FanHouse MarkMulder

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.

Sorry for the delay, kiddos, on the Power Rankings. I'm sure you spent the entirety of Wednesday wondering "WHERE IN GOD'S NAME ARE THEY??? WITHOUT THEM I'LL HAVE NOTHING TO BANTER SENSELESSLY ABOUT TO MY CO-WORKERS!!!1" Or something like that. Either way, it's time to debate the worthlessness of your favorite baseball team in numerical form once again. Do enjoy.

MLB Power Rankings: Where we care what you've done for us lately when we break down the who's who and the what's what in the baseball world each week.

HAVE YOU HEARD? YANKEE STADIUM HAS A WIND TUNNEL!!! Does it matter/is it real? Probably not. In fact, it might actually be on the other end of the spectrum of importance when compared to MLB Power Rankings. This week, we welcome another brand new No. 1 at the top of our rankings, although, all spoiler alerts aside, it's from the same division as last week! Debate the quality of your team, after the jump.

The Daily Jolt is a dose of baseball reality every weekday morning.

Jered Weaver gave the Angels a much-needed respite Tuesday night. Weaver, along with left-hander Joe Saunders, is one of the last men standing in a Los Angeles rotation ravaged by injuries and, of course, the tragic death of Nick Adenhart.

He pitched seven innings and allowed three runs as the Angels beat the Tigers, providing a quality start and taking some of the pressure off of a bullpen which entered the night with a major league-worst 8.31 ERA.

Unfortunately, it was only one night, and Los Angeles has many ahead.

In what has to be the last surprising news you'll hear this month, the St. Louis Cardinals have decided not to exercise their $11 million option on Mark Mulder, who's pitched all of 12 2/3 innings since signing a two-year, $13 million contract prior to the 2007 season. From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

Mulder, 31, continues to rehab his left shoulder at his offseason home in Arizona, where he has worked with an assortment of specialists -– including a Yoga instructor -– but has gone months without throwing a baseball.

His agent, Gregg Clifton, confirmed to the Post-Dispatch on Monday that he recently received a letter from the Cardinals saying they would pay the $1.5-million buyout on the option.

He has not had any discussions with the team since.

A letter to his agent and not a single phone call? I know the Cards must be bitter about paying the guy just over a million dollars for each inning pitched the last two years, but that's just cold. Obviously giving up Dan Haren and Daric Barton for Mulder was a bad move, but let's not forget that for at least one year he was the ace the Cardinals needed.

His body eventually gave out midway through in 2006, but the Cards knew they were getting damaged goods when they re-signed him the following winter. Considering his career seems to be in jeopardy (or at the very least, seriously derailed), the least the team could have done is give him a courtesy call, even if everyone saw this decision coming a mile away.

If it seems like I've written a million stories about Cardinal pitchers rehabbing injuries this year, it's because the Cardinals have a lot of pitchers rehabbing from injuries. I thought that maybe stories about Mark Mulder were going to stop coming in because his last setback seemed to be of the career-ending variety. That's apparently not the case, as Mulder is again rehabbing and trying some ... alternative therapies. From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

The Cardinals pitcher, continuing what has become two years of persistent rehab for an injured shoulder, hired a personal yoga instructor to enhance his flexibility. He has met with more doctors in the past month than he has had major-league starts since a 2006 surgery. He even shaved his armpit so that a therapist's massage tool could really dig in there and tenderize the joint.

I have so many questions. Namely, I want to know whether he shaved one armpit and not the other. I do not know why I want to know this, but it is seemingly vital information to the rest of my life.

OK, so maybe it's not vital. But the point is that Mulder is putting himself through a lot to try and come back from an injury that's sidelined him for much of the past three seasons. While trying to come back this year, he suffered from recurring shoulder pain and trouble getting his arm into a slot he could throw from. It's inspiring to see he's not giving up yet, but it's not likely he'll ever be an effective pitcher again.

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

Florida Marlins (47-44) at Los Angeles Dodgers (45-45) - 10:10 PM ET

The Florida Marlins are a team that will be hard to read when it comes to whether they're buyers or sellers at the trade deadline. But they may not have to do anything if Josh Johnson, who returns tonight from ligament replacement surgery (umm, ouch?) to take the hill for Florida.

The Dodgers, meanwhile, have no such pitching problems right now. In fact, twice in the last three days saw Dodger starters take perfect games into the seventh inning (Hiroki Kuroda on Monday, and Derek Lowe on Wednesday.) If Chan Ho Park goes into the seventh with a perfect game, I'll eat my hat.

You may have noticed some growing pains around FanHouse lately. These things tend to happen and while they can be frustrating for everyone, they're not actually painful. Mark Mulder made his first start in a long time last night and after just sixteen pitches, he felt pain in his arm that was very, very real. With this setback, which is just the latest of many, no one's sure when or if he's going to pitch again:

"I just keep getting let down. I don't know really what to do," Mulder said.

