FanHouse ChrisBurke

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.

Eric Byrnes is hitting .362 on his current 14 game hit streak. He does not credit a great Diamondbacks' lineup. He does not credit the hitter friendly Chase Field. He credits his mustache, which he's been growing since the fourth game of the season.

The idea came from a mustache party Byrnes attended in the offseason, when he had 10 days to grow one from the time of a dinner at the White House to the party.

Byrnes figured since he could grow a "presentable" mustache in 10 days for the party, that would give him a goal to shoot for.

'I knew if I could hit in 10 straight, just something to get me going at the beginning of the year, get a little visible mustache growing, that would be great,' Byrnes said.

Alright. First of all, I want to know what "Monty" (it's new, we're trying it out) is doing at a "mustache party". Who the hell has one of those, and why are we throwing it around like it's some really casually occurring event in society? Do people grow mustaches just for parties that often and I don't know about it/have never been involved in one? If that's the case, I might as well call the dogs off now.

Apparently, teammates and coaches are hopping on the bandwagon as well, with Dan Haren promising to keep some fuzz on his face until he loses a game and Chris Burke made some half-hearted promise about rocking out a flavor savor if Byrnes extended his hit streak past 10 games (nice self-confidence in both your hitting and 'stash growing there, Mr. Burke).

Byrnes says he doesn't plan on shaving until he stops raking though, and it took a late inning, last at-bat double to keep his streak alive on Saturday night. Maybe the best part about the whole process is that Byrnes seems to have zero intention of even trimming the 'stash; he said that if he gets near the magic 56 number he'll be "looking like a walrus." Here's hoping the mustache ride never ends.

Update: The face fuzz may be gone; I guess this explains why I'm never invited to mustache parties.

In case you forgot, it's still the hot stove season in Major League Baseball. Just because we as fans spent all day yesterday thinking about the Mitchell Report doesn't mean that the wheeling and dealing that's so typical to this time of year just stopped. The Arizona Diamondbacks certainly didn't as they announced two huge trades this afternoon. The headliner is their acquisition of Dan Haren from Oakland for six prospects (Brett Anderson, Greg Smith, Dana Eveland, Carlos Gonzalez, Aaron Cunningham, and the recently acquired Chris Carter). They also shipped closer Jose Valverde off to Houston for Chris Burke and Chad Qualls.

If you want some snap analysis, any time you pick up someone of Haren's quality, it's hard to call it a bad deal. Haren and Brandon Webb will give the Diamondbacks one of the best 1-2 punches in the NL and reestablish them as the favorites in the NL West, especially if their young lineup progresses. I don't like the Valverde trade nearly as much: Burke is mostly a utility guy (he's not better than Stephen Drew or Orlando Hudson) and Qualls is a bad set-up guy. How that's worth Valverde is beyond me.

On the flip side, most of the six guys going to Oakland are pretty young and unfamiliar to me, but I'm going to operate on the assumption that Billy Beane wasn't going to give Haren away. Carter is a very promising young hitter and all three of the young arms (Eveland, Anderson, Smith) have promising minor league numbers. As for the Astros, Valverde for Qualls and Burke is a decent pickup, but they're going to need a rotation if they're going to have any leads for him to hold.

The Astros have been linked to Miguel Tejada for a while now, and it seems the rumor does have some merit: Ken Rosenthal of FOX Sports reports that the teams have discussed a trade but aren't yet close to pulling the trigger:

The Astros apparently believed a trade was possible Wednesday night, telling at least two other clubs that they were on the verge of a major deal. It is not clear whether their focus was Tejada.

Astros officials said Thursday morning that nothing was imminent, suggesting perhaps that the talks had faded. Other sources also indicated that the discussions were not in an advanced phase.

A Houston radio station reported Thursday that the Astros were close to acquiring Tejada for shortstop Adam Everett, second baseman Chris Burke and a pitcher.

If Everett and Burke are really the main cogs in the package offered to Baltimore, it's not hard to see why a deal is not yet in place. Tejada's home run tally and slugging percentage have declined each of his four years in Baltimore, but he's still an enormous upgrade over a guy like Everett, who hasn't had an OBP over .290 each of the last three seasons and has tallied all of 34 home runs in seven years. Yes, he's a fine, fine fielder, but he's truly awful at the plate and has no business playing every day. I think Burke might actually have some potential, but he's 28 years old and has never been a full-time starter, which has to count for something. Unless the Astros decide to get serious and offer some real talent, don't expect anything to come from this.

With the slump the Pirates are in right now, you would think the Astros could manage to take two of three from them without getting two of their best players injured. You would be wrong, though, because after Roy Oswalt was injured while pitching the Astros to victory on Friday, Hunter Pence hurt his wrist in the Astros 1-0 victory yesterday. Luckily for the 'Stros, Pence's injury doesn't appear to be serious.

"I've done this several times," he said. "I tried to take out the second baseman behind the bag and went in sideways and jammed my wrist a little bit. I should be OK. Hopefully (today) I'll get some treatment on it and I'll be all right."

Probably the best thing about this for Pence is that he won't miss any time and lose ground to Ryan Braun in the rookie of the year race, which looks like a sprint to the finish between those two with Josh Hamilton still sidelined. And I suppose it's nice for people that watch the Astros because Pence is one the few things they've had to cheer for this year and if he were to miss any serious amount of time, Chris Burke would probably take over in center. He's not nearly as interesting or exciting as Pence.

