MLB season strikes out, lacks excitement

July 13, 2009 by Sage Sammons 

First half of MLB season not shocking baseball fans

Major League Baseball surpsies us every summer, but this summer has been an exception. All the teams that were predicted to do well are actually winning.

The only huge surprise is the increasing number of steroid users coming to light — but then again are those even surprises any more?

It was shown that Alex Rodriguez had failed a drug test and that he used steroids. Though he did apologize to the fans and his teammates, the incidents started the rollercoaster of the 2009 baseball season.

Since the season began, everything has seemed to go as predicted. Albert Pujols has proven again he is the most dominant hitter in the world. Tim Lincecum is vying for another Cy Young Award. The Yankees and Red Sox are battling for the top spot in the American League East, and the Dodgers picked up right where they left off last year.

Pujols is hitting .337, which is fifth in the MLB, but he leads the majors in home runs (32) and runs batted in (87). Being ranked so high in all three categories, he is the leading candidate to take home the Triple Crown this year. The last player to hit for the Triple Crown was Carl Yastrzemski in 1967, and the last time it was done in the National League was in 1937.

Lincecum is on track for the same achievement on the pitching side. He leads the league in strikeouts with 149. He is tied for third with 10 wins, and his ERA is third at 2.33. The Triple Crown for pitching has been a little more common than the hitting Triple Crown. Jake Peavy was the last to earn this title, in 2007.

After the Yankees’ fall from grace last year, they have worked hard to try to get back to the promised land, but the only question was how. They opened a new stadium with hopes that it would turn the Yankees’ luck around, and it did.

The Yankees are 51-36 on the year and are two games behind the Red Sox. The reason they are so successful this year is the fact that they lead the majors in home runs with 132. Their only downfall is that the pitching has struggled from time to time. But again it looks like the AL East will come down to the Yankees and Red Sox at the end of the year.

The only big surprise of the first half was the L.A. Dodgers. Not that they were predicted to do badly, it was just thought that after their best player Manny Ramirez was suspended for steroids, they would fall apart.

Well, that didn’t happen. The Dodgers are leading the majors with a record of 55-32, six games ahead of the San Francisco Giants. They are consistently playing well as a team and look to be a force in the playoffs this fall.

Hopefully, the second half of the season is a little more interesting.