At 8 PM EST major league baseball’s annual Home Run Derby will take place at Yankee Stadium. This year’s field is made up of Lance Berkman, Ryan Braun, Grady Sizemore, Chase Utley, Josh Hamilton, Justin Morneau, Dan Uggla and Evan Longoria.

I’m gonna go with Lance Berkman from the NL to win it, with Josh Hamilton of the AL coming in second. Unfortunately, and rather ironically, there are no Yankees participating, no thanks to A-Rod. Check out Jayson Stark’s thoughts on that situation .

Starting pitcher Rich Harden is now a Chicago Cub.

In a six player deal that also sent Oakland reliever Chad Gaudin to Chi Town, Athletic GM Billy Beane has once again traded away young talent for younger, this time acquiring pitcher Sean Gallagher, outfielders Matt Murton and Eric Patterson and minor leaguer Josh Donaldson.

This is not a good trade for Oakland. All of the players that Beane just received have yet to come any where close of their perceived talent. This is just another case of Billy Ball run rampant.

At 3:15 AM this morning, the New York Mets fired manager Willie Randolph. The Mets are currently underachieving with a record of 34-35, though the firing may have had more to do with the team’s monumental collapse at the end of 2007’s regular season. The Mets have posted winning numbers in each of Randolph’s three complete seasons, but with a payroll of $138 million, Randolph has apparently come up short—at least in the eyes of general manager Omar Minaya.

My take: The Mets are a classic example of a team built too much around free agency, much like the Yankees. Bulking up their roster with big names on year to year basis, they lack the chemistry necessary to make a World Series drive.

After three blown home run calls on nationally televised games in May, Major League Baseball is apparently looking to instill instant replay by August 1st. This according to a report by USA Today, citing two ranking MLB officials.

I think that instant replay will be a proper asset to umpires on disputable HR calls. But I think the line needs to be drawn right there. In no way should instant replay ever effect a judgment call such as a tag play or balls and strikes. We’ll see how it all pans out.

This year has been great as far as bad contracts are concerned in the major leagues. With Andruw Jones, Miguel Cabrerra, Eric Gagne, the crown jewel of all bad contracts Barry fucking Zito, and now Dontrelle Willis all complete flops, GM’s around the league have to be even more wary of spending the big dollars on extensions for younger players and those big free agent fish.

It was announced today that Willis, or “the human earned run” as I like to call him since he was traded to Detroit (note the 10.32 ERA), has been sent down to Single A. I’m sure it’s just to “work things out” or whatever, but the truth is his numbers had declined steadily for the two seasons previous to Detroit acquiring him during the off season due to the fact that he can’t seem to mix in a strike every once in a while.

Detroit as a team fucking sucks this year after many predicted them to be world series contender, and after putting Jeremy Bonderman on the DL earlier in the day things don’t appear to be looking up any time soon. They have one of the highest payrolls in the bigs, and I looked forward to seeing that lineup come together on the field, but such is the way of baseball. After all, who would have predicted Tampa Bay to be 38-26 at this point in the season?

Jake’s blog about Paul Pierce reminded me about another recent incident involving a Boston athlete. Coco Crisp got hit by a pitch in the first inning against the Rays a few days ago - and had it coming because of his ridiculously hard slide in to 2nd base the day before - but instead of walking down to first base like a man, he charged the mound. He didn’t fare so well, as there were a lot of swings and misses, which pretty much his entire career as a Red Sock.

Even so, a good baseball fight is good for the soul sometimes. Enjoy.

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