Previously at FanHouse
Roy Oswalt Is Hurt

Yeah, it's early in Pence's career. No doubt about that (he's only had 65 plate appearances in the big leagues to this point). Still, after an amazing spring in which he batted .652 before his demotion to AAA, expectations were certainly sky high for the 24-year old when he got his call-up in late April to help the struggling Astros offense. Still, Pence has somehow met expectations since his arrival in Houston.

Last night Pence went 4-for-4 with a homer in his second straight game against the Giants to help the Astros to a 2-1 to get above .500 for the first time since before Pence's call-up in April. The homer Pence hit two nights ago tied the game up in the bottom of the eighth, this one gave the Astros the lead in the fourth. He's now got four homers since his call-up, and he's a mind-boggling 7-for-7 two games into the 'Stros three game series against the Giants. His season line in those 65 plate appearences? .355/.394/.677. Now that's impressive. If he keep it up for a larger sample size, Josh Hamilton will have some company in the NL Rookie of the Year race.

Though it seems pretty unlikely Pence will keep slugging over .600, it's also pretty easy to see the spark he gives to the Houston lineup when compared with guys like the recently demoted Chris Burke. He's given the Astros a third bat to plug into things with Carlos Lee and Lance Berkman, and sometimes that can make all the difference in the world. The question now is how well he keeps going once everyone gets a book on him.

The Marlins are looking for a closer to replace the human batting machine known as Jorge Julio, and tonight's 4-3 loss to Houston in the ninth probably brought them no closer to a ninth inning answer. Kevin Gregg was Monday night's victim, coming into a tie game and giving up two walks and two hits to lose the game.

"It was unacceptable to walk those two guys," Gregg said. "You just can't come up there and walk the first guy. That's not going to get the job done."

Nope, can't blame Jorge Julio for this one. Maybe you can blame Joe Borchard, who's crash landing into Dan Uggla, who had a bead on a foul pop in the ninth with the sacks full caused Uggla to drop the ball ... leading to that very batter, Morgan Ensberg, winning the game later in the at bat. With that out, the Marlins were still in a pickle with bases loaded and one out, but with Luke Scott (.250) and Chris Burke (.211) coming up, you could lay even money that Gregg wriggles his way out of the jam.

But how about Hanley Ramirez?

The Marlins squandered a scoring opportunity in the first when Hanley Ramirez hit the second pitch of the game off the wall in left center for a standup triple, but Ramirez ignored the stop sign by Marlins third-base coach Bo Porter and was gunned out at the plate by a considerable margin. "He ran through it," Gonzalez said, then added with a straight face, "His leg's good." He was referring of course, to Ramirez's previously injured leg.

"He can run," Gonzalez said. "We're going to have to put the stop signs in English, maybe."

Unfortunately, the Marlins' payroll mandate prevents them from hiring a bilingual sign coach.

Every spring the same mantra is repeated over and over again, "It's just spring training. Don't worry about it. The games don't count." Still, at some point fans start to get worried about players that just aren't performing in the spring. Chris Burke has to be getting close to that point with his .059 average this spring. Burke is getting frustrated himself:

"The funniest thing about baseball is you can tell yourself whatever you want to tell yourself, but ultimately it's still frustrating when you don't do better," said Burke, who went 0-for-3 in Tuesday night's 11-3 victory over Atlanta to drop his average to .059. "It's been frustrating I haven't had more success. The comforting thing is I feel fine. I feel like I'm swinging at strikes."

Burke still doesn't have much to worry about in terms of his spot in the lineup. At this point in the spring his main competition for the center field job has been top prospect Hunter Pence and Phil Garner has already made it clear that Pence will start the season in AAA despite his .652 average this spring. Still, Burke will have to pick things up to keep Pence from breathing down his neck all summer.

It's easy for fans to get excited about spring training numbers, but the truth is that they don't mean jack. At least, that's what Astros manager Phil Garner would have you believe. Despite the fact prospect Hunter Pence has hit a scorching .652, Garner indicated that he's probably going to open the year at Triple-A Round Rock instead of pushing for Chris Burke's job, despite the fact Burke is hitting an anemic .052 (no, that's not a typo: he's hitting point oh five two).

Not only that, Garner told the Houston Chronicle that Luke Scott, Jason Lane and Richard Hidalgo were also in front of Pence for a roster spot:

"You have to give Luke some credit for what he did last year. You have to give Jason Lane some credit for what he's done. That he has been in the big leagues carries a little bit of weight.

"And Richard had a good winter. We know what history he had. He's a young man who's gotten himself in shape, and he's got a pretty good history with this organization."

Not benching Burke I can understand -- we're talking about 30 or so at-bats here, people, that's not much of a sample size to make any drastic decisions. The same goes for Lane and Scott, especially considering they're hitting well themselves this spring.

But what has Hidalgo done to deserve a long leash? After hitting .239 in 2004 and .221 in 2005, he wasn't even in the majors last year, getting cut by the Orioles in spring training and never making it out of extended spring training with the Yankees. Maybe he had a good winter, whatever that means, but he's having an awful spring, hitting just .148 in his first 12 games. Pence has yet to play an inning of Triple-A ball so more time in the minors can't hurt, but after hitting .283 with 28 dingers and 95 RBI in Double-A last year, he ought to at least get a chance to throw his hat into the ring.