The 10 Most Anticipated Baseball Stories of the Summer

June's here (almost) and the Spurs are going to win the NBA Finals which means the days are long and your sports watching options are snoozy*. So, baseball? Yeah, we know, we just told you why MLB thinks you're stupid, so telling you that there are baseball stories this season that you should be anticipating makes us look pretty dumb. But tell us something we don't already know.

Fact is, this baseball season is looking pretty interesting. The teams with the four highest payrolls are struggling, a couple perennial doormats are in first place at the moment, and the game's most tattooed and compelling figure is making a run at the history books. Yes, you'll still want to drink excessively to make the whole thing a little more palatable, but these are the 10 Most Anticipated Baseball Stories of the Summer.

*The Spurs are actually really fun to watch. If you're still making "the Spurs are boring" jokes, you don't know what you're talking about. Which, guilty as charged.

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The four highest spending teams in baseball, winners of three of the last five World Series, proud owners of two $250 million men (Angels and Yankees), one of the greatest 1-2-3 pitching rotations of this generation (Phillies), and the best team to tank a season due to excessive beer and chicken consumption (Red Sox)—Boston, Los Angeles of Anaheim, New York, and Philly are a combined eight games above .500 as of this writing. And they're desperate, too. The Angels' shiny new first baseman, Albert Pujols, spent the first six weeks of the season not hitting, the Red Sox are playing their $150 million dollar first baseman Adrian Gonzalez in right field, the Phillies just lost their No. 1 starter Roy Halladay for 6-8 weeks, and the Yankees are still pitching Phil Hughes every five days (we'll see how long that lasts). Will any of these teams make the playoffs?

The Complex Crystal Ball Says... Yes, but only one of them will be playing beyond the wild card play-in, and it's not the one you think. Between May 1 and August 31 last year, the Red Sox were the best team in baseball, and they're largely the same squad this year. They get Jacoby Ellsbury back in July, and while playing Gonzalez in the outfield seems like a recipe for disaster, the Sox have scored the second-most runs in the AL so far. The Angels are only five and a half games behind Texas in the West, and are in the thick of the early AL wild card race. They'll be fighting with the Yankees, Red Sox, Rays, and Blue Jays for the wild card (one of those East teams will win the division, obviously). Here's saying that neither the Yanks or Halos make the cut. Oh, and the Phills are toast!

Lincecum, everybody's favorite long-haired, weed-smoking, f-bomb-on-live-tv-dropping pitcher is off to the worst start of his career. His fastball velocity is down, his walks are way up, and his ERA and WHIP are way, way up (5.82 and 1.57 respectively). Some haters—er, conventional wisdom types—have suggested for years that Lincecum's unorthodox delivery and workload would catch up with him in the form of reduced effectiveness or injury or both. With the Giants already a half dozen games behind the Dodgers in the NL West (albeit in the thick of the expanded and muddled wild card hunt), San Francisco fans are wondering if they'll have to make a playoff push without their two-time Cy Young Award-winning Freak.

The Complex Crystal Ball Says... He turns it around. Lincecum's had bad stretches before (granted, not this long) and every time it's appeared he's ready to pay the piper for his whipsaw delivery, he's come back to strike the piper's dumbass out. While his walk rate is up, so is his strikeout rate (at 9.5 per 9 innings, a tick below the number he posted to lead the league two years ago), and he's been a victim of some bad innings that have inflated his numbers (including his start Friday against the Marlins, where he went five strong innings before giving up five runs in the 6th). He might not approach his '08-'09 peak (only a handful of pitchers in MLB history ever have), but don't expect Lincecum to be a drag on the Giants much longer.

Last year saw the suspensions of a one-time sure-fire Hall of Famer (Manny Ramirez) and the current league MVP (Ryan Braun, since overturned). Who will be the next to have their name tarnished by a steroid suspension (and then subsequently tarnish the name of a career scientist who stored the urine sample in his fridge for a weekend)?

The Complex Crystal Ball Says... Ha! We're not falling for that slander trap! Our best guess is a high-profile pitcher making a comeback from injury. Or Manny Ramirez (he can't sue us, right?).

They play in the biggest market in the country, but have a payroll smaller than Minnesota or Milwaukee this year. Their former best player signed with a division rival this past offseason and their best pitcher hadn't pitched in a year and a half prior to the beginning of this year. Yet the Mets are five games over .500 and just a game and a half out of first in their division. They've done it with big-time performances from their current best player, David Wright, and the aforementioned best pitcher, Johan Santana, but they've also got contributions from major league retreads and a few non-prospects called up from the minors. Can it last?

The Complex Crystal Ball Says... Depends on what you mean by "for real." "We're going to the World Series!" for real? Uh, no. "We'll be playing games with playoff implications when the Tebow-Sanchez quarterback controversy gets going in August" for real? Sure. The Mets have two very good pitchers (Santana and R.A. Dickey), and Wright's power-hitting sidekicks Ike Davis and Lucas Duda can't really hit any worse. Maybe, just maybe, this is the Mets' year...to be relevant past July 4.

