2011 is proving to be a long season in Houston.

The recent trade deadline was a sad reminder for Astros fans of where their team has fallen to.  Losing fan favourite Hunter Pence to the Phillies and lead-off speedster Michael Bourn to the Braves was depressing enough.  Watching those players leave during the same period when Carlos Beltran moved from the Mets to the Giants made it even worse.

The trade of Beltran didn’t affect the Astros directly.  It was meaningful because it called to mind a very different, and much happier, time in Houston.

The last time Beltran was traded in mid-season, it was the Astros who acquired him to add a spark to their 2004 postseason charge.  It was seven years ago; seven years that must seem like a lifetime.

That feeling isn’t limited to people residing in Houston. There is a decent smattering of Astros fans in Britain due to the team’s period of success coinciding with MLB’s stint on British terrestrial TV. Baseball arrived on Five in 1997 and that was the first year the Astros had made the playoffs since 1986.

It started a ten year period when they finished first or second in the National League Central in every year except for a fourth-place finish in 2000.  Fans brought to the game by Baseball on Five knew the Astros as perennial contenders, led by the Killer B’s of Bagwell, Biggio, Bell and then Berkman, with Roger Clemens, Andy Pettitte and Roy Oswalt ultimately providing the pitching to go along with the hitting.

There are no Killer B’s in this Astros team.  Clint Barmes is a dedicated professional who gives his all, but he is about as lethal as a water pistol.

Things are so bad that one Houston Press blog went as far as to describe their lineup on 1 August as the “worst lineup in Major League history”.  There are people vastly more qualified than me that can assess the accuracy of that claim, but there’s little question that it is an undistinguished group. Frankly, it looks Major League in name alone.

And that’s where the pain of Astros fans is joined by an uncomfortable feeling for others.

The San Francisco Giants haven’t played the Astros so far this season.  They will face Houston seven times over the next two months, after they have traded away their two best offensive players.  The Giants’ main rivals for a postseason spot, the Arizona Diamondbacks, played the Astros three times at the end of May.  They won all three of those games, but how would they feel if they had been swept by that Astros team and they narrowly lost out in the NL West with the Giants taking six or seven wins against the Astros-lite? 

That’s just one example, but it hints at a deeper problem.

There’s not much fairness when it comes to the MLB schedule and any sports schedule will be subject to an opponent’s strength being weakened by injuries at a particular time. However, in this type of situation, the Astros have deliberately chosen to play out the rest of the season with a weakened team.  Wolves and Blackpool have been fined for doing that in the Premiership in recent years, yet it’s an accepted practice in MLB and seems to fly in the face of the general conept of things being done ‘in the best interests of baseball’.

It’s a difficult situation because, like a lot of onlookers, I’ve watched the Astros going nowhere while holding on to veterans in recent years and stated that they should be rebuilding for the future.

Rebuilding – trading away your established players for prospects, acquiring some of the best young talent due to the high draft picks given to the worst-performing teams etc – is not only a legitimate approach, it’s arguably an essential one for teams without the largest financial resources if they ever want to have periods of challenging for the World Series.

However, the current situation with the Astros shows the ugly side of this.

There is no relegation in MLB, or any major North American sport.  I’m not suggesting that should change – there are plenty of negatives to having relegation and, in any case, introducing it would be close to impossible considering how professional baseball is structured in the States – but the way in which organizations can get rid of their best players and field below-standard teams doesn’t seem right. It goes beyond the ‘race to the bottom’ to secure the number one draft pick; the MLB competition over the season’s final two months can be compromised by teams all but giving up.

The big question now is whether the reported increase of playoff teams from eight to ten next season will change this through making less teams decide to completely blow up their roster?  That remains to be seen. 

Seeing-eye singles

It was a shame, if not much of a surprise, to see Greg Halman optioned back down to Triple-A by the Mariners on Friday.  The Dutchman get off to a decent start when he made the Majors in June, but July proved to be a difficult month for both Halman and the rest of the team; as emphasised by their miserable 17 game losing streak.  His first stint in the Big Leagues will have taught him a great deal about what it takes to succeed at the highest level and he can take heart from the favourable reviews of his play in the outfield and from hitting his first two Major League home runs. 

