When the curtains closed on the first month of baseball season, there were only a handful of surprises for the preseason prognosticators -- but a couple of the early misses appear to be in intensive care already.
Chief among those teams are the San Francisco Giants, New York Mets and Toronto Blue Jays, all of which have had significant injuries. For all intents and purposes, they will be out of their respective division races by Mother's Day -- Father's Day at the latest. Early returns for the Texas Rangers and Seattle Mariners were not promising, to say the least, but the same can't be said for a couple of the so-called upstarts.
In Houston, they've thrown away the training wheels and the Astros are on the verge of re-establishing themselves -- not just as the best team the American League West, but in the AL, and maybe even MLB. Chicago Cubs fans may be disappointed to hear this, but the dynasty that was more than a century in the making is not a given.
