On Deck is FanHouse's look at the day's most intriguing baseball matchups.

Oakland Athletics (23-19) at Atlanta Braves (20-20) - 7:10 PM ET

It's probably safe to say that out of the former "Big Three" in Oakland, Tim Hudson has been the most successful of the bunch since leaving the nest after the 2004 season. Four seasons later, Hudson faces his former club for the first time (the two teams played a three game set in '05 but Hudson did not make an appearance). A lot of Hudson's old teammates from his last season in Oakland are gone, but his mound opponent for today, Rich Harden, is still around. And Harden was hoping he'd match up against him. Harden is probably also hoping that he makes it through the game intact.

Yesterday, we learned that Ken Griffey paid off his debt to Josh Fogg in American pennies. Maybe Griffey lost a bet. "Hey, Ken! I bet you won't lug $1500 in pennies into my locker to pay off a bet (the one I am currently proposing to you right now)!" That's right. A nested, self-swallowing bet.

Sorry, didn't mean to make your head explode.

On the bright side, your face might be on a penny someday!

Okay, I'm done. Today's Dugout is after the jump.

Paying back debts is never fun. Oh, so what -- so I borrowed like $30 from you that one night when I left my wallet at home and needed to buy a mojito and a cab ride for that one ugly girl at the bar. One time! You can't cut a guy a little slack?! You know I'm good for it! Ken Griffey, Jr. feels this pain. Screw actually paying someone back -- pay them back in pennies, ensuring they'll never use that money for anything ever again (via SbB):

Pitcher Josh Fogg arrived at his locker Wednesday to find it stacked with 60 boxes of pennies, 2,500 pennies to a box. He immediately looked at Griffey and said, "That's good, Griff, real funny. Kick me when I'm down." Griffey warned him but Fogg didn't believe it when Griffey said he was going to pay off a $1,500 debt in pennies. "I'm a man of my word," said Griffey. "When you owe a man $1,500, you pay him. You can't do a whole lot with pennies, can you? Just think, each box weighs 16 pounds so Fogg has 60 bowling balls in his locker."

For the record, Josh Fogg will make $1 million this year, only $400,000 of which is guaranteed. Griffey will make $12.5 million. I'm all for pranks, Griff, but sheesh: Fogg might actually need that money. Not cool, brah.

If you are in a single season fantasy league, there is absolutely zero reason you should not be trying to sell high on Edinson Volquez right now. Okay, actually, there are actually a few reasons why you don't want to move him. His sparkling ERA (1.12), coupled with his six wins (tied for second in the bigs) and 57 K's in 48 innings have made him a valuable fantasy commodity.

But, as is often the case, things are not all that they seem. Reality tells us that there are several factors working against Volquez' current success, and that makes him a superb sell high option.

First, his stats. A 1.12 ERA and a 10.61 K/9 ratio are wonderful. But there are some other mitigating factors to those numbers. His WHIP (1.26) is actually higher than his ERA. That's not obscenely shocking, but it does indicate some luck. As does his ERA when compared to his 4.84 BB/9.

Both of those numbers tell us that he is frequently allowing baserunners, but not letting them score. And that checks out perfectly with his 90.8 strand rate, 20% above the big league norm. In other words, some of these guys getting on base are going to start scoring more frequently.

Given that the Reds are in last place in the NL Central and they've fired their GM already this year, it's safe to infer that they're not off to a great start. One of the few bright spots for them this year has been shortstop Jeff Keppinger. After a solid end of the year last year, he's mostly kept up the pace into 2008, hitting .320/.365/.442 coming into tonight's game. Unfortunately, he fouled a pitch off his kneecap tonight and broke it. That's right ... broke his kneecap. Ouch.

Tonight the Reds replaced him with Jerry Hairston Jr. and unfortunately, he's probably the long-term answer for the Reds at that spot as well. In fact, he's going for an MRI tomorrow, so we probably won't know what the Reds are planning until they know just what the extent of the injury is. Generally, though, the prognosis for a broken kneecap is pretty grim.

What should the Reds do assuming Keppinger is out for a considerable amount of time? Shift Hairston to short, call Jay Bruce up, and move Corey Patterson to the bench. Actually, they should've done that before Keppinger got hurt. And they should probably find a better shortstop then Hairston, while they're at it. And Adam Dunn and Ken Griffey Jr. should put their houses on the market, because if the Reds' season wasn't shot before tonight, it sure is now.

