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While he doesn't have much power or a ton of speed, one thing Howie Kendrick has always been able to do is hit the baseball. His career batting average in the minor leagues is an absurd .360 -- with a .972 OPS, which is even more impressive considering his lack of home run power. In the majors, he's generally been a .300 hitter as well. Thus, entering 2009 as a 25-year-old with a firm grasp on an everyday second base job, expectations were a bit high. Kendrick flopped.

He was demoted to the minors after hitting only .231 with an abominably low .636 OPS through 51 games. After about three weeks in Triple-A, though, the Angels feel confident Kendrick is ready to come back, and he's been recalled.

The Atlanta Braves have announced that struggling second baseman, Kelly Johnson has been placed on the 15-day disabled list with tendinitis in his right wrist.

This is the second piece of bad news Johnson has received this week. After Tuesday night's game, Bobby Cox announced that Martin Prado would take over as the starting second baseman for the Braves. Johnson, who is hitting .214 this season in 234 at-bats, has been mired in an awful 9-for-74 slump. Johnson's overall poor hitting, especially his .174 average against right-handed pitchers, combined with Prado's recent success forced Cox to rule out a platoon situation and give the job outright to Prado.

The Cubs continue to make minor tweaks to their roster as they cling to relevancy in the NL Central race. After recalling Kevin Hart and Sam Fuld in the past few days, relief pitcher Jeff Samardzija was brought back to the big leagues Tuesday. He'll replace Jose Ascanio in the bullpen.

Samardzija, the highly popular pitcher who once played wide receiver for Notre Dame's football team, came onto the scene with a solid rookie season in 2008. He worked 26 times and compiled a 2.28 ERA. Earlier this year, though, Samardzija had a rough go at the major league level. In five outings, his ERA was a large 8.10.

When the St. Louis Cardinals traded for Mark DeRosa over the weekend, it was basically the unofficial start of teams swapping players before the July 31 trade deadline. Traditionally teams wait for one big domino to fall before they start wheeling and dealing, so it's no surprise that the Yankees and Pirates have now worked out a deal amongst themselves.

In a Tuesday morning deal, the Yankees acquired Eric Hinske from the Pirates for two minor leaguers.

WASHINGTON -- "We have too many Johns on this team," cracked a heard, but not seen, Red Sox player as a horde of media crowded around John Smoltz's locker the day before his first major league start of 2009.

There is (Jon) Lester, the once and future ace. There is (Jonathan) Papelbon, one of the best closers in the game. And Thursday evening in the nation's capital, for the first time there will be (John) Smoltz, the future Hall of Famer trying to reinvent himself one more time as he makes his 2009 debut.

"This is not the old, or the new, or the done," Smoltz said of his return to a major league pitching mound. "This is just a new chapter of which when I have a baseball in my hand, I feel like I can make a pitch and ... take the sting out of the bat."

Kyle Blanks, San Diego's top hitting prospect, is expected to be promoted from Triple-A Portland and join the Padres as early as Friday.

The 22-year-old Blanks was batting .283 with 12 home runs and 38 RBI prior to his expected promotion. He's split time this season between his natural first base position and left field, a move that should earn Blanks more playing time at the big-league level due to the stranglehold Adrian Gonzalez has on the first base position.

The right-handed hitting Blanks was named the Padres Minor League Player of the Year last season after averaging .325 in Double-A San Antonio with 20 home runs and 107 RBI. He hit .301 the previous season in Single-A Lake Elsinore with 24 home runs and 100 RBI.

The Red Sox and Marlins met Tuesday night for the first time since 2006. This was significant -- and only in a minor way -- not because it was the first time the two teams met since the fateful Josh Beckett-Hanley Ramirez (and other significant parts) trade, but because it was the first time where we could even begin to evaluate that swap with any historical perspective.

Back then, Ramirez was just a rookie shortstop with plenty of talent and two good months under his belt. Beckett, brought in as the presumptive ace, was struggling with the transition from the NL to the AL East and sported a bloated ERA hovering near 5.00 for a Boston team headed for a mighty fall in the second half.

So far this season it seems like the Chicago White Sox have been trying to go back in time. After getting off to a bad start to the 2009 campaign, the Sox went out and signed Scott Podsednik to a minor-league deal -- even though most scouts would have told you he was done. Well, it's worked out pretty nicelyl for Chicago as Podsednik is back on top of their lineup and playing surprisingly well.

Then, this week the White Sox signed another player from their 2005 team who most people think is washed up: Freddy Garcia. It seems like the team thinks if they get as many players as they can from 2005 they'll win another World Series. Which is why it's too bad that the Rangers had to go and destroy Chicago's "brilliant" plan.

Once one of the most beloved sports figures in Chicago, Sammy Sosa, will quietly announce his official retirement from baseball sometime in the near future. He was de facto retired anyway, having not played since 2007 and seeing minimal major league interest in his current services. This move simply means he'll quit trying to find work.

Sosa retires with numbers that would have made him a sure-fire first-ballot Hall of Famer in any previous or probably future generation. With players who excelled between the early 1990s and 2004, however, there is an obvious cloud of performance-enhancing drug suspicion hanging over them. On that subject, he just doesn't want to talk about it.

The 2009 trading season began in earnest Tuesday evening.

The Pittsburgh Pirates sent Nate McLouth to Atlanta in exchange for three prospects, according to a statement released by the Braves. Outfield prospect Gorkys Hernandez and pitching prospects Charlie Morton and Jeff Locke are headed to Pittsburgh in return for McLouth.

It's not surprising to see the Braves acquire some outfield help; none of their outfielders has an OPS above .700 and they're still well within striking distance in the NL East. McLouth was an All-Star in 2008 and despite an oblique injury, he was off to a good start in 2009, hitting .256/.349/.470 with nine home runs for the Pirates. In addition to his offense, he won a Gold Glove last year playing center field in spacious PNC Park.

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