April 16th...or....When Do You Start To Get Worried

Today is April 16th which means that this season essentially is still in diapers, but what an odd start to the year. Teams that you would have never expected came out of the gate swinging (Baltimore, Tampa) while others can't seem to get it going full steam quite yet (New York). But when do you say to yourself it is time to panic...especially if you are a Yankees and/or Nats fan? I don't know if there is a specific date per say, but I will say that day is coming soon, especially for the Nationals.



Let's start out with the American League. Below are the the AL East standings as of this morning (sorry, no time to cover the rest of the AL although novels could be written about the Tigers):





Now I know that it may be a bit hard to read Boston's numbers there, but they insist on the color pink so I have to go with what they want. Anyway, look how close everything is! Normally by this time the standings have already set into place for the year with Boston and New York duking it out for first and the Ray's sitting comfortably at least 5 games down in the cellar. But the AL East could be in for a tight race for the entire year given Tampa Bay's new found set of cohones, Baltimore's surprise start, and the sad but true fact that the Yankees are getting older and are starting to become more prone to veteran injuries. Boston is in a similar boat though. Teams have been so effective working the shift on Ortiz he is only hitting .113 with 1 homerun. And let's not forget the back injury that plagued Ramierz through the last half of the 2007 season. Put that all in a bag and mix it up with Wakefield (older than dirt) Schilling (seal-clubingitis) and Dice-K (7th inningosis) and Boston fans are starting to look like this guy:






I don't thing that it is time for New York fans to panic though. Although Posada's arm troubles and Yankees catching in general worries me, Jeter seems to be doing just fine after his groin / hamstring / leg injury, and Cano looks as though he is ready to come out of his slump (just in time to help out my fantasy team.) Our pitching will be just fine too. Rivera already has 5 saves and Pettitte, Wang, and the youngsters look good too.



It's a completely different story for the Nationals though. Their pitching has been simply terrible and they leave more runners on base in scoring position than I care to report on. Here are the current NL East standings:





Ouch! Even in the game they won to break their losing streak they didn't really earn it. Chalk that one up to a slew of unearned runs thanks to Atlanta. Even then they almost blew the free lead they were handed. Unless the Nat's bullpen figures out how to keep the earned runs to a minimum nothing is going to change, even when Zimmerman, Guzman, and Lo Duca start swatting more HR's and finally start knocking in RBI's. Hopefully the Pope will bless the field and the team and divine intervention will step in to turn around thier miserable start to the season.