You can’t really argue with the decision to suspend Yadier Molina for five games for bumping the umpire Rob Drake.  Just like raising your hands in football, every ballplayer knows that making contact with an umpire will lead to a suspension (rightfully so, and Molina himself has accepted the decision).  However, it would be interesting to know if Drake’s part in the incident has been reviewed by MLB.  Molina was uncharacteristically angry because Drake called him out on strikes on a pitch that was clearly inside.  Nobody is perfect, but replays suggest he missed that call by a significant margin.  Players have to control themselves, but you can fully understand Molina’s frustration at getting a call like that in extra innings during an important game.  Molina got punished for his mistake; will Drake face any penalty for his?

Just two weeks ago, it looked like this year’s MLB non-waiver trade deadline wouldn’t offer us much drama.  Aside from a couple of free-agents-to-be finding a new home and some minor deals, little else seemed in the offing.

Instead, teams competed to make additions that they hope will make the difference both in getting to the postseason and then winning when they are there.

The San Francisco Giants’ capture of Carlos Beltran, officially announced on Thursday, sparked off some frantic action as the Sunday’s deadline zoomed into view. 

The deal could have been the final true headline-grabbing act.  Beltran was the best potential bat on the market and it was possible that the other main contenders in the National League keen on adding a quality hitter, particularly the Phillies and Braves, might accept that a big upgrade was no longer out there and settle on a minor deal or two. 

However, the Phillies and Braves were determined to improve their offensive options.  The Braves acted on Sunday by acquiring speedster Michael Bourn from the Astros – a good acquisition for the Braves – but that was in part due to Atlanta failing to come to an agreement with Houston over another outfielder. 

In this column last Monday, I expressed my doubts that the rumours surrounding two National League players would turn into actual trades:

I would be very surprised if two of the more-touted names from the National League are actually dealt.  The Ubaldo Jimenez situation has all the hallmarks of a team putting feelers out just in case someone is willing to blow them away with an offer they couldn’t refuse.  As for Hunter Pence, I suspect the Astros value him more highly than other team.  

Now, I didn’t write that they wouldn’t be traded, so technically I wasn’t wrong; however I genuinely didn’t believe they would be dealt.  That makes it all the more interesting to look at why they were.

In Pence’s case, my doubts were partly created by the Astros’ form over the past few years in holding on to players rather than making the decision to rebuild properly. 

Pence was a real fan favourite and Astros supporters have every reason to feel disappointed that he is no longer on their team, but they also know better than anyone that the team wasn’t going anywhere with him anyway.  It was the right decision to move Pence and look to the future.  The question then was which team would meet the Astros’ apparently realistic valuation?

While the Phillies have the best record in the Majors, their goal is to win another World Series and their offence needed a boost.  Their General Manager Ruben Amaro Jr is not exactly shy about making ‘win now’ trades so we shouldn’t be surprised that he was the one to make the deal happen. 

Pence will make a very good team even stronger.  He will take over in right-field and typically slot into the fifth batting spot behind Ryan Howard, a good complementary part of the lineup rather than hitting in the clean-up spot as he was with the Astros. 

The Phillies already looked a solid bet to win the NL East and in the short-series format that makes up the playoffs, any team is vulnerable to being turned over.  That doesn’t mean they should bypass the opportunity to strengthen if possible, though.  They didn’t have to add a good everyday player, but the fact that they did makes them even more formidable.

As for Ubaldo Jimenez, I doubted that he would be traded simply because I didn’t believe the Rockies wanted to part with their best pitcher.  I’m still not sure why they’ve decided to do so. 

2011 has been a disappointment; however the Rockies have a good group of players and no team looks set to dominate the NL West in the near future.  Had they kept hold of Jimenez and added a few players, there’s every chance they would be back competing for the division next year.  He was under contract for at least another two seasons at a very affordable price, so there was no pressing need to trade him now. 

It’s slightly baffling and you suspect that teams looking at trading for Jimenez thought the same thing: why are the Rockies willing to trade him?  His relative struggles this year compared to last, accompanied by a drop in velocity on his fastball, have raised concerns about a possible injury or mechanical issues.  Only time will tell if the Rockies knew something we all didn’t.

I was surprised when I logged onto MLB.com at breakfast on Sunday morning to read that Jimenez had indeed been traded and stunned by the identity of the team that he had been traded to. 

I didn’t take the rumours linking the Cleveland Indians with Jimenez too seriously.  Their current situation simply didn’t appear to match up with a position where they would trade for one of the better starting pitchers in the game.

To my mind, they have overachieved by still being in the AL Central race at this stage in the season.  They have some talented players, but you wouldn’t necessarily look at their roster and think they are one key addition away from having a real chance.  The Rockies were only going to trade Jimenez if they received several highly-touted prospects in return and, as a team with a relatively low payroll, the Indians are exactly the type of team that needs to keep hold of promising young players under club control.

