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* As of 2:30 pm, the Giants have Bengie Molina, Eliezer Alfonzo and Steve Holm listed on the active roster. This could simply mean that Alfonzo is headed back to Fresno, and the MLB.com Web monkey went out for a caramel frappalappadingdong and forgot to erase E-Alf’s name. Or it could mean that something else —something bigger — is about to happen. KNBR’s Damon Bruce hinted last night a move was afoot. I generally regard information from Bruce as seriously as I would a glassy-eyed guy on the street asking me for $2.50 because his car broke down and he needs to take BART back to Fremont. Is your car perchance named Wild Irish Rose, my good sir?
Maybe there’s more to this than a simple backup catcher swap, but my money’s on the hungover Web guy.
* Is Randy Winn available? Brian Sabean recently said no, but BP’s Will Carroll now says yes. (Baseball Prospectus is free all week, by the way. Click over, peruse, and subscribe. It’s worth it.) Winn is Plan B or C for most teams looking for OF help, not surprising.
* Speaking of BP, prospect guru Kevin Goldstein has quotes from anonymous scouts about Madison Bumgarner and Angel Villalona. Read them in full here, but a couple excerpts: On Bumgarner, who had another outstanding game last night for low-A Augusta: “He's young for the year, he has above-average velocity, his control is outstanding, and his command is getting there… I like him a lot and think he'll move fast.” On Villalona, Bumgarner’s teammate who now has 12 home runs: “His raw power is just off the charts. It's massive raw power—he'll mis-hit balls in [batting practice] and they go 390 feet, but right now he's very restless at the plate."
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First, the superstar:  The six-time Pro Bowl linebacker signed a one-year extension earlier in
the day and the deal is reportedly worth $18 million. It includes a $6
million signing bonus, a $1 million raise in base salary from 2008
through 2011 and then $8 million in the final and new year of the deal
in 2012. Second, the rook: The Chicago Bears agreed to terms with T Chris Williams on a five-year
contract today. Williams was selected by the Bears in the first round
(14th overall) out of Vanderbilt. The Bears have all 12 draft picks
signed heading into Wednesday’s opening training camp practice. Terms
of the deal were not disclosed.
Good good good good, good good good good. Happy to see we don't have another Benson on our hands. Williams is locked up for the foreseeable future, so let's see what he can do. The Urlacher deal I'm sure will have more mixed reactions, but fans can't underestimate a happy, saner Urlacher versus an unhappy, insane Urlacher. He can be a real dick sometimes, but hopefully this deal minimizes that side of him. * * * Extra shizzle: - In Cubs-hate news, Milwaukee is 1 game back (as of this afternoon). Is it actually possible the Cubs may not make the playoffs? - Brett Favre in Tampa Bay?- White Sox off tomorrow before trips to Detroit and Minnesota
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What a dominating performance by Mike Mussina. 8 innings, 6 hits, 0 walks, 8 Ks, 0 runs. The adjustments this guy has made from last season to this season are nothing short of miraculous. Today's 5-1 win was his 13th of the season, and as ironic as it may be, I think he has a legitimate shot at 20 wins for the first time in his career. The Yanks have 61 games remaining on their schedule, meaning if everything went according to plan, he'd have 12 more starts to pick up 7 wins. Of course, when you factor in days off and the desire to skip the guys at the tail end of the rotation, he could see as many as 14. That would be the story of the year, as far as I'm concerned. The guy was a true ace for over a decade, but it wasn't until he lost his velocity that he finally won 20 games. As for the offense, well there wasn't a whole lot of it, but 5 runs is better than we've seen plenty of times this year, and it was more than enough today, so I'm not complaining. Sterling had me fooled on A-Rod's two-run double. From his call I thought it was headed for the left-field bleachers. Otherwise, nothing too shocking from his call of the game. I don't recall hearing, "That's baseball!" Once today, which is noteworthy. Justin Christian took a commanding lead in the battle for center field with his 2 for 3 performance, including a double to break the 0-0 tie and plate Jose Molina all the way from first base. The Melk Man was also 2 for 3, Gardner had the day off. Player of The Game: Moose Team Record: 56-45 Damon: You tell me, I had to listen to the game.
