Look Ahead: Vote Hunter
The Weekend Buzz while you were stopping at the kids' corner lemonade stand and remembering summer days with baseball cards between your bicycle spokes ...
1. Midnight Ride of John Mozeliak: St. Louis' late-night strike Saturday to acquire Mark DeRosa was perfect. It immediately strengthens the Cardinals lineup and gives Albert Pujols better protection. It shows Pujols, manager Tony La Russa and the rest of the clubhouse that the front office is serious about helping this team win (unlike last year). And it deals another blow -- both on-the-field and psychological -- to the struggling, division-rival Cubs, who never did seem to get over trading DeRosa to Cleveland last winter.
Score one for general manager John Mozeliak, who, in one deal-sealing phone call, immediately becomes more proactive than he was last summer. Now, it's Game On for the Cardinals.
DeRosa is a veteran, he's been through important, stretch-run games and, as opponents begin to walk Pujols more and more -- that surely has to start happening sooner rather than later given the way Pujols is destroying everything in his path, doesn't it? -- DeRosa should feast.
Not only was he hitting .270 with 13 home runs and 50 RBI in Cleveland, but the right-handed pop artist is hitting .339 with a .409 on-base percentage and a .661 slugging percentage against left-handers. Balanced against St. Louis' 29th-place ranking in the majors against lefties in batting average and slugging percentage (and the Cards are 27th against lefties in on-base percentage), his addition is more welcome than a bag of bird seed and a shipment of worms to a nest of cardinals.
The Cardinals overall rank ninth in the NL in on-base percentage and batting average. Thanks in no small part to Pujols' monstrous season, they are fourth in slugging percentage.
But the Big Fella can't do it alone, no matter how otherworldly he is. And as games become more and more meaningful and the NL Central looks more and more winnable -- the Cards and Milwaukee were tied for first at the time of the trade -- Pujols is going to have the bat taken out of his hands more and more. Already, it's remarkable that Pujols ranks only third in the NL in walks (59), behind San Diego's Adrian Gonzalez (61) and Washington's Adam Dunn (60).
That will change soon. And as it does, DeRosa, who probably will play a lot of third in Troy Glaus' continued absence but also can play the other three infield positions as well as the corner outfield spots, has the capability to punish opponents as they make those decisions.
Chris Carpenter is back and pitching like an ace. Right-hander Kyle Lohse (strained forearm) is expected to leave for an injury-rehabilitation assignment within the next week. The Cardinals still hope to salvage something from anxiety-ridden Khalil Greene, who so far has been a bust and another reason why another bat was needed.
La Russa already loved this team, calling them a bunch of "grinders." Now he has a chance to love them even more. And with the Hall of Fame-bound manager in the final season of his contract and unsure what his future holds after 2009, that is of no small importance to the hardball future of the country's best baseball town.
2. Albert Pujols: After smashing his 27th and 28th home runs against Minnesota on Saturday, we have a dunce cap at the ready for any manager who insists on sticking his head in the lion's mouth from here until season's end. At his current pace, Pujols will finish with 60 home runs and 159 RBI. How in the world he ranks a piddling third in the NL in walks is one of the world's great mysteries, right up there alongside Mick Jagger's hair and Spam.
Best strategy against him if you're a pitcher? "When he gets in the batter's box, if you pray, then you start praying," Kansas City's Brian Bannister explained after surrendering a two-run blast to Pujols on June 20. "If you don't pray, you think about starting. That's kind of how you have to approach it."
3. Lou Piniella calls Milton Bradley "piece of ----": Cubs fans don't care what Bradley is, technically. They just know he can't hit. And they want DeRosa back. Oops.
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| Credit the Indians for not making Eric Wedge the scapegoat for their bad season. (AP) |
"We felt the time was right to maximize the value Mark had," said beleaguered GM Mark Shapiro, who also will receive a player to be named later. With Oakland's Matt Holliday expected to be on the market, there was no sense in waiting too long on this one.
5. Eric Wedge must go: Well, that's what lots of e-mailers are telling me. But Shapiro so far disagrees on the Indians manager, dispatching DeRosa instead in the most obvious what-we-have-here-isn't-working move yet.
"The accountability and responsibility for what has been a bad year is broad-based and shared," Shapiro told reporters in Cleveland last week. "The arrow should not be pointed at Eric. It should point toward a broad spectrum -- players, our staff, Eric, myself, the front office. There's shared responsibility, and I'm accountable for all those groups."
Maybe Wedge goes eventually, but Shapiro deserves credit for not taking the easy way out, hitting the eject button on Wedge, and shouldering some of the responsibility.
6. Vladdy's caddies: The Los Angeles Angels have slipped back into the AL West picture after a long uphill climb this season, but they've mostly done it without Vladimir Guerrero. While everyone was fretting over the troubles of Boston's David Ortiz and the Yankees' Alex Rodriguez earlier, you can add Guerrero to the "Uh-oh, have they lost it?" debate, too.
Relegated to pinch-hitting duties over the weekend in Arizona because he still is not sufficiently recovered from a torn chest muscle to do anything more than DH, a clearly frustrated Guerrero last week shaved his trademark dreadlocks while attempting to turn the page.
"They found the Dead Sea Scrolls in there," Angels manager Mike Scioscia quipped.
Good chance, because Guerrero's bat has been looking like it came from the Dead Ball Era.
Of his 38 hits this season, 30 are singles. He has just two homers in 144 plate appearances, by far the worst ratio of his career. He's 35 now -- it was learned this spring that he was one year older than originally thought -- and a free agent this winter. He's been one of Angels owner Arte Moreno's favorite players, but if Guerrero doesn't get it going, it's hard to see how the Angels would be interested in retaining him.
For their part, they think he will get it going.
"His bat speed is there, but at times his swing has been long," Scioscia says. "He's working on getting comfortable in the batter's box. Once he does, he generally starts to hit."
Tick, tick, tick. ...
7. Alex Rodriguez passes Reggie Jackson on all-time home run list: Difference between the Yankees sluggers? One was juiced with performance-enhancing drugs. The other tested positive only for excess mustard.
8. Rockies' roll: Colorado, 20-3 since June 4, is one more good week away from seizing control of NL wild-card chase. Brad Hawpe continues to rake, new No. 2 hitter Clint Barmes' comeback is impressive and Troy Tulowitzki again is looking like an All-Star.
New manager Jim Tracy's key? "Felipe Alou, my mentor, said don't ask players to do things they're not capable of doing."
9. Tommy Hanson beats flu, Red Sox: Next up for incredible Atlanta phenom: Negotiating post-election peace in Iran.
10. "Moneyball" movie sacked: It all fell apart when Sony thought the script was too boring. Instead of Brad Pitt-as-Billy Beane angrily hurling a chair in the Oakland draft room during one scene, movie execs wanted to dramatize it by having the Beane character pull out assault weapon and blow away entire Athletics' scouting staff in final, dramatic statement of old sabermetrics vs. scouting debate.
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