1621

Eh I think we do, and we still have a lot of pitching to give up, but sacrificing that for a 3-4 week stint while Cruz is injured for Berkman… I dunno man. It’s a serious gamble. I think they’re looking to stay internal for Cruz’s replacement for now… that’s my thinking. Any more big trades and the minors will start hurting for talent I think.

— Alan

1622

Apparently Cardinals’ GM John Mozeliak asked Lance Berkman point blank if he’d like to be traded to the Rangers, and Berkman told him to basically do what he thought was best for the club…“but if you’re planning on me being back here next year, don’t trade me.”

So that’s that. I’m told that for whatever reason Puma is NOT a Rangers fan.

1623

Off field drama:

The payroll manager from the Giants front office has been embezzling $1.5M of player salaries.

1624

So she probably wouldn’t have been caught if she didn’t attempt to buy another home in San Diego and forge a letter from the Giants HR manager. The only bright spot in this is, we’re not actually talking about the Giants who are now five games back and can’t win games against the NL cellar dwellers.

1625

So the Padres pitcher Stafford walks in three runs, bases are loaded and my third favorite player Ethier hits a grand slam. Started the inning with 0 runs and we are still batting and it’s 8-0. Can’t get better than that!!!

*Stafford is blaming the plate umpire, but he was not throwing strikes.

EDIT: They walked two more guys, but Jamie “I’m allergic to RBI’s” Carroll struck out.

1626

And the Giants have now just DFA’d Aaron Rowand and Miguel Tejada. They’ll be eating ~$14M left on Rowand’s contract and another $1M+ on Tejada’s. Wow. It needed to be done, but I didn’t think the Giants front office had it in them.

1627

A little too late at this point. Not to mention they still have Zito’s contract and $50 million or so left on it. What a waste that trade for Beltran is now, with their offense going so bad. I hope they make a run for Bourn in the offseason, they need a good solid leadoff hitter and somebody who won’t worry about hitting HRs at Pac Bell.

1628

The Mariners made the smart move and extended GM Jack Zdurencik today. While not everything he has done has worked out (notably the Figgins contract), he has significantly improved the farm system and there is some hope for the future. Making yet another GM change after three years would have been a mistake.

1629

Dodgers win 8 of the last 9, complete a sweep of the Padres, and a paltry 8,000 fans show up for the last game. Paid attendance was 27,767, so about 70% no-shows. Ouch!

1630

In official attendance terms the Dodgers are actually doing just fine. #10 overall. So I’m not sure what the impact is really going to be on them, at least until we see a huge drop in season ticket purchases for next year.

The attendance numbers are interesting. A couple of competitive teams are still sucking in terms of getting people to come out - Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and Arizona, for example.

1631

Cleveland’s problems are probably more economic than anything else. Northern Ohio is “rust belt” land and has been losing population for a while now. Furthermore, Cleveland is a 3 sport town, and recently the Cavaliers and the almost but not quite Browns have been garnering the attention and people’s limited money, especially after last year’s dismal Indians season.

In other Cleveland Indians news, the team wins in 16 innings against the Oakland A’s. The hero for the night was the surprise resurgent Jack Hannahan, who at 31 one has played on as many teams as he has years. Which is quite the accomplishment considering there are only 30 professional teams (I joke, though I think he has played for 5 clubs in 4 years). The Indians signed him as a back up in a year they didn’t expect to contend for just above the league minimum ($500,000). Injuries and poor performance from hot prospect Lonnie Chisenhaul saw him promoted on and off to the full time starter. Anyways, after the heart warming story of what the team did for him in his family’s time of need, he has been on a tear. Not only has he continued to be an elite defender at 3rd base, he has elevated his hitting. Last night he accounted for 3 of the teams RBIs, including two Home Runs (one off the foul poll) and the walk off single.

To honor the Celtic Hero of the Cuyahoga, mlb’s fan cave did thisstrange and funny tribute. While I don’t think Hannahan is ever going to be an above average hitter, its always nice to see unlikely heroes have their moments of glory.

PS, best thing about him is not his defense, or the fact its so easy to turn his name into MAN-ahhan, its that he talks with a Minnesotan accent.

1632

Under/Over .500 charts, updated for August:

The Phillies and Brewers were the stars of August, barreling towards what could be an interesting playoff series down the line. I have to admit, the way the Phillies have chewed through the regular season, I’ll be a little disappointed if they don’t at least make it to Game 7 of the NLCS.

The Braves look like they’re in pretty good shape for the NL wild card, so the only real race left in the NL looks like it’s in the West, where the DBacks gained 8 games on the Giants for a big division lead. I knew the Giants offense was bad, but I don’t think I quite realized how awful it was, where they’re apparently on pace to have their worst offensive season in over 100 years.

The AL isn’t quite as cut and dry, although the teams haven’t really changed. The Red Sox and Yankees continue to swap the AL top seed and wild card, and the Rangers continue to stay a few games ahead of the Angels. I think Detroit finally delivered the knockout blow in the Central, playing 8+ for the month as Cleveland continues to hover around .500.

On the other side of the fence, a lot of teams fell off the map this month. Pittsburgh’s fun season crashed and burned with an 8-22 August. Whatever life was left in Minnesota died with a 7-21 month. The Mets have a losing record again. Houston, however, at least won enough games this month to keep them out of the 110-loss club.