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As the morning papers note, the Giants are showcasing Omar Vizquel and other vets for another 10 days before the deadline with the hope that a mini-hot streak will catch a scout's eye. Jack Taschner is now officially a set-up man and allowed to pitch an entire inning -- unless he does like last night and walks two of the three guys he faces. Way to boost that short-term trade value, Special Agent. Dave Roberts is back and might start tonight in place of FreddieLoo!, though it's hard to imagine he's being showcased unless the Red Sox are on a dewy-eyed nostalgia trip. Oh well. Keeping Roberts isn't so bad for the rest of the year. If it weren't for his salary, he'd be a perfectly fine backup OF. He's a great pinch-hitter to lead off an inning when you need one run late in the game. Maybe he'll help teach Velez and Burriss the finer points of basestealing, the same way Maury Wills taught him when he was a pup, and his situation will sort itself out this winter. You might even read "showcase" into the move to bring back Steve Holm, who according to Baggs' Blog could swap places with Eliezer Alfonzo tonight. Perhaps the Giants heard rumblings of interest in Holm, and they want to make sure he gets a little major-league PT before the deadline. Baggarly also speculates that Pablo Sandoval, who has moved up to AA and keeps on raking, could soon see the bigs, perhaps after Rich Aurilia is traded. As for the youth movement, lo and behold check out the bullpen. With Yabu out, Tyler Walker is the senior citizen at 32; Taschner's the only other 30-year-old. I'm feeling optimistic this morning. Bringing the Nats to town, now 0-5 against the Giants this year, will have that effect. And not just for the results on the field. Did you see where they traded top reliever Jon Rauch (good pitcher under a reasonable contract) straight up for the D-Backs' dubious infield prospect Emilio Bonifacio? But wait, there's more: GM Jim Bowden, perhaps eager to throw his weight around before he goes to jail, also gave a two-year $16 M extension to SS Christian Guzman, who is sporting a rather empty .300 batting average after a four-year run of offensive misery and a long injury-induced absence. Lunatic fringers, it could be a whole lot worse. We could have Paul LoDuca in left field.
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Another night, another late-inning come-from-ahead-loss. A strong first inning is not a portent of things to come. And a reliever allows a home run. So, where do we start with the blame? Do you, like TLR, take on the offense? Six runs in two games isn't necessarily a recipe for success, I'll grant you. But look at the lines for Milwaukee and St. Louis last night. Same number of AB. Same number of hits. Same number of total bases. The Cardinals even walked twice when the Brewers didn't walk. So it's hard to lay it too much on the offense when Milwaukee can do the same and win. I think the problem is the bullpen, but maybe not for the reason everyone is talking about. Look, Lohse had labored through the seventh. If there is a bullpen combo that TLR trusted, he'd have pulled Lohse after seven, used Pitcher A in the eighth and pitcher B in the ninth (perhaps with Villone in the middle to get Fielder as well). Right now the Cardinal staff has 13 arms on it. There should be no reason to extend starters like they did last night. But the problem is there are very few that can be trusted in that pen. Springer's been pretty good, but he's pitched too much recently. McClellan, obviously, has that trust (though it backfired last night). Villone can be trusted against lefties, but he's not a guy you can throw out there for an inning. Thompson has been giving good innings lately. After that, who? Izzy and Franklin are very dangerous. Flores hasn't been effective. Boggs is out there, but you know they are trying to save him to start Friday. All these arms and the game is still left in the hands of a tiring starter. That said, Kyle Lohse pitched a heck of a game. It's too bad he didn't get a win out of it, but it was just more of what we've come to expect from him. I'm still not sure the Cards should sign him to an extention--this screams "career year"--but I'm glad that they picked him up in spring training. Unfortunately, the goat has to go to Kyle McClellan. It's tough being in a tie game where one mistake can cost you the game, but you really don't want to give up a home run in that situation. A couple of base hits, it's possible you can work out of that. A home run there, especially after the Brewer comeback, is just demoralizing. So after another Cubs loss, the