Tight MLB Standings After April Leaves Baseball Season Up for Grabs!

Usually after a full month of the Major League Baseball season, several teams have taken a commanding lead in their divisions and already separated from the pack.  Often the team with the best roster, this side can generally stroll to a division title and a playoff appearance in October.  But so far in the 2014 MLB season, few teams have been able to take that big step, and the races are generally very tight, making for an exciting summer of close races!

Only 3 teams have gotten off to a hot start, including the Milwaukee Brewers, the Atlanta Braves, and the Oakland Athletics.  While these teams have decent talent and should be expected to do well, their high marks at this point of the season are a bit of a surprise.  While these teams certainly could reach the playoffs, they are by no means major contenders for the World Series!  Instead, sides like the Los Angeles Dodgers, the Detroit Tigers, the Philadelphia Phillies, the New York Yankees, and the Boston Red Sox (teams with burgeoning payrolls and All-Star rosters) are meandering around .500 as they simply haven’t been able to generate strong winning streaks.  This should make for a great season ahead!

As the relatively unknown squads continue to win, they will eventually get pressured by the high spenders, and we should expect enticing drama come August and September in several divisions.  Right now, each of the AL East, NL East, and the AL Central are only separated by roughly 5 games from 1^st place to last place!  Basically, each of these teams could still turn around their year and compete for the playoffs!

Even in divisions where teams like the Houston Astros, Arizona Diamondbacks, or Chicago Cubs have come out to woeful starts, all the other teams are still hovering around .500 and could make a move.  In fact, those 3 teams are probably the only ones that anyone could consider hopeless for the year, especially given their weak rosters.

But for all the other teams like the Cincinnati Reds, or the Los Angeles Angels, or even the Miami Marlins, this baseball season is just getting started and they are right there within the race.

What will be intriguing is to look ahead two or three months from today and guess how the standings will look.  While injuries to key players will pile up and certainly become a problem for the average teams, where as the rich teams with depth will be able to push on to more victories, we should expect those big-budget clubs to begin catching up to the leaders and even starting to pull away.  But what’s fascinating about baseball is when a club without many superstars can organize a strong run!  Such is the case right now with the Athletics, the Brewers, and the Braves.  Will these teams be able to keep up the pace?  No matter what happens ahead, this current tight MLB standings should make for a closely contested and an exciting summer as these teams push and pull on their way on to the MLB playoffs!

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Have Steroids Ruined Major League Baseball?

As we stand on the precipice of another exciting baseball season, watching players and teams battle it out for playoff spots, there are other stories that endlessly swirl around the game. Ryan Braun of the Milwaukee Brewers, the 2011 National League MVP, has been suspended for the rest of the year for using steroids. He is the latest new face of disappointment in Major League Baseball, a game that has devolved into rumors of performance-enhancing drugs that have tarnished the legacies of nearly every major player in the current generation of the game.

Whenever a player shines and has a historic season, several years later it comes crashing back to Earth amidst accusations and revelations over their steroid use. It’s getting quite boring, and it’s ruining America’s pastime.

 

For Ryan Braun, the suspension is really not that big of a deal. His team, the Milwaukee Brewers, is well out of any hope for the playoffs, and Braun himself had been enduring a slump year, hitting below .300 for the first time since 2008. Perhaps a break from the game is exactly what he needs.

Meanwhile, the circus that is the life of Alex Rodriguez (AKA A-Roid) goes on. Electing to appeal a 200-game suspension for his most recent steroid transgressions, Rodriguez is able to return to the New York Yankees, a team that has a very real shot at making the playoffs. This flies directly in the face of justice and accountability. We now have a known steroid-user playing for a contending team. This is wrong.

 

Baseball seems to have no answer to this problem. It seems everyone is using. Should we ban everyone from playing the game? Over the last several years, the following players have been linked with steroids: Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, Barry Bonds, Andy Pettite, Miguel Tejada, David Ortiz, Manny Ramirez, Roger Clemens, and Jason Giambi. Where would baseball be without those players? How many World Series have been erroneously won by cheaters? What will happen if Alex Rodriguez leads the Yankees to a World Series title this year? Will we put an asterisk next to that title? Does an asterisk really mean anything?

 

To me, steroids are a big reason why baseball’s popularity is dwindling. When your hero is turned into a villain, how can you celebrate their achievements? Ryan Braun will never be the same player he was before, even if he plays well for another 10 years. A-Roid is nothing but a stain on the game, a far cry from the player we expected to break the all-time home run record, which is currently held by Barry Bonds, another tarnished name. Long forgotten are the days of people playing the game the “right” way. Now baseball is a collection of sleazy guys injecting drugs into their behinds.

 

I understand why it happens. A player like Alex Rodriguez begins his career with great aplomb. He is heralded as the next great player with an opportunity to set records, to compete with the likes of Babe Ruth and Hank Aaron. His future is bright. But as he begins to age and his numbers decline, that golden image of breaking records begins to dim. An injury sets back those goals even further. The only way to compete is by using steroids, and everyone wants to be great, and everyone has a breaking point. And so he uses steroids, plays well again, and eventually we all find out.

 

Instead of aging gracefully and leaving the game with pride, we get A-Roid: A monster. To me, steroids have ruined baseball. I think the only way to get rid of this plague is through lifetime suspensions, perhaps by the second offence. Players need to know that there is a line and that you cannot cross it. Slapping Ryan Braun on the wrist by removing him from an already-doomed season does nothing to change a game’s mindset. Or perhaps there should be fines equaling an entire year’s pay. Nothing like a $10 million fine to keep someone from using steroids. Either way, if baseball wants to ever come clean, they need to up the punishments, because clearly what they’re doing now has done little to remove steroids from baseball.

 

There are many great MLB players who follow the rules and make baseball great. I believe that these players will be the ones that will continue to make baseball what it is and will be able to help the MLB weather this ugly storm of PED usages. We have sports collectibles for these players that you still love. Our autographed memorabilia is guaranteed for life or your money back. Visit us at www.AAASportsMemorabilia.com to find your next collectible!