[...]

"Typically, I have a very optimistic tone," general manager John Mozeliak said. "In this case, it's hard to envision this getting to a point where it's going to work for us and for him."

"It doesn't sound too good," La Russa said.

There's not much else to say here. It's sad to see a guy who's career prospects where once so high (between the ages of 23 and 25 he was one of the best pitchers in either league) fall to the point that he can't even pitch an inning, but that's where we are with Mulder. I'd like to see him get it together as much as anyone, but it doesn't look likely at this point. Doctors can fix just about anything that's wrong with pitchers these days, but shoulder problems are the exception.

When I first found out yesterday that the Oakland Athletics had traded Rich Harden to the Cubs, my first reaction was "Why?" I didn't even know who Oakland had gotten in return from the Cubs, and already the deal didn't make that much sense to me. Then I heard who the A's got, and the deal made even less sense to me.

Don't get me wrong, I think Matt Murton has the potential to flourish in Oakland as he's finally found an organization that can appreciate what he's capable of (Matt has struggled this season, but does still have a career OPS of .810 without ever getting regular playing time), and Sean Gallagher could end up being a very effective pitcher for the Athletics. Eric Patterson is probably just an insurance plan should Mark Ellis not re-sign with the team after the season, as the A's are pretty thin at second base in the minors, and I don't know anything about John Donaldson.

But why now, Billy Beane? Why pull the trigger on this deal when your team is only five games out of first place in the AL West, and only 3.5 behind Boston for the wild card? There is no way that Beane can honestly think his team has a better shot at making the playoffs this season without Rich Harden.

Yet, while on the surface this deal makes absolutely no sense to me, I also realize that Beane knows what he's doing and I want to give him the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he's just tired of being held hostage by Harden's injury history and is tired of having to build a team around a pitcher who may or may not be available at any given time. If you look at Beane's history of letting his pitchers go, he seems to have great timing, as Mark Mulder and Barry Zito have never been the same since leaving the bay area.

It's still way too early to tell if this was a mistake or not, but I have to say, at the moment I don't think this was one of Beane's finest moment.

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

So in the last 48 hours the Milwaukee Brewers have added CC Sabathia to their rotation, and the Chicago Cubs picked up Rich Harden to add to theirs. All the Phillies have managed to do in during that span was lose two games in the standings.

The Phillies have now lost four in a row, and unfortunately for them their losing streak directly coincides with a four-game win streak by the New York Mets. Now both the Mets and Marlins sit only a game and a half behind the Phillies. So the pressure is on the Phillies to add an arm of their own to the rotation.

If you look around the National League right now, things aren't set up too well for Philadelphia. The Brewers now have Ben Sheets and Sabathia. The Cubs have Harden, Carlos Zambrano, and Ryan Dempster. In Arizona the Diamondbacks feature Brandon Webb and Dan Haren at the top of their rotation, while in Los Angeles the Dodgers have a NL-best 3.70 ERA.

The Phillies have Cole Hamels and, um, Jamie Moyer? While the Phillies have the fifth best team ERA in the National League, Hamels is the only member of their rotation who has an ERA under 4.00. Their offense may be pretty dangerous, but once the playoffs start (if the Phillies get there) it's pitchers who dominate, and the Phillies just don't have enough of them.

So when will the Phillies make their move in the NL Arms Race?

In recent weeks there had been plenty of teams who were interested in the services of 16-year old Dominican pitcher Michael Inoa. The 6'7 prospect has had scout salivating for a while now, and organizations were lining up for the chance to add him to their team. Well, when it was all said and done and Inoa was allowed to sign with somebody, he ended up choosing the Oakland Athletics.

As details came out about the signing, other teams (like the Rangers and Reds) found out that even though they offered Inoa more money, he still chose the Athletics over them. This didn't make sense to these other teams, so in their minds, the only logical explanation is that Oakland cheated and signed Inoa before the deadline. Now it looks like MLB will be taking a look into the deal.

Adam Katz, Inoa's agent, would not discuss the offer from Texas (or a reportedly larger offer from Cincinnati), but he said the A's did not sign Inoa until the 12:01 a.m. EDT deadline Wednesday.

"There was no contract before the deadline," Katz told The Chronicle on Sunday. "Absolutely not. Billy (Beane) and the team followed all the rules carefully. Billy and I were both very aware how high profile (Inoa) is."

Personally, I don't think Oakland did anything wrong here. I mean, maybe Inoa and his agent chose a smaller offer from the A's because they've seen the success Oakland has had in developing young pitchers. You know, guys like Tim Hudson, Mark Mulder, Barry Zito (he used to be good Giants fans, I swear), Dan Haren, and now Rich Harden and Justin Duchscherer.

Needless to say, the Rangers and Reds don't have the same kind of history. Well, the Rangers can develop good pitching, they just trade it all away before it's ready for the bigs. Just ask John Danks and Edinson Volquez.