Pablo Sandoval sure is taking a lot of flak for his weight struggles these days. Not that it's obvious talking to him. He seems completely unfazed and focused on his performance on the field. No matter the number on the scale — he prefers not to share his weight — San Francisco's free-swinging slugger insists he is strong, agile on defense and moving well when running the bases.

The St. Louis Cardinals and Boston Red Sox postponed their game on Friday because of rain and agreed to a rare spring training makeup date. Boston and St. Louis will split their squads on March 22, adding a game in Jupiter. Stadium officials were expecting one of the largest crowds of the spring Friday.

Rain delayed Francisco Rodriguez's first batting practice session to batters this spring training. Slowed by conjunctivitis, the New York Mets' closer expects to throw BP on Saturday, a step necessary before he appears in an exhibition game. He plans to wear prescription goggles at the direction of doctors.

The Philadelphia Phillies-Tampa Bay Rays spring training game has been canceled because of rain. Friday's cancellation means Tampa Bay's franchise-record streak of nine straight exhibition wins will remain intact at least another day. The Rays are scheduled to host the Florida Marlins in Port Charlotte on Saturday.

As most have us Mets fans know by now, Jose Reyes is expected to be on the disabled list for an overactive thyroid when the season begins, but now it appears, according to the team, Reyes will be replaced with 20-year-old Ruben Tejada, who played in Double-A last year, this according to the New York Daily News . 

Tejada batted .289 last season and hit five homers in 488 at-bats in the minors but claims he’ll be ready to play in the bigs.

“It’s baseball,” Tejada told the Daily News. “Everywhere I play the game normal. I’m ready for everything.”

The Mets could also use the obvious Alex Cora, but manager Jerry Manuel seems to prefer Tejada.

To me, Alex Cora seems like the better bet because of all the hard work he put into last season when Reyes went down, but if Manuel would prefer Tejada then why not change things up?

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Stew lieutenant David Brown is visiting Arizona and his swing took him to an unusual forum on Thursday night…

I’m not exactly sure when it happened, but somewhere along the line I began enjoying Major League Baseball’s offseason more than the regular season itself.  Something about being a Mets fan from November through March is encouraging.  At the start of every season the Mets are “the team to beat”…and then all of a sudden the season starts. 

Mets fans are constantly given a false sense of optimism and are cursed with an old New York tradition of “waiting ’til next year.”

I mean think about it.  After the legendary September collapse in 2007 the Mets addressed their biggest need by bringing in the best pitcher in baseball when they traded for Johan Santana.  They listened to the fans demands, and then gave us a reason to feel optimistic.  The addition of Santana made Mets fans feel like “next year” had finally come.

When the Mets broke down the following September yet again, they blamed the collapse on their shaky bullpen.  So what did they do?  They went into the winter meetings and signed Fransisco Rodriguez and traded for J.J. Putz who were supposed to take an 89-win team with a shaky bullpen and turned them into a legitimate contender with no glaring weakness.  

Mets fans were once again sitting in the drivers seat.  Even Sports Illustrated picked the Mets to win it all.  I mean really that’s not saying much, but you can see where I’m going with this.  

This offseason, the Mets have gone about their business in a slightly different way.  Although they did make one big splash with the signing of Jason Bay, they haven’t added any other big-impact players, rather they’ve brought in a number of low-risk, high reward guys like Mike Jacobs, Ryota Igarashi, Hisanori Takahashi. 

They refused to over pay for aging veterans like Bengie Molina and Randy Wolf, and for the first time in years they have excitement coming out of their minor league system.

Omar has built up the farm system simply by refusing to trade his top minor league talent, and waiting patiently for them to develop.  A pretty basic strategy that has seemed so hard to execute over the past four or five years. 

Guys like Ike Davis, Fernando Martinez, Jennry Mejia, and Josh Thole have been given the chance to develop and pretty soon will make in impact at the big league level. 

