Five Takeaways From MLB Week One

1) The Dodgers are loaded. When your #7 hitter is a borderline All-Star outfielder (Matt Kemp), that speaks to two points. First, that your manager should have his head examined; Joe Torre's love of Orlando Hudson in the #2 slot seems a little silly to me. Second, that you've got just a sick offense. But we knew that about the Dodge Show as soon as Man Ram signed, seeing how the NL is still where AL stars go to stud. What we didn't know is that the rest of the team was going to have good moments, too.

Jonathan Broxton looks like, well, one of the few reliable closers in the National League. Chad Billingsley looks good to go after off-season surgery and a playoff meltdown. Clayton Kershaw might not be quite ready to lock down your roto championship with occasional control issues, but in the real world, he's just intimidating. Randy Wolf seems like a tolerable filler. They got fairly good starts out of rookies Eric Stults and James MacDonald, which is to say, they got the very real hope that rotation fill-ins won't be a major roadblock. I believe in the set-up men. And this is with opening day starter Hiroki Kuroda hitting the disabled list for what shouldn't be very long.

Finally there's also this: with an upcoming financial tsunami hitting MLB, the Dodgers should be able to clean up in mid-season refueling, especially since the farm system looks like it still has assets. Right now, LA looks like a mid 90 win team to me in a weak division; add a top-line starter, and I'm seeing a team that clinches its division by mid-September.

2) Cleveland is in trouble. In the Tribe's first week, Travis Hafner actually hit like a baseball player. Kerry Wood didn't get hurt, and neither did Carl Pavano. Victor Martinez slugged .600 in his comeback year after the 2008 nightmare. No one blew a save. They played Texas and Toronto, which is to say, they played two teams that shouldn't add up to 160 wins between them.

And they went 1-5, with staff ace Cliff Lee getting lit up for a 9.90 ERA in the bargain. The rest of the rotation wasn't much better, with Anthony Reyes "leading" things (6.00 ERA), Scott Lewis not fooling anyone (8.31 ERA), Fausto Carmoba continuing to not look like 2007 (10.80 ERA) and Pavano really stinking up the joint (81.00 ERA).

Now, they will get better than that in the long run, simply because no rotation is ever that bad, and Lee made too big of a leap in 2008 with his control to completely revert to a non-MLB pitcher. But it's cold, and it's April, when the pitchers are supposed to be ahead of the hitters and the relievers are fresh enough to throw tolerable long innings. If this is what the rotation is doing now, Tribe Fan is not looking forward to the dog days.

3) You might start believing in the Florida Marlins. The team with the best record in MLB for the first week of the year (at 5-1 with Atlanta) may not continue to get All-Star production from new third baseman Emilio Bonifacio, but they will get quality starting pitching all year, and this Hanley Ramirez fellow is pretty good, too. Even the bullpen looks better than advertised, with old Oakland stalwart Kiko Calero looking hale and healthy, and Matt Lindstrom shaking off his scary WBC injury. (That's a joke, folks: the WBC had no scary injuries, mostly because everyone was scared poo-less by the spectre of a WBC injury.) The division is still murderous, and the Fish have no pockets to speak of, but when Josh Johnson is just another arm in your rotation, you are freaking loaded.

4) San Diego is a mirage. The division leader at 5-2 started the season at home against weak teams (and yes, San Francisco still counts as one), with no breakout offensive players that I'm buying from last year's punchless wonders. Heath Bell certainly looks fine at the end of games, and Chris Young and Jake Peavy are more than acceptable, especially at Petco, but what you have with the Padres is basically a pitching park version of the historic Rockies franchise -- a team that is singularly incapable of winning enough games on the road to be a factor in any race. They are still going to be under .500 well in advance of a mid-season sell-off, and Peavy is still on his last go-around in SOCal.

5) The Yankees still aren't built for October. In the first week of the year, Robinson Cano has shed his career-long pattern of stinking it up in April. Joba Chamberlain didn't get hurt. Neither did Johnny Damon or Hideki Matsui, and at this point in their careers, that's news. Jorge Posada looked like the old-time Jorge Posada, which is a huge difference over the 2008 model, and not to be expected from a mid-30s catcher with a lot of wear and tear. (Remember, as well, that Posada has an extra year or more on the books from all of the post-season play.) The bullpen has been, more or less, what it always is.

And when they lose a game, as they did yesterday to the Royals, it all comes back with a vengeance. Xavier Nady may not be mortally terrified of the wall the way that Bobby Abreu was, but that doesn't mean he's actually, you know, good defensively. Brett Gardiner in center field might have wheels, but man alive, he's got an arm like a wet Johnny Damon; when the Yanks start both of them, Jeter's going to need to run halfway to the warning track to take the cut-off throw. Jeter, of course, hasn't been a good defensive shortstop for so long that even Yankee Fan is starting to concede the point. Cody Ransom might be the worst player in MLB right now with a starting job, which just goes to show how thin the organization is, and has been for years, behind the brittle older stars.

The rotation looks much improved, and the offense, especially if Cano and Posada's first week can be believed, looks dramatically better than last year's quiet Achilles heel. They'll be in it all year, especially if Boston or Tampa suffer injuries (especially the former; Tampa still looks to me to be the pick of baseball's best division).

But tell me, Yankee Fan -- which of your teams was good in October? Right, the ones with a killer set-up man that caught the ball at every position, with useful spare parts on the bench. Now, does that describe this team... or the 2005-2007 one-and-done teams?