With the first month of the season history, the story of 2003 now begins to become more significant in May.

The Diamondbacks in a strange way may be in better shape than people think. When your team is built around two aging starters, it may be a blessing in disguise when Randy Johnson will not pitch until the end of the month, thereby saving his arm for the tough summer months ahead. Same for Curt Schilling who normally would have 50 or more innings by now, as he works his arm strength back to starting form.

These two just may lead Arizona on a summer charge because they didn’t wear themselves out early in the year.

It seems that the Royals are in wierd bull pen games every night. That isn’t good as the pen with Jason Grimsley leading the way, will never make it through the summer. The Royals need to have some bull pen reserves ready for the games in August and September if they hope to stay close.

Same reasoning applies to the Red Sox especially because Derek Lowe is not looking like the 20 game winner of one year ago. When the Royals and Red Sox meet, you don’t have to start watching the game until the seventh inning, that’s when all the action begins.

Is Nomar Garciaparra going to turn his miserable start around? He makes errors nightly, goes in batting funks, and is not looking happy in Boston. Is it crazy to think Billy Beane would consider a trade of Miguel Tejada for Garciaparra? Stay tuned on this one, it may not be as absurd as you think.

Click Read More for more baseball.The A’s hit Mark Buehrle very hard in Oakland last year. Tonight it is a rematch with Mark Mulder. They faced each other last week in Chicago.

The White Sox are in slump right now. They potentially should hit lefties pretty well, but Mulder, Lilly and even Halama are not ordinary south paws. Even so, the A’s need to hit more consistently and start developing some offensive philosophy that they can go to when the bats quiet down. Truth is, with solid baseball players one through nine, it seems that one of the hitters does the job every night, thereby masking the fact that the A’s simply cannot create runs against good pitching.

Seattle is playing well right now. Jamie Moyer must be perfect to be at the Yankees and the Yankees beat him last week in NY. Andy Pettitte is a key pitcher on the Yankee staff since he will be counted on against Oakland or the Mariners in post season play.

Moyer versus Pettitte, an advance scouts dream.

Will Seattle stay in this race? Why not, if they can beat the teams out of the division with close to the same regularity that the A’s do, then they will be there. If they falter against the White Sox and Royals of the world, then they will slowly slip behind Oakland as the story unfolds.

Jarrod Washburn tries to make it two in a row over the Indians who probably can’t believe they are back on the West Coast after being swept in the Pacific two weeks ago.

What scheduling.

Toronto on the road in Texas, always an adventure. Toronto reminds me of Colorado in they win at home and then crumble on the road. Can Roy Halladay slow down the Rangers? Colby Lewis needs to be more consistent for Texas or he will be heading to Oklahoma City very soon.

The Rangers should take a flyer on Sterling Hitch***** who needs to leave NY. He is a major league pitcher who throws 88 or so, but better than what Texas has, and why waste the great seasons of Carl Everett and company.

Jeremy Affeldt returns from his blister problems tonight against Casey Fossum in KC. With Affeldt needing to build his arm strength, this one should be similar to last night’s 7-6 game.

Odalis Perez pitched beautifully in his last start for LA, now he is in the big apple to face the lefty heavy Mets batting order. Pedro Astacio is a battler, but one wonders how healthy he is.

The Giants have struggled from time to time in Miami. Jason Schmidt comes off his emotional win last week against the Cubs, to face Carl Pavano and the running Marlins.

The Giants need to keep Joe Nathan healthy because he is the bridge to the set up men in SF.

Can Mike Hampton win tonight? The scouts tell me Hampton’s last couple of games were some of the best he has thrown since being with the Mets.

Let’s see if Kirk Saarloos is ready this time for Houston. The Astro bull pen is the team strength and I still see them winning the Central. Have you seen Lidge pitch yet?

Cincinnati is playing very bad baseball right now and only the Cards leaky bull pen kept them in the win column last night. The way St. Louis is hitting, if they get anything from former Red Brett Tomko tonight they should win the game.

Things should start to settle down some this month as the pitchers and hitters settle in to the day to day routine of the season.

Remember things really don’t come into focus until the peaches are on the trees, and the trees in the valley are just blossoming, as is baseball.