Posts tagged CarlosLee at FanHouse

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.

Everyone expected the Astros to be awful in 2008 and indeed, they were out of the playoff race by more than ten games as July wound down. Oddly, Ed Wade decided to reload at the trade deadline and acquired Randy Wolf and LaTroy Hawkins. Somehow, they very nearly sprinted from Pirate territory at the bottom of the NL Central to a wild-card berth. In the end, they were derailed both by Hurricane Ike and by just not being good enough.

That's put them in an interesting situation. The general feeling is that they're going to try and reload around this team and make another run at the playoffs in 2009. That's a potentially disastrous plan, but rebuilding around middling veterans and just missing the playoffs is what general manager Wade is known for. This is an important off-season for the Astros. They're not nearly as close to contending as people think they are and what they do this winter could set the course for the team for the next several years.

They're called the dog days of August for a reason. With the trade deadline in the books, major league teams are, barring a waiver trade, stuck with what they've got on the roster for the duration of the regular season. That means injuries, like the one suffered by Arizona's Orlando Hudson in the photo to the right, will shape the pennant races much more than they have over the last four months.

Five teams in the hunt for a playoff spot got bad injury news in the last 24 hours. Here's a look at who's hurt and how each team will cope with the absence of a key player over the final seven weeks.

- Carl Crawford, LF, Rays: The speedy Tampa Bay outfielder injured a tendon in his right middle finger on a check swing last night and was placed on the 15-day DL. The Rays are unsure how much time he'll miss, but a Seattle trainer told him he could miss six-to-eight weeks. If he's out that long, it could be devastating to their chances of holding off Boston in the AL East.

When the Houston Astros decided to be buyers at the trade deadline, it was somewhat confusing. The Astros were 50-57 on July 31, in fifth place in the NL Central, and trailing the Cubs by 14 games. In the wild card race, they trailed Milwaukee by nine games. It was pretty obvious to anyone with half a clue that the odds of the Astros overtaking either team, especially after they'd each added a top line pitcher to their rotation, were somewhere between slim and none.

This did not faze Ed Wade, however, as he made the deals anyway in hopes of helping Houston reach the post-season. To their credit, the Astros have played pretty well lately. They've won seven of nine since the deadline, but they still find themselves 12.5 games behind the Cubs and 8.5 behind Milwaukee. If that isn't enough to help the team realize that 2008 just won't be the year, maybe this will do the trick. Carlos Lee is likely done for the season after breaking his pinky finger.

Lee was hit by a pitch thrown by Bronson Arroyo in the third inning of the Astros' 3-1 win over the Cincinnati Reds. He left the game immediately to be taken for X-rays.

"I knew right away it was not going to be good," Lee said. "It hit me square. It's a bad deal, but what can I do? They said six to eight weeks, so probably I'm out (for the season). Unless the guys make a comeback and I'll be back for the playoffs."

Though if the Astros still don't want to give up, I hear that some guy named Barry Bonds might be available.

July 31 is rapidly approaching. Buy or Sell lets each team know where they stand.

It is absolutely, completely 100% unfathomable to me that we have to answer this question for the Astros. They're currently standing at 44-51, in last place in the NL Central, 13 games behind the Cubs and 8.5 back of the Wild Card. They've got no pitching staff to speak of and their offense is old. This team isn't a contender and they're in serious danger of falling into a huge rut because of the emptiness of their farm system. The answer here is an emphatic, "SELL! SELL! SELL!'

And yet, Ed Wade isn't convinced. He seems to think that there's a way for him to patch the team together and make a run at something this year. At the very least, he's refusing to rebuild this year. That's a dangerous idea for a team that's top two prospects (Hunter Pence, J.R. Towles) are already in the majors. Of course, Wade is the guy that sent a passel of prospects to Baltimore for Miguel Tejada over the winter, so don't doubt him on this one.

The other problem the Astros face is that they don't really have any terribly attractive "sell" candidates. Their best players (Lance Berkman, Roy Oswalt, Carlos Lee, and Tejada, I guess) are all kind of old and locked up until the 2011/2012 neighborhood. Really, the Astros kind of look to be painted into a corner for the near future, and having Wade at the helm isn't going to help things.

Maybe the All-Star Game is a meaningless to the players and just an excuse for Bud Selig to admire himself for a week. That doesn't mean that the selections should be stupid. Today, the MLB 'Haus gives you All-Star Grievances.

Grievance: Aaron Cook over Cole Hamels, or to stay in division, Chad Billingsley and Jonathan Sanchez. Mmmm-mmm. Home cookin'! Cook has been pretty good this year, but to call him All Star quality dominant might be a bit of a stretch. Hamels is a no-brainer and Billingsley and Sanchez have been erratic at times, but both have helped shore up their respective team's rotations with high strikeout pitching (they are 20 shy of collectively quadrupling Cook's totals.) Also, it really bothers me when the manager for a team uses his power to grab a homer pick. Or when people reward wins (which, partially = luck).

Grievance: Brandon Webb starting over Edinson Volquez or Tim Lincecum. Webb has been great this season, but he's scuffled recently. All three deserve to be heading to New York, but the reality is that Lincecum or Volquez should be starting, if we're basing the "award" on recognizing the entire first half of the season.

The Milwaukee Brewers signed their ace Ben Sheets to a four-year $38.5 million deal before the 2005 season started, and in the years since Sheets has spent a lot of his time earning that money on the disabled list. Last season, after spending the majority of the year in first place, Milwaukee's slide down the Central coincided with a Sheets injury.

