FanHouse ShawnChacon

According to a report by the Las Vegas Sun, police in Nevada have issued a warrant for the arrest of former big league pitcher Shawn Chacon for a $150,000 gambling debt owed to Caesar's Palace. He's being accused of taking out three $50,000 gambling markers in March and hasn't repaid them, which in Nevada results in a felony charge that is prosecuted as a bad check.

You may remember Chacon as a promising young pitcher and All-Star for the Rockies, a mildly successful starter for the Yankees, or a decent bullpen guy for the Pirates. It is most likely, however, that you remember Chacon for choke-slamming general manager Ed Wade as a member of the Astros early last summer. That earned him a release and he hasn't returned the majors since.

Shawn Chacon was wrong to attack Ed Wade last week. I know it, you know it, and -- now that he's been released -- Chacon knows it. But does that absolve Wade's role in the altercation?

Wade has remained tight-lipped about the incident, but hearing Chacon's side of the story doesn't paint the general manager in a very positive light. Wade approached Chacon in the clubhouse and requested a private meeting. Chacon declined, saying they could talk right there. That's when Chacon says Wade began "yelling and cussing." As Bill McCurdy of the Texas Baseball Hall of Fame told Bloomberg News, that's also what guaranteed that this exchange would not end well.

``You treat a grown man like that in front of his peers and something's going to happen, but it's not going to be good,'' McCurdy said. ``There's no way for him to suddenly get up, if Wade raises his voice at him, and slump silently away to the office like he's being sent to the principal.''

In what has to be the early leader in the "least surprising news of the week" award, nobody wanted to trade for GM-choke-slammer Shawn Chacon. He officially cleared waivers yesterday afternoon, meaning he's free to sign with any other franchise who thinks his mediocre pitching is worth the hit to the team's image and/or GM's face.

(I don't know about you, but I'm hoping the White Sox show interest, just so we can see what happens when Chacon disagrees with strength and conditioning coach [and former professional wrestler] Dale "The Demon" Torborg. But I digress ...)

Big league contracts are guaranteed, but the way the Astros see it, choke-slamming your boss is grounds for breach of contract, so they've decided not to pay Chacon the rest of his salary. Considering he's still owed nearly a million dollars, Chacon went running to the players association, which officially filed a greivance today.

With a good 16 hours to digest the insane idea that a baseball player choke-slammed his general manager yesterday, there's still a ton of lingering questions. I mean, Shawn Chacon nicely admitted to the act, which is a surprise in this day an age, but now what? Chacon's "indefinitely suspended," but what does that really mean? Let's run down some of the options and how likely they are.

Chacon will pitch again this year for the Astros: Uhh, this isn't going to happen. I'm not going to say I'd eat my hat if Chacon pitches for the 'Stros again this year (I just bought my hat and hats taste bad). Let me put it this way: Barry Bonds will play for the Astros this year before Shawn Chacon does. You just don't keep players that do stuff like this on your team.

Chacon will pitch for someone else this year: Slightly more likely, but I don't think the odds are great here, either. For Chacon to pitch for another team, someone would either have to trade for the GM-choker, or the Astros would have to release him. We'll rule a trade out since Chacon already kind of sucks and he just destroyed any value he might have on the trade market. If I'm Ed Wade, I think I'm kind of content to keep him suspended and not pitching for anyone this year since I'm paying him either way. It might be a little vindictive, but Chacon's earned it.

Last week the Astros demoted Shawn Chacon from their rotation and he intimated that he wasn't very happy with the move. That's understandable. No one really wants to be demoted. Still, most people find a way to take something like that in stride and move on with their lives. Shawn Chacon is not most people. He confronted GM Ed Wade today and the incident ended with Chacon grabbing Wade around the neck and driving him into the ground. Seriously. The Houston Chronicle has Chacon's version of the events:

"He started yelling and cussing," Chacon said of Wade. "I'm sitting there and I said to him very calmly, 'Ed, you need to stop yelling me. Then I stood up and said 'you better stop yelling at me.' I stood up. He continued and was basically yelling and stuff and was like, 'You need to (expletive) look in the mirror.' So at that point I lost my cool and I grabbed him by the neck and threw him to the ground. I jumped on top of him because at that point I wanted to beat his (butt). Words were exchanged."

I love how cooly Chacon admits that he chokeslammed his GM. He claims that Wade started the whole thing by swearing at him when he refused to go into Cecil Cooper's office to meet with Cooper and Wade to presumably discuss his anger at being demoted to the pen. But still ... pretty unacceptable behavior from Chacon. He's suspended indefinitely and he probably won't pitch for the Astros again. That's just me hazarding a guess, but I feel pretty confident with that one.

