FanHouse Al Central

Starting Five is our wrapup of the previous day's baseball action, with a quick nod to what is ahead.

You Oughta Know ...
That the Braves have their longest winning streak of the year.

OK, it's only four games. But before Thursday night, Atlanta was the only team that had not won four straight at some point this season.

And where has it gotten the Braves? Not out of fourth place in the NL East – yet within two games of the first-place Phillies, their victims the past three games.

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From the Windup is Matt Snyder's extended look at some aspect of America's pastime each Thursday.

This coming weekend, Major League Baseball will reveal its 2009 All-Star teams. So what better opportunity than this to run through a list of this season's "Anti-All-Stars." Anti-All-Stars is far too bland a name, though, so we decided to name the team in honor of Andruw Jones. After all, he was the poster child for guys not earning the lucrative contracts bestowed on them last season. We'll sort through each position and find the player who is least helping his team in comparison to expectations -- whether monetary or from management.

Thursday we passed along the news that Geovany Soto had tested positive for marijuana during the World Baseball Classic this past spring. Just one day later, another positive result from the WBC round of testing has been revealed. Sidney Ponson, the embattled 32-year-old righty who pitched for the Netherlands, also tested positive for a banned substance.

It wasn't the mellow Mary Jane that Ponson was partaking in, though. Nope, he tested positive for phentermine, a stimulant. Like Soto, he'll avoid punishment from Major League Baseball and face a two-year ban from international play.

Starting Five is our wrapup of the previous day's baseball action, with a quick nod to what is ahead.

You Oughta Know ...
That the Marlins and Tigers are on fire.

Exactly two weeks ago, Florida was eight games behind Philadelphia. Since then the Marlins have gone 9-3, all in interleague play, to close within a game of first place. The hot streak includes four one-run wins and Thursday's 11-3 victory that sealed a sweep of the Orioles and ran Florida's win streak to five.

During this 12-game stretch, Hanley Ramirez has batted .400 with three home runs (one of them a grand slam Thursday) and 19 RBI while Cody Ross has hit .400 with five homers and 12 RBI.

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In a ridiculous but true story we couldn't possibly make up, Kansas City Royals relief pitcher Kyle Farnsworth continued his 2009 Farewell to the Major Leagues Tour today by having to get four stitches in his left index finger after being bitten by one of his dogs. According to the report, he was bitten while trying to break up a fight between the canines, but anybody who has ever read a Dugout knows that is totally NOT what he was doing, and chances are it was something even more absurd that what you are about to read.

Sometimes Barry Bonds dresses up like Paula Abdul, sometimes Jim Thome hits a game-winning home run on Opening Day, and sometimes Kyle Farnsworth gets bitten by a dog. Thank you, God, for having a sense of humor. Tonight's Dugout is after the jump.

Remember last week when the Cleveland Indians beat the Kansas City Royals on a walk-off single by Shin-Soo Choo when Royals centerfielder Coco Crisp lost the ball amidst a flock of seagulls (video here)? No, Coco didn't have headphones on and he was not singing along to "I Ran" when this occurred.

There was literally a flock of seagulls in the Progressive Field outfield, no doubt there searching for all of those bugs that still haunt Joba Chamberlain's dreams. Well if you are a Royals player or fan you were probably pretty upset to be losing a game because of avian invasion, but you'll just have to trust me when I say that it could have been a lot worse.

Each year the Chicago Cubs and Chicago White Sox play six times. Six. Out of 162 total games. Those games aren't any more relevant than six games between the Twins and Cubs or Brewers and White Sox. Of course, there are millions of misguided fans who believe there's a rivalry between the two teams, a notion that is only perpetuated when our President talks about how the White Sox play "real baseball." FanHouse's resident Cubs fan (Matt Snyder) and resident White Sox fan (Tom Fornelli) got together to discuss the aura surrounding what shouldn't be a rivalry.

When the Detroit Tigers got Jeremy Bonderman back on Monday, it presented somewhat of a problem for the team. If Bonderman pitched well enough to earn a spot back in the rotation, exactly whose spot would he take? Well, Bonderman didn't pitch very well in that first start, giving up six runs in four-plus innings, but Dontrelle Willis followed Bonderman's start by walking five in five innings on Tuesday.

So, really, the decision the Tigers had to make was which one of their two options would do the least damage to the team every five days. Not an easy decision to make, but it looks like the Tigers have made it. On Friday, they placed Bonderman back on the disabled list.

From the Windup is Matt Snyder's extended look at some aspect of America's pastime each Thursday.

Among the general population of sports fans, Scott Boras is a very unpopular individual. He's referred to as greedy, a snake, and "Bor-ass" (what a clever way to use his name in a derogatory fashion, huh?), among other things. Teams threaten to never deal with him again. Fans claim he's ruining baseball and is everything wrong with professional sports. And on and on -- just check out the reader comments on this Jeff Fletcher piece.

You know what I call him? The best agent in the history of sports.

MLB Power Rankings: Where MLB FanHouse's editors, writers and bloggers team up to break down the who's who and the what's what in the baseball world.

We had to break the trend. Sure, the Dodgers might have a better record than everyone else -- but competition has to count for something, doesn't it? The Dodgers have mutilated the mediocre-at-best NL West to the tune of 26-9. This means they are 14-11 against everyone else. Is that a top-two team in baseball? Hardly, I'll take the heated-rivals: Yankees (who have overcome a slow start to go 19-7 since May 12) and Red Sox (18-8 against the best division in baseball) as the top two.