Fan News

The Cardinals and Reds are neck and neck in the NL Central standings with no dark horse in sight. They will stay that way unless a key player gets injured or one of these two teams make a move before the July 31 trade deadline.

There is less than a month to baseball’s trading deadline and the Washington Nationals will soon have to decide whether they are going to be buyers or sellers.

Yankees manager Joe Girardi wasted no time pulling starter A.J. Burnett after 6 2/3 scoreless innings once Burnett surrendered a two-out single. But the skipper was nowhere to be found as reliever Joba Chamberlain struggled through the eighth inning, eventually yielding the tying run.

Such is baseball in the 21st century.

So is this: With runners on first and second and no one out in the bottom of the sixth, Francisco Cervelli stepped to the plate with a chance to help the Yankees add to their slim 1-0 lead.

The All-Star break is approaching and that is usually when trade talks start heating up. Rumors are flying around all over the place: chat rooms, internet blogs , news reports, etc.

One of my favorite places to find the latest rumors is MLBTradeRumors.com .

Here are the following moves and rumors from the Yankees and Mets that have popped up this past week:

Yankees

A quick post here before I head out for the weekend.

One of my favorite Gorilla Monsoon sayings from back in the 80’s was when he said someone was “cleaning house” in the ring. It usually happened during a tag-team match or a battle royal when the fan favorite made a comeback.

My friend Justin and I have adopted the term and use it when someone completely cleans off their plate during a meal. Now I think the Arizona Diamondbacks can adopt the term “cleaning house” as well.

Few two-letter combos can be as devastating as the dreaded “DL” in fantasy baseball.

Anyone who has played the sport knows that dreams of championship sugarplums can quickly dissolve into nightmares of basement-dwelling dust bunnies thanks to a few badly timed injuries.

In one high-stakes 16-team roto league, my team is redder than Santa’s suit on Christmas Eve. Grady Sizemore, Scott Sizemore, Asdrubal Cabrera, Nate McLouth, Maicer Izturis, Jeremy Hermida, and Brandon Webb, among others, have given my squad more DLs than HRs or RBIs.

Alex Gonzalez’s RBI single with the bases loaded in the top of the 11th inning started a five-run rally as Toronto topped New York, 6-1, Friday afternoon at Yankee Stadium.

Barry Bonds could quite go down as the most dangerous hitter Major League Baseball has ever seen. Steroids or no steroids, Bonds eye at the plate was matched by a select few.

Bonds is a guy who was walked intentionally with the bases loaded just so he wouldn't hit a homerun. So, the question is what 10 pitchers gave Bonds the most problems with the minimum being at least 25 at-bats for Bonds?

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The Detroit Tigers are in a tough predicament. They are one game behind the Minnesota Twins, one game ahead of the Chicago White Sox, and they have lost one of their best relievers in Joel Zumaya.

Zumaya fractured his right elbow throwing a 99 mph fastball against Minnesota's Delmon Young. And just like that Zumaya was done for the season.

Zumaya had a history of injuries with the Tigers. In the past three seasons he has ruptured a tendon in his right hand and injured his right shoulder multiple times.