FanHouse SteveTrachsel

You know it's a slow baseball day when the tumultuous futures of Cliff Floyd, Steve Trachsel, and Daryle Ward appear to be the biggest story out there. Nonetheless, the show must go on: the Cubs have decided to bring back pinch-hitter extraordinaire Ward, while declining options on Floyd and Trachsel.

The moves both preserve Ward's hallowed status as the Cubs' best bench player last season, and free up more time for him in right field. In the meantime, declining options for Floyd and Trachsel -- which Floyd seemed to sense early in the offseason -- frees up about $9.5 million for the Cubs next season.

What will they do with that extra money? Curt Schilling is not out of the question, nor are Barry Bonds and Alex Rodriguez. Still, given the nebulous ownership situation on the north side, the likelihood that the Cubs make any sort of free agent splash this offseason, even one of those tiny ones the Olympic divers make, is little to none.

But yeah, Daryle Ward. Exciting. Where is Scott Boras when we need him?

The Cubs did a bunch of tinkering and trading in late July and August and it looks like almost none of it is going to affect the outcome of their five game series against the Diamondbacks. Waiver wire acquisitions Craig Monroe and Steve Trachsel, who have bombed as Cubs, were both left off the Division Series roster by Lou Piniella, while trade deadline pick-up Jason Kendall appears to be mostly relegated to backing up the emerging Geovany Soto (at least if the Sun-Times guess at the starting lineup is to be believed).

It's worth noting that while Jason Marquis isn't going to be a part of the post-season rotation (as of now, at least) he did make the roster over Sean Marshall. This choice was made because, umm, I don't know why. I'd rather have Marshall make a spot start than Marquis if the Big Z can't go on three days rest (which, frankly, is something I'm surprised Piniella is banking on). I guess Marquis is a bit older and has more experience in big games, plus the Cubs haven't used Marshall much in the past couple weeks. Still, Marshall scores high on the "Not Jason Marquis Scale," which is a completely pretend method created by me to determine how much a pitcher sucks.

One final note on the Cubbie roster: Kerry Wood will be in the bullpen. Kerry Wood on the mound in the late innings of a close playoff game. That doesn't make Cub fans shudder at all, does it?

Back when the Cubs traded for Steve Trachsel, all ten days ago, I wondered what kind of benefit the Cubs were hoping to see by adding the middling veteran to their rotation. Apparently, the Cubs weren't willing to look too hard for whatever it was they wanted to see. After one decent start and one bad start that both ended in Cub losses, Lou Piniella is already thinking about dropping the veteran from his rotation.

But when asked after the game what he'd do with the recently acquired veteran after he lasted only two innings Sunday, Piniella said: ''I don't know. We've got to think about this. And I don't know what we're going to do Thursday, to be honest with you.

''I might have to have a nice dinner and a glass of wine thinking about it.''

It's nice to know that Sweet Lou can still find time to crackwise while his team's shot at the playoffs disintegrates, but it shouldn't require much thinking for Piniella to know what to do with Trachsel at this point, and that's to toss him back on the shelf. Sean Marshall may not have much experience throwing this deep into the season, but Trachsel was almost single-handedly responsible for the Cubs' loss to the Pirates yesterday. The Cubs tried to fix something that wasn't broken. The best they can do now is try to put it back to the way that it was.

Previously at FanHouse
Sean Marshall Will Miss a Start to Make Room for Steve Trachsel

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

New York Yankees (76-62) vs. Seattle Mariners (74-62)-7:05PM Est.

If this weekend did anything in the AL East, it was letting the Yankees know it's time to turn their attention to the wild card race. They're not going to catch Boston, not that I ever thought they would mind you, so Seattle is their newest rival. The Mariners were able to take the first game of this series behind Felix Hernandez and Ichiro Suzuki, and ended their 9-game losing streak in the process, as they got back to within a game of New York and the wild card. The Yankees on the other hand are losing players. Andy Phillips is done for the season, and Roger Clemens is undergoing an MRI on his elbow. If Clemens is lost for some time, will the Yankees already questionable pitching staff be good enough to hold on? Chien-Ming Wang starts tonight, and he's 9-2 in his last 12 starts. He's also done a good job of keeping Ichiro off the basepaths, as Suzuki is hitting only .176 off of Wang. The bad news for Wang is that after Seattle snapped each of it's previous long losing streaks this season, they've gone on a run. It'll be up to Horacio Ramirez to get another one started tonight.

