FanHouse AaronBoone

Starting Five is our wrapup of the previous day's baseball action, with a quick nod to what is ahead.

You Oughta Know ...
That Colorado has cycled back to the top of the NL wild-card standings.

Troy Tulowitzki hit for the cycle Tuesday as the Rockies bashed the Cubs, 11-5. By taking three of four in the series, Colorado moved a game ahead of San Francisco.

According to STATS LLC, Tulowitzki joined John Valentin as the only players ever to hit for the cycle and turn an unassisted triple play.

Tulowitzki ended up 5-for-5 with a career-best seven RBI, and he nearly had a two-homer cycle but replay upheld a foul ball ruling.

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Left on Base is MLB FanHouse's link dump.

- David Weathers has been shipped to the Brewers for a player-to-be-named. It should help to shore up the Milwaukee bullpen, though it does nothing for the rotation -- which, outside of Yovani Gallardo, is pretty damn awful.

- Apparently David Eckstein is not too worried about winning anymore. The 34-year-old middle infielder, who already has two world series rings, had the chance to be traded to the Twins and turned it down. The Twins are hanging in the AL Central race for dear life, so it's not like the postseason was a given. Still, the Padres are far out of anything relevant and are one of the worst teams in baseball.

From the Windup is Matt Snyder's extended look at some aspect of America's pastime each Thursday.

With the non-waiver trade deadline looming just eight days away, it seemed like the perfect time to warn teams about the dangers of a deadline deal. There are plenty of good trades on the books. Then again, it's the swaps that blow up in the face of a team that seem to stick with us. That's nothing new. We know the famous, ill-fated John Smoltz and Jeff Bagwell deals, but for now let's look at recent history by ranking the 10 worst deadline deals of the 2000s.

Every Sunday, MLB FanHouse empties out its notebook in Baseball Brunch.

About eight years ago, the hardest part of Lee Banks' job as coach of a youth travel team based in southeast Virginia was picking a shortstop.

"It was a lot of fun," Banks recalled to FanHouse last week. "You just sat back and let 'em play and try not to mess it up."

Back then, the team (now known as the Tidewater Orioles) had on its roster B.J. Upton, David Wright, Ryan Zimmerman and Mark Reynolds.

Aaron Boone, who will always be remembered for one of the most dramatic homers in baseball history, now faces something more serious than a Tim Wakefield knuckleball: open-heart surgery.

At a news conference this morning, the Astros revealed that Boone, 36, needs his aortic valve replaced.

"It's not an emergency situation. I don't have to rush to the table. It is something I have to schedule this week but hopefully we'll get done in the near future.

"... Will I play baseball again? I don't know at this time."

Over the last few years the idea of Miguel Tejada moving from shortstop to third base has come up on a number of different occasions. As Tejada gets older teams fear that the 34-year-old -- who turns 35 in May -- Tejada will start to lose some of his range at short, and would be better off at third where it's more about reaction time than range.

The problem is that every time somebody's brought the idea up to Tejada, he's said no. Well, Miguel recently returned to Astros camp after the Dominican Republic was eliminated from the World Baseball Classic. He had been playing third base. It seems that Tejada may have discovered he liked playing third because now he's telling everybody he's totally cool with moving there if the team wants him to.

Fantasy baseball draft season is coming, so you best be prepared by delving through every major player on each team. Fantasy FanHouse is here to help with a quick once-over.

Meet the ...
Team who refuses to rebuild. Seriously, Drayton McLane, just keep holding out hope you can win the World Series and making your general managers deal every prospect you ever stumble across for the likes of Miguel Tejada and an overrated closer. It just keeps setting the franchise back years at a time. For now, they are solving a broken leg with a band-aid by winning 86 games and treading water.

Footprints in the Snow is FanHouse's look at the paths to be forged by MLB teams this winter as they look ahead to 2009.

You have to search pretty far and pretty wide these days to find a corner of Major League Baseball where there is virtually no hope. Parity is a reality. The Rays reign in the AL. There have been seven different champions in the last eight seasons and 23 different teams have qualified for the postseason since the beginning of the decade.

Heck, even Pirates fans have hope. Just ask Pat Lackey.

Enter the Washington Nationals, one of those few dark corners in the baseball world where it's hard to find anything to feel good about. They have a shiny new stadium in D.C., but it had one of the poorest first-year attendances of any ballpark in the post-Camden Yards era. The broadcast ratings haven't been much better either.

Of course, most of that trouble is related to the product on the field, and what an abysmal product it is. MLB's role as caretaker of the franchise during its last days in Montreal and its first days in Washington has buried it in a deep hole, and general manager Jim Bowden seems to have exacerbated the problem.

No matter what happens this winter, the Nationals have a long way to go.

In the Playoff Pulse series, our MLB editor takes on a hot October topic.

Baseball is a humbling game. Walk into any major league clubhouse and talk to anyone -- a manager, a superstar or a utility infielder -- long enough and they will all preach that message. It turns out baseball can even humble writers. Two days ago, I made the (very stupid) mistake of pronouncing the Red Sox finished in the ALCS.

Boston may not win this series. James Shields at Tropicana Field is a terrifying prospect for a team that can be eliminated with just one loss.

But I (and maybe the Rays too in the latter innings of Game 5) forgot the one thing that makes baseball so much better than all the other games out there. There is no running out the clock. There is no 30-second timeout or two-minute warning. There is no place to hide. You have to get 27 outs to beat a team. There's no way around it. The Rays were reminded of that in excruciating fashion Thursday night.

In the Playoff Pulse Series, our MLB editor takes on a hot October topic.

There's something fitting, or poetic, or maybe even perfect about Boston's season coming down to a start by Tim Wakefield. Putting your season in the hands of a knuckleball pitcher like Wakefield is a bit like betting a year's salary on black at the roulette table -- it's an awful lot to wage on just one thing, but the odds aren't all that bad.

Wakefield is unique -- the one true practicing knuckleballer with a regular gig in the major leagues right now. When he's on, you wish there were more pitchers around like him, but part of his success comes from the fact that he's a complete novelty. For all the talk about Jamie Moyer being a crafty, soft-tossing veteran, Wakefield has been around nearly as long as Moyer and he throws even softer.

He has arguably the best contract in baseball, a never-ending team option for $4 million a year. That's tremendous value for a back-of-the-rotation starting pitcher. Wakefield can be even more than that when the knuckler is fluttering in the wind. Of course, things can turn quickly on him if his signature pitch starts to rotate and flatten out. The 2003 ALCS is a perfect example -- ha baffled the Yankees in two starts and was on his way to being series MVP, and then Aaron Boone got a hold of one of the bad knuckleballs.