So why have they done it?  Two reasons come to mind.

Firstly, and to state the obvious, they must feel they have a genuine chance of winning the AL Central this year with Jimenez in the mix.  While teams should be cautious about mortgaging the future for short-term gain, they should never take a chance to win for granted.  Nobody can predict the future and banking on winning with prospects three or four years down the line is dangerous because any number of things could derail those plans.  And while the Indians might not look the most threatening of teams, we all know that once you’re in the playoffs, anything is possible.

Secondly, the key with this deal is that although the Indians have traded away some well-regarded pitching prospects in Alex White and Drew Pomeranz, this isn’t simply a ‘win now’ move.  If the team doesn’t make it to the postseason this year then Jimenez will still be under contract for the next two seasons at an affordable price.  They’re taking a gamble on him regaining his previous top form, but if he does and the Indians don’t contend in the first half of next season then they will still be able to trade Jimenez and re-stock the farm system to cover the players they’ve just lost.

Fans always want their team to make a move or two at the deadline.  Often, it can take several years for us to evaluate how a trade has worked out, so after all of the deals over the last few days we shouldn’t be too hasty about assigning the tags of winners and losers.

After seeing the likes of CC Sabathia and Cliff Lee depart in recent years, fans of the Tribe deserve to enjoy their team trading for a top-line starter rather than trading one away.  It will be fascinating to see whether the initial joy at the news turns into something positive for Cleveland, just as it will be for every other team involved in deals at the deadline.

The MLB season has a rhythm to it; a series of different periods that we move through as the year goes by.

The dark winter months lead to Spring Training, Spring Training leads to the joy of Opening Day, Opening Day gives way to early-season consolidation, the early-season turns to the All-Star Break, before the All-Star Break gets us to where we are now: the trade period.

The shift from an All-Star mindset to the rampant rumour mill that takes hold prior to 31 July came about more suddenly than expected. 

The National League had just picked up their second victory in two years on Tuesday in the All-Star Game when the news broke on the same night that the Milwaukee Brewers had become the first team to roll the dice.  The Brew Crew bolstered the back of their bullpen by trading for Francisco Rodriguez from the New York Mets.

“And we’re off”, was the cry.

The suddenness was felt because up to that point the trade market had been relatively quiet.  No real deals of note had taken place and there hadn’t been a great deal of rumours flying around either.

Looking through the standings, you could make a case for up to seventeen teams as potentially still having a shot at making the playoffs.  For one team to gain a notable player via a trade, another team has to be prepared to part with them and there is still a certain amount of jockeying for position, a final week or so of teams holding fire to see where they are before deciding to make a move, to stand pat or to start building towards next year.

The Minnesota Twins are the best example of this.  When you consider how badly things went for them during the first half, they should be out of it.  However, no team has run away in the AL Central so the Twins’ good form over the last month has given them a chance.  The next week will make or break their season: going 5-1 or 6-0 would keep them firmly in the division race, going 1-5 would all but end their hopes.  Until those games are played, Minnesota probably won’t be making any moves and it’s a similar story for a number of other teams.

The other big factor that has made the rumour mill spin more slowly than we’ve seen previously is that the players that normally get traded are those who are either out of contract at the end of this season or the next.  The impact players that fall into that category are typically on teams that are not about to part with them.

First base is a good case in point.  If the Brewers had struggled through the first half then they would have dangled Prince Fielder (not literally, that would be a heavy – not to mention pricey – load to wave around) to see if someone was prepared to offer them a package greater in value than the draft picks they will receive when he leaves as a free agent.  As it is, there is no chance of Fielder leaving now, with the Brewers hoping to win it all in his final year with the club. 

Albert Pujols isn’t going anywhere either, so that leaves the Cubs’ Carlos Pena as arguably the best first-base proposition.  He’s a decent player to have and will add some pop to whichever lineup he goes to, but he isn’t near the Fielder/Pujols level in terms of the impact he would have.

The best free-agent-to-be from there would be the Mets’ Jose Reyes, a fact that will cause their fans to shudder. No one seems to know quite what state the Mets are in financially; however any logical thought-process would determine that they not only need to keep him now but also do all they can to re-sign him over the offseason.  For the sake of Mets fans, let’s hope logic applies at Citi Field.

