{"id":7536,"date":"2010-07-08T13:48:54","date_gmt":"2010-07-08T20:48:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/?p=7536"},"modified":"2010-07-08T13:48:55","modified_gmt":"2010-07-08T20:48:55","slug":"luke-warm-july-8-2010","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/?p=7536","title":{"rendered":"Luke-Warm: July 8, 2010"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Landestoy Luke<\/p><\/div>\n

By Landestoy Luke<\/p>\n

I\u00a0was told by a reader on the site yesterday that I didn\u2019t mention the Yankees enough. What\u2019s there to say? They have the best record in baseball and are the best team money can buy. No\u2026I\u2019m not complaining about it…every team plays under the same rules. However, it\u2019s tough not to root for small-budget Tampa. They\u2019ve made shrewd trades and built up their team through an excellent farm system.<\/p>\n

Speaking of the Rays, word is they are in on the Cliff Lee sweepstakes. That brings the total number of potential suitors for Lee to 76. Dodger fans should ditch the idea that they will get Lee. It\u2019s actually not a money thing (the Dodgers have room to add a big salary and reports indicate they are willing to do so). It\u2019s a matter of Seattle getting prospects that are ready to play in the bigs and the Dodgers just don\u2019t have those. They are fairly stacked at the lower levels, but with other teams having major league ready talent, they can\u2019t compete. Roy Oswalt of Houston is more of a probability, given that Houston won\u2019t be competing any time soon and can afford to take on players that may not be ready for 2-3 years.<\/p>\n

I think differently on this than most baseball folks do. I\u2019d prefer trading a package of guys for an everyday player than a pitcher. Acquire a pitcher in late July and you\u2019ll get maybe 12 starts out of him. Is that guy going to be 3 or 4 games better than the pitcher they replace? Most likely not. In the postseason, there aren\u2019t any givens either. In 1998, Houston sold the farm to Seattle for Randy Johnson. He was awesome during the regular season, but puked his first game in the NLDS and the \u2018Stros were done. Two of the three players traded for him, Freddy Garcia and Carlos Guillen, were core contributors to Seattle \u2019s solid run at the beginning of the 2000\u2019s. Granted\u2026nothing is guaranteed with prospects, but they are valuable chips for trade and would rather flip them for players that will contribute every day. But that\u2019s just me.<\/p>\n

Bonita Alum wants me to go cover summer baseball. Sorry\u2026the Luker doesn\u2019t do summer leagues. Unless you\u2019re really into seeing the 4th<\/sup> string pitcher who will end up throwing 5 total innings for the varsity club, summer ball is as exciting as reading Villathedevil\u2019s horse racing stories. Now, if The Mid wants to dispatch Double L to Hawaii to cover the Hawaiian Collegiate Baseball League, I\u2019m all in.<\/p>\n

Want more L-squared and in real-time? Follow my Twitter feed: #LandestoyLuke.<\/p>\n

Landestoy Luke is a former semi-pro baseball player in the California-Nevada Independent League. He credits his pitching coach, Urbano Lugo, for teaching him the splitter that he used with great success while a member of the Henderson Florencias.\u00a0 After spending some time as an advance scout in the Mexicali League, Luke now spends his time as a freelance writer. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Landestoy Luke I\u00a0was told by a reader on the site yesterday that I didn\u2019t mention the Yankees enough. What\u2019s there to say?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[2252],"class_list":["post-7536","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-bonita-alum"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7536","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7536"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7536\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7540,"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7536\/revisions\/7540"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}