Veteran Athletics outfielder Coco Crisp says that he believes the team is artificially holding down his playing time to prevent his option from vesting, Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle reports. Crisp says that he’s “extremely hurt” by the team’s “shady” handling of the situation. While GM David Forst and manager Bob Melvin have stated that Crisp is sitting against lefties to afford younger players more exposure, he sees more to it — particularly since he is not being used much off the bench. Crisp’s $13MM option vests at 130 games played; entering today’s action, he had appeared in 93 contests, meaning he’d need to take the field for most of the club’s remaining 43 games to reach the threshold. “I’m healthy, I’m playing hard and this has surprised me,” said Crisp, who noted that he has loved playing in Oakland. “This calls their integrity into question, it’s very sad.” The 36-year-old, who owns a .239/.307/.410 slash on the year, indicated that he may not be interested in playing after this season, adding: “The business side sure makes it hard to love the game, and I’ve loved the game since I was six years old.”
Here’s more from out west:
- The Padres seemingly intend to give just-acquired infielder Luis Sardinas a good run late this year, as Dennis Lin of the San Diego Union-Tribune tweets. Though he hasn’t hit much at Triple-A or the majors thus far in 2016, Sardinas has a solid pedigree — as club GM A.J. Preller well knows having signed him as an amateur. “I don’t think we [acquired] him to relegate him to Triple-A the rest of the year,” said manager Andy Green.
- One Padres player who has thrived upon receiving an opportunity is 26-year-old outfielder Alex Dickerson, who entered the day with a .280/.319/.528 slash and seven home runs over 135 plate appearances. Lin writes that there’s more concern over Dickerson’s glove than his bat, though Green also suggests he has been better than the defensive metrics might suggest. Still, the exciting element of Dickerson’s game is his work on offense. “The way he sees the ball, his plate discipline, he’s a guy that could easily have a 10 percent walk rate to go along with the way he hits, the power numbers he puts up,” said Green. “I’m very pleased with what he’s shown early in his major league career and have every expectation he’ll keep improving.”
- It was reported recently that Major League Baseball is looking into the Padres’ provision of medical information in a pair of recent trades. The initial review, at least, is expected to wrap up this week, Lin tweets. It remains largely unclear whether there’s any possibility of punitive measures being taken against the team, or whether the review is focused more on arriving at a standard approach to swapping health documents for all teams.
- Mariners lefty James Paxton has been scratched from his next scheduled start, as Bob Dutton of the Tacoma News Tribune reports, and could be headed to the DL. Though Paxton wants to pitch, and the team no doubt wants to give him the ball, manager Scott Servais says that the prudent course is further rest. Forearm soreness is almost always scary, but in this case it resulted not from a throwing injury but a line drive. Regardless, Seattle will hope to get the southpaw back in action as soon as reasonably possible. The 27-year-old appears to be harnessing his talent at an opportune time for a Mariners team that is trying to make a run at a Wild Card, if not the AL West title. Over his 81 2/3 innings on the year, Paxton owns a 3.53 ERA with 8.0 K/9 against 2.0 BB/9, and he has been even better of late.
