Oh, the Mediocrity!

Three weeks into the 2010 baseball season, it seems we are in for a great deal of mediocrity around the league.

With the exception of the Rays, who were the subject of my last post, the Yankees, and perhaps the Twins (interestingly, all American League teams), I'm not impressed with the output from any team in baseball to this point. The National League is a borderline embarrassment, with the powerhouse Phillies just one-and-a-half games ahead of the Mets (the definition of mediocrity), the bargain Marlins, and the lowly Nationals, while the Padres rode an eight-game winning streak to the top of the NL West. The NL Central is a joke, and is completely St. Louis' division to lose. There just aren't any dominant teams in the NL, and I'm not sure any will emerge as the season wears on.

Surely, the likes of the Padres and Nationals will fade. Remember the start that the Padres got off to last year? And look where they ended up. There's no way they will be able to maintain their early success a year later either. Undoubtedly, the contenders will separate themselves from the pretenders, in time. My point is that the contenders don't look all that special. The Phillies were supposed to be this machine that steamrolled through everyone, but Roy Halladay's the only one that can pitch over there. The Cardinals are winning just because everyone else in their division can't. The Padres aren't for real. And there are your "contenders" through three weeks. Seriously?

Over in the American League, I won't even get into the AL West, because that division's a joke too. The Rays coming out of the East are a championship caliber team, as I've said before. David Price was masterful yesterday, and unlike the Phillies, he's not the only one producing starts like that. The Yankees finally lost a series this weekend to the Angels, but that doesn't say much because the Yankees historically have problems with the Angels and the Angels, at 10-10, are mediocre. I'm not worried about the Yankees at all. At this point, I'd say the ALCS championship game between the Rays and Yankees will decide who wins the World Series. But watch out for the Twins - they have some pitching of their own that has come through so far, and of course they have Joe Mauer. The Twins could be dangerous after they win a division they're already starting to run away with.

By the way, speaking of Joe Mauer, Ryan Howard got a contract extension today that will pay him $25 million a year for the next five years in Philadelphia. That extension surpassed the annual value of Joe Mauer's extension this April. When will the madness end?

I'm simply saying that 27 out of the 30 teams in Major League Baseball are not awe-inspiring. We don't have any 2009 Dodgers or 2006 Mets in the league this year. The Rays are the closest thing to it, but they have the Yankees right on their heels. The real question is, does this make baseball more exciting? To watch the season produce 27 bad-to-mediocre teams that all, somehow, have a greater chance of making the postseason than anyone would expect? It does if you're a Padres fan or a Nationals fan. Maybe baseball's turning into a communist faction, at least for this season. I don't know about you, but I'm not excited about mediocrity. I want to see true powerhouses clash all season long for division superiority, not a bunch of middle-of-the-road squads wage a war of attrition and then limp into the playoffs. So I'll go watch the Rays and Yankees this year and get my fix. I'll watch my Dodgers revert to near-.500 form. I'll watch the NL get crushed in the All-Star Game. I'll wait and hope for deals at the trade deadline that alter the dynamics of division races. And then I'll wrap up a rather pedestrian MLB season watching either the Rays or Yankees dominate their World Series opponent.

Mediocre indeed.