Cards sit in third, two games out. Earlier in the year I'd started to write off the Brewers, but now they may be our best chance to keep the Cubs out of the playoffs. The Cards can only split this series and that'll take a herculean effort with the pitchers for the next two days. Tonight, Braden Looper goes against CC Sabathia. On paper, that's not even close. Since he's been in the AL, there's not a lot of heads-up data against most of these Cardinals, though Troy Glaus has been pretty hot against him. Maybe he can bounce back from the 0-3 from last night. Sabathia's been dominant since moving to the NL, though, with a 1.88 ERA after three starts. Looper, well, you never can be sure what you are going to get with him. The Brewers haven't had much trouble with him in his career and this year, he's 1-1 against them but has an ERA of 4.09. The bad news wasn't contained to wins and losses last night. First off, Chris Duncan hits the DL. Some may find that a reason to rejoice, but Duncan had started to look better since his return from Memphis. Plus, with him going on the DL now, the odds of him getting traded at the deadline are almost nonexistent. He can be traded with his permission, I believe, but nobody's going to take him on while he's hurting. Then, in Memphis's game, Colby Rasmus goes down with a potentially season-ending MCL injury. We'll know more today, so that could be his dad's (who is the poster that put up the info) overreaction, but it doesn't sound good. Which means that we won't get that extra offensive boost by getting Rasmus into the lineup either. Wonder how all of this affects what Mozeliak is doing or needs to do? Will we hear of any trades soon or will this be another quiet deadline?
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 KIngman and co are still on vacation. And we are still in mourning at the end of Shea Stadium's rock & roll era. Here is another new entry to the Shea Rocks series.Today is the 32nd anniversary of Jethro Tull at Shea Stadium. From all surviving accounts, a good time was not had by all. On July 23, 1976, Tull came to grace the same stage as the Beatles, Grand Funk Railroad and the Festival of Peace. Rory Gallagher and Robin Trower opened. In what must have been state of the art for the time, giant video screens provided "Tullivision" for the fans in the back rows. However, the show was hampered by setup and weather issues. It took an hour between each act to break down and build the stages. Add to this annoyance lit fireworks: apparently an issue for concert-goers in the mid-'70s. According to Sounds magazine these "jive bombers...threw combustibles off the
top tiers, betting if they'd explode before landing on those at ground
level. Foxholes anyone?" Jive bombers - awesome band name. Here is the Tull set list from that day: Thick As A Brick To Cry You A Song A New Day Yesterday (w. flute
solo, incl. Bourée)/Living In The Past Too Old To Rock'N'Roll... Minstrel In The Gallery Beethoven's Ninth My God Cross-Eyed Mary Encore: Guitar Solo Wind Up Back-Door Angels Locomotive Breath/Wind
Up (reprise) Dambusters March/Back Door Angels (reprise) Here is the entire Sounds review: JETHRO TULL / ROBIN TROWER / RORY GALLAGHER
Shea Stadium, New York
Perhaps Deep Purple, who were once rated the world's loudest group, could have won a battle against the LaGuardia Airport runway which neatly bordered Shea Stadium. At the peak of rush hour flights on a Friday evening, Jethro Tull didn't have a chance.
Shea is normally a baseball stadium, capacity 55,000, and even with Tull's specially bulky outdoor sound system, it hardly constituted an ideal venue. For one thing, it took a bold leap of imagination to actually see anything resembling human beings at the several hundred foot distance from the stage. For some others, almost everything below 90 decibels was drowned out by the jet paths, and, as you can probably guess from Britain's many mud-filled festivals, it steadily rained on all but the few enclosed seating areas. Add circumstances together, and the bands themselves seemed to take on their physical surroundings in performance, mediocrity of setwork matching the greyness on the field.
Pity the unfortunate Rory Gallagher, who opened the evening forced to play his foursome of repetitious blues tunes while the bulk of the audience slowly filed in. Those who were seated didn't hesitate to show their opinions — one song done, and the first of the firecrackers exploded. An outdoor arena provided the jive bombers with new attack plans, and they threw combustibles off the top tiers, betting if they'd explode before landing on those at ground level. Foxholes anyone?