1633

McCourt offered 1.2B for team. It would get him out, but who the hell are these people?

The record sale price for a major league franchise is $845 million, set two years ago when the Ricketts family bought the Chicago Cubs from Tribune Co., publisher of The Times.

That deal included the team, Wrigley Field and a 25% stake in a cable sports channel. The Burke group proposes paying almost half again as much for the Dodgers, their stadium and a chance to start a cable sports channel or negotiate a new cable television contact.

Forbes magazine last March estimated the Dodgers’ value at $800 million. The team could be worth from $900 million to $1.1 billion, according to Marc Ganis, president of Sportscorp Ltd, a Chicago-based sports industry consulting firm.

1634

Cliff Lee just finished August with 5 wins and an ERA under 1 for the month. He also had 5 wins and an ERA under 1 in June. Apparently that makes him only the third dude in the past hundred years to do that twice in the same year. The other guys were a couple of no names, though. Bob Gibson and Walter Johnson. Lee’s also got a 22 inning scoreless streak going, which is his second longest of the season. Crazy stuff!

Of course, if this pattern keeps up he will have a less than stellar September but then be back in fine form for the playoffs. I could live with that. Man, that dude is fun to watch.

1635

The LATimes tried to figure that out. Based on the 2009 revenue numbers, the attendance drop is costing the team at least $27 million in total revenue - ticket sales, parking, and concessions. That’s pretty conservative though, because it is based only on the drop in paid attendance from 2010 to 2011 (~7900 seats a game), so they are assuming about 36,500 are actually showing up to each game.

I think the revenue loss is more like $45 to $50 million compared to last season. In 2009, the team had $282 million in revenue, and in 2010 they dropped to $265 million. At the half-way point this season, thanks to the bankruptcy we know they were at $120 million. That includes all the season ticket revenue though, and actual turnstile counts have dropped again after the All-Star break, so revenue is probably headed toward something in the $220 million range. TV ratings have been down as well (as of July, they were down 27%), so that may be another revenue hit. I don’t know whether Fox/KCAL take that hit or the Dodgers share the pain.

Maybe he’ll take the new $1.2 billion offer for the team from Bill Burke and the Chinese government.

1636

I totally missed it, but the Yankees finally called up Jesus Montero and have him in this lineup tonight as the DH. He’s 0-3, but got hit by a pitch and just scored the go-ahead run in the 7th inning of what’s been a pretty good game.

Edit: And Mo walks the leadoff hitter in the 9th, and gets a long, loud fly ball out from the potential tying run, so it’s back to the usual drama for Yanks/Sox, as Ellsbury comes to the plate with 2 out.

Edit 2: And now the Red Sox have the bases loaded for Adrian Gonzalez. Gaaaaaaah … .and he got him looking. Whew.

I think this was a big win for the Yankees. Not just to pull within a half game of first, but I think it’s good for their psyche to finally take a series from the Red Sox, and do it using the 7-8-9 combination of Soriano/Robertson/Mo to shut it down, which they’re going to need in the playoffs.

And it didn’t hurt that AJ Burnett, who again pitched just well enough to lose, trailing 2-1 with the bases loaded when he departed, at least didn’t blow up and kept the Yankees in the game through 5+.

1637

A few months ago, there was that story about how Josh Hamilton claimed his poor performance during day games this season was sight related, that he was having trouble seeing and hitting the ball and it was related to his having blue eyes. I’m sure some people thought that theory was a little cuckoo, but as someone with blue eyes, I know I’ve always been a little more light-sensitive than most, and can certainly understand how any extra glare might be a slight hinderance in an occupation where seeing the ball coming out of the picther’s hand is a huge deal.

For the last six weeks, Hamilton has been experimenting with tinted contacts for day games. During those games, he’s gone 11 for 26 (.423), compared to the .122 he was hitting in day games before he started wearing the contacts. And he just rocked a based-loaded triple off the Fenway wall to put the Rangers up 9-0 on the Red Sox. So maybe the contacts helped, or maybe it’s a coincidence, but he seems to have overcome his day-game slump, which I found kind of interesting.

1638

Man, what a bunch of dud pennant races. There are only two divisions out of six with a real race, and one of those is the Yankees and Red Sox with the loser getting the wild card.

The races for the wild card teams are also essentially decided. Either Yanks or Bosox in the AL and the Braves in the NL.

1639

I have to admit, as little as I like seeing playoffs for major sports get watered down with the addition of extra teams, there’s a part of me that would really like to see baseball adopt the system that’s been bounced around this year, where they’d add another wild card team in each league, and add a brief 1- or 3-game wild card round before starting the divisional series.

The intended result is that you’d not only keep more teams in the races longer, but in cases like the Yankees and Red Sox this year, you create a real desire to win the division, that you want no part of a short series against the Rays or Angels where anything can happen. The wild card, which right now simply means you get stuck on the road for a few extra games, would suddenly carry a serious penalty.

Of course, the flip side is the more teams you add to the playoffs, the better the chance that some team with 86 wins gets into the tourney and takes it all. So I won’t be majorly upset if they keep things as is for a while.

1640

Well if some 86 win team did take it all. They had to play through the short series while the other teams got a rest and then also beat the division winners so I wouldn’t mind it so much. By the end of the season there is generally only a 10 win difference between the top division winner and the wild card so it’s not like they’re putting in some sub .500 club.