Carlos Beltran is the Met more likely to be moved and is the best bat (potentially) on the market.  While he’s not going to match the impact he made last time he was traded mid-season – his unforgettable run with the Astros in 2004 -  plenty of teams would be interested and that’s where some of the more rampant rumours are likely to focus.

After Beltran, teams will be looking at players such as the Padres’ Ryan Ludwick and the A’s Josh Willingham to add an extra bat to their roster.  It’s a sign of the time of year that when I listened to Willingham smack a homer into the second deck in the early hours of Saturday morning, my first thought after the initial celebration was that a few more of those would make him a more attractive prospect for a contender.

When it comes to pitching, there isn’t a Cliff Lee out there waiting to be added to the top of a contender’s rotation.  The Dodgers’ Hiroki Kuroda would be a solid pitching addition, a decent number three to add to your pack, and both Jeremy Guthrie and Jason Marquis could eat some innings.  That might not sound like a lot, and won’t get the pulses racing, but it could be enough for one or two teams to get over the line into the postseason.

Relief pitching is always fashionable at this time of year, as the K-Rod deal shows, and the Padres look to be the in prime position to start a bidding war with Heath Bell and Mike Adams sure to attract the attention of a number of teams.  Again, while those type of deals don’t steal the headlines, they might just make the difference in a tight division race.

And of course, there’s always a chance that someone will make a big move out of nowhere.  Maybe the reigning NL Cy Young winner Ubaldo Jimenez will get dealt, as a few rumours along those lines are being whispered?  The Rockies would need to be bowled over to part with their ace pitcher, yet a team like the Yankees or the Tigers may feel it’s worth the price.

There are plenty of teams with a chance to make 2011 a successful year, while the lack of relegation means that the struggling sides aren’t forced into short-term measures and can trade away some players to rebuild for another year.

That means we should expect plenty of rumours and a few surprises over the next fortnight.

The 2011 amateur player draft will begin at midnight UK time tonight. 

This year’s class of the best high school and college ballplayers will be on tenterhooks as they wait to hear which team selects them and sets off the early stages of a professional career that, for some, will result in them fulfilling their lifelong dream of making it to the Major Leagues.

The Pittsburgh Pirates are this year’s team to have swapped being the worst for being the first.  Their Major League worst 57-105 win-loss record in 2010 means that they get to make the opening selection as they attempt to continue their rebuilding process.

The Pirates have been slightly unlucky with their timing.  The Washington Nationals have been able to turn two terrible years into number one picks when there was an outstanding talent available on both occasions.  Pitcher Stephen Strasburg was selected in 2009 and made waves in the Majors last season before cruelly being cut down by an elbow injury requiring Tommy John surgery.  Last year, they selected Bryce Harper, another precocious talent who is tearing up the Minor Leagues on a fast track to the Big Leagues.

There isn’t a standout Number One talent this year and the experts see it coming down to a choice between three talented college players: third baseman Anthony Rendon, right-handed pitcher Gerrit Cole or left-hander Danny Hultzen.

The Pirates have yet to give any indication as to which they will go for and it’s possible that the Buccos’ brains trust is still to make a final decision.  That adds an extra element of intrigue to this year’s draft that has been absent from the last two; rumours that the Nationals might look elsewhere due to the financial demands of Strasburg and Harper were never really believed.  Much as MLB has tried to limit spending on amateur players through the introduction of guide draft bonuses, teams now appreciate that saving money on the draft is a false economy.

No drafted player, however talented, is guaranteed to make the most of their potential and large signing bonuses will always carry an element of risk.  However, it’s often a risk worth taking.  Acquiring established impact players is now so expensive, either in terms of dollars for free agents or in terms of players and prospects when making a trade, that building from within is the best way to go for those without the big spending power.

No one illustrates that point better than the Tampa Bay Rays.  The high draft picks they received after a series of losing Major League seasons helped them to develop a team that can compete against the seemingly insurmountable Yankees and Red Sox in the American League East.  That process is set to continue in 2011.  The Rays lost a horde of Major Leaguers to free agency over the offseason and consequently of the first 60 selections that are made in the early hours of Tuesday morning, 10 will be by Tampa Bay.

The Rays will be allocating plenty of money to their draft pot and the Pirates will do the same.  A draft preview on MLB.com states that “no team has spent more on the Draft since 2008 than Pittsburgh, and the organization has the backing of owner Bob Nutting to be among the highest spenders again this year”. 