After the Cubs traded for Steve Trachsel on Friday, there was a bit of speculation as to whose spot he would be taking. The answer, at least for now, is Sean Marshall. Marshall did have an ERA of over 6.00 in August, but that was mostly due to one bad start against the Pirates at the beginning of the month. Lou Piniella says not to put too much stock into the news:

"There's nothing wrong," Piniella said. "We've skipped people here from time to time this summer."

As the article linked above immediately points out after that quote, umm, no the Cubs haven't. In fact, Marshall, Lilly, Zambrano, Hill, and Marquis are the only Cub starters to take the mound since mid-May. I think that consistency is one of the big differences between these Cubs and the 66 win Cubs of last year, who trotted fourteen different starters out to the mound.

Will putting Trachsel into the rotation be worth breaking the rotation up? Trachsel really doesn't have much left in the tank at age 36 in his 15th major league season, but he's been a pretty consistently average pitcher the past three or four years. I can understand the Cubs not wanting to run Marshall's arm down this early in his career, but honestly, I'd rather have Marshall on the mound than Trachsel in a game that I thought my team had to win.

When your team's 16 games out of first place in late August, you may think you can get away with such things as skipping out on pre-game stretching. But not on Dave Trembley's watch, buddy.

Before yesterday's game against the Blue Jays, the Os skipper took great exception to seeing some of his players show up late for their mandatory stretch. So, bat in hand, Trembley got his Lou Piniella on, blasting the guilty for their tardiness and reminding them of his three golden rules: Be on time. Be professional. Respect the game.

"There are no exceptions. People will be out on time, and we'll do things right. We've made tremendous strides. I've had tremendous cooperation from the players, but on days like today, where it is a day game after a night game, there may be a tendency just to go out there and say, 'We shot all our bullets in New York. I want to go out there and make sure everybody knew that we didn't. We're coming out here to play today, and we're going to get after it.

"A big part of my job is to make sure guys are prepared to play and focused. It all starts with being on time, doing things right and expecting to win. I'm not trying to be a bad guy here, but commitment needs to happen by everyone and as a team. I won't compromise those things for anybody at any time, and if I have to raise my voice to get people's attention, I have no problem with that."

The tirade seems to have paid dividends: Os starter Steve Trachsel won for the first time since June 8, and J.R. House hit his first major league home run. Today, Baltimore shoots for the rubber game, and you can bet everyone shows up on time for stretchin'.

Let me see if I have this right: we stink, we don't spend money, we make terrible player personnel decisions, and we're stuck in a division with two perennial World Series contenders. Oh yeah, and we've lost eight in a row, darn. What should we do about this? I know, let's fire the manager!

Maybe the situation in Baltimore didn't strike you as such, but that's how it came across to me. How can you fire Sam Perlozzo and blame him for the team's failures? Baseball is a game of ups-and-downs. The same club that went 2-13 in June also had separate four-game and six-game winning streaks in May.

Even with the hideous recent play by the O's, Baltimore was still only 29-40 at the time of Perlozzo's firing, not 26-43 like Texas or something. I'm not saying that losing is acceptable, but what did Baltimore's management group really have in mind for this year's team? A playoff berth? A division title? A World Series run? Honestly, look yourself in the mirror for a second before you run your manager out of town.

Before the season started, Major League Baseball announced several minor rule changes, including one that said pitchers must deliver the baseball within 12 seconds when the bases are clear ... or as I like to call it, the "Steve Trachsel Rule".

To be honest, I don't have a clue if umpires are actually enforcing this rule, but if they are it certainly hasn't affected the man known as the "Human Rain Delay." In 13 starts he's put up a 5-4 record with a 3.82 ERA. In fact, Trachsel is pitching so well that he's probably going to garner more interest on the trade market now than he had when he was a free agent this winter -- and the irony of that fact is not lost on him. From the Baltimore Sun:

"I laugh at how I look at all the other teams that picked other pitchers over me and how well they're doing, for three times the money," said Trachsel, who starts tomorrow night against the Washington Nationals at Camden Yards. "But there were a lot of things going on behind the scenes that contributed to that."

What exactly was going on behind the scene? For one, he was going through a divorce, but he also claims there were a lot of false rumors about him floating around big-league front offices.