2013 MLB Season Update: Early Surprises And The NL East

Screen-Shot-2013-03-29-at-5.49.35-PM The Major League Baseball season is underway and like normal, every pontificator who screamed from the mountain tops about how the season was going to go are now burning every recording device in their office. Baseball is an amazing sport, extremely difficult in many ways and a great reward for the patient. The difficulty necessitates a grueling 162 game season so that the best teams can advance to the post season, making it a certainty that the two teams that survive the process are in fact the best two teams that year. However, the same thing that makes Baseball a great sport can also be seen as something of a negative, they play 162 games! Admittedly it€™s hard to stay engaged around game 50, by early June even the Philly Fanatic is simply Phil the Reasonably Enthusiastic. To help you keep tabs on the long season let€™s take a look at how things are going around the league at this point. The All Star break is a ways away and teams are still jockeying for position, let€™s see the early surprises per division.

American League East

At a glance, it looks like business as usual in the AL East, The New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox are at the top. However, the early season prognosis didn€™t have the Yankees leading anything. Derek Jeter has yet to appear in a game this year after suffering a devastating ankle injury last season. The Yankees disabled list (DL) looks like it could be a starting roster in and of itself including names like Mark Teixeira (1st Base) and Joba Chamberlain (Relief Pitcher), add to that three starting pitchers and the teams top 2 third basemen and it€™s a wonder they are above .500 let alone atop a division that features an equally surprisingly good Red Sox team and a resurgent Baltimore Orioles team that is determined to change the perception of the AL East being a two team division. The Red Sox were a mess last season, with managerial issues, a post Theo Epstein (General Manager) hangover, and a roster that was starting to come apart at the seams. All signs pointed to rebuilding, but so far the Sox are eight games above .500 and that€™s not a bad place to be. David Ortiz (Designated Hitter) and Dustin Pedroia (2nd Base) are essentially the last members of the Red Sox Championship teams left on the roster, so the Sox haven€™t exactly stood pat since then. There have been key additions to the starting rotation that has borne fruit in the likes of starting pitchers Clay Buchholz and Jon Lester specifically; both have had some good outings thus far. The offense is pretty balanced with speed and power, with Ortiz (continuing to try and knock the moon out of the sky) as the team€™s offensive anchor that shares the team lead with 8 homeruns and the team€™s best batting average. The Orioles are still in great position to make some noise, but at this point the perennial powers aren€™t quite ready to relent to the upstarts.
 
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Dante R Maddox got started in writing about pop culture in 2007. He developed his conversational style majoring in English and minoring in speech communication, his desire to write as if he were speaking to the reader face to face was the bane of many professors. An odd blend of geek cred and regular fella chic', you're just as likely to end up talking about baseball or politics as you are about comic books and movies (just don't mention Tucker Carlson, you are addressing the man who will go to jail for assault in the future after all). He wrote a book called The Lineage of Durge that's available on Amazon for a small amount of money, he's writing a second while acting as Editor-in-Stuff over at Saga Online Press, there is a graphic novel expansion of his book series also in the works as well as continued development of his cheesecannon, one day Canada...one day (Seriously, a piece of ham, you slice it up and now it's bacon?!?!? I say thee nay!!!)