Take a Flyer on the Douchebags

EDIT: Marc Lancaster writes that the Rays held on to Dukes because they refused to deal him for a grossly undervalued return. Instead, they will hold onto him, hope he turns his life around, let him mash in Triple-A and hope his value increases. Sounds like a pretty good idea to me, from their perspective.


The trade deadline is heating up. Instead of blabbing incessantly about Mark Teixeira, I think we should take a look at a couple of guys whose trade value has plummeted and could be had for pennies on the dollar relative to what it would have taken around this time last year. Elijah Dukes and Lastings Milledge are two extremely toolsy prospects whose value has taken a hit due in large part to off the field issues. For a rebuilding team with an excess of middle-aged middle relievers, why not try to unload one of them and take a flier on a low-risk, high-reward clown with issues? If you're the orioles, the worst case scenario is trading acquiring Milledge from the Mets, and then cutting him after his misogynistic hip-hop record takes off and he spends more time in the strip club than the batting cage. Is that really a big deal, especially if you're unloading Jamie Walker's contract to do so? With a change of scenery, maybe Lastings develops into the .300/.375/.470 player he's supposed to, and he supplants Corey Patterson in CF for the long term. For the Orioles, what the hell else are you going to do?

Dukes is a bit more of a psychopath. His worst case scenario falls somewhere between domestic assault and serial murder. Scouts love him on the field, though. The D Rays are pretty much fed up with him, and with good reason. He needs to get out of Tampa. With every executive in baseball fully aware of this, the Rays have no leverage. He can be had for a slightly above average pitching prospect. Again, if you're the Royals or the Marlins, why not? You have to play the market in this situation, and at this point, because Elijah Dukes is insane, the market vastly undervalues him. For small-market teams that have very little chance of competing, you need to stockpile these assets as they become available.

As much as I hate Dave Littlefield and think that he is the worst GM in the game, the Pirates have been surprisingly active in searching for young talent to complement a rotation led by Tom Gorzelanny and Ian Snell. They are in the market for Duke as well as Braves stud catching prospect Jarrod Saltalamacchia. I believe I spelled that correctly without looking it up.

Random Stuff:

• I'm watching the Twins-Marlins game right now on MLB.tv, exclusively because of the fact that Johan is pitching. The Marlins announcers provided me with this asinine statistic: since 2003, Johan's record after the All-Star break: 42-4. His ERA is something around 2.00. Ridiculous.
  
• I think we can reach a solid verdict on Texas GM Jon Daniels after this trade deadline. His team sucks, but he has a lot of very marketable assets with which to rebuild. How he handles Teixeira, Gagne, and Otsuka will tell us a lot about his ability. As of now, the two major deals he has made since becoming the youngest GM in the game (trading Chris Young and Adrian Gonzalez for Adam Eaton and Akinori Otsuka; signing Michael Young to a very large deal) have not inspired much confidence for me. He can change that by doing well this July.
• I went to a Tigers-Nationals game at RFK on Monday night. Here's to hoping that the new ballpark in DC gives the fans something to rally around. Nats fans were literally outnumbered roughly 3-1 relative to Detroit fans. I don't blame them; the team is a joke and the stadium is an awful place to watch a ball game. I don't know that I trust Jim Bowden to turn the team around, but at least the plans for the park look pretty cool.