The top shelf and the bottom of the barrel

By Chris Maza
Fan Fanatic Sports Staff

The top shelf
Tampa Bay Rays
The Rays still remain the team with the best record in the majors and therefore remain at the top of the list. Probably most impressive is the fact that Tampa Bay has four starters with an ERA of 3.00 or lower. No other team in the majors can say that.

New York Yankees
It wasn't a very good start to the week for the Yankees last week as they lost three of four to the Tigers, including two shutouts. They rebounded, however, taking two of three from Minnesota. Andy Pettitte remains terrific with a 5-0 record and 1.79 ERA. In fact, the Yankees are 7-0 in his starts this year.

Philadelphia Phillies
The Phillies hold the best record in the National League and have gone 11-3 in the month of May thus far. What will be interesting to watch is how they respond to losing both of their top options in the bullpen in Brad Lidge and Ryan Madson. Jose Contreras is now the closer by default.

Minnesota Twins
The Twins have been a pretty ho-hum team over the past week, but Justin Morneau has been doing his best to keep things interesting for Minnesota. Morneau leads the league in hitting at .362 and his 1.142 OPS is also tops in the league.

Toronto Blue Jays
They are in third place in the AL East and if the season ended today would not be a playoff team, but I can think of two or three divisions that this team could be dominating. The Jays lead the league in homers and headed into Monday with a four-game winning streak. Ricky Romero is having a terrific second season after a solid rookie campaign. Opponents are batting a paltry .210 against him.

The bottom of the barrel

Milwaukee Brewers
As if a six-game losing streak isn't bad enough, the Brew Crew just lost one of its starters in a very startling manner. Doug Davis was placed on the DL on the 16th after being diagnosed with Pericarditis, which is an inflamation of the heart's tissue lining. On the plus side, Casey McGee, who has an awesome baseball name, by the way, has built upon his rookie year with an even better sophomore season.

Seattle Mariners
No team in the American League scores fewer runs, gets on base less frequently and hits fewer home runs than the Mariners. Their pitching staff has been able to keep them in some games, but last time I checked, the team that scores more runs wins most games.

Arizona Diamondbacks
You'd be hard-pressed to find a bullpen quite this bad. There are a lot of ERA's with sixes, sevens and even eights and nines in front of the decimal point. A win over Atlanta snapped a seven-game losing streak, but a 13-1 loss the following night got things back on the wrong track for the D-backs.

Kansas City Royals
Zach Greinke finally won a game and then manager Trey Hillman promptly lost his job. In the 15 games the Royals have played this month, they have scored no more than two runs in seven of them - all of those games were losses.

Houston Astros
The Astros are in dead last in the weakest division in baseball. Things seemed to be turning around, especially after the Stros swept the Cardinals, knocking them out of the top spot in the division and out of the top shelf. But it all went back to business as usual against San Francisco as they lost three straight. Roy Oswalt took one of those losses and dropped to 2-5 on the season, despite a 2.52 ERA and 52 strikeouts in 55 innings.