Daily Links - The Trade Deadline As Dating Vernacular Edition

I love trading season. But why is it that rumors, deals, and potential deals are all spoken of using the same terminology as dating? The Red Sox are "all over" Erik Bedard while the Yankees "are hot for" Umbaldo Jimenez. According to Jayson Stark, the Indians and Rangers are involved (with each other?), while the Braves are  "chasing after" Josh WIllingham. I hope he's cute! The Pirates are eyeing Jason Kubel Brewers but are not "hot on" Carlos Pena who must be like totally crushed. The Indians are "chasing after" Jamey Carroll. Texas and the Padres have had a "good talk" and as we all know those never end well. Just ask the Phillies who eventually "gave up on" Hunter Pence. Aww, so sad.

Link time!

When President Nixon left office he famously said, "You won't have Dick Nixon to kick around anymore." It was funny that he called himself dick. I wonder if Clay Buchholz said something similar upon leaving the Red Sox clubhouse after being placed on the DL last month. Probably didn't call himself dick. Buchholz, it has been revealed, may not be around anytime soon as the back problem he's been suffering from has not been solved. It's unclear but either the Red Sox know what the problem is and it's not at all good, or they have no idea what the problem is, which is not at all good. Alex Speier (who follows Marc Normandin on twitter!) writes about the situation in some detail and wonders, as do I, with the trading deadline near, what the ultimate affect will be on the Sox.

Steven Goldman, writing at SB Nation's Baseball page, discusses his private existential crisis as relates to Hanley Ramirez. No snark or joke here, just more proof that Mr. Goldman is one of the best baseball writers out there in any medium.

Could this be Dustin Pedroia's best season ever? It's possible according to Mr. Speier. According to the article, since June 4th when he had a OPS of .673, Pedroia has hit an ungodly .387/.475/.671. That looks like a tough line to keep up for the rest of the year, but even if Pedroia levels off at the plate, his overall contribution will give MVP voters some pause. Well, a second or two before voting for Jose Bautista. And now that I look it up to make sure I'm not making some huge error writing a sentence like that, according to Fan Graphs, Pedroia has been worth 6.4 WAR while Bautista has totaled 6.8. The race is closer than I thought. Also of note, third on the fWAR list is Jacoby Ellsbury at 5.9.

Chris Jaffe at The Hardball Times has an interesting article about teams and their overall records. Not Pythagorean records, or third order winning percentages, Mr. Jaffe writes about teams records since they became a franchise. Like the Cardinals since 1882. Or 1892 depending on whose doing the counting. For the record, the Boston Red Sox/Americans franchise is 8,883-8,272.

Finally, not to belabor this point, though I could be well past that by now, but Alex Remington of Fan Graphs sums up the missed call/non-missed call by umpire Jerry Meals that ended the 19 inning love affair between the Pirates and Braves three nights ago and the media reaction to it. But he also adds some pertinent information: both Meals and Executive Vice President for Operations for MLB Joe Torre stated Meals missed the call, Julo Lugo (the runner) should have been called out, and the game should have continued. Mr. Remington uses this unfortunate situation as a jumping off point to show how an instant replay system could work in baseball. I've called for something similar many times both here, at other sites and over twitter. Hopefully Uncle Bud will listen one of these days, but I won't be the one holding my breath in anticipation.