Carlos Delgado opened the year slow, but in case you haven't noticed, he's been raking the ball lately. Before the All-Star break, Delgado hit just .248 with a .748 OPS. Ever since then, he's been hitting .286 with a .972 OPS. Does his revival have something to do with Jerry Manuel replacing Willie Randolph? John Harper of the New York Daily News and Mets assistant GM Tony Bernazard seem to think so:

No player seemingly has benefited more from change than Delgado. His return to form as a feared slugger, after looking ready for retirement early in the season, already had been so remarkable you couldn't help but wonder if he was somehow lacking motivation under Randolph.

[...] "Delgado is such a student of the game," said Bernazard. "If you're running a good game, he knows. When you're running a bad game, he knows."

It's an interesting theory, I suppose, and hey, everybody is entitled to an opinion. But is Delgado's resurgence even that surprising? Part of the reason his early struggles were magnified was because of his strong finish last year. When you look at the numbers, Delgado has consistently improved his OPS after the All-Star break each of the last five years. With few exceptions, it's a trend that's existed his entire career.

To ignore that trend and instead attribute Delgado's current success to Randolph's absence is both mean-spirited and ignorant. If the two developments are at all related, it's the opposite that's true: Randolph is no longer around because Delgado wasn't hitting.

It's true, it's true: The Florida Marlins, long the victims of bad baseball (except when they win the World Series) and even worse stadium accomodations, do not provide a draw to fans in beautiful Miami, Florida. But rarely are the fans so noticeably absent as they were last night. From the Orlando Sun-Sentinel:

That's what reliever Joe Nelson and two other Marlins' players, whose identities he loyally protected, did before the opening pitch of Florida's 5-3 win against the Atlanta Braves. Each picked a section of Dolphin Stadium and scanned for fans. Nelson guessed 418. The official count came up with 584 fans, five fewer than the media accounted for.

"You guys might have had a better view," Nelson said, referring to the smallest crowd at Dolphin Stadium since 375 came out last Sept. 13. "We had a few friendly jokes about how many people would be here. It was actually higher than I anticipated."

584 fans. Terrible. Sarah Palin had more family members in the XCel Center last night, though, granted, some of them were unpaid. (Politcal humor!)

Beyond the park and the baseball, though, I suppose I can see why baseball fans don't necessarily dedicate themselves to nine innings at the ol' ballfarm. The fact that Miami Beach is so very close nearby would be my first. In the north, baseball is a celebration of the fact that you can merely sit outdoors for more than three minutes. In Miami, the distinctions aren't quite the same.

Adam Eaton, he of the three year $24.5 million contract, was recently made a September callup after being sent to the minor leagues in late July. If that didn't make it painfully obvious that maybe that Eaton contract was a mistake, then I don't know what will.

Oh, maybe this will:

"You go back and you look at it, and you kind of evaluate how you may have screwed up," Gillick said of signing Eaton to a three-year, $24.5 million free-agent contract before the 2007 season. "I don't think Adam is happy with what has gone on. Certainly, we thought he'd pitch better. But you kind of have to forget about it and move on."

I'm sure a lot of Phillie fans have already gone back and evaluated how Pat Gillick may have screwed up, and would have gladly helped him come to this realization much earlier.

Moving on while Eaton has another year to go on that contract might be tough, but at least I give Gillick credit for not waiting until Eaton was out the door to admit it might have been a mistake. Besides, signing him hasn't really hurt on the field, as the Phillies were the division champs last season ... and you can't blame Eaton for the playoffs, he didn't even pitch.

Arm bash: Phillies Nation

He's 40 years old, and hasn't hit a home run in a month. But in the NL East, where the margin between first and second is razor thin, Matt Stairs qualifies as an upgrade. And it's the Philadelphia Phillies that have snagged him for the stretch drive, acquiring him from the Blue Jays for an unidentified minor leaguer.

Stairs is what he is ... a .250 hitter who also happens to be a career .250 hitter in the month of September. He'll most likely play some outfield in place of the disabled Geoff Jenkins, but I'd be willing to bet that most of Stairs' appearances will be coming off the bench to get some big hits for the Phils'.

I wonder if the Phils are done dealing ... as their problems lately have come from the bullpen in the eighth inning. In the last two weeks, they've blown five games where they've had leads in the eighth, with Chad Durbin and Ryan Madson being multiple offenders (they combined to blow a 4-1 lead Thursday night against the Cubs in the eighth.) Wild guess, but could Huston Street be far behind?

It shouldn't have been a surprise to see the Braves ship Mark Kotsay to the Red Sox for a low-level prospect -- Kotsay will be a free agent this winter, the Braves are 17 games under .500 and haven't been in the playoff race since, well, April.

But even if there's nothing left to play for this year, at least Braves fans will get to watch some of their top prospects get a cup of coffee in September, right? Perhaps a sneak peek of Jordan Schafer, who could be the starting center fielder in 2009? Umm, not quite. From David O'Brien of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

So will we see Schafer in September? No. In fact, Wren said we won't see any of the Braves' top young prospects in September, including the pitchers like Tommy Hanson and Kris Medlen.

