Posts tagged C.c.Sabathia at FanHouse

With the trade deadline coming up on us quickly, there's been plenty of talk surrounding a certain Blue Jays starting pitcher that may be available via trade this season. That pitcher is A.J. Burnett, who has the ability to opt out of his contract at season's end, and even if he doesn't the Jays aren't sure they really want to pay him the money still owed him on his current contract.

So they wouldn't mind trading him at all, and given the way he's talked in recent months, A.J. wouldn't mind it that much either. Of course, the Blue Jays have another pitcher on their staff who hasn't exactly been thrilled with the way things have gone in Toronto, and he's been letting management know about it too.

Which is why the Jays are calling teams to gauge their interest in 2003 Cy Young winner Roy Halladay.

The whispers just won't go away. Halladay is apparently unhappy in Toronto and has let management know it, and management has apparently responded by doing some quiet surveying of teams (such as St. Louis and the Dodgers) that are far, far away from the AL East in an effort to see what it could get for the 2003 Cy Young Award winner. Apparently, the returns other teams are getting for top-talent pitchers such as C.C. Sabathia, Rich Harden and Erik Bedard has inspired the Blue Jays to at least find out what it could get for one of the best pitchers in the American League. It remains unlikely that they'd deal him, but you never know.

I don't know if there's any way the Blue Jays would actually trade Halladay, but it could be a good way for J.P. Ricciardi to stick it to ownership. With John Gibbons being fired earlier this season in favor of Cito Gaston, and the Jays disappointing again, most believe that Ricciardi won't be the team's general manager next season.

Would there be a bigger "screw you" to the organization and fans than trading away the team's most important player before being fired?

With the Indians in full 2009 mode after trading CC Sabathia to the Brewers, there's a lot of speculation going around Cleveland about changes that will be made with the team. Some guys may have new addresses come August 1st, and players that are still on the team may have new roles.

One of the rumors going around is that shortstop Jhonny Peralta's days at shortstop may be numbered, and that the team is planning on moving him to third base in the future. It's a rumor Jhonny's manager Eric Wedge denies.

"He's our shortstop. I don't see us making any change anytime soon," Wedge said. "I see a guy who is doing everything he can to be the best he can be."

"As [first base coach]Luis [Rivera] has continued to get a better feel for the league and different players he's helped Jhonny better position himself. He's doing a better job of being in the right place at the right time. There is always going to be that ball that is just off the glove. But he's as good as anybody in the game, if not the best, at the routine play."

So Peralta is good defensively, but only if the ball is hit right at him? I understand Wedge wants to support his player (especially considering that player is hitting .341 with 5 homers and 20 RBI since moving to the cleanup spot), but a move to third base would make a lot of sense.

Now that the Brewers have added CC Sabathia to their starting rotation, they have a bit of an overflow in the starting rotation. When Jeff Suppan returns from the disabled list after the break, the Brewers will have six pitchers for five spots. Normally that would mean that either Dave Bush or Seth McLung would be the odd man out, and relegated to long relief out of the bullpen.

That is, if Ned Yost wasn't a visionary who plans on forever changing the game of baseball as we know it. Will the world be ready for it when Ned breaks out the platoon starting rotation after the break?

"I'm thinking seriously about matching up," Yost said. "You look at numbers and try to put each of them in a position that they can be successful. 'Bushie's' numbers are starkly different between home and road. McClung's better on the road: a (4.95) ERA at home compared to a (3.28) on the road."

In Yost's playing and coaching career, he has never come across anyone who has managed his rotation in such a manner.

"I think it makes sense," Yost said. "I'm not trying to reinvent the wheel. All I'm trying to do is give us the best chance to win every day. . . . I'm trying to do what's smart."

You know, during his time in Milwaukee, Yost has done quite a few things that have made me sit there and scratch my head (the latest incident would be sending Yovani Gallardo back out to the mound after a collision at first base). Still, the longer I sit and think about this platoon pitching situation, the more I like it.

