Horsehide Chronicles

It’s highly doubtful that any minor league player is going to have the type of impact Mike Trout had on the Los Angeles Angels when he joined the team in late April of last year and went to have one of the best rookie season’s ever (.326 BA, 30 HR, 83 RBI, 129 R, 49 SB). His team went 83-59 the rest of the way.

The Houston Astros have their Ryan.

Maybe not the Ryan they were hoping for, mind you, but the Ryan the Astros have hired certainly comes to them with baseball cred, and his hiring could potentially lead to a fascinating shake-up of the baseball landscape in Texas.

Over the years, the bunt has been attacked again and again...and again for good measure.

A couple weeks ago, I wrote an open letter to Bryce Harper asking him to never change. I made it clear that it involved him upholding his style of play, as Bryce Harper just isn't Bryce Harper without the Tasmanian Devil approach to the game. 

If a pitching rotation is like a sandwich, consider this the recipe.

Every sandwich has the same basic ingredients: The bread to keep things together on the ends, the meat in the middle and the cheese and mustard for a little kick on top.

Now a month into the MLB season, it's as good a time as any to take a look at the latest trade buzz around the league.

Phillies Itching to Sell?

There, in the distance, I see smoke and white flags being waved!

Such is my vision of the 2013 Major League Baseball season. There will be a point, right around the July 31 non-waiver trade deadline, when some teams just plain give up and go into fire-sale mode.

Not a hard prophecy to conjure, really. It happens every year, and it will happen again this year. The only question is which teams are going to be the ones doing the giving up and the selling?

Maximizing a player’s trade value usually involves a team waiting until the last possible moment, hoping a team with some interest gets desperate as its roster hole becomes more evident. It also doesn’t hurt if the player being shopped gets red-hot leading up to the trade deadline.

Boston Red Sox right-hander Clay Buchholz is the early favorite for the American League Cy Young Award. He's won each of his first six starts, racking up a major league-best 1.01 ERA along the way.

And he's doing it all because he's a no-good cheater.