan Sanchez who will probably get there by the end of the 2012 season. That's all for now, I am out.

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