He said the reasoning was two-fold: 1. The Braves want to monitor innings on those guys, including Medlen, who's starting on a regular basis for the first time since high school, and 2. "roster management."

In other words, to add any of them, including Schafer, to the 40-man roster now would require the Braves take someone off and possibly lose them in the Rule 5 Draft.

I get the reasoning, but c'mon, throw the fans a bone. The Braves have three of their last 16 games -- it's going to take a little more than $1 Hot Dog Night and pretty girls wielding a t-shirt gun to convince anyone it's worth buying a ticket the final month.

This morning, Ken Rosenthal reported that Mark Kotsay had cleared waivers and was drawing trade interest from the Red Sox and Phillies. This evening, Kotsay was a late scratch from Atlanta's lineup. Coincidence? Not according to David O'Brien of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

Center fielder Mark Kotsay was a late scratch from the Braves' lineup Tuesday, fueling speculation he would be traded before the end of the night to the Boston Red Sox.

A person familiar with the situation said the Braves were close enough to a trade that they didn't want to risk Kotsay getting hurt playing on the rain-soaked surface at Turner Field.

The Red Sox have both a spot on their roster and in their lineup for the taking after finally putting J.D. Drew on the disabled list. Drew was recently diagnosed with a herniated disc in his back and hasn't played since August 17th. Kotsay, ironically, missed five weeks earlier this season with a bulging disc himself, but he's healthy right now, and considering he'll be a free agent in just a few short months, that's really all that matters.

Kotsay doesn't have nearly as powerful a bat as Drew, but he's certainly an improvement over Coco Crisp, the slap-hitting fourth outfielder pressed into duty by Drew's injury. Since the All-Star break, Kotsay has posted a .820 OPS; Crisp, just .686.

Update: According to Y!'s Gordon Edes, the deal is done pending a physical.

The Nationals are bad. The 46-85 record gives that away. They're also poorly run, as evidenced by the Jim Bowden scandal and their inability to sign their first round pick. The biggest worry for the Nationals right now has to be that their problems go even deeper than that. Recently Arbitron released their latest ratings for baseball radio broadcasts and the Nats' numbers were so low that they didn't even properly register on the charts. From the Washington Post:

The team's broadcasts on the station formerly known as WWWT (107.7 FM and 1500 AM) attracted a cumulative weekly audience of about 26,500 from May through July, the most recent period measured by Arbitron.

[...]

It could be worse -- and probably is.

Arbitron's figures are estimates based on a sample of listeners; as the share of these listeners falls to smaller and smaller fractions, the reliability of the estimates declines as well. Farley concedes that the actual radio audience for the Nationals is "probably lower" than the average reported by Arbitron.

For comparison, the article gives the Mariners numbers at about 133,000 a week, or five times the ratings of the Nats. Meanwhile, the Nationals are 13th out of 16 teams in National League attendance and are averaging less than 30,000 fans a game, despite opening their new park this year. Even the Pirates topped 30,000 a game when PNC Park opened in 2001. Can anyone remember how moving to Washington was supposed to save this franchise from obscurity?

Somehow, only five weeks remain in the baseball season. Other than injuries, a contending team's schedule might be the biggest factor in determining which teams get a shot at postseason glory and which spend October on the golf course.

The following is a quick breakdown of what the NL teams still fighting for a playoff spot will face over the season's final weeks.

Brewers

The Good: There are plenty of bottom-feeding clubs left on Milwaukee's schedule. The Brewers will play six against the Pirates and Reds as well as four against the Padres down the stretch. In all, 16 of their final 31 games will be against sub-.500 competition. In addition, they only face the Cardinals -- the team chasing them in the wild-card race -- two more times.

The Bad: The Brew Crew still have six games left against the Cubs, including a three-game set to finish the season. Milwaukee might want to lock up the wild card before that final series.

Key Stretch: From Sept. 11-21, Milwaukee will embark on its final road trip of the season. The Brewers will head to Philadelphia for four games and then Wrigley Field for three before ending the trip in Cincinnati. They'll have a chance to catch the Cubs over the final 2 1/2 weeks of the season, but if they take care of business, the NL Central title should be a point of pride more than anything else.

Mr. Met has apparently taken Jerry Manuel's "gangster" rep a little bit too far, as he is seen here giving the throat slash gesture to a young Yankee fan in the stands. Considering how big Mr. Met's head is, that's a lot of throat to slash.

Ken Griffey Jr. demands an apology.

Dan Uggla has struggled during the second half of the season. Since the infamous All-Star game where Uggla struck out three times and made three errors, Uggla has been awful, sporting a line of .189/.298/.336. The All-Star game may or may not have led to Uggla's struggles, but Uggla's struggles have led to him being benched on Sunday by Fredi Gonzalez.

"Some guys go through rough spots in the season," Gonzalez said. "He's going through one now. He's a big part of our offense."

"We need him to get back on track if we're going to win," Marlins outfielder Luis Gonzalez said. "He's huge for us."

Uggla says he has no explanation for his struggles. He scoffs at the amateur psychologists' belief that his performance in the All-Star Game - three strikeouts and three errors - plays a factor.

"That was over as soon as the game was over," he said.

But that hasn't stopped opposing fans from taunting him ... especially one group that's been particularly scorned by Marlins in the past.