That’s something for fans in Pittsburgh to be excited about and they undoubtedly deserve to have something to cheer after currently being on the longest sequence of losing seasons in North American sports history (18 and counting).  The Pirates have started bringing through youngsters such as Andrew McCutchen, Pedro Alvarez and Jose Tabata and their game against the Phillies on Saturday brought in the largest crowd ever to see a game at their beautiful PNC Park.

We’ll find out just after midnight which prospect will start his road to PNC Park, ready to be cheered on by another large crowd.

Matsuzaka’s future uncertain as he goes under the knife

The amateur draft will be one of many items discussed in the upcoming Collective Bargaining Agreement talks between MLB and the Players Union, as will the prospect of an international draft.  It’s unlikely that an international draft would include professionals in Japan, but there’s no doubt that MLB owners would change that signing process if they could.

It was confirmed on Friday that the Red Sox pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka will undergo Tommy John surgery.  It typically takes a year for a pitcher to return from the operation and that means Matsuzaka may well have pitched for the last time in a Red Sox uniform, as his current contract expires at the end of the 2012 season.  Some have even questioned whether he will pitch again in the Majors, with the possibility open that he may opt to return to Japan instead.

If Matsuzaka doesn’t return to the Majors then it will be an ignominious end to a decidedly mixed term Stateside.

The Japanese star helped the Red Sox to a World Series in his first season, earning wins in the ALCS and World Series in the process, and he had an excellent second season, going 18-3 with a 2.90 ERA in 2008.  However the last couple of years have been full of frustration, with Matsuzaka rarely going deep into games due to his ‘nibbling’ approach that ramped up his pitch count.  Add in reports that he didn’t adjust well to the American way of preparing for games, and him not always being in the best condition physically, and the Red Sox were left with a pitcher who didn’t quite live up to his billing.

Or his price tag.

The 2006 offseason has become the best example for opponents of the posting system, used to acquire Japanese players still under contract with a professional team in their homeland.  If the Japanese team agrees to make the player available, MLB teams can submit a blind bid for the rights to negotiate with the player.  

While football fans are accustomed to outlandish transfer fees, they don’t play a part in baseball (or other major North American sports) and the $51,111,111.11 posting fee that Boston paid to the Seibu Lions was genuinely shocking.  Barely two weeks later, the Yankees responded to missing out on Matsuzaka by winning the rights to Kei Igawa with a $26,000,194 posting fee.  Matsuzaka received a six-year, $52m contract; Igawa a five-year, $20m contract.

The Red Sox could at least comfort themselves with the fact that their dip into the Japanese market wasn’t the complete, abject failure that the Yankees experienced with Igawa, but they didn’t receive a great return on their $100m+ commitment in Matsuzaka and it may make teams think twice before investing so heavily in Japanese pitchers again. 

I can’t help but feel that the A’s dodged a bullet by failing to agree a contract with pitcher Hisashi Iwakuma after bidding $19.1m for him over the offseason.

Seeing-eye singles

Since we’re on the A’s, their fourteenth inning loss to the Red Sox on Saturday was a tough one to sit through.  They seemed dead and buried heading into the top of the ninth trailing 8-4, but managed to send the game to extra innings after catcher Jason Varitek and closer Jonathan Papelbon lost their cool and got ejected due to arguing with the home plate umpire (who didn’t seem to have done a whole lot wrong with his balls-strikes calls).  To have fought back so well, and to have taken the lead in the eleventh inning, made the final loss all the harder to take.

SNY broadcaster Ron Darling made a classic comment during the Pirates-Mets game on Thursday.  He described a pitch by Mike Pelfrey to Andrew McCutchen as a “please hit me” pitch.  Unfortunately for Pelfrey, Darling had barely finished making the comment during a replay when Neil Walker took a 1-0 sinker into the right-centre field seats.

The Giants’ General Manager Brian Sabean has every right to be upset at losing Buster Posey for the season, but his comments about Scott Cousins (“if I never hear from Cousins again, or he doesn’t play another day in the big leagues, I think we’ll all be happy”) were completely uncalled for.  The fact that Cousins has been receiving death threats from some idiots made the way Sabean needlessly stoked the flames of controversy all the more disappointing. 

Note that Johnny Bench, who knows a thing or two about catching, made the point that Posey got himself into a “bad position” on the play.  As stated in this column last week, there are ways for the catcher to protect himself on that sort of play.  Again, that’s not to ‘blame’ Posey, but it does have an impact on the argument as to whether the rules should be changed as a result of his injury.