The concert's promoters bit off more than they could chew in battling with Shea's logistics. Gallagher was on stage for 20 minutes; over an hour later Robin Trower's equipment was finally ready for action. A system that would give surprising clarity to Tull's softish volume found no friend in Trower. His leads lost all differentiation, just as Jim Dewar's vocals were muddily obscured by an overbalanced bass control.
Struggling through the murk came 'Day Of The Eagle', 'Bridge Of Sighs', and new song, 'Long Distant Ways' and 'Too Rolling Stoned', Trower's normally delicate and sinuous passages now predictable to the point of boredom. He fared a bit better on the uptempo 'Lady Love' and 'The Fool And Me', only because the fast pace of those tunes eliminated any extended notes in favour of a quick melody, over and out. Trower has reached a dangerous point in his career, as his promised innovations are awfully slow to emerge, and what was once an acceptable Hendrix adaptation is now just so much rehash.
By now it was nearing the imposed time limit on use of the stadium, but Tull's show was preceded by another hour-long set change. Grand gestures introduced the almost full house to 'Tullavision', a group of large projection screens which made it possible for everyone to see at least one part of the stage action in close-up. Of course, 90% of the camera time was focused upon Ian Anderson, well-clothed in a neat, multi-colourful dancer's costume.
The rest of Tull played with brilliant complexity, defying my belief that no one could sound discernible notes in such a large place, but they might have been hidden behind the stage for all we got to see of their musicianship. Only when Anderson played his one-legged flute trills, introduced a song via acoustic guitar, or physically left the stage, was any instrumental work illustrated.
Anderson gave the audience the clever, warble-voiced madman they had waited four hours to see. He introduced 'Too Old To Rock 'n' Roll' pushing a baby carriage, and, growling, menaced his way through 'Aqualung'. Much of the set was fairly new; none of it was introduced, and songs had the uncanny way of blending into one another.
Mostly, they began in quiet; always, they crashed into full force with great energy, Anderson careening around the stage bug-eyed, mugging for the camera. And that bothered me most -- the use of long distance concert giving as a lucrative live show substitute. To pay the ten dollars for a slightly more personal 'Top Of The Pops'? The choice may soon no longer be yours to make.
OK so maybe Ian Anderson does not have fond memories of Shea. But wouldn't you have loved to see Billy Joel and Tull jam out on "Too Old To Rock & Roll/Too Young To Die"?
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All too easy. Darrell Rasner pitched well, but in bad luck, Bobby Abreu launched a two-run bomb and Robinson Cano picked up two more hits and two runs batted in as the Yanks slammed the Twins 8-2 at The Stadium. This one was a pitchers' duel through six, but the Bombers exploded for three runs in the sixth and four more in the seventh to stay unbeaten since the All-Star break and moved a season-best 10 games over .500 with their fifth straight victory.  Rasner gave up only two runs through 5 2/3 innings, but left trailing 2-1. David Robertson came in to relieve and was the beneficiary of the offensive outburst. D-Rob vultured his second win in four days with just one pitch. Yep, sometimes baseball is just unfair. The bullpen continued to flex its muscles as Jose Veras, Kyle Farnsworth and Dan Giese wrapped things up with three innings of one-hit ball. The Good:Bobby Abreu. The Yanks seemed destined for another dismal offensive performance when Abreu stepped up to the plate with the score 2-1 Twinkies in the sixth. But El Comedulce sparked the Yankees with one swing of the bat. Abreu crushed a 1-1 pitch deep into the Bronx night with Johnny Damon aboard to give the Bombers a 3-2 lead. The Yanks would go on to score five more runs and coast to the win. Bobby has been slumping in July (.234 average heading into Tuesday night) and his dinger was his first since June 25 at Pittsburgh. Maybe this will jump-start his bat. Abreu finished 2 for 4 with 2 runs scored and 3 RBI. Robinson Cano. Another night, another two hits for Robbie. Cano continued to wield a