Season half way mark

With the MLB reaching it's halfway mark through the entire season (already), there have been many surprises throughout the league. The Astros were expected to be a year away from postseason contention, instead of them leading the AL West by 5 games over the Angels. The entire AL East has been surprising with the top 4 teams separated by one game. Teams flip-flop in the standings all the time. On the other side of expectations, the padres were expected to be in contention at this point -- and maybe even a favorite to win the division -- but have definitely underperformed. The Mariners are another team that was expected to compete but they have struggled to score runs. The Marlins signed Giancarlo Stanton to a monster 10-year $300 million deal over the offseason and now the Marlins have underperformed, although they have been playing better baseball of late. With the all-star game looming ahead, I look forward to the madness of playoff baseball in the second half of the season.

The Padres.... They are an interesting topic. Injuries keep piling up (Spangenberg to the DL, Middlebrooks out day-to-day), and the team's field play hasn't exactly been outstanding. Now with the team 7 and a half back of the Dodgers in first place, it will be tough to make a run at a playoff birth, but just as James Shields said, if the Royals could make a second-half surge into the world series, the Padres are definitely poised to do the same. Sure Matt Kemp has struggled all season and Justin Upton has recently slowed in performance. Hopefully we can get some of these players off the DL in order to be the team that we intended on being prior to the season. Well, after last night's win in St. Louis (another surprise team), we are 5 games under .500 and look to finish the first half of the season with a winning road trip of 10 games against winning teams (St. Louis, Pittsburgh and Texas). This will put us in position to make the desired second-half run that we are very capable of having. I will be bold enough to say that it will happen.

In other news, the US women's national soccer team will play Japan in a rematch of the 2011 world cup final in this year's world cup final. The game is Sunday night. These women are tenacious. They have not surrendered a goal in 513 minutes during this world cup. Defense will definitely show here in this game as probably the eventual winner. In 2011, the US team was 3 minutes away from winning the title, but surrendered a goal in the final few minutes. Let's find out if this year is different, shall we? Have a great 4th everybody!