Opinion

To the national media, the Royals' trade for Yuniesky Betancourt was a somewhat minor transaction:  partly because of the two cities involved and partly because of the players involved. To those of us who doggedly follow the Royals, however, this trade was a big, big deal, and one that was almost universally disparaged.

Obviously, all A's fans (and many baseball fans) know the story of Brad Ziegler.

He was signed by the A's out of the independent leagues, wasn't very good, was converted from conventional pitching to submarine-style pitching, took off, and ran off the longest scoreless-innings streak to start a career last season--at age 28.

While it looks like Ziegler's 2008 (1.06 ERA) was much better than his 2009 (3.27 ERA), that's actually not the case, as he had a 3.72 FIP last year and sports a 3.07 mark this year.

David Wright is starting his sixth year as a Met this week and has made it known that he would prefer to stay with the Mets for the rest of his career.

In this day and age of players only wanting to go where the money is and putting in no trade clauses in their contract, Wright is choosing loyalty to the team that he grew up loving and works hard for them 24/7/365.  The Mets have Wright under contract through 2012 and he has an option for the 2013 season.

Facing accusations of collusion by new head of the players' union Michael Weiner, commissioner Bud Selig is standing his ground.

"That's fine. They're entitled to their opinion," Selig said Tuesday at a meeting of the Baseball Writers' Association of America.

Why do we keep awarding Tim Lincecum the Cy Young award? By we, I mean writers across the world, including those at ESPN, Sports Illustrated, and us at Bleacher Report.

The Chicago White Sox currently have a pitching prospect named Carlos Torres.

White Sox fans, I'd forgive you if you've never heard of him. Non-White Sox fans, I'd be shocked if you have.

Carlos Torres was ranked the White Sox's 25th best prospect coming into the year by Baseball America. 

Torres is 26, and he's a member of the rotation of the White Sox's Triple-A affiliate, the Charlotte Knights. He didn't reach Triple-A until a few months shy of his 26th birthday, which is part of the reason why scouts aren't thrilled with him.

Here we are, Wednesday, July 15, also known as the slowest day in the sports year.

Historically, the day after the MLB All-Star Game is the slowest sports day of the entire year.

There are no major sports playing today. None.

Perhaps you care a lot about summer league basketball? Maybe European football (soccer)?

Honestly, I went looking for the Saturday Night, Live skit simply because of the tie in to the theme of the article (I'll get to that).  Then I watched it and realized the implications are treacherous as well as infinite.  I'll leave it to the reader to make the leaps because I'm as tired of typing the phrases as you are of reading them.

Besides, the performances make no subtle statements.

Finally.

Finally, the Atlanta Braves fans can hear the words, "Now batting, Jeff Francoeur" and not feel obligated to scream and holler and clap and cheer for their hometown hero.

Finally, the young ladies in the stands can tear off their Francoeur t-shirts and replace them with the screen-printed bleached hair of Nate McLouth.

When Francoeur returns to Turner Field this weekend as a New York Met, I can't promise you that he'll strike out three times or hit into four double plays. But I can promise you one thing: There will be boos.

The St. Louis Cardinals should trade for Corey Patterson.

Maybe I'm a moron.

Maybe I'm a thinker.

Either way, sometimes crazy ideas work. 

I know I'll get fried for this. You're probably thinking, "If he's not good enough for Washington, he's really not good enough for St. Louis. What does this guy know?"