ESPN ranked the Milwaukee Brewers’ Ryan Braun as the Preseason #3 best MLB fantasy player behind only Albert Pujols and Hanley Ramirez this past week as the left fielder goes into the 2010 season. The Brewers didn’t make the playoffs in 2009, but Braun had a great year personally batting .320 with 32 HR’s and 114 RBI’s. Braun has had three of the best seasons any player has had in the MLB since he hit 37 HR’s as a rookie in 2007 winning the NL’s Rookie of the Year Award. He represented the USA at the World Baseball Classic starting in left field and won the Silver Slugger Award in 2009 for the second year in a row. The 26-year-old has accomplished incredible things in just three seasons, but only made $1,032,500 last season with his pay increasing year-by-year according to the 8 year contract extension he signed with the Brewers in ‘08 worth up to $51 million. The Brewers are likely to lose Prince Fielder eventually, but Braun contract will ensure they have one of baseball’s best hitters in their lineup for years to come. The real question is whether the Brew Crew can surround Braun with enough talent to make it to the playoffs while playing in a division with bigger market teams like the Cubs and the Cardinals.

New St. Louis Cardinals batting coach Mark McGwire decided to own up to his past when he admitted to using steroids as to clear the air before he began working for a MLB team again. The fact that McGwire used performance enhancing drugs wasn’t a big surprise to many people as it had been suspected since the ballplayer hit 70 home runs in 1998 breaking Roger Maris’ single season record of 61. In an interview with Bob Costas the former first baseman claimed that steroids did not help him break the record, but only aided him in recovering from injuries.Costas thinks otherwise, but feels that McGwire honestly believes what he says. The real question is how will the general public react when McGwire is in the dugout with the Cardinals this year. It seems likely that when the team travels the 47-year-old will be subject to some jeering. Baseball fans will be interesting to see how the crowd in Cincinnati will react to McGwire when the Cardinals open their season against the Reds.

Earlier this week, as you probably know, there was a huge earthquake in Haiti. There are quite a few ballplayers in the MLB who are from Haiti. As you can imagine, many of them are still worried sick about where their families are and how they’re doing. Some of them might even be down in Haiti itself during the offseason. The MLB is doing a great job helping out with the big relief effort that is underway. They are contributing a lot of money for these operations and goes to UNICEF. A million dollars from the MLB organization, and surely many of the players themselves are giving money to this effort. Hopefully they will be able to help out many different people as this unfolds. Good job MLB. People who are looking to donate themselves can find some links on other parts of the web too.

If you haven’t had the chance to check out the stadium where the Marlins play, you’ll have to look it up in a different name again. For a large part of last year it was referred to as Land Shark Stadium, as it had been leased by Jimmy Buffett, singer and founder of the Land Shark brewery. For the entire football season and much of the last baseball season, it was known by that name. It seemed clunky at first, but it’s finally started to feel normal again. Dolphin Stadium always seemed a little weird for the Marlin’s baseball team, but it makes sense for the location. I think they just keep getting stuck with fish down there in Miami, with the Marlins, Dolphins and “Land Sharks.” Anyway, it won’t change much about the stadium except the name on your tickets.

Adrian Beltre is reportedly headed to the Boston Red Sox. This means that there will be yet more money put into the 3rd base position for the team and the high possibility that both of the players at that position could be injured at any one time. It’s exciting, and Beltre is a very talented player. But he tends to get injured, as he hasn’t made 640 plate appearances very frequently over his 12 year career. He’s going to do well in Boston, I think, where there is a lot of support and high expectations. And with Lowell out for the first part of the season recovering from his recent thumb surgery, it’s no surprise that they are looking for replacements in various places. The Red Sox are trying to make some big moves and they might just get some kind of change this year.

This year in baseball was one of high expectations and then the dropping of several teams that were expected to do well. One of the most interesting places in the league was the AL Central, which looked like it had improved greatly, but ended up with just the Tigers and the Twins in real contention. The White Sox had fallen off a few weeks before the end of the season and the Indians and Royals were hardly in it at all, despite assertions that they were both finally among the elite. As usual, the AL East was where a lot of the power was, as they took the Wild Card spot as well. On the NL side, the Dodgers, Cardinals and Phillies were the powerful teams, which was hardly expected. In fact, the Western Division was hardly figured enter into any kind of major playoff discussion, but they almost got themselves a pennant. A fun year it was and we look forward to giving you even more fun in 2010.

There is always some kind of labor problem in professional sports. This time it’s the umpires. When you look at the news today, we are happy to see that baseball’s referees have now signed a contract through 2014 and it’s just right. We saw the NBA officials almost go on strike earlier this year but now they are on the job and we don’t have to worry about the umpires leaving the sport for quite awhile now. We just have to hope that the players’ contracts continue to work and then the sport should be just fine. They will probably need a new drug policy, I don’t know what they decided on that aspect, but it seems only obvious that this is going to be very necessary.

The Red Sox have been looking to get Mike Lowell out of town for awhile. Not that he’s a bad player, but they’re looking to update their staff a little bit and get the team back into winning condition rather than keeping too many veterans around. During trade talks with Texas, he was required to take a physical, where they discovered that the sore thumb was in fact a torn ligament. How can that happen? Somehow the Red Sox hadn’t bothered to look into it. So now the trade talk is off with Rangers, who would much rather have their right handed bat ready to go instead of having to wait as long as two months to get him moving. The Sox might not be able to get Lowell out at this rate. They’ll just have to keep at it though, since they do want something new.

Over the last decade, we have seen a lot of different strong players who will be able to make the ESPN “All-Decade Team”. In a way, the team is almost slanted to the older generation, the players who started off the decade dominating. It’s hard to forget the more recent events of the decade when making these decisions, but it’s interesting to look back at those old players. People like Randy Johnson, who had such a dominating arm at the end of the 90s and in the early 00’s. Barry Bonds made the list in the outfield, having won several MVP awards and being the top player for that position over many years, despite the controversy that he ultimately gathered. It was a great decade and we look forward to the next decade of great basketball.

Yesterday, it was reported that the Chicago Cubs had all but signed Matt Capps from the Pittsburgh Pirates to come and play for them, possibly not as a closer, but as a relief pitcher, even as their setup man. But today, the reports were contradicted. They said that Capps is indeed interested in the Cubs, but that RHPs are being sought by almost every team in the league at the moment. So he might not take whatever deal the Cubs are looking for, especially as the Cubs don’t seem to be as able to offer big salaries as they might have been in previous years. They still have to get a Milton Bradley deal done and that’s not easy either, and it will cost them extra money so their resources could well be largely depleted by the end of this thing.