I often carry a notebook with me in which I jot down ideas for possible future eSports articles. Determining a VORP (value over replacement player ) equivalent for GM's, or a discussion of all of the possible things that could have been on Kenny Rogers hand during the World Series, are just a couple of things that I've put down on paper in the past. I also use my handy-dandy little notebook to write down general reminders like appointments and grocery lists.

The majority of the time these topics end up forever relegated to mere notebook status, never to be published, never to see the light of day. In most of those cases, an idea just isn't worth developing any further. Other potential articles hit research roadblocks, while others die off either because I lose interest or I decide the subject has already been beaten to death by the sports media.

With the flashpoint of another Major League Baseball season just around the corner, and organizations around the league making those all important final decisions to round out their roster for the start of games that actually count, I felt it was time to pluck a few choice topics from my little notebook before the season starts.

What follows is a list of some interesting stories for the 2007 season that may not (but, then again, just might) get the ink that the Barry Bonds saga, the Roger Clemens lottery, or the Daisuke Matsuzaka rookie campaign will, but I still plan to keep an eye on.

* Zack Greinke's MLB comeback. After making his big league debut in 2004 at the ripe age of 20, and displaying the type of talent that had him touted as one of the best young pitchers in all of baseball, Zack Greinke shocked everyone when he decided to walk away from the game.

Claiming he had lost his desire to play the game that had become such a big part of his life, he left Spring Training Camp and returned to his parent's home in Florida. By his own admission, he had reached a point where he no longer enjoyed playing baseball and actually hated the game.

The rookie phenom that was being compared to the likes of Greg Maddux and Bret Saberhagen was so miserable when he left that he intended never to step foot on a major league pitching rubber again.

However, after nearly two months away from baseball, during a visit with his psychologist, he finally realized that it wasn't baseball that he hated at all. In fact, he loved the game. What he didn't enjoy was all the free time that comes with being a major league pitcher and seeing game action only every fifth day. Greinke wanted to be on the baseball field.

Thanks to antidepressants that treat what has since been diagnosed as social anxiety disorder, Greinke is now back in camp with the Kansas City Royals and looking like one of their five best starters. Through his first 19 innings this spring, he has a 3.32 ERA and a 21/2 K/BB ratio and most importantly, he's enjoying baseball again. 

* Carlos Zambrano's impending free agent status. Carlos Zambrano wants to sign a long term contract with the Chicago Cubs before the regular season starts. The Cubs would like to ensure their young ace is pitching in Wrigley Field for years to come.

So why hasn't a deal happened yet?  One word: money. Zambrano is going to get a lot of it.

Just look at the last blockbuster deal given to a pitcher this winter. San Francisco signed Barry Zito to a seven year, $126 million guaranteed deal, with the possibility of an even larger payout if various incentives and options are reached.

Now consider the Cubs ace is both younger and better than Zito. In a nutshell, there's the problem. When you consider the investment the Cubs made over the winter to stabilize other parts of their lineup, it would be pure folly to let the core of their starting rotation walk away now. But then again, this is the Cubs.

* The continued development and performance of the Devil Rays outfield. With projected starters Rocco Baldelli, Delmon Young, and Carl Crawford, the Tampa Bay Devil Rays have the most intriguing blend of outfield talent and youth in all of baseball. All three possess the type of pure athleticism that major league scouts drool over. They're legitimate five-tool players, but even while both Baldelli and Crawford have already established themselves as major league players, many talent evaluators believe they both have room to develop based on their skill sets.

Young, on the other hand, may be the best of three. Like Baldelli, Young is a former Minor League Player of the Year, and with only 30 big league games under his belt, the Rays are toying with the idea of batting him in the all important number-three spot in their lineup.

Thanks to a skimpy pitching staff and a loaded American League East, Tampa Bay fans might not be treated to a winning baseball team, but at least it may be an exciting team if their three outfield prodigies stay healthy. I haven't been this excited about a group of young outfielders since Montreal Expos fans were treated to the trio of Larry Walker, Marquis Grissom and Moises Alou in 1992.