Add these young players to a core that already include young established players like Wright, Reyes, Bay, Francoeur, Beltran and Santana give Mets fans something real to feel optimistic about.  The Mets have youth and athleticism they haven’t had since the mid-’80s.  Who knows, the starting Mets infield in 2011 could be an all-home-grown unit of Wright, Reyes, Reese Havens, Davis and Thole.  

So even with the recent news of Reyes being out 2-8 weeks, and Beltran already on the shelve for the first month of the season, I’m my typical preseason optimistic self; but hey, that’s the nature of being a Mets fan.  Always believing in the unbelievable and staying true to the team through thick and thin. 

That’s what makes being a Mets fan in New York so fun.  It’s hard work.  It takes dedication, determination, and a little bit of twisted optimism.  I love the Mets youth, their energy, their depth and the future of the franchise.  Unfortunately, most of my wildest dreams lay on the shoulders of John Maine and Oliver Perez. 

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David Wright looked around during the New York Mets' first full-squad workout and saw some of the injured stars that finished last season on the disabled list. He talked openly about the positive vibe in camp and having fun for a change. Two weeks later, dynamic shortstop Jose Reyes is hurt again and Wright is fielding the same questions he answered countless times during New York's…

Baseball is a game of numbers and here are a few that influenced the Dodgers and Hiroki Kuroda last season: 117.1 innings pitched, 20 games started, 12 HR allowed and 40.50 postseason ERA.

Many insiders and fans alike criticize the Dodgers for the lack of offseason pick-ups after another loss to the Phillies in the NLCS.

The fact is, the Dodgers made it to the NLCS again, and believe they have what it takes to make it there and beyond this upcoming season. 

A simple response to the offseason signings, or lack there of: You can’t change what can’t be controlled, rather work with what you have. The division has gotten stronger, and in order to make a ”threepeat” in the NL West the boys in blue have questions that must be answered on the field.

The entire league knows Clayton Kershaw is going to be better, how much better is yet to be known. Chad Billingsley tanked after making his first All-Star team, but being young gives him a much higher chance of rebounding to ”old” form. 

Yet the key in the rotation is held by Hiroki Kuroda.

He is a ground ball pitcher, who has shown signs of throwing harder than in his first Major League season. This could mean a couple things.

One, like many pitchers as they get older, they begin to throw harder due to the fact their arsenal is not as sharp as in their prime.

Another could be, he is becoming more sound mechanically as he enters just his third MLB year.

Now it’s interesting Kuroda gave up nearly as many home runs last season in 66 less innings pitched than the year previous. That stat could possibly be contributed to the fact that he was bouncing back from the DL for the entire season. It is still very interesting given the fact he is mainly a pitcher that keeps the ball on the ground.

Kuroda has proved he is a no-nonsense competitor with a gamers mentality. (A quality shared by many Japanese players) In his rookie season, he won his only two starts in the postseason, shutting out the Cubs in six innings pitched during the 2008 NLDS.

When the Dodgers squared off against the Phillies, Kuroda delivered a high fast ball to Shane Victornio, barely missing his head. This wasn’t a surprise, but it was Kuroda’s defining Dodgers’ moment.

After Russell Martin had continuously been plunked and Manny was thrown behind during the series, Kuroda was the first pitcher to step-up and defend his teammates. The crafty right-hander eventually went on to win the game.

Now it is 2010 and Kuroda is coming off a season blasted by injuries. He pulled an oblique, got rocked in the head by a screaming line drive, and experienced a bulging disk in his neck during the 2009 postseason. In his only start in that postseason, the Dodgers pitcher gave up six runs in a little over one inning, to who else? The Phillies.

Knowing what kind of make up this man has, it wouldn’t be a shock to see him rebound to have his best season to date. If that rings true then the Dodgers should have a very consistent starting staff, and a competitive threat deep into the playoffs.

The key as always is staying healthy, and if that happens, look for Kuroda to be the spine of the staff. 

