Most of the baseball world is chirping about the Yankees’ nine-game winning streak, the return of Dice-K in Boston and the possible landing spots for Jake Peavy now that he’s rejected a trade to the White Sox, but I’m feeling a little more pessimistic myself. That’s why I’ve compiled a list of three of the most frustrating, punch-a-hole-through-your-wall teams to watch so far in baseball this season.

(This list is in no particular order – they’re all frustrating to watch.)

1. New York Mets
I’ve never seen a team squander so much natural talent than the Mets do on a near nightly basis. I know they’re battling some injuries right now, but there’s no excuse for a lineup so chockfull of talent should be giving games away because of stupidity in the field and on the base paths. Johan Santana and the rest of the pitching staff must close their eyes and start praying every time a batter puts the ball in play because there’s a good chance that circus the Mets call a defense will blow the play somehow. And blind elephants (they exist – I looked it up) would be better on the base paths right now than most of New York’s runners.

2. Washington Nationals
Forget for a moment that this club has lost 28 of its first 40 games – the most frustrating thing about the Nationals is that they’d easily be a .500 team if they had anything resembling a pitching staff. Don’t believe me? Washington has scored the third most runs in the National League and the 11th most in all of baseball, but the pitching staff is giving up over a touchdown a game in runs. Even if the pitchers could hold opponents to five runs a game (which is certainly not unreasonable) the Nats would win most nights. Watching this team is like getting two robots for Christmas. One of the robots (let’s call him Ryan Zimmerman) functions great and does everything you want it to do, like build things. The other robot (let’s call him Scott Olsen) barely starts, you constantly have to change its batteries and even the times it does work, it only works long enough to ruin what Ryan Zimmerman Robot built.

3. San Francisco Giants
The Giants have the opposite problem of the Nationals – their pitching staff is solid, but their offense couldn’t score runs if every batter started with a 3-1 count. In Jonathan Sanchez’s last start, he gave up two hits and lost. Barry Zito has gotten a whopping 2.5 runs a game when he pitches. Not even NL Cy Young winner Tim Lincecum can cure what ails the Giants’ offense this season. San Fran is also the only team in baseball that doesn’t have a home run yet from its first base position. When any combination of Rich Aurilia, Eugenio Velez and Emmanuel Burriss is due up in the ninth inning, Giants fans might as well just turn the channel because a rally isn’t coming. Manager Bruce Bochy should start forfeiting games as soon as the Giants get down 2-0, because there’s no conceivable way that they’re going to come back from that insurmountable deficit and he might as well save his pitching staff. Watching the Giants try to hit is the equivalent to taking a nail gun and shooting it through your eyelids.

I’m sure Astros, Pirates and Rockies fans will have something to say about this, which I welcome in the comments section. Come on – get out your frustrations!

Dedicated baseball fans throughout America realize there’s an intangible contract one signs at the beginning of April. In following one’s favorite team, the signee accepts the prospect of having 162 good days, 162 bad days, or any number in between. The season is long: a half-year jaunt whose push and pull seamlessly seeps into every corner of the fan’s life. For fantasy owners, this effect is even more intense. I’m finding that out now for the first time in my life, as a group of my buddies finally convinced me to sign up for their league. I’ve heard it described that every episode of “Seinfeld� and the “The Sopranos� can serve as a near-factual model for the way American life works, whether they exemplify the battle of the sexes, the tensions and joys of friendships, the need and dismay of romance, the absurdity of life, the power of death, or the pleasure of solitude. For myself, it’s always been baseball, as its mixture of celebration, defeat, and the bizarre seem to perfectly mirror life as a whole. As a write this, Tim Lincecum is off to a rocky start for the year while Tim Wakefield is pitching a no-hitter into the eight inning. Who would’ve thought?

Here are five random observations about the first few weeks of the season…

1. Fantasy Baseball

How anyone could sign up for more than one of these leagues is beyond me. I was under the impression that I would simply have to monitor my team once a week, only having the urge to check the scoreboard every now and then. Turns out, you need to treat your team with the same love and attention you would a girlfriend or a dying pet. Throughout my day I’m checking Yahoo’s GameChannel and Stattracker, yelling at numbers and diagrams on my screen as they are updated in real time. I’m reading the columns by fantasy “pundits;� I’m about to buy the MLB Extra Innings package; I’m contemplating trades, drops, and pickups; friendships hang in the balance each week in our head to head league. And all the while I’m realizing that this at times very complicated critical thinking could be put to better use for something like, I don’t know, NASA. But then who would give J.D. Drew another chance to prove himself as a fantasy stud?