* The New York Mets starting staff. One of the surprise winter developments was that the New York Mets did little to improve what was undoubtedly the weakest spot on their roster, the starting rotation.

Apparently, GM OMar Minaya never received the memo about Pedro Martinez being out until at least the All Star break recovering from shoulder surgery, or the one about Orlando Hernandez' injury history being the main reason he has more than 22 starts only once since 2000.

Granted, Tom Glavine was masterful last season and youngster John Maine showed promise, but there are just too many questions for a team hoping to repeat as NL West Champions.

After courting the likes of free agent starers Barry Zito, Mark Mulder and Jeff Suppan, as well as reportedly pursuing deals for just about every live arm rumored to be available, who did Minaya end up adding to his staff? Chan Ho Park, Jorge Sosa and Aaron Sele?

Really? Minaya must be expecting Manager Willie Randolph to squeeze blood out of the proverbial turnip by coaxing another load of meaningful innings out of a relief corps that saw more action than any other NL bullpen besides the Cubs and Washington Nationals.

Now the recent revelation that setup man Duaner Sanchez will be out until August after having shoulder makes that a more dubious assignment.

Once the inevitable "El Duque" DL stint happens, I don't think the rest of the NL will necessarily be shaking in their boots at the possibility of facing Sele, Mike Pelfrey and Oliver Perez over a weekend series at Shea?

 Is this team really better than the Philadelphia Phillies? I'd have to say the answer lies with the Mets' pitching staff.

* Josh Hamilton's comeback. Yet another comeback story. Many of you may know more about Hamilton's story than Greinke. He's a former No. 1 overall pick in the 1999 Amateur Draft by the Tampa Devil Rays, a legitimate five-tool talent and a recovering drug addict.

After three years away from the game battling his addiction, during which he had become estranged from his parents and separated from his wife, Katie, and the couple's two daughters, Hamilton finally hit rock bottom showing up on his grandmother's doorstep in Raleigh, North Carolina emaciated and in need of help.

Gradually, with his grandmother's help, Hamilton was able to free himself from the demons that had been tormenting him for the last few years, reconcile his life, and turn his attention back to sports. 

Upon returning to baseball last season from the indefinite suspension placed on him by baseball for violating the terms of his treatment program, Hamilton now finds himself with an outside shot at a starting job in the Cincinnati Reds outfield.

Last December, Reds GM Wayne Krivsky managed a deal with the Cubs for the No. 3 pick in the Rule 5 draft and selected Hamilton based on the promise there was still some raw ability left in the now 25 year old former high school All-American.

Surrounded by a support system consisting of manager Jerry Narron and his brother, and newly appointed administrative coach Johnny Narron, who have both known Hamilton since grade school, the outfielder is taking advantage of each spring at-bat to show the organization just why they made the deal to move up and grab him.

As the season nears, the odds are stacked against him performing well all season since he hasn't seen any at-bats above Class A ball prior to this spring, but that was the past and the Reds are required to keep him on the roster or return him to Tampa Bay. Besides, what's most important is there may be no denying Hamilton's desire to put that past behind him and continue to build on his future.

* Chris Duncan's development. Just like every other St. Louis Cardinals fan around the country, I am hoping that what Chris Duncan did in his time in the big leagues last season is just a sample of what is to come. The optimist in me sees a repetitive loop of the young Dunc sending souvenir after souvenir into the bleacher seats and circling the bases with his tobacco stained jersey 30 times this season.

There is no doubt Duncan can channel Roy Hobbs when dealt a steady diet of fastballs, and the Cardinals recently stated publicly that he is slotted to hit second in the batting order right in front of Albert Pujols.

Teams around the NL will have had plenty of time to develop how they pitch to the youngster over the winter, and even though no pitcher in his right mind is going to want to put him on base with baseball's best hitter looming in the on-deck circle, Duncan is going to have to make some adjustments himself.

