An early season update on the AL and NL East

Baseball fans all along the Eastern Seaboard have been treated to an intriguing start of the season with interesting story lines across both leagues. There are teams having impressive success; there are players struggling with laughable failures. I think I read somewhere that Lastings Milledge would be a great fantasy pickup this year as a player on the rise. If you play fantasy baseball, I hope you didn’t get this advice. A Philly fan excited to see the World Series MVP in his first game back from injury? Sorry you had to see what you saw last week. Here are a few of our early observations…

The Boston Red Sox and New York Mets (two teams who have slipped in our power rankings) have a combined record of 7 and 10 after being heralded as possible world-series opponents by many. It is, of course, a long season, but certainly a disappointing start for two teams whose early exits from the prime time last year (the Mets didn’t even make the post-season) left fans frustrated. Citi Field was inaugurated with a bad loss to an unassuming Padres team (the Metropolitans treated fans to a better performance tonight, reaching the .500 mark); Jon Lester’s most recent outing was shameful. It isn’t as if these teams should lose all hope a whopping one week into the season; all we are saying is that we expected more.

But the Boston’s sorrows and Brooklyn’s woes come nowhere close to the lamentable week in the nation’s capital. The White House gets a new team every few years. Unfortunately, National’s Stadium does not. Seven games, seven losses. Oh yeah… and have you heard about that minor leaguer Lastings Milledge? Wow. A few miles up 95 the O’s have 6 wins on the year but as this is being written they are being absolutely hammered by Texas, perhaps suggesting that one’s success – which has come as a result a good hitting and mediocre pitching – can only last so long when Adam Eaton is the one’s third starter. No matter how well Adam Jones and Nick Markakis are playing, it is tough to see Baltimore continuing to win.

The southernmost and northernmost teams in the East (those being the Marlins and Blue Jays for the unversed in geography) are off to great starts, with performances both orthodox (Scott Rolen and HanRam) and, of course, unorthodox (Emilio Bonifacio? Adam Lind?). Both teams have solid pitching, and the Marlins, who have some pretty obvious offensive talent, have show-cased a simply fantastic rotation in the early going. Chris Volstad has looked unbeatable these last few games, taking a lot of pressure of that offense.

The Phillies and Braves have played above average. Chase Utley, with 4 hits for every 10 at bats, seems to have come back from injury rather well if you ask us… a rather unorthodox recovery from the 3-time All-Star. But the Philadelphia starting rotation, an underrated strength last year, has been simply awful. Terrible. Cole Hamels first start has Philly fans worried; his velocity wasn’t there, and the Rockies took advantage of slow fastballs and weak curveballs hanging over the plate, inviting the men in purple and white to swing away as they lazily crossed the plate. Never a good idea to give gifts at Coor’s Field. The Braves, on the other hand, showed off an improved pitching staff in week one against the bats from Broad Street, but we don’t trust Vazquez after these last few seasons and Lowe got pounded by that Marlin lineup on the way to the Braves’ third loss. Jordan Schafer though… ATL has got to be excited about his performance.

That leaves the Yankees and the Rays, who have been duking it out this week in a battle of what we here at the HumanReview see as the AL’s two best ball clubs. Sweet pitching makes Tampa and New York dangerous, and when A-Rod comes back it is going to be interesting to see how the 26-time champions kick it into gear. The Yanks win the series 2-1 but we think both teams will go on to win a whole lot of games against everyone else they face.