The Cubs just wrapped up a tidy 12-game losing streak, they're paying $18 million to Alfonso Soriano this season to play really poorly (and $18 milli the next two years to presumably play worse), and Bryan LaHair, their feel-good story of the year, a longtime farmhand who's enjoying a breakout season at age 29, is blocking their top prospect, Anthony Rizzo, who's done all he can do in the minors. And yet the team is 8th in attendance in the majors, ahead of first place teams like the Nats, Rays, White Sox, and Orioles.

The Complex Crystal Ball Says... Of course Wrigley will continue to sell out. There may be douchebags on the field (and in the stands), but Wrigley is still the least douchey bar in Wrigleyville.

Clemens and the feds are now into the seventh week of a perjury retrial that's already put two jurors to sleep (they were subsequently kicked off the trial). Hey, at least the prosecution didn't step into a mistrial on the second day this time! Wait, maybe that's not a good thing.

The Complex Crystal Ball Says... Who cares. Really, Clemens is a jerk and lots of regular folk get in a shitload of trouble for lying to the authorities, but it's hard to work up a lot of righteous indignation about this now. We just hope he goes away.

The Marlins new skipper got himself a five-game suspension and nearly a pink slip at the beginning of the season for saying that he loved and respected Fidel Castro a.k.a. the most hated non zombie cannibal in South Florida. The famously opinionated skipper put himself on free-talking suspension for a few weeks, but has started to revert to form again recently, including calling out Miami Heat hero Dwyane Wade for getting into an on-court argument with his coach. As the summer warms up in Miami and the bath salts start flowing, will Ozzie go off again?

The Complex Crystal Ball Says... Ozzie said he respected Castro's staying power, what other despots might he admire? Genghis Khan is said to have 16 million contemporary descendants, perhaps Ozzie's a fan of Khan's proclivity for war rape? Kim Jong Il stayed in power despite crippling economic troubles by simply allocating all of his country's resources toward the military, maybe Oz likes Kim's approach to making tough budgetary decisions? Or—and he should be kicked out of the sport Pete Rose-style if he ever says something this awful—Guillen actually thinks Bud Selig has been a positive influence on baseball?

Sure, he doesn't become a free agent until after next year, when he'll be 39, but the Captain signed a three-year/$51 million deal after having a subpar 2010 season; this year he's leading the AL in hits, and having one of his best statistical seasons since the mid-'00s. Along with Curtis Granderson, he's been the lone source of hitting consistency for the Yanks, who elsewhere feature a lot of over-priced, under-producing stars.

The Complex Crystal Ball Says... Quiet as kept, Jeter is one of the gulliest athletes in sports history—and he's beloved, too, a combination that the Yankee front office surely hates. He's up there with Ruth and Gehrig and DiMaggio and Mantle on the list of greatest Yankees now. He didn't give the squad a hometown discount two years ago, and if he's putting up an OPS in the .840 range for the rest of the year, you can bet his agents will be readying a dizzying negotiating blitz for next year's offseason.

As of this writing, the O's and Nats are both in first place in their divisions, leading to hopes of a B-W Parkway Series come October (they'll probably want to work on a better name). The Nationals have done it despite a rash of injuries, including to franchise player Ryan Zimmerman and to last year's free agent pick-up Jayson Werth, the latter of which "necessitated" the call-up of all-everything prospect Bryce Harper. The Orioles have done it despite playing in the AL East and despite being the Orioles.

The Complex Crystal Ball Says... No and yes. The Orioles could easily be out of first before the weekend is over (they're tied with Tampa at the moment, and on a five-game losing streak), and they're just too young and too not-good to keep up with the Rays, Yanks, and Red Sox (and probably not even the Blue Jays). Don't be at all surprised if Baltimore finishes the year where we thought they would-in last place.

As long as the Nats don't suffer any major injuries to their pitching staff, they should be playing meaningful games into September and beyond. Their starting rotation is five-deep with quality arms: Stephen Strasburg, Gio Gonzalez (the NL's strikeout leader), Jordan Zimmermann, Ross Detwiler, and Edwin Jackson. Harper is in the majors to stay, and if Zimmerman, who's back from injury but struggling, can be the hitter he's been up to this point in his career, the Nats could assume favorite status in the NL.

In a case of falling off the wagon and landing on your feet, Josh Hamilton had a well publicized break with sobriety this past offseason, only to start the year on a blistering hitting pace. He's currently holding a healthy lead in two of the three American League Triple Crown categories (his 21 homers are four better than the next player; his 57 RBI are 15 better than second-best), and his .368 batting average is good for second place (just .13 points behind first place Paul Konerko). No player has won a batting Triple Crown (leading his league in home runs, RBI, and batting average) since Carl Yazstremski did it for the Red Sox in 1967.

The Complex Crystal Ball Says... I'll Have Another has a better chance of winning the horse racing Triple Crown when he runs in the Belmont Stakes next weekend, but Hamilton—if he can stay healthy—should make things interesting well into summer as well. Earlier this month he hit nine homers in six games, including four in one matchup with the Orioles. You could argue that that streak is a fluke and indicates his pace is unsustainable—or you could argue it's a sign of his talent and an indication that the home run title is his for the taking. The Rangers lineup is strong around him, so he should have plenty of RBI chances into September. If he can sustain the batting average and his competitors come back to earth, come the fall we may be talking about one of the greatest steroid- (and hopefully Crown Royal-) free batting seasons of the past half century.