SI.com’s Jon Heyman spoke to Rockies GM Dan O’Dowd, who now says a trade of Matt Holliday or Brian Fuentes is "highly unlikely." He talked to multiple teams about both players, but hasn’t found a match. Holliday could instead be shopped in the offseason.
The Rockies are in buying mode, hoping to land a back-end starter. Heyman mentions Josh Fogg and Paul Byrd. We’ve also seen Justin Duchscherer and Bronson Arroyo named in reports.
Jayson Stark brings us a few more tidbits from the Hot Stove…
Cork Gaines writes for RaysIndex.com and can be reached here.
Yahoo’s Tim Brown posted a new column this evening.
The Indians are currently in fourth place in the AL Central, 8.5 games out. Baseball Prospectus’ projections suggest their playoff chances are less than 3%. Many key players are injured. That’s enough for Terry Pluto – he says we should stick a fork in the Tribe.
Random items for today…
ESPN’s Peter Gammons names ten starting pitchers who could be available in the coming months. We’ll try to devise a comprehensive list when we get to the position in our Trade Market series.
Gammons’ trade possibilities: Paul Byrd, Jeremy Sowers, Derek Lowe, Rich Harden, Odalis Perez, Brett Tomko, Jarrod Washburn, Zach Duke, Vicente Padilla, and Kevin Millwood. Byrd, Lowe, Perez, and Tomko will be free agents after the season. Sowers and Duke are the kids. Harden is the oft-injured ace. Washburn, Padilla, and Millwood bring burdensome contracts.
Gammons also five "unlikely, but not impossible" scenarios. He suggests A.J. Burnett, Bartolo Colon, Joe Blanton, Greg Maddux, and Ben Sheets could be moved under the right circumstances.
The Padres stuff got its own post; let’s see what else Ken Rosenthal has for us today.
Ken Rosenthal has some items worth discussing in his latest Full Count video:
By Nat Boyle
Mark Shapiro and the Indians had three option decisions to make, and today the team exercised all of them. All of these were pretty much expected to be exercised.
So, $13.5MM for the trio of pitchers. Seems reasonable. Of course there’s the HGH stigma with Byrd. But as a baseball decision, it’s fair to expect him to pitch like a back-rotation guy worthy of a one-year, $7.75MM deal.
A week ago, Paul Byrd’s $8MM option for 2008 seemed like a no-brainer for the Tribe. He kept his ERA under 5.00, made 31 starts, and won 15 games. $8MM on a low-risk one-year deal would’ve been an easy decision even for the cost-conscious Indians.
But now we’ve got a little HGH controversy on our hands. Ken Rosenthal discusses the situation over at FOX Sports. Rosenthal is correct in that Byrd never acted like someone who had something to hide. He didn’t disguise his purchase of HGH in any way (though MLB didn’t agree with his contention that they’d been informed). Byrd even brings up HGH in his upcoming book, mentioning that he resisted the urge to take more than the prescribed dosage. On the other hand, even at the recommended dosage Byrd was "able to recover quicker from pitching." At what point do we call this cheating? Is Byrd getting generous treatment because he’s a devout white guy?
As Mark Shapiro says, he doesn’t have all the information yet. Nor does the public, of course. Honestly if the HGH situation somehow causes the Indians to decline the option, Byrd stands to make more money on the open market.