He still has to work on his pitch recognition to be able to lay off the hard breaking pitches he will undoubtedly see with regularity this season, as well as his approach against those pesky lefties.

So far his spring results have been encouraging, as he leads the team in both home runs and runs batted in, and he has worked with Larry Walker to improve his defense, but the Cardinals new left-fielder is far from a sure thing.  

His minor league numbers suggest last seasons breakout was an aberration, but he's still a work in progress. Over the winter the Cardinal organization showed faith in their young slugger by resisting the temptation to "sell-high" and are making every attempt to help him build upon his successful rookie campaign because, frankly, they don't have any better options.

* The AL Central race. The division has only four teams, but three of them have a legitimate chance of hanging a divisional banner come October 1st. Heck, even the perennial cellar dwelling Royals improved. This has all the makings of being a season long battle and it's very likely these teams will be battling it out well into September.   

After finishing fourth out of the six teams and a shocking 18 games back in 2006, the Cleveland Indians addressed what appeared to be the weakest link on their roster; the bullpen. With the additions of Joe Borowski and Roberto Hernandez, they've added much needed depth and veteran leadership to a bullpen that blew 27 saves last season and finished dead last among all 30 teams in save percentage (51%), bullpen losses (27) and bullpen ERA (4.66).

While neither Borowski or Hernandez are capable of being the lights out presence, the team would prefer to have in the bullpen, they are both capable of providing some consistency at the end of games and that may be just enough to put the Indians at the top of the division.

After 2005, the Chicago White Sox, entered 2006 with a load of hope. Ultimately, they had a good season and finished with a respectable 90 wins, but were left on the outside watching as the Minnesota Twins and Detroit Tigers rolled in to the playoffs. GM Kenny Williams decided to make only few changes in the hopes that his team's explosive offense can power them to return to the playoffs.

White sox fans can only hope he knows what he's doing. After watching their core of starting pitchers struggle to match their impressive 2005 numbers, Williams made a couple of questionable moves by trading Freddy Garcia to the Phillies, and then followed that up by trading Garcia's presumed replacement, Brandon McCarthy, to the Texas Rangers.

It's obvious Williams is banking on a return to form for Mark Buehrle, who saw his ERA balloon to 4.99 last season and finished under the 14 win mark (12) for the first time since his rookie season in 2000.

Williams has to be counting on some drastic improvement from Javier Vazquez as well,  after signing him to a three-year, $34.5 million extension, but that may be a bit optimistic after Vazquez' ERA's that last two seasons have been hovering awful close to 5.00.   

Last season, Jim Leyland joined the Detroit Tigers and appeared to be the final piece to the puzzle GM Dave Dombrowski had been working on since 2002. The 2006 Tigers impressed all season until stumbling with five consecutive losses in the final week to finish just one game behind the Central Division Champion Minnesota Twins.

A frighteningly good collection of young arms helped the team compile the division's largest positive differential between Runs Scored (822) and Runs Against (675). After an off-season trade with the New York Yankees brought in a much needed power bat  in Gary Sheffield, the Tigers appear to have improved upon a team that represented the American League in the World Series.  

The division winning Twins relied on a combination of timely hitting, solid pitching and a late season skid by the Detroit Tigers to come out on top of the heap in 2006.

Powered by a solid offensive core of  Joe Mauer, Michael Cuddyer, Torii Hunter and AL MVP Justin Mourneau, as well as a pitching staff anchored by the golden arms of Johan Santana and Joe Nathan, the Twins enter 2007 with high hopes.

The loss of young stud in the making Francisco Liriano to Tommy John surgery hurts, but the Twins have enough core pieces in place to do what they seemingly do every year; scratch and claw their way to the playoffs.

The Tigers, White Sox and Cleveland Indians could finish in any order once the dust finally settles in October, but at least the second place team can take solace in the fact that the Wild Card team very well could end up coming from the Central once again.