On Deck is FanHouse's look at the day's most intriguing baseball matchups

Texas Rangers (19-21) vs. Seattle Mariners (15-25) - 8:05PM Est.

Let's start today's On Deck by taking a trip in the FanHouse Time Machine. We're going to go all the way back to May 8th, 2008. The world was a different place back then. Ok, so the world was really any different as all, as it was just five days ago, but it was sort of exciting!

That was the day when Richie Sexson threw his helmet and charged Kason Gabbard after taking exception to a pitch. Sexson thought that Gabbard's eye-high fastball was meant for his face even though it was over the heart of the plate, and he took umbrage. Of course, had Felix Hernandez not plunked Ian Kinsler earlier in the game after Kinsler homered, none of this would have happened.

Now, here we are five days later, and Gabbard and Hernandez are set to face each other one more time. Will we have an encore?

Remember that talk last week about how Ken Griffey Jr. expects to be traded and wouldn't mind eventually returning to Seattle? Turns out the Mariners might be looking to make it happen. John Hickey of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reveals the following on his blog:

Reports out of New York say that Duane Shaffer, in his first season as a special assistant to Seattle general manager Bill Bavasi, was in Shea Stadium Sunday to have a look at Griffey.

The Mariners need two things - someone to get the fans' interest revved up after a horrid start to the season and someone to provide some power to a lineup devoid of many run-producers.

As Hickey points out, Griffey has 10-5 rights, meaning he's allowed to veto any trade. But if the Mariners agree to move Raul Ibanez to DH and put Griffey in the outfield, there's a good chance that Griffey would approve the trade. Plus, while most of the majors seems to be ignoring Griffey's march to 600 home runs, nobody could better appreciate the milestone than the fans in Seattle, many of whom watched him hit most of those dingers before being traded to Cincinnati.

On Deck is FanHouse's look at the day's most intriguing matchups

Cincinnati Reds (15-23) vs. Florida Marlins (23-14) 7:10PM Est.

Quick, without looking it up, who has the best record in baseball right now? Did you say the Diamondbacks? Close, you were right up until yesterday, but getting swept by the Cubs knocked them off the top of the mountain. The Red Sox? Good choice, they are the defending champs after all, but even though they have the best record in the American League, they aren't the best in baseball.

No, that honor somehow belongs to the Florida Marlins, who have managed to win their last 7 games and are currently an MLB-best 23-14.

Just what the hell is going on here?

It's one of those things that you don't often see in baseball, but the Reds attempted the old "batting out of turn" trick in their game against the Mets this afternoon. The mistake came from, as these things usually do, out of players being confused after a late game double switch. In this case, David Ross led off the bottom of the ninth with a fly out to right field. But there was one problem, Corey Patterson was due up lead off in the ninth, with Ross batting behind him. So Mets manager Willie Randolph informed the umpires of the mistake, which meant that the out was charged to Patterson, and Ross had to bat again, this time in his correct spot. Ross then singled.

Reds manager Dusty Baker said the batting order was correct on the dugout board and on his scorecard.

"The guys hit out of order, and it's my job to catch that," Baker said. "So I take full responsibility."

Baker said his only other experience with a team batting out of order came when he was a player and he was the one who hit when he wasn't supposed to. When he came up the second time, he hit a three-run homer.

That indeed happened to Baker, as you can see in this boxscore. But Dusty obviously has a short memory, because Baker was actually involved in two other incidents as a manager. Dusty probably doesn't remember the first one, because nobody called him out on it when it happened back in 1998 between Rich Aurilia and Joe Carter. But when Dusty was managing the Cubs back in 2004, there was a pretty intense incident regarding batting out of turn. And oddly enough, it happened against the Reds:

On Deck is FanHouse's look at the day's most intriguing baseball matchups.

Cincinnati Reds (14-21) at New York Mets (17-15) - 1:10 PM ET and 7:30 PM ET

Yesterday, we brought you the news that the Mets might be re-evaluating Willie Randolph's job status very closely over the next month. Well let the re-evaluating start today, with a doubleheader against the Cincinnati Reds. The Mets just came from a road trip against N.L. West powerhouses Arizona and Los Angeles and broke even on the six game trip. That's impressive. But the Mets under Randolph have historically been the type of team that could break even or better against the good teams on the road, then turn around to a seemingly easier homestand and do no better than break even there too. The Mets now have seven at home against the Reds and Nationals starting today, and anything less than five wins will more than likely turn the heat up on Randolph ... especially going into the series against the Yankees immediately following, where everything is magnified to the hilt anyway. So let the Willie Watch begin.