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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The NFL Lockout - Where do you stand?

By Kalen
The most popular sport in the US has been locked out for over 3 months now and while we do hear rumors of progress being made, how much? We really don't know. What makes this Lockout so difficult is that both sides have valid arguments. Now while fans in general tend to agree with the players, there are numerous issues where I do have to side with the owners. I think that, ultimately the game will be better for the fans if the owners come out on the winning side of this (and they most likely will).

THE LEGACY OF ROGER GOODELL WILL HINGE ON THE OUTCOME OF THE LOCKOUT

Now I don't think they should get everything they want, I do agree with several issues. Such as:

Installing a rookie salary cap - The draft was designed in order to help the bad teams get better, correct? Well the Raiders take Jamarcus Russell #1 overall, and at the time I think most people thought it was a solid choice. That Russell had all the talent, tools etc etc etc. 3 years and a guaranteed $32 million dollars later, Jamarcus is not only out of the NFL but out of sports. There is no such as a sure thing when it comes to the draft, why put teams in a horrible position should the draft pick not work out. It defies the logic of the draft. Also think about this, a lot of the guys coming in to the league are maybe 21 or 22? And they are being guaranteed $30-40 million now? What incentive do they have to put in the work? I know I know, the draft screening process should reveal this, but if so many draft "experts" get it wrong so often then can we really blame teams for this? I think the NBA has it right here, I think there should be a price slot allocated to each draft position and a contract of 3-4 years. Paying crazy money to rookies is already an insult to veterans who are proven, why potentially cripple an entire franchise over 1 selection not working out?

THE FUTURE OF FOOTBALL RESTS IN THE HANDS OF THESE GUYS

The future ramifications to fans - Should the owners lose out in the new CBA, you know prices for basically everything football related is going to increase significantly. Imagine ticket prices? Jersey prices? That $10 beer suddenly turns in to $15. And the NFL owners know they can do this and get away with it because of the popularity and demand for basically anything football related. Who knows how far owners could take things in order to recuperate the losses made, should the players come out on top.

Salary Cap needs to be reinstated - I'm not 100% sure on how the owners or players feel on this issue. I tend to feel that the owners would be in favor of the Salary Cap. It keeps things fair and keeps every team at a similar competitive level. Do we really want to see the Redskins and Cowboys turn in to the Red Sox and Yankees? I feel if owners are able to budget and know exactly where they stand financially with player contracts, we can expect better prices. Put a decent size Salary Cap in place and I think a minimum amount needs to also be implemented so the NFL does not have a Pittsburgh Pirates on their hands (18 straight losing seasons would never fly in the NFL).

A get out of Contract Clause - I think this should be implemented in most professional sports. What I mean by "get out of contract clause" is that teams should be able to terminate a contract with zero financial consequences under certain circumstances. I feel that a team should be able to put forth 1 contract per year for review by a neutral party (or else a party with an even vote between players association and league representatives). For example, lets say the San Francisco 49ers signed Nnamdi Asomugha and gave him a 7 year $100 million dollar contract. Now if Nnamdi comes in and plays well the Niners will have no problem paying him that. Now lets say if Nnamdi has constant injuries or else his level of play drops dramatically and he comes in to camp out of shape and is basically a huge bust, then the 49ers should be allowed put forth that contract to the 3rd party and from there a verdict can be made on how to restructure or terminate the contract. A good real life example would be Albert Haynesworth in Washington. Now there would have to be a drastic significant decrease in the level of play for a change to be made.

WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON?

These are just some of the issues that I think I would favor the owners in AND would benefit the League. There are however many issues that I disagree with; such as retirement medical insurance, wanting players to play 2 extra regular season games without improving the current contracts or medical coverage. While 4 preseason games can be torturous, think about this, each team will have maybe 10 fringe players to make the 53 man roster and 8 to make the practice squad. That is 18 per team. We times that by 32 (for all the teams) and we get around 575 players who need all those 4 games to prove themselves to make the team in some capacity. Plus owners keep complaining about their high priced stars getting injured, yet you want more games to put them in harms way? In these cases it clearly can be perceived that the owners care about their wallet and not for the players health and safety.


The whole CBA issue is so complex, and there are so many issues which can be looked at so many ways that it's hard to even digest the whole issue. This is why it has and will take a long time to solve. Ultimately all I can ask for is we still have the game we all love back ASAP and not ruined by this whole ordeal.

Let me know what you guys think about my points, let me know what issues of the CBA are on your mind and maybe we can get a discussion going. Thanks for reading (if you made it this far).

This is Kalen from the Sports Cave.
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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!