Baseball Notes 5/14/2010

Here's some baseball notes for 5/14/2010:

Impressive: The San Diego Padres (22-13) swept my San Francisco Giants (19-15) at AT&T Park this week. The Padres are surprising everyone and are in first in the NL West. They've won all six games against the Giants so far this year. They look like the better team right now. The Giants get another chance with a series next week.

Also Impressive: The Cincinnati Reds (19-16) have been playing some good baseball, they've won 7 of 10 and had won five straight before dropping their series opener to the St. Louis Cardinals (21-15) tonight.

Not Impressive: The Arizona Diamondbacks (14-22) have lost 7 straight after losing in walk-off fashion to the Braves (17-18) tonight. As far as I can tell the Snakes have the worst bullpen in baseball. It seems like they're always either giving up leads or allowing the opposing teams to put the game out of reach.

This Weekend: The Giants are hosting the Astros (13-22) and took the opener 8-2 tonight in San Francisco. Lincecum and Zito go the next two days so I'm optimistic about getting a sweep. Good series to check out if you get the chance are Twins (22-13) at Yankees (23-12) with both teams off to very solid starts and facing off in a rematch of last year's ALDS. A-Rod had a big grand slam in the Yankees taking the opener tonight. Another good one is the Reds and Cardinals, the Reds have a chance to show that they're for real (well at least a little at this time of year) and have been surprising. They're only a game and a half out of first place in the NL Central. As for the worst of the weekend it's either White Sox (14-21)-Royals (13-23) or Cubs (15-21)-Pirates (15-20). The White Sox have been disappointing and the Royals have really, really struggled and just fired manager Trey Hillman in favor of former Brewers skipper Ned Yost. The Cubs are down so far this year despite a big payroll and the Pirates have been showing some signs of life lately, at least by their standards.