If Yost goes through with this and it works out well for the Brewers, platooning your starters will be the new pitchers batting in the eighth spot in 2009.

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

So in the last 48 hours the Milwaukee Brewers have added CC Sabathia to their rotation, and the Chicago Cubs picked up Rich Harden to add to theirs. All the Phillies have managed to do in during that span was lose two games in the standings.

The Phillies have now lost four in a row, and unfortunately for them their losing streak directly coincides with a four-game win streak by the New York Mets. Now both the Mets and Marlins sit only a game and a half behind the Phillies. So the pressure is on the Phillies to add an arm of their own to the rotation.

If you look around the National League right now, things aren't set up too well for Philadelphia. The Brewers now have Ben Sheets and Sabathia. The Cubs have Harden, Carlos Zambrano, and Ryan Dempster. In Arizona the Diamondbacks feature Brandon Webb and Dan Haren at the top of their rotation, while in Los Angeles the Dodgers have a NL-best 3.70 ERA.

The Phillies have Cole Hamels and, um, Jamie Moyer? While the Phillies have the fifth best team ERA in the National League, Hamels is the only member of their rotation who has an ERA under 4.00. Their offense may be pretty dangerous, but once the playoffs start (if the Phillies get there) it's pitchers who dominate, and the Phillies just don't have enough of them.

So when will the Phillies make their move in the NL Arms Race?

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

It's been a week of change for Mr. CC Sabathia. Not only did he decide that former Cy Young Award winners don't need to subscribe to the rules of the english language and drop the periods from his initials, but tonight he'll also be taking a pitchers mound in a Brewers jersey for the first time.

Whether or not this move ends up in a playoff appearance for the Brewers this season, it was a move they had to make. After deciding to stand pat at the trade deadline last season--save for adding Scott Linebrink--the Brewers faded down the stretch before losing the division to the Chicago Cubs. To not make a move this season would have told the fans that while they don't mind winning in Milwaukee, it's really all about making a profit.

Now everybody knows that the Brewers only have on goal, and that's to win a championship.

Will CC be the man to help them get there? I'm not sure, but we'll start to find out tonight. Really, the only thing I'm truly interested in during tonight's game will be whether or not Sabathia can restrain himself from trying to eat any contestants in the sausage race.

Seeing as how CC (no more periods!) Sabathia grew up in California, when he becomes a free agent at the end of this season, odds are he's going to head out to the west coast to pitch somewhere. With that in mind, the Los Angeles Dodgers were interested in trading for Sabathia because they feel they'd have a good shot at re-signing him to a long term deal after the 2008 season.

They nearly had him too, but apparently team owner Frank McCourt just wasn't willing to pull the trigger on the move.

Shortly after the Milwaukee Brewers finalized a trade for reigning American League Cy Young Award winner CC Sabathia on Monday, the Daily News learned that sometime in the days leading up to that deal, Dodgers owner Frank McCourt nixed a trade that would have brought Sabathia to Los Angeles, along with Indians third baseman Casey Blake and utility man Jamey Carroll.

McCourt's reason was financial, according to multiple industry sources. But that is a charge McCourt flatly denied.

"It's just totally false," he said. "The players didn't match up, and that's just the way it was.

"Trades are complicated, and (the Indians) weren't just going to give us three players. They were asking for something in return. The point being that in this deal, the give and the get just didn't match up."

So now that the Brewers have traded for C.C. Sabathia, one has to wonder what move, if any, the Chicago Cubs are going to make to counter it. After all, a top of the rotation that features Ben Sheets and Sabathia is quite formidable, and the Brewers are currently constructed are more than capable of making up the 3.5 game gap between themselves and the top of the division.

So what are the Cubs going to do to answer Milwaukee's challenge? Word out of Chicago is that general manager Jim Hendry has been talking to Billy Beane a lot lately, and the topic of their conversation is not the weather, but rather what it would take to get Rich Harden in a Cubs uniform.

