The major league teams start playing baseball again tonight. One big minor league game will have the Cubs taking on the Diamondbacks.
- The trade winds are blowing because no one has played any major league baseball since Sunday. Yankees GM Brian Cashman said that the team will actively pursue pitching before the trade deadline.
- That makes sense, as the Yankees just signed Rich Hill.
- Matt Kemp isn't asking to be traded, unless he's not going to be the everyday center fielder. Then the Dodgers should please trade him.
- The Dodgers might make a trade for Jonathan Papelbon, making him a really overpaid setup man.
- More Dodgers news. David Schoenfield asks if Zack Greinke will opt out of his contract after next season? And if so, does that explain the Dodgers' interest in David Price?
- The Mariners have been talking to the Rays about trading for Price and Ben Zobrist.
- The Angels would like to trade for Huston Street and Ian Kennedy, but as we suspected, they just don't have anything the Padres would accept in return of the two pitchers. Yes, smartypants. The Padres would take Mike Trout for the two of them. Nothing that the Angels would be willing to part with.
- There was actually one trade in baseball: The Royals acquired Jason Frasor from the Rangers.
- The Blue Jays have "checked in" with Alfonso Soriano. Soriano at this point is unsure about whether he wants to play or retire.
- The Red Sox bad offense this season? GM Ben Cherington says "That's on me."
- Phil Rogers thinks that several current contenders don't hit enough to stay in the playoff hunt.
- The situation between the Astros and number one draft pick Brady Aiken is going to end today, as today is the deadline. Jon Heyman calls the dispute "ugly" but it is in the best interests of both parties to come to an agreement.
- SB Nation's Astros site The Crawfish Boxes tells us what we currently know. It seems that Aiken is healthy, but that his UCL is abnormally small and the Astros fear that it will break in the future and that Tommy John surgery would be problematic because of the ligament's current size. This is somewhat similar to what happened to R.A. Dickey, although Dickey doesn't have a UCL at all.
- If you really want all the details, follow The Crawfish Boxes story stream.
- Mike Bates thinks the Astros come off looking sleazy.
- Grant Brisbee writes that the Astros are just behaving like any other business.
- Someone who is definitely going to have Tommy John surgery is the Rockies' Tyler Chatwood. That makes 3,569 pitchers who have had the surgery this season, give or take a few.
- Here are four other injuries that will have a big impact on the pennant races.
- The Padres have narrowed their GM search down to four candidates. One of them is Kim Ng, who would be the first woman to be a general manager if she gets the job.
- The Time-Warner dispute over televising the Dodgers in Southern California drags on and on and on.
- That's fine with the Nationals Anthony Rendon. He finds watching baseball to be "long and boring."
- Maybe because television broadcasts don't actually focus on the game anymore. Craig Calcaterra notes how little baseball was discussed during Fox's broadcast of the 2014 All-Star Game. And that Fox's telecast started 49 minutes before the first pitch.
- Fox and MLB issued a statement about why they didn't mention Tony Gwynn's passing during the telecast.
There were too many upcoming shows on Fox to plug.They said that baseball had lost many people in the past year and that they didn't want to "single out any individual." - That's ridiculous, since the whole telecast was dedicated to one individual: Derek Jeter.
- As far as the controversy over home field advantage being awarded by the result of the All-Star Game Rob Neyer says he can't get worked up over it because home field advantage in the World Series just isn't much of an advantage.
- Bud Selig and Tony Clark say they want to eliminate the use of smokeless tobacco in the game.
- Baseball is still looking for a successor to Selig. But one highly-regarded candidate, Steve Greenberg, won't take the job. Greenberg is the son of Hall of Famer Hank Greenberg and is said to be a favorite of Selig and White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf.
- Craig Calcaterra thinks that an article claiming that a new commissioner needs to shorten games to seven innings is stupid.
- Tracy McGrady recorded his first professional strikeout, pitching in the Atlantic League All-Star Game. He retired immediately afterwards.
- Robert Klemko looks at the NFL path not chosen by Jeff Samardzija. Apparently as recently as 2012, the Bears put out feelers to see if Samardzija would be interested in changing sports. If you're not sick of Samardzija by now, it's a really good article that looks at went into his decision to become a baseball player and how he transformed himself into an ace pitcher.
- Luke Scott was released by his Korean baseball team for essentially being Luke Scott.
- Some new research indicates that hot streaks may be real. I'll wait for further confirmation.
- Jon Paul Morosi has an oral history of Josh Donaldson. There's a lot about Donaldson's troubled family life and the Cubs scouting and drafting him. Apparently, Billy Beane was pretty angry when the Cubs drafted Donaldson so when Jim Hendry called about Rich Harden, Donaldson was one of the first names to come up. Worth reading.
- By most measure, Mark Buehrle shouldn't be a very good pitcher. Rany Jazayerli tries to figure out how Buehrle manages to be a great pitcher anyway.
- This is an issue near and dear to my heart. Russell Carleton of Baseball Prospectus blasts the ridiculously low salaries paid to minor league baseball players. Carleton says that this isn't just a matter of fairness, but that if minor leaguers were paid more, they might eat, sleep and train better. Which means they might be better major leaguers. I've been at many a minor league game where they actually passed a hat around to help pay the players.
- Here's an interesting story by baseball's official historian John Thorn and the issue of "phantom ballplayers." Those are players who have been listed as playing in the majors erroneously.
- Finally, Fox Sports has started their own longform baseball site to compete with similar sites such as Sports On Earth and Grantland. The Donaldson piece I linked to earlier is one of their first pieces. But one that will probably get the most attention is the curious story of Tom Emanski, of the ubiquitous television commercials of the late 90s and early aughts which got Fred McGriff's full endorsement. By the way, even though the commercials are gone, you can still purchase the videos.
And tomorrow will be a better day than today, Buster.