FanHouse EricGagne

Major League Baseball is in the early stages of investigating player agents who may be connected to the sport's steroid scandal.

"It's a whole new territory we're looking into," a person with direct knowledge of the investigation told FanHouse. "Our information has led us to believe there are some [agents] worth going after."

The 50-game suspension of Manny Ramirez last week proves MLB's intention to rid the game of performance-enhancing drugs is expansive in its scope and aggressive in its tactics.

Now that nearly 30 players have been suspended for using PEDs since the penalty phase of testing began in 2004, the natural progression, say people familiar with baseball's Department of Investigations, is to target the suppliers, as well as users.

From 2002 to 2004, Eric Gagne was the best closer in baseball. In 2003, he had arguably the best single season in the history of baseball by a closer and he won the Cy Young award.

Sunday night, the 33 year-old right-hander was released. The news created no ripple. It barely created a whimper. Northern Iowa's basketball team winning the Missouri Valley Conference title got more buzz in national sports news, with good reason. Gagne just isn't relevant anymore. So, what happened?

I got my start in this industry at a now-defunct site called The Talented Mr. Roto. The namesake for the site, Matthew Berry, now does his thing over at ESPN. One hard and fast rule he always lived by -- and I'm sure he still does -- was this mantra: Never pay for saves.

It's just as simple as it sounds. If you play in an auction league, let everyone else bid on Francisco Rodriguez. Your money can be better spent elsewhere. If you draft, just find your relievers in the last few rounds. I'm not as hardcore into the theory, but it certainly has merit.

I still like to pretend that Getty Images employs a cow named Elsa who started chewing on a camera that was dropped in the meadow and somehow became an art sensation.

But yeah, occasionally something happens in baseball that overshadows the game itself. That's when you have to nod knowingly and accept that everyone wants you to know their opinion about it. If you click the "continue reading" button you can read mine! Oh come on, you have to!

A little over a year ago, the Milwaukee Brewers were desperate for bullpen help. They turned to Eric Gagne, hoping that the once dominant closer could nail down wins again and cement the back-end of their bullpen for a playoff run. He never found himself in Milwaukee and it didn't take long for him to lose his job to Salomon Torres, who did a nice job closing games out as the Brewers snuck into the wild-card spot before losing to the Phillies in the NLDS.

Torres is retired now and with him, Brian Shouse and Guillermo Mota, two of the Brewers' more effective set-up men in 2008, are gone as well. They've signed an aging Trevor Hoffman to try and do what they hoped Gagne could do last year, but they still need more arms in the bullpen. And Tuesday, the Brewers turned to an unthinkable source to add those arms: they've re-signed Gagne himself to a minor league deal.

Eric Gagne has fallen so far, so fast, that it's easy to write him off completely. The Brewers took a shot on him last winter with a one-year, $10 million contract, and what did he do? Post a 5.44 ERA over 46 1/3 miserable innings, that's what.

But even if he blew his last chance at signing another eight-figure contract, Gagne will certainly get another job offer, because as bad as he was last year, he did seem to show improvement with a surprisingly respectable 3.52 ERA after the All-Star break and a 3.09 ERA in the month of September. Assuming that's not merely a sample-size-induced mirage, he could end up being a serviceable option.

Every four years, Major League Baseball's postseason intersects with a presidential election. This is one of those years. In the spirit of the season, we here at MLB FanHouse have divided the playoff teams up for a series of debates. Here Pat Lackey and Mullet discuss the NLDS between the Brewers and Phillies.

Mullet: This series may turn out to be the least competitive of all the four first-round matchups out there. There are a lot of reasons the Phillies should take care of the Brewers in three or four games, so I'll start with this one: Brad Lidge is 41-for-41 in save opportunites this season. The Brewers bullpen, meanwhile, has Eric Gagne and Guillermo Mota. You've seen it as much as I have, bullpens win in the playoffs.

Pat Lackey: It makes me vaguely sick to my stomach to point this out, but since mid-July Eric Gagne has a 3.52 ERA and a 1.00 WHIP. He's not the Gagne of old, as his strikeouts are way down (17 in 23 innings over that span), but he's at least done a good job of keeping guys off of the bases for the home runs he inevitably gives up. The Brewers will likely turn to Salomon Torres in a pinch before either of the guys you named and until a couple hiccups down the stretch, he was very good this year.

From the Windup is FanHouse's daily, extended look at a particular portion of America's pastime.

As the final week of the regular season unfolds, millions of baseball fans across the nation are being treated to several close races.

Except for me, of course. I live near Detroit, and the only race the Tigers are involved in is the race to avoid last place. And after losing 6-2 to the Royals last night, the chances the Tigers might take sole possession of the AL Central's basement by Wednesday is a very real possibility.

This got me thinking: the Tigers have to be the most disappointing team in the majors, right? (It's actually been a recurring thought all year, but now seems like an appropriate time to dwell on it ...) They have the second-highest payroll in baseball and haven't been relevant since opening the year with seven straight losses.

As I see it, no other team comes close.

The Yankees had a disappointing final season in their stadium, but at least they're guaranteed a winning record (and haven't officially been eliminated from the playoffs, though that should happen any day now). The Rockies hoped for a chance to defend their NL pennant, but last year's finish was a little too incredible to be surprised by a let-down this season. I didn't expect the Mariners to be the worst team in the majors, but I also never thought they'd contend. Plus, this year wasn't a complete waste; at least they rid themselves of Bill Bavasi.

If the Tigers have been this year's most disappointing team, who's been the game's most disappointing players? It's a fuzzy question, so let's try to establish some guidelines.

I remember back in May 2005, the Chicago White Sox were off to a fantastic start to the season. Halfway through the month they had a 29-12 record, and a 5 and a half game lead over the Twins. Most people don't believe me when I tell them this, but at that point, I knew the White Sox were going to win the World Series that season.

I didn't care that they hadn't won a title since 1917, or that they had only played the first quarter of the season. I knew that 2005 was going to be the year. It was at that point that I went to an online betting site and put money down on it at 15-1 odds. I wasn't risking a large sum of money, for I wasn't making these big time blogger dollars at the time, but it was enough to make their eventual championship all that much sweeter.

Of course, I didn't view it as a risk. As I said, I knew they were going to win it all. I wasn't exactly sure what I saw in that team up to that point, but there was just this feeling about them, I guess you could call it swagger. I'm not even exactly sure just what the hell swagger means, but whatever it is, the White Sox had it that season. When they were down four runs going into the ninth inning, I still felt like they were going to win, and more importantly, so did they.

I haven't had that feeling about the White Sox since, and I don't have it this year. Of course, there's only one team in baseball that I do have that feeling about, and I've had it for a while, I just haven't found the courage to tell anyone about it.

Well, today is the day I man up.

With the playoff chase coming down to the wire, our MLB editor rounds up the five biggest pennant race stories in Eye Toward October.

- Arizona Aces Faltering: One of the reasons I, and several other pundits, think the Diamondbacks will be a very dangerous team in October is because of the Brandon Webb-Dan Haren-Randy Johnson trio at the top of their rotation. It has the potential to be devastating in the postseason, but if they don't get their collective acts together, it might be a moot point.

Haren, Webb and Johnson have started the last three games for the Snakes, putting up this cumulative line: 13 IP, 24 H, 16 ER. All three are seasoned pros, and if this were June or July, this streak would barely be worth batting an eyelash over.

It's September, though. Time is short and the Diamondbacks' edge in the NL West is slim. Arizona can't afford another stretch like this from the top three pitchers on its staff.