FanHouse Kenny Lofton

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.

SAN FRANCISCO -- You don't have to hang around the Rockies for very long to get the feeling that Dexter Fowler is just about to blow up. In a good way.

By all accounts, Fowler just needs to meet his offensive potential and get the right publicity, and he could one day be one of those players who attain "face of the game" status.

Before you dismiss that as hyperbole, listen to Todd Helton.

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

Believe it or not, Spring Training is just one month away. It's been a long, cold winter -- at least everywhere except Philadelphia (or Florida or Southern California) -- but if you listen closely, you can practically hear the sharp crack of the bat. Daydream long enough, and you can almost see that first session of pitcher's fielding practice.

But we aren't there yet. The slow free-agent market has left plenty of unfinished business as the clock counts down toward reporting date. So with that in mind, here are 12 big questions that figure to be answered before the moving trucks are loaded and sent on their way to Florida and Arizona.

What's the advice of a friend worth? Apparently less than $161 million. Before CC Sabathia signed with the Yankees, Kenny Lofton apparently tried to steer him clear of the Big Apple, at least if you believe the New York Post's unnamed sources: "'He painted a bad picture of New York and the Yankees,' a person in the know said. 'A lot of negative things.' "

Whoa, did "a person in the know" really play the "a lot of negative things" card? Burn! Fortunately for the Yankees, though, a handful of reassuring phone calls from Johnny Damon apparently sealed the deal for A.J. Burnett. From the New York Daily News:

"Johnny talked to A.J. about New York, the differences between New York and Boston, how he views it. Johnny couldn't be happier here and he communicated those thoughts to A.J. I know at one point he told A.J. about dealing with New York and told him, 'Be accountable. If you're accountable, you'll be fine. Don't fear the media unless you give them a reason.'

"I know on a couple of occasions, Johnny said to him, 'You don't have anything to worry about.'"

So now that the Cleveland Indians have shipped C.C. Sabathia off to Milwaukee, we can officially say that the Indians are done trying to win in 2008. The focus has now been moved to preparing this team for the 2009 season and trying to figure out which pieces fit into that picture, and which ones don't.

While none of us can see the future, there is something about this Indians team that most of us have known for quite a while, and that is the fact that Grady Sizemore will not be a lead-off hitter his entire career. When Grady first came up with the Indians, everybody knew he was destined to be a middle of the order type guy, but with the Indians monster lineup the last few seasons, there was no need to do it.

Well, it's time now. Grady has grown up and he's ready to be the guy the Indians build their lineup around. Travis Hafner's power and ability to make contact with the ball have magically* disappeared and there's no guarantee they'll ever come back, so there is an opening.

Eric Wedge is currently batting Ben Francisco third, and Jhonny Peralta in the clean-up spot (where Jhonny's been raking). Meanwhile, Sizemore has an OPS of .914 and leads the American League with 22 home runs, yet he only has 50 RBI. How can that be? Well, since Grady hits lead-off, 16 of his 22 taters have come with nobody on base.

When Dusty Baker took the Reds' managerial job, lots of Reds' fans were not pleased with the news. Dusty seems like a bad fit for the Reds because he's known to stick with veteran players for as long as he can and the Reds have a team full of young, promising players. That problem hasn't reared it's head yet, but rumors out of Cincinnati have started flying with the most veteran name of them all: Kenny Lofton.

For what it's worth, Wayne Krivsky is denying the rumors, but he's the GM. It's his job to deny the rumors. With days running out until pitchers and catchers report to camp in Florida and Arizona, Lofton's got to be close to signing somewhere. I suppose he could be retiring, but that seems unlikely.

I suppose the Reds could just be looking to add a left-handed bat in the outfield with Josh Hamilton gone, but signing a guy like Lofton (who's almost 41) just seems like asking for trouble in Cincy when Jay Bruce is ready to play with the big club sometime around the All-Star break (that's a conservative guess). Of course, Bruce isn't even 21 yet and who better to be a father figure for him on the Reds than someone actually old enough to be his father?