While this move would make a lot of sense for the Cubs if they could pull it off, I wouldn't exactly plan on seeing it happen anytime soon. First of all, Beane has showed us in his recent deals for Dan Haren and Nick Swisher that if you want one of his top players, you better have a truckload of prospects to send back his way. I'm not sure the Cubs have enough players who would qualify as somebody Beane would be interested in taking.

Then there's the fact that while Harden was on the block at the beginning of the season, that was because everybody expected the A's to suck this season, including Billy Beane. The fact that they're only six games out of first place right now will probably cause Beane to hold off on pulling the trigger on this deal. Though if Oakland falls out of it by the trading deadline, then all bets are off.

So now that the Cleveland Indians have shipped C.C. Sabathia off to Milwaukee, we can officially say that the Indians are done trying to win in 2008. The focus has now been moved to preparing this team for the 2009 season and trying to figure out which pieces fit into that picture, and which ones don't.

While none of us can see the future, there is something about this Indians team that most of us have known for quite a while, and that is the fact that Grady Sizemore will not be a lead-off hitter his entire career. When Grady first came up with the Indians, everybody knew he was destined to be a middle of the order type guy, but with the Indians monster lineup the last few seasons, there was no need to do it.

Well, it's time now. Grady has grown up and he's ready to be the guy the Indians build their lineup around. Travis Hafner's power and ability to make contact with the ball have magically* disappeared and there's no guarantee they'll ever come back, so there is an opening.

Eric Wedge is currently batting Ben Francisco third, and Jhonny Peralta in the clean-up spot (where Jhonny's been raking). Meanwhile, Sizemore has an OPS of .914 and leads the American League with 22 home runs, yet he only has 50 RBI. How can that be? Well, since Grady hits lead-off, 16 of his 22 taters have come with nobody on base.

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

I understand why Mets fans are upset with their team, after all, the sting of last season's collapse in the final weeks is still pretty fresh in their memories. Then there's the fact they have a $138 million payroll, and the team has been hovering around .500 during 2008. What I don't get is that when you talk to a Mets fan about the team, they talk about the team as if they're dead and buried.

You guys do realize you're only 3.5 games out of first place, don't you? There are still 74 games left in your season, which is plenty of time to make up such a small deficit. This is something you should be well aware of after watching the Phillies overcome a larger gap in an even shorter amount of time.

I know you're in third place at the moment, but I wouldn't expect the Marlins to stay where they are during the second half of the season with that bullpen and the inconsistency of their starting pitching. Trust me, if the Phillies are worrying about holding their lead over anybody, it's you guys. Not the Marlins.

With a win today, the Mets will have taken three of four from the division leaders this weekend, and be right back in the race. So cheer up, Mets fans, you kids are still in this thing!

As anyone that closely followed the Erik Bedard saga last winter knows, it can be a long way from "We've agreed on a deal in principle" to players actually switching teams. Things aren't going to take that long with this Brewers/Indians trade, though, because the Brewers have announced a press conference for noon (11 AM Central) and if they don't announce a C.C. Sabathia trade, then .... actually, don't worry about it. They're announcing the trade.

The other key today is that the trade has expanded from "Matt LaPorta and someone" to "Matt LaPorta, Zach Jackson, Rob Bryson, and someone that may or may not be Taylor Green." Jackson's not much, but Bryson's an extremely young reliever with some good numbers in the low minors and Green's a good-hitting, young third base prospect.

If Green is the fourth piece of the puzzle for the Indians, they managed to pull about as good of a haul from the Brewers system that they could ask for without getting Alcides Escobar or Mat Gamel. The Brewers, meanwhile, managed to pick up the best available starting pitcher by only giving up one blue chip prospect. It's pretty rare that a trade like this ends up as a win for both teams, but at least it's got a chance to shake out well for both the Brewers and Indians.