FanHouse Adrian Gonzalez

The San Diego Padres have made no secret of the fact that they're going with a youth movement to try and rebuild their franchise. They've traded Jake Peavy for four young pitchers, and reportedly came close to moving first baseman Adrian Gonzalez at the trade deadline as well.

So, with that youth movement in mind, the Padres went out and announced on Saturday that they'd signed second baseman David Eckstein to a contract extension. Yes, he's 34 years old, but he looks like he's 13, so it's cool.

Randy Wolf was good on Sunday. Really good.

Let's start with his 7.2 innings of work on the mound. Wolf gave up three earned runs and five hits. But he struck out an amazing ten batters while walking none. And this isn't the first good outing for Wolf in a while. In fact, quite the opposite.

If you take out the four earned run game on August 6th against Atlanta, you have to go all the way back to June 24th to find another day where Wolf didn't provide the Dodgers with a quality start. Nine of his last ten outings have been quality starts and he's sporting a 3.13 ERA over that time. He only has four wins to show for it, but that sounds like a run support issue and not a dig on Wolf.

Poppin' out the box scores and right into your cubicle, the Roto Rush is your double espresso shot of fantasy baseball advice every weekday.

By all accounts, this has been a season to forget for Josh Hamilton. While it would have been hard to meet the expectations that come after a 32-HR, 130-RBI season (Hamilton's numbers in 2008), no one could have predicted a fall this precipitous.

After a .242, two-HR April, we called it a rough start. Hamilton followed that up with a .237 May and went on the shelf for a month. The struggling Texas outfielder entered the All-Star break hitting .243 with just six HRs on the season. By August 2, his average was down to .220.

And then, something finally clicked.

Poppin' out the box scores and right into your cubicle, the Roto Rush is your double espresso shot of fantasy baseball advice every weekday.

Mired in the middle of a quite reprehensible offense, Adrian Gonzalez had been struggling at the plate for quite a while. Sure, he was still hitting home runs and drawing walks, but his batting average from May 1 to August 9 was an atrocious .228 in 298 at-bats. He hadn't had a multiple hit game since July 29 and hadn't had more than two hits in a game since June 18.

Tuesday night, Gonzalez went 6-6, giving him more hits in one night than the rest of August combined.

According to Geoff Baker of the Seattle Times, there was a trade in the works which would have been the biggest deadline deal in recent memory. It was no secret the Red Sox were interested in Adrian Gonzalez, and there were some rumors circulating that they also coveted Felix Hernandez. They ended up trading for Victor Martinez, but that was -- according to Baker -- only because a three-team blockbuster deal was vetoed by Seattle Mariners general manager Jack Zduriencik.

The proposed deal? The Red Sox would have received King Felix by bringing in the Padres as a third team. The Mariners would have received Gonzalez, Clay Buchholz and two other prospects from the Red Sox. The Padres would have gotten back upwards of four top-notch prospects along with Brandon Morrow.

There have already been two massive blockbusters in the last week, but as the clock ticked toward the July 31 non-waiver trade deadline at 4 PM ET a few more went down.

Roy Halladay, Victor Martinez and Adrian Gonzalez were a few of the big names out there, and a number of smaller pieces were on the move. To relive the madness, as brought to you by the MLB FanHouse crew, read the chat wrap after the jump.

MLB Power Rankings: Where MLB FanHouse's editors, writers and bloggers team up to break down the who's who and the what's what in the baseball world.

The second half of the season is in full swing and lo and behold if capitalism hasn't reared it's ugly head once again. Billy Beane was spun off Matt Holliday (as expected of course) and the eleventy billion dollar payroll machine that is the New York Yankees are in first place in the AL East. (Of course, that can't explain why the Mets are horrible but that's a whole other thing.)

Will the Yankees' surge be enough to propel them into the critically important No. 1 slot of the FanHouse MLB Power Rankings? Find out after the jump.

Poppin' out the box scores and right into your cubicle, the Roto Rush is your double espresso shot of fantasy baseball advice every weekday.

Adam Kennedy: 5-for-7. Mark Ellis: 4-for-6. Orlando Cabrera, Kevin Youkilis, and J.D. Drew: 3-for-5 each. Six other players with two hits. Five more with a single hit. 35 in all, and nary a home run to be found. Boston's Clay Buchholz and Oakland's Vin Mazzaro each gave up nine hits in the game, and Boston was able to piece together five runs in the third to end up with a 6-2 lead after six innings. But as they say, that's when things got interesting.

Poppin' out the box scores and right into your cubicle, the Roto Rush is your double espresso shot of fantasy baseball advice every weekday.

Sure, he gave up a home run to Joey Votto on Sunday, but that's about all the Cincinnati Reds got facing the Cubs' Rich Harden.

For Harden this was his third consecutive start where he showed the potential of being a front-line ace. He struck out eight in only six innings and that home run was the only hit and only run he allowed the Reds in route to earning his seventh win.

Over his last three starts Harden has struck out 21 while walking only two batters in 19 innings. His ERA over this time is 0.47 and he has two wins to show for great pitching.

This is the first time in 2009 Harden has put together this kind of run. He's been able, on a number of occasions, to put two good starts together, but never three as he seems to get shelled every time he's about to take that next step towards becoming the solid number one guy the Cubs desperately need him to be.

With the San Diego Padres falling further and further out of contention with each passing day -- they're currently 23 games behind the Dodgers in the NL West -- it's clear that they will be sellers at the trade deadline this season. Everybody knows that they'd have loved to move Jake Peavy by now, and would have if not for his no-trade clause and ankle injury.

So now that they're facing the prospect of having to continue paying Peavy while maintaining a low payroll, there's been a lot of speculation that the team may consider moving its All-Star first baseman Adrian Gonzalez. It's talk that the Padres have rebuffed, but it seems that even Gonzalez himself thinks it may be the best thing for the Padres to do.