ESPN Buster Olney Blog

Follow baseball long enough and you will come to know this hard truth: You know nothing. You will always be surprised. These are 10 things in the majors that have surprised me the most in the first half:

1. Of the five teams in the AL Central, there was one team that, on April 6, I was convinced had virtually no shot at winning the division: the Detroit Tigers. They had too many pitching questions. The Dontrelle Willis effort in spring training was a disaster, Nate Robertson seemingly had lost his stuff, there was uncertainty about whether Joel Zumaya would ever regain his velocity, they didn't have a closer and Jim Leyland was so desperate that he had to turn to a right-hander only two years out of high school, Rick Porcello, to save his staff. To cap the chaos, they dumped Gary Sheffield in what appeared to be a desperate clubhouse-cleansing move, and ate a ton of money in the process. The whole thing was a mess.
   But as it turned out, Dave Dombrowski's acquisition of Edwin Jackson has generated the best results of any offseason trade: Jackson has stepped up, posting the best first-half ERA for any Detroit pitcher since Mark Fidrych. Justin Verlander had turns as the King of the Pitching Mountain. Fernando Rodney -- often hurt in recent seasons -- has been sensational at closer. Zumaya is back and throwing hard. Porcello has probably been used more than the Tigers would have liked, but he's been good. And Detroit finished the first half in first place, 3½ games ahead of the White Sox.
2. I remember watching Ben Zobrist start on Opening Day a couple of years ago. He looked like a perfect candidate to get the bat knocked out of his hands; in 2007, he batted .155 with a .206 slugging percentage. I would've never guessed that that guy would turn into an All-Star with an OPS of 1.012.
3. By the time that Jose Reyes, Carlos Beltran and Carlos Delgado rejoin the Mets, their chances for contending might be all but over; New York is currently 6½ games behind the Phillies in the NL East, and the Mets have to take advantage of the fact that they will face Atlanta, Washington and Houston right out of the All-Star break. It's impossible to have envisioned that they would lose five of their nine best players to injury.
4. The Indians' roster is loaded with players who have been excellent at one time or another in their careers: Victor Martinez, Grady Sizemore, Cliff Lee, Fausto Carmona, Travis Hafner, Jhonny Peralta, Rafael Betancourt, and Kerry Wood are among them. Asdrubal Cabrera is going to play 10-12 years in the majors, and Kelly Shoppach is probably going to be an everyday catcher for some team in 2010. Carl Pavano has had a decent comeback season. You put all that together and what you have, as it turns out, is a last-place team with the second-worst record in baseball. Their starting rotation has an ERA of 5.56, the worst in the majors. I didn't pick the Indians to win the Central, but I thought they would be much better than they are.
   Cleveland's flaws are deep, writes Patrick McManamon.
5. Pablo Sandoval. Face it, he doesn't look the part. None of the Giants do, actually. Tim Lincecum is too small and Randy Johnson is too old and Bengie Molina is too heavy and Aaron Rowand is too beaten up and the whole lineup is too offensively challenged. Add in that Barry Zito is too far gone, and Sandoval -- well, who would've guessed that a player who began 2008 at Class A San Jose, a guy with the body of Charles Barkley, would be arguably one of the three best left-handed hitters in the NL in 2009? The Giants may or may not hold on to win a playoff spot, but they are a fascinating circus act that would be incredibly dangerous in a short series in October, and Kung Fu Panda will be at the heart of whatever they accomplish.
6. We can't lose sight of how bad the Mariners were last season. Sixty-one victories, 101 losses, and the first-place Angels were completely out of sight to Seattle, 39 games off in the distance. But today the Mariners are 46-42 and sit four games out of first place. This team is just one good week away from being at the top of the division. You hear stories from players and agents and executives about how much different it feels under the regime of new GM Jack Zduriencik and manager Don Wakamatsu, how there's a new optimism in the clubhouse. Having strong pitching doesn't hurt, either: Felix Hernandez is blossoming, becoming more consistent, and is 9-3 with a 2.53 ERA. Jarrod Washburn is throwing the ball well. Erik Bedard is back. It remains to be seen whether the M's can stay in contention, but this has been a good year for them.
   The tension between Ichiro and his teammates was resolved. The Mariners' new staff has earned the confidence of Seattle fans, writes Jerry Brewer.
7. There seemed to be some really ragged play over the last week leading into the All-Star break, a lot of sluggish at-bats and loss of focus. Players look tired, and presumably part of the reason is they don't have access to drugs that are now banned. This is just one small reminder of the surprising reality of how different the sport is without performance-enhancing drugs.
8. There were questions about how Matt Holliday would fare outside of Coors Field, given his acute home/road splits, but a lot of talent evaluators -- a lot -- thought he would still be fine after he left Colorado because he seemed to hit the ball hard so consistently. Well, so far, in his first season outside of Colorado, he is a bust: He's on pace right now to finish the year at .276, with 15 homers and 81 RBIs. I thought he would be much better.
9. The Cubs won more games than any other National League team in 2008, but then shook up their roster in ways that didn't make a lot of sense. Investing heavily in Milton Bradley, who has always had trouble staying on the field, didn't make a lot of sense. Trading Mark DeRosa didn't make a lot of sense. But the team was so good and had so much depth at the beginning of the season that you could not envision the Cubs as a .500 team. But that's exactly what they are, and it remains to be seen whether they can win with an outfield defense of Alfonso Soriano, Kosuke Fukudome and Bradley.
10. I covered Jamie Moyer in Baltimore in 1995 and I thought his career was close to being over that summer. Well, 14 years later he is still taking the ball, still winning, still contributing in what has been an incredible career. That's 254 victories and counting. Moyer never stops surprising me.

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