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In a list of greatest players in the history of one of baseball’s most storied franchise, the names at the top of Boston’s list are Hall of Famers.

Williams. Yastrzemski. Rice. Doerr. Young.

So it is not every day that a player comes along with enough caliber to crack the top part of such a list.

One such player did emerge in the summer of 1997.

Nomar Garciaparra’s emerging talent preceded him. During the mid-’90s, the Red Sox had a more than decent option at shortstop in John Valentin. But the prospects of Garciaparra’s bright future earned him the job for Opening Day 1997.

Garciaparra, who signed with the Sox for the purpose of retiring with the team earlier this week, spent parts of nine seasons in Boston from his debut in 1996. Due to an injury in 2001 and being traded in 2004, though, he accumulated only six full seasons. So how can he be considered among the greats of a franchise that has been around for more than a century?

As will likely be the case for sometime, the impact of player like Garciaparra may not be completely recognized until a later point because he played during the steroid era. At the time he was an excellent contact hitter and the star player on a star franchise.

In retrospect, he may have been the most dominant hitter in the game during his tenure in Boston.

Garciaparra’s numbers over that time certainly paint an impressive picture—.323/.370/.553, 178 home runs, and 279 doubles during his time in Boston. But it is his versatility as a hitter that made him the best during that time.

Garciaparra was most naturally a gap, line-drive hitter. But he changed his offensive approach so the team could get the most out of him.

During his first two seasons with the club he hit 30 and 35 home runs, respectively, a feat that at the time had been accomplished only four other times in the history of baseball (and two, Mark McGwire and Jose Canseco, have been linked to steroids).

He set records for RBI by a leadoff hitter and home runs by a rookie shortstop on his way to the Rookie of the Year award.

After those seasons of great power numbers, Garciaparra changed to still be able to put up good power numbers but increase his on-base percentage and cut down on strikeouts. By his fourth season, the Sox had signed a rather well-known power hitter by the name of Manny Ramirez, which took some of the burden of being a power hitter off of Garciaparra.

After that transition, Nomar, named after the reverse spelling of his father Ramon, became a much more balanced hitter. He crossed the 50-doubles plateau twice, and also twice pulled off the very rare accomplishment of recording more doubles than strikeouts.

He cemented his legacy as one of the most dangerous hitters by leading the league in hitting in back-to-back seasons in ’99 and ’00, at .357 and .372, respectively (nobody has finished the season in the AL with an average above .372 since George Brett in 1980).

Garciaparra had the ability to do whatever he wanted as a hitter. If he wanted to hit 40 to 45 home runs, he could have. There were times where it seemed like he could take every single pitch he was given and bang it off of the Green Monster, something he did better than maybe any player in Red Sox history.

Ted Williams, in an interview during the 1999 All-Star Game festivities in Boston, said that if any player were to ever hit .400 again, it would be Garciaparra.
 
Red Sox fans are well aware of the impact that Garciaparra had on the diamond for Boston’s teams in the late ’90s and early 2000s. But his impact stretched much further than just that. He was drafted and signed by John Harrington and Dan Duquette, the predecessors of the John Henry/Larry Luccino/Tom Werner ownership and Theo Epstein at general manager.

The current Sox ownership saw what affect drafting quality players and revamping the minor league system could have on a franchise. In Garciaparra, the Sox not only got a great player, but someone who was taken as the fan favorite and face of the franchise.

No matter where you rank him among Alex Rodriguez and Derek Jeter in the “Trinity of Shortstops” of the late ’90s and early 2000s (to say nothing of Miguel Tejada, Omar Vizquel, and others), Garciaparra will get some votes for the Hall of Fame—and deservedly so. A player like Garciaparra exemplifies the reason why players remain on the ballot for 15 years. He is not a first-ballot player, but he will be there eventually.

He was a dominant, versatile hitter, and it is in Boston where he deserved to end his career.

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