Short hops, quick pops and backhand stops:
The way things are going, this year's July 31 trade deadline will come complete with a laugh track. Or, at the very least, it will be filmed before a live studio audience.
Everybody's looking for pitching, but two of the top targets, Seattle's Erik Bedard (shoulder) and San Diego's Jake Peavy (foot), landed on the disabled list in the past week. So, too, did Toronto's Roy Halladay (groin), not that Blue Jays general manager J.P. Ricciardi ever was going to trade him, anyway.
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| Erik Bedard's brief tenure in Seattle has been marked by arm troubles. (Getty Images) |
There's always the chance that Cleveland could decide to trade Cliff Lee (doubtful) or that Houston could move Roy Oswalt (more doubtful). And there's always the chance that Bedard could bounce back and get in a start or two before July 31, thus tempting someone.
• Blog: MLB trade rumors
Bedard visited Dr. Lewis Yocum, an orthopedist in Southern California, on Thursday. He has a relationship with Yocum, and the Mariners are hopeful that Yocum will agree with their assessment and assure Bedard that his shoulder is fine. If so, he could make his next start on Tuesday against San Diego.
But his injury history surely will give Seattle's potential trading partners pause, and will the Mariners be willing to accept 80 or 90 cents on the dollar just to move Bedard?
• A better question than what's immediately above might be, who do the Mariners think they are? And I don't mean that the snotty way it might sound. What I mean is, do they view themselves as buyers or sellers? They're only 5½ games behind Texas in a mediocre AL West.
If they're sellers, and the guess here is that they will be, Bedard, Washburn and third baseman Adrian Beltre will go back on the block for the umpteenth time in the past couple of seasons.
"It is a balancing act," Seattle general manager Jack Zduriencik said this week. "Everyone likes to think they're in it. We like to think we're in it. We'd like to have a couple of our players get hot. That would help. Colorado recently showed what can happen when a couple of players get hot (the Rockies won 11 in a row).
"We have a couple of guys we'd like to see perform better, a couple of guys who are trying like hell to find their groove."
Zduriencik didn't name names, but you can peg shortstop Yuniesky Betancourt and second baseman Jose Lopez as two of them.
"Adrian Beltre has been hot, and I can't say enough about what Russell Branyan and Ichiro Suzuki have done," the GM said.
Bottom line? What's most important for executives as July approaches is to avoid being delusional, even if their clubs are within a couple area codes of first place. It's a matter of timing, and Zduriencik probably won't ultimately decide until mid-July.
"As you see things right now, that doesn't mean it will be the same scenario two weeks from now, or a month from now," Zduriencik said. "You give it your best shot."
• The July 31 trade deadline always arrives overheated with rumors, but two major league executives this week essentially said this year could be all sizzle and little steak partly because of the way clubs are bunched up right now. Into the weekend, 22 of the 30 major league clubs were either in first place in their divisions or within 6 games.
• There is a chance that San Diego's Peavy will have to undergo surgery on the torn tendon in his right foot. He does not believe that will be the case, remaining optimistic that he can return inside of two months, rather than be sidelined for two to three months. But the Padres are holding their breath.
• The Ted Williams chase is on: Minnesota's Joe Mauer takes his .425 batting average into the weekend and, according to the Elias Sports Bureau, when Mauer was at .429 on Tuesday, it was the highest batting average by any player beyond the 150-at-bat mark in 15 years, since Paul O'Neill was batting .431 through 167 at-bats in 1994.
• Boston sure drew an ace on one of its winter gambles, with strong right-hander Brad Penny at 6-2 and hitting 95 mph on the radar gun again. One major league executive this week said he never would have believed it after watching Penny fight a bad shoulder for the better part of last summer. Penny adds to the Red Sox's depth, and whether they opt to deal him or keep him, chalk it up as another brilliant move by a savvy front office.
• The more he pitches, the more Minnesota's Francisco Liriano looks like a one-hit wonder. He's now 2-8 with a 5.91 ERA, not even close to what looked like his breakout 12-3, 2.16 ERA season of 2006. His slider is back following the Tommy John ligament transfer surgery, but in the view of one AL scout, he's just not throwing it as hard and he's missing his spots. "Basically, he's a No. 3 pitcher right now," the scout said. "And he might not ever be anything more."