mighty stick with his fifth straight multi-hit game. Robbie's RBI-single in the second gave the Yankees an early 1-0 lead. Cano added another ribbie-single during the Bomber's three-run sixth to extend the lead to 4-2. Keep on keepin on, Rob. Cano finished 2 for 4 with 2 runs batted in. Derek Jeter. Cano's hot-hitting has garnered most of the attention (and rightfully so), but The Captain is also starting to heat up. DJ's two-run double in the seventh gave the Yanks a more comfortable 6-2 lead. Jeter drove in two runs for the second straight night and is working on a modest four-game hitting streak. It's been well documented that Cano is a strong second-half hitter, but Jeter also comes alive when the weather turns oppressive. DJ is a career .322 hitter after the All-Star Game. Jeter finished 1 for 5 with a run scored and 2 ribbies. The Bad:Melky Cabrera. The Melk-Man has been hitting well since the break (.353 in four games), but he didn't have a good one Tuesday night. Cabrera went hitless and also committed his fourth error of the year in the first inning. And it was an egregious one. Denard Span singled to center to open the game and Melky came in to field the ball, but misplayed it and Span advanced to second base. Physical error? Negative. Melky fumbled the ball because he was waving his hand in acknowledgment to the bleacher creatures' roll call. Inexcusable! The error didn't cost the Yanks, but Melky has to know better than that. Cabrera finished 0 for 4.  The Ugly:Screw you, doc. This news is a day old, but I forgot to mention it. Doctors recommended season-ending knee surgery for Hideki Matsui, but Godzilla will try and make it back without going under the knife. "I still have a strong desire to come back this year and be a force for the
team," Matsui said Monday. I like Matsui's grit, but GM Brian Cashman didn't seem to think it would make a bit of difference. "I wouldn't say I'm optimistic, personally," Cashman said. "I think it speaks a lot to his heart. The doctors looked at him and
recommended surgery, but he wants to see if he can fight through it and continue
to play. And there's no harm. He's not going to make it any worse by doing that.
So we'll see. But I'm not optimistic." Prove 'em wrong, Matsui. The Yanks will go for the sweep Wednesday afternoon. Mike Mussina (12-6, 3.49 ERA) will battle Glen Perkins (7-2, 3.84 ERA). Perkins has won five of his past six decisions and hasn't dropped a game since May 30 when the Yanks drubbed him for five runs on 10 hits in four innings. The Moose has been spectacular in July (2-0 with a 1.50 ERA in three starts) and is 21-6 with a 3.18 ERA in 31 career starts against Minnesota. Mussina was the winning pitcher for the Yankees in their May 30 win against the Twinkies at the Metrodome. Time to take this winning streak to six.
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A game that started with Melky Cabrera making an error while answering his roll call from the bleacher creatures turned around quickly in the bottom of the sixth when Bobby Abreu caught up to an inside fastball and deposited it in the right field seats to reclaim the lead for the Yanks. The bullpen would make it stand up. Rasner gave you as much as you can hope for. 5 2/3, 2 runs. You can live with that. You can win with that. Robbie Cano kept up his torrid Summer pace with another two hits and two RBI. The highlight of the game was obviously the near 3-6-1 double play started by the Giambo. When I saw him stumble and throw from his knees to second I was 100% sure the ball would wind up in left, but he hit Jeter with a decent throw and they almost turned it. The bullpen was unbelievable again. Farnsworth completed nine straight no-hit innings tonight. The only blemish was a single given up by Geise in garbage time in the 9th. Gardner gets the slight edge in the battle for center field tonight. He was 0/3 with a walk and two K's, but Melky was 0/5 with that bone-headed play in center. The Rays lost tonight, the deficit has been cut to 3.5 games. Boston is playing on the left coast, but they can't overtake the Rays so the deficit will still be 3.5 when you wake up tomorrow. The Moose vs. Perkins to wrap the series (and hopefully the sweep) tomorrow night. Player of The Game: Abreu Team Record: 55-45 (HW) Damon: Nada
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