Having had the pleasure (that's not really the right word) of seeing Shawn Chacon pitch over the past two seasons in Pittsburgh, I was kind of surprised when the Astros signed him this off-season and decided to put him in the rotation. In the past few years, Chacon has been awful as a starter and fairly passable as a reliever. Unsurprisingly, he's been pretty bad and he's going back to the pen. That doesn't mean he's happy about it, though. From the Houston Chronicle:

"I think it's horse (expletive)," Chacon said. "That's pretty much how I feel about it. Sums it up."

[...]

"I didn't expect him to be totally happy because he came here because he had a chance to start," Cooper said. "I'm not concerned that he's unhappy because I think he'll do whatever he needs to get it done."

Nice to know Cecil Cooper is concerned about his players. The most hurtful part of the whole thing for Chacon? He's losing his rotation spot to Runelvys Hernandez. Did you know Runelvys Hernandez was still in baseball? He hasn't pitched in the bigs since 2006, hasn't been relevant since 2003, and washed out of minor league stints with the Pirates, Red Sox, and Yankees last year before getting his stuff together in AAA Round Rock in '08. Losing a rotation spot to him? That stings.

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

New York Yankees (39-33) vs. San Diego Padres (31-42) - 1:05PM Est.

When Hank Steinbrenner came out earlier this season and basically demanded that Joba Chamberlain stopped being used out of the bullpen, and placed into the starting rotation, his general manager and manager kind of just ignored him. Hank was just doing anything in his power to try to be like his dad, and after dealing with George for all those years, Brian Cashman had become pretty adept at tuning his boss out.

Besides, the Yankees starters were just off to a rough start to the 2008 season, and things would turn around soon enough. Only they never did, as Phil Hughes struggled, Ian Kennedy got sent down, and Mike Mussina looked like a shell of a shell of his former self. So eventually Cashman and Joe Girardi had to cave, and move Joba into the starting rotation (and now that Chien-Ming Wang is out they're lucky they did).

His first start didn't go very well, but in the two starts since, Joba has improved each time out. This afternoon he'll be making his fourth start of the season, but will he finally pick up his first victory as a starter?

One of the biggest surprises for me to this early point in the baseball season is the mild success of the Astros, who are sitting at 22-17 though almost a quarter of the season after being picked by many people to wallow at the bottom of the NL Central. That's an impressive start, but it's just a start. Well, unless you're Steve Campbell. Steve's ready to hand Ed Wade a key to the city for resurrecting the Astros.

Maybe Smith knew what he was doing with all that inside information after all. Wade is less than a fourth of the way into his first season on the job, and he already has done what many suspected was impossible.

[...]

Brad Lidge, Chad Qualls, Luke Scott, Troy Patton, Adam Everett and Chris Burke were just part of the price Wade paid to reshape a lifeless lump of the 89-defeat team he inherited. Wade traded five players for shortstop Miguel Tejada, three for closer Jose Valverde.

Trading eight players for a shortstop with maybe one or two good years left and a decent closer is a good thing all of the sudden? The Astros are off to a great start, but Lance Berkman's putting up numbers that only Barry Bonds has even dreamed of. Miguel Tejada's hitting like he did when we thought he was 28. Shawn Chacon is pitching like a reasonable starting pitcher. What are the odds of these things continuing? What are the odds of them happening two years down the road when the Astros still don't have those eight players Wade traded away? What's Wade going to do to address their barren minor league system? Shouldn't these questions be answered before saying a GM is a good hire?

The two coldest teams in the National League are facing off this weekend in a match-up that can only be generated by the National League Central. The Pirates are losers of five in a row, including three straight at the hands of the Cardinals (who only have nineteen wins on the season). The Reds are tied for the worst record in the big leagues and just lost three in a row to a team that they share that distinction with, the Washington Nationals.

So what does this thrilling four game series have to offer? The Pirates will send Paul Maholm (2-6 with a 5.82 ERA) and Shawn Chacon to the mound in the first two games to try and end the losing streak while the Reds will send out a murderer's rotation of Harang, Arroyo, Saarloos, and Lohose to counter. Besides Arroyo, that's a whole lot of snoozing right there.

I can keep going, too. The Pirates have the lowest on-base percentage in the majors with a Mario Mendoza-like .307 line for the entire team. In fact, the Reds' team OBP of .321 is approaching the Pirates team slugging percentage of .360. The Reds, meanwhile, will trot out one of the most explosive (in a bad way) bullpens in baseball and see what they can do against a lineup that the Pirates' blog Bucs Dugout described as having a tendency to make mediocre pitchers look like Walter Johnson. Can you feel the excitement for this series? I can.