• OK, so Tampa Bay iis beginning to look like it thought it would look, a real contender, and one big reason is big Ben Zobrist, who now has 14 homers while starting at six different positions (all three outfield spots, second base, shortstop and third base). Already, he's in rare -- and unique -- company: According to baseball-reference.com, Zobrist becomes only the fifth player to hit 14 or more homers while starting at six positions. The others: Oakland's Scott Brosius (1995), Detroit's Tony Phillips (1991), Kansas City's Ed Kirkpatrick (1969) and Boston's Felix Mantilla (1964).
• It is not a vicious rumor: With Peavy and Chris Young both on the DL and their rotation in shambles, the Padres actually did sign former big leaguer Brian Lawrence, 33, when he was pitching for the independent Orange County Flyers of the Golden Baseball League. Lawrence started for Triple-A Portland on Tuesday night and could land in San Diego soon. As one wiseguy Padres fan wrote sarcastically in an Internet chat room, "Your move, Dodgers."
• Alfonso Soriano might have crushed the game-winning home run to beat the White Sox on Thursday, but one NL scout is not amused. His assessment of the NL Central: "Alfonso Soriano is terrible, and he's killing the Cubs in the outfield. The Cubs can't score. Geovany Soto got out of shape at the World Baseball Classic, he sat around for two weeks and didn't do anything. Cincinnati can't figure Joey Votto out and Jay Bruce looked like he thought it would be easy in the big leagues and it's not. The Cardinals look good for a week and then they look terrible. If I had to venture a guess, I'd say Milwaukee wins the division."
• Another impressive outing Thursday in Dodger Stadium for Oakland's Vin Mazzaro (two earned runs, five hits, five strikeouts and one walk in six innings). "Love him," said one major league scout. "His stuff has late action, it's crisp, he's a strike-thrower." Mazzaro, Oakland's third-round pick in the 2005 draft, owns a 1.75 ERA after four starts. And he, Trevor Cahill, Dallas Braden, Brett Anderson and Josh Outman, five young starters around whom Billy Beane is building, continue their impressive development. "They're legit," the scout said.
• Author Bill Chuck checks in following the death of Bob Bogle, lead guitarist for The Ventures, whose hits included Hawaii Five-O and Walk, Don't Run, and, in tribute to the latter, offers a list of players with at least 1,000 career walks and fewer than 25 steals. The top five: Ted Williams (2,021 walks, 24 steals), Jim Thome (1,591, 19), Harmon Killebrew (1,559, 19), Wade Boggs (1,412, 24) and Mark McGwire (1,317, 12).
• Happy Father's Day: Here's something worth checking out from National Public Radio, Satchel Paige: Confronting Racism One Pitch at a Time.
• Happy Father's Day 2: While we wrote about Tony Gwynn Jr.'s return to San Diego this week, there are 23 other major leaguers playing right now whose fathers preceded them in the bigs.
The list: Kansas City pitcher Brian Bannister (dad Floyd), Kansas City infielder Tug Hulett (Tim), Cleveland infielder Josh Barfield (Jesse), Milwaukee catcher Jason Kendall (Fred), Houston infielder Aaron Boone (Bob), Pittsburgh third baseman Andy LaRoche and first baseman Adam LaRoche (Dave), Yankees second baseman Robinson Cano (Jose), Oakland shortstop Bobby Crosby (Ed), Angels outfielder Gary Matthews Jr. (Gary), St. Louis outfielder Chris Duncan (Dave), Philadelphia outfielder John Mayberry Jr. (John), Milwaukee first baseman Prince Fielder (Cecil), Angels reliever Darren Oliver (Bob), Seattle outfielder Ken Griffey Jr. (Ken), Kansas City infielder Tony Pena (Tony), Texas pitcher Jason Grilli (Steve), Cincinnati reliever Josh Roenicke (Gary), Angels reliever Justin Speier (Chris), Cincinnati infielder Jerry Hairston Jr. and San Diego Outfielder Scott Hairston (Jerry Sr.), Yankees outfielder Nick Swisher (Steve) and San Diego outfielder Will Venable (Max).