Ben's injury history is probably the main reason that the Brewers didn't want to discuss a contract extension with Sheets this spring before the season started, and because of making that decision, Sheets has every intention to test the waters when he becomes a free agent at year's end.

"That's the direction I'm headed right now," Sheets said. "You can't invite yourself back.

"In all honesty, that would be pretty tough (not to test the market). We're getting pretty deep (into the season). It would be hard not to (test the market), especially when you start putting together a (big) year."

So the Brewers didn't want to talk extension, and Sheets plans on testing the market. Doing the words and intentions math, those two things together equal Ben Sheets in another uniform next season. Which begs the question: are the Brewers better off trading Sheets before the deadline or holding on to him and letting him go for nothing?

So far this season there have been quite a few big name players whose names have been bandied about in trade rumors. There are the Ken Griffey Jr. rumors, the C.C. Sabathia rumors, and hell, A.J. Burnett is basically trying to start his own "Burnett to Chicago" rumors.

One surprising name that was brought up today in the New York Post (and if it's in the Post, it has to be true) for the first time is that of Milwaukee Brewers first baseman Prince Fielder.

Want a surprise name that could come in the market, maybe before July 31, but almost definitely in the offseason when the Mets and Yanks could be hunting first basemen: Milwaukee's Prince Fielder. Milwaukee is blessed with a lot of offensive-centric players who could switch to first (Ryan Braun in the majors, Matt LaPorta or Mat Gamel nearly ready at Double-A). Mainly, Fielder is a Scott Boras client who almost certainly will not sign a long-term contract and the Brewers could decide his greatest value is in dealing him sooner than later while his value is highest and cost to them lowest. The Dodgers, Twins and Royals also could have interest.

Now when first reading this, and considering the source, it's pretty easy to dismiss this as just the daydreams of a columnist. Then you read the quote from Brewers general manager Doug Melvin, and you start to wonder.

People say this a lot, but baseball is often defined by failure. More often than not, a batter fails to get a hit and that's what the game revolves around. Somehow, Lance Berkman's been avoiding this key tenant of late. Before a fifth inning pop-out last night, he'd gotten a hit in eight consecutive at-bats, tying a team record that's only been matched twice in all of Astros' history.

Behind Berkman's hitting and walking (the Nationals walked him twice intentionally last night), the Astros pulled out their fifth straight win, clinched when Carlos Lee singled home Kaz Matsui in the bottom of the ninth. The win actually pulls them into third in the NL Central, ahead of the sliding Milwaukee Brewers, and two games above .500 in what was supposed to be an ugly year for the 'Stros.

So why are they playing so well? It's mostly due to the heart of their order. Berkman, Lee, and Miguel Tejada are all killing the ball right now. On the mound, Shawn Chacon and Brandon Backe are adding some depth to what was supposed to be a painfully thin pitching staff. It's hard to count on a hot start to last when guys like Chacon and Backe are helping carry it, but maybe Ed Wade's crazy "mortgage all of the future for 2008 and maybe 2009 if I'm lucky" strategy isn't as completely insane as we all thought it was. Actually, the Astros are probably just headed straight for the "Ed Wade Zone" this year: 82-85 wins and no playoff berth.

Plenty of sports fans like to fire nasty epithets at professional athletes about their riches, especially if we don't think those players are earning their considerable salaries. No one is more of a target for this sort of thing than Alex Rodriguez; when casual baseball fans lament what appears to be a spending explosion, they start with A-Rod and go cascading right down the list. Carlos Lee! Barry Zito! And so on.

But as the Wall Street Journal's Numbers Guy (For the record, I hope the WSJ has more than one person good with numbers) reminds us, the dollar isn't what it used to be. Not only that, but owners might be stockpiling more revenue than before:

The second reason these contract numbers are smaller than they appear is that there are far more overall baseball dollars to go around. In 2001, the first year of the first Rodriguez mega-contract, major-league players were getting 56% of their sport's $3.5 billion in revenues. Yet this year, Jeff Passan notes on Yahoo Sports, players made only about 41% of baseball's $6 billion in revenue. (Murray Chass has even suggested in the New York Times that the owners are edging toward collusion in their attempts to avoid bidding wars.)

As Bialik explains, in most public financial transactions, actual adjusted dollar amounts are listed, while in professional sports transactions, only raw dollar amounts are given. In other words, when you adjust Alex Rodriguez's current salary and weigh it alongside the increase in overall league revenue, Scott Boras' lofty contract demands begin to look far less greedy.

On Deck is FanHouse's look at the day's most intriguing matchups

Atlanta Braves (64-59) vs. Arizona Diamondbacks (71-53)-1:05PM Est.

What was once an incredibly tight four-team race in the NL West is quickly starting to become a three-team battle for second place. The Diamondbacks have won their last four games, and have opened up a 5-game lead on the second place San Diego Padres. It's not only the NL West they lead to, as the Diamondbacks are the only team in the National League with 70 wins on the season, and have a one-game lead over the Mets for homefield advantage in the playoffs. Brandon Webb hasn't given up a run since July, and Micah Owings is not only pitching well, but he's outhitting his opposition as well. Today the Diamondbacks look to complete a three-game sweep of the Atlanta Braves, a team they've dominated that last few seasons. Since last season these two teams have met 12 times, and Arizona has come away with a victory in 10 of the meetings. The Braves meanwhile have fallen to 5.5 games behind the Mets in the NL East and are growing desperate for wins. John Smoltz will get the start this afternoon in hopes of stopping the bleeding, but Smoltz hasn't picked up a win in his last four starts. Yusmeiro Petit starts for the Diamondbacks, replacing the recently DFA'd Byung-Hyun Kim.