Stop for a moment and think of all the great players who never won a World Series. There are a lot, but baseball history's most famous examples are probably Ernie Banks, who never even got to play in one, and Barry Bonds, who screw Barry Bonds.

I think at some point we need to include Kenny Lofton in this discussion. He's bounced around to eleven different teams throughout his major-league career, and that doesn't even take into account the fact that he's spent three different stints with Cleveland. As fate would have it, he's happened to reach the postseason eleven times. Granted, all his appearances have been in the Wild Card era, but it's still remarkable that he played for some pretty great teams (of note, the '95 Indians, '02 Giants, and '04 Yankees), and doesn't own a single championship ring.

What would tonight's Kenny Lofton tell a circa-1995 helmet-hatted Kenny Lofton about loss and life in general? The Dugout explores this after the jump.

I'm assuming that if you're reading a baseball blog, you're probably already watching the World Series. So if that's the case, you know all about the little confrontation between Josh Beckett and Kenny Lofton on Thursday night. If for some reason you don't, you can watch it here.

Well, I have to wonder if some of that animosity is going to make it's way back on the field tonight. It's nothing new in a playoff series-in any sport-that teams tend to get a little sick of each other. During the regular season when you're playing a three game series, you can get mad at another player in the opposite dugout, and then not see that guy for three months. So the anger subsides. In the postseason, where the games are just more intense based on the stakes, you see that person every day.

So if there are some extra curricular activities tonight, I wouldn't be all that surprised. The managers of both clubs though, insist there isn't going to be any trouble.

"There was some verbiage back and forth and they toed up a little bit," said Wedge. "Everybody ran out and got some exercise, and everybody ran back, which is usually the way it works. Nothing really happened."

Said Francona: "If you went back and looked at the video, if you saw my gait out to the field, there wasn't a whole heck of a lot of urgency to it. Nobody was going to fight."

So it's all water under the bridge? Not if you listen to the way Kenny Lofton and Josh Beckett are talking.

As you can see from the clip above, there's really no love lost between the Rose Hose and the Native Americans. Josh Beckett more or less started the whole mess by jawing at Kenny Lofton the moment he connected on the flyball (Awful Announcing, who found this video, has footage of that, as well) so I can't really blame Lofton for taking a detour across the mound.

But seriously, did umpire Gary Cederstrom really do a "tremendous job" breaking that thing up? Would a little pushing and shoving really been the worst thing in the world? I'm not wishing bodily harm on anyone, but I think fans kind of enjoy it when things get a little salty -- wasn't the infamous Don Zimmer/Pedro Martinez tussle one of the most enjoyable moments of the 2003 ALCS?

A good point was made in the comments of my post about NLCS hyperbole; despite the fact that the Rockies and the D'Backs are probably the two best teams in the NL this year, most so-called experts didn't expect them to be good this year and so rather than actually trying to understand why they're good, they just spew gobbledegook about "hustle." That makes this AL version a bit harder because both the Sox and Indians were "supposed" to be good. Still, Tim McCarver will find a way.

Player: Dustin Pedroia
What you'll likely hear: "He just reminds me of David Eckstein so much with his big heart and the way he hustles and isn't afraid to get dirty and play the game right!"
The truth: You know how people invariably compare white athletes to other white athletes and black athletes to other black athletes? At best, it's a lazy way to do things. Now the trend has extended to short people. This year, in his rookie season, Pedroia hit .317/.380/.442. Eckstein has never topped one part of that stat line in his seven-year career. David Eckstein is short. Dustin Pedroia is good.

Player: Paul Byrd
What you'll likely hear: "He sure is a crafty pitcher and that makes him as tough to beat in these big games as anyone. Just look at game 4 of the division series when he finished the Yankees off."
The truth: Take a look at this line: 5 IP, 8 H, 2 BB, 2 K, 1 HR. Do you want anything to do with that in a playoff game? I don't. That's Paul Byrd's game 4 line with runs removed. The Indians won that game in spite of his start, not because of it. It kills me that of all the great ALDS performances the Indians had, somehow his is held out above the others despite the fact that it wasn't that impressive to start with and was mostly luck anyways.