The Blue Jays paid Frank Thomas almost $8M to walk away. Why would Barry Bonds care? Read on...

Regular readers of this space know my feelings about Barry Bonds, so I’m not going to give you another diatribe calling the cries of collusion a farce. But I am going to tell you that Bonds’ handlers and lawyers are watching the Frank Thomas situation with great interest. As you probably know, the Big Hurt was released by the Blue Jays after complaining about being benched. The public party line from J.P.Ricciardi is that the team could not wait for Thomas to get through his usual two month warm up period and start hitting in late June or July.  Ricciardi claims that in the AL East a team can get buried in the standings right quick and never recover to compete in the post season. The rest of the world already knows the truth though. Thomas has a vesting clause in his contract that would guarantee another contract year to the tune of $10 mllion if he reached 375 at-bats this season. So rather than allow him to reach that plateau, the Jays intended to bench Thomas enough throughout the course of the season to prevent the option from kicking in. When he balked, they stared him down and released him, opting to eat more than $7 million this year rather than pay him $10 million next year. So why are the Bonds folks watching you ask? Well, they want to see if someone ponies up the money to hire Thomas. The two players have plenty in common. Both are injury prone, both cannot play the field, have attitude issues, and are expensive hitters that could help an American league club win a bid to the post season. If someone hires Thomas, but would not give Bonds a sniff; that could be construed as evidence of collusion. Maybe. It would hardly be a smoking gun, although, Bonds’ attorneys do not really need a smoking gun per se. But if Thomas does end up working for someone, it would be another potential building block in a case against MLB owners. In the meantime, the Toronto papers are already looking at Bonds coming to play for the Jays.

Things are looking grim for Carlos Delgado. Simply put, it appears that his high mileage, injury history, and the wear and tear of 1868 games played are conspiring to force him into the twilight of his career. All of his key statistics and peripheral numbers point to an epic drop in production.  Check out this article by Dave Cameron of Fangraphs in which he was checking up on Frank Thomas (who still has something lefr in the tank, by the way) and came across Delgado.  If you haven’t checked out Fangraphs, I highly recommend it. They have their own unique way of looking at the game with a statistic they call Win Probablity added, and they have cool looking graphs for every game in progress on their scoreboard. That’s just the beginning – check them out for yourself.

How about Chase Utley? He’s hit six homers in his last six games and raised his batting average to .357 in the process. I’ll say it now – Chase Utley will be this year’s NL MVP.

Garrett Atkins has been en fuego in the early going.  Guess all that talk about Ian Stewart breathing down his neck, has got him motivated.  Atkins hit his fifth home run of the season yesterday, is batting .321 for the season, and driven in 15 runs. He is in the midst of a seven game hitting streak, and has hits in 16 of the 20 games he’s played this season.

Ednison Volquez continues to pitch very well for the Reds. Yesterday he held the Dodgers to one run on three hits over seven innings, striking out seven.  He did walk four batters and threw 105 pitches, so the news is not all great. I’d like to see him be a bit more efficient with his pitches, but perhaps that is asking too much of the youngster.

Good to see Justin Verlander get a win, finally.  But he needed 110 pitches to get through six innings, and he only struck out three, so he was far from dominating.

Speaking of Detroit, they have gone 8-6 since losing their first seven games, and the offense is finally starting to put some runs on the board. They are still wildly inconsistent, and the pitching has been awful. Don’t write them off just yet though.

Pirates outfielder Nate McLouth saw his 19 game hitting streak come to an end yesterday. During the streak, which began Opening Day, he had 28 hits, including 3 home runs, 10 doubles, and a triple, and he had 16 RBI. His on base percentage is .447, which is outstanding for a leadoff hitter.  If only the Pirates had some other good hitters in the lineup to drive him in, they might actually start winning some games.

I’ve been pimping the Brew Crew’s Bill Hall since the beginning of the season, and he has been pretty good with 6 home runs and 16 RBI. But he is only batting .185, and yesterday the Brewers hung nine runs on 15 hits on the Cardinals, and Hall went 0 for 6.
Ouch! I’m a little worried.

The Red Sox have a real conundrum on their hands with Jacoby Ellsbury and Coco Crisp. Yesterday’s performance by Ellsbury isn’t going to make things any easier.  Ellsbury went 3 for 5 with 2 home runs, 3 runs scored, and 2 RBI. His average is up to .308 despite getting off to a very slow start. Crisp, on the other hand, is batting .325 but has only been healthy enough to play in 16 games, and has missed the last three with another injury. Someone has to go – and soon.

That’s all for me folks.  Shake it easy!