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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.

The National League shapes up a lot differently today than it did yesterday. Burly Indians left-hander CC Sabathia, none other than the reigning AL Cy Young Award winner, will make his first start for the Brewers tonight.

As difference-makers go, Sabathia is virtually impossible to top. Milwaukee's NL rivals simply can't do any better than the southpaw. Here are the gruesome details for the Cubs, Cardinals, Mets, Phillies and Marlins: On April 16, Sabathia's ERA was 13.50, since then he's made 14 starts, posting a 2.16 ERA and getting through the sixth inning in every single turn.

And of course, he's moving to the weaker National League and moving to a team where he won't be expected to be a savior - not with Ben Sheets and Manny Parra already in the rotation.

Milwaukee still has some work to do. As of Tuesday morning, the Brewers sit four games back of the Cubs in the standings and a 1/2 game behind the Cardinals, but Sabathia is replacing Jeff Suppan and his 4.71 ERA in the rotation. The expectation here is that they'll be able to make up that ground just by placing him in the rotation for the second half.

So the question for the Brewers' National League rivals becomes how to react to Milwaukee's coup. The answer is simple: concentrate on what you can control, and forget trying to better Brewers GM Doug Melvin.

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."

The Indians traded CC Sabathia to the Brewers in part because they're convinced that he's determined to add an extra comma digit to his contract this winter (he turned down a $72 million extension in January in hopes of finding something in excess of $100 million). Before being officially introduced to Milwaukee's media on Monday, though, there was a different bit of punctuation on Sabathia's mind:

From here on out, Carsten Charles Sabathia is just "CC" Sabathia - not "C.C."

After holding a news conference Monday to announce they'd made a trade to acquire the reigning AL Cy Young award winner from Cleveland, a member of the Brewers public relations staff advised media members that Sabathia prefers to have his initials written without periods.

And you thought the perks of being a big leaguer stopped at fancy cars and groupies. No sir, once you make it to The Show, the rules of grammar literally no longer apply. I suppose this explains why so many athletes like to speak in the third person ...

Just in case you're curious (and if you're still reading, I'm sure it was in the back of your mind), the team did make sure to clarify that J.J. Hardy would be holding onto his periods for the time being. It's nice to know you can rely on something in these crazy times.

The Brewers apparently don't feel content walking down the Cubs in regular fashion (they are only 3 1/2 games back) and have instead decided, according to Tom Haudricourt's Brewers Blog at the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, to trade for C.C. Sabathia.

I just was told by a reliable club source that the Brewers have a deal in place with Cleveland for left-hander C.C. Sabathia, contingent on the paperwork being done and medical records exchanged.

But believe me, folks, that's a deal. All that other stuff is formality.

All I know so far is that top prospect Matt LaPorta is in the deal. I was told two lower-level minor leaguers also are included. The Brewers refused to include another top prospect such as Alcides Escobar or Mat Gamel.

Obviously this is huge news; Sabathia has been the primary name mentioned in all major trade talks over the past few months. Word had not-so-quietly leaked that the Indians were willing to concede this season in the AL Central and look to acquire young talent in exchange for the free agent to be. LaPorta fills that need as he ranks at the top of the Brewers farm system and could be an impact player in Cleveland in the near future. More details as the facts surrounding the trade get released.

The Yankees' worst fears were confirmed this afternoon following an MRI on Chien-Ming Wang's right foot. He's been diagnosed with a sprained Lisfranc tendon and a partially torn peroneal longus tendon and will be confined to a walking cast for the next six weeks.

Once the cast is removed, he'll still need at least another month throwing bullpen sessions and making minor league rehab stats to regain his conditioning, which means that the earliest he's expected to return is September. Not surprisingly, Wang's teammates aren't optimistic about being able to replace him. From George King III of the New York Post:

"Nothing against (Alex Rodriguez) and (Jorge) Posada but when you lose a front-line starter, that's a big deal," [Mike] Mussina said Sunday. "There are seven other guys in the lineup. When you lose your No. 1 starter, that's very hard. He is the ace."

How will the Yankees replace him? Apparently from within, if you believe Brian Cashman. From Peter Abraham of the LoHud Yankees blog:

"There is no trade market at the moment," he said. "I'm not optimistic that something can get done on that front. We have to try and plug this gap internally and that's not going to be easy."

I was born an Orioles fan, but fate and contextually affordable housing in the Bedford, Ohio area has made me an Indians fan. Pictured to the right is me with Slider, the Indians mascot, post dimensional jump.

The Indians don't use the Official Chatroom of Major League Baseball, so we don't feature them a lot. If you're a longtime reader you know about what's coming after the jump. If you don't, get ready to watch as I spend about a day and a half trying to narrow down all the crazy stuff that's happened to the Indians this winter into one online conversation without resorting to movie parody or epic mythological magicks battles.

You'll be seeing a lot more of the Indians this season. O-H, I-O (or whatever) after the jump.

It's quite possible that someday we'll look back at today as the day the Indians lost C.C. Sabathia. With pitchers and catchers reporting today, he's decided to table negotiations for an extension with the Indians. From a statement on his official website:

This off-season, through my representatives at Legacy Sports Group, I have discussed the possibility of a contract extension with the Cleveland Indians. At this time, we haven't been able to reach agreement. Now that the reporting date for spring training is here, it is time to put aside contract discussions so that I can focus all of my energies and attention on preparing for the upcoming season.

As my colleague Tom Fornelli pointed out this morning, Sabathia is already under enough pressure to live up to expectations following his Cy Young award-wining season last year. If he repeats that performance, the money will take care of itself -- most likely coming in the form of a huge offer from a team in a bigger market. It's not out of the question that Cleveland could retain him, but their window of opportunity to negotiate without other teams whispering offers in his ear has apparently closed.

A good point was made in the comments of my post about NLCS hyperbole; despite the fact that the Rockies and the D'Backs are probably the two best teams in the NL this year, most so-called experts didn't expect them to be good this year and so rather than actually trying to understand why they're good, they just spew gobbledegook about "hustle." That makes this AL version a bit harder because both the Sox and Indians were "supposed" to be good. Still, Tim McCarver will find a way.

Player: Dustin Pedroia
What you'll likely hear: "He just reminds me of David Eckstein so much with his big heart and the way he hustles and isn't afraid to get dirty and play the game right!"
The truth: You know how people invariably compare white athletes to other white athletes and black athletes to other black athletes? At best, it's a lazy way to do things. Now the trend has extended to short people. This year, in his rookie season, Pedroia hit .317/.380/.442. Eckstein has never topped one part of that stat line in his seven-year career. David Eckstein is short. Dustin Pedroia is good.

Player: Paul Byrd
What you'll likely hear: "He sure is a crafty pitcher and that makes him as tough to beat in these big games as anyone. Just look at game 4 of the division series when he finished the Yankees off."
The truth: Take a look at this line: 5 IP, 8 H, 2 BB, 2 K, 1 HR. Do you want anything to do with that in a playoff game? I don't. That's Paul Byrd's game 4 line with runs removed. The Indians won that game in spite of his start, not because of it. It kills me that of all the great ALDS performances the Indians had, somehow his is held out above the others despite the fact that it wasn't that impressive to start with and was mostly luck anyways.