MLB Toronto

On Deck is FanHouse's look at the day's most intriguing baseball matchups.

Chicago Cubs (52-35) at St. Louis Cardinals (49-39) - 3:55 PM ET

It's sad to see a friendship go south as apparently the one between Tony La Russa and Jim Edmonds has now that Edmonds is with the Cubs and La Russa is playing ultra-sensitive. But in reality, La Russa and Edmonds are mere players in the larger war that is Cubs vs. Cardinals, with first place on the line and growing ever so further away from the Cardinals. Today, Kyle Lohse is going to have to continue his 2008 magic (remember when nobody wanted Lohse? Yeah, well now he's 10-2) against Ted Lilly.

It looks like David Eckstein can't rely on his scrappiness to rescue him much longer, as the Blue Jays are reportedly in the market to replace him and his offensively challenged partner John McDonald. The Jays are willing to trade A.J. Burnett and his opt-out clause to get that shortstop.

"They're offering Burnett to any team that needs pitching," an American League general manager told the (Toronto) Sun. "They've told us they're not happy with either David Eckstein or John McDonald."

Eckstein, who the Blue Jays inked to a one-year deal before spring training, is hitting .273 with a .360 on base percentage this season, but has struggled in the field. McDonald, who is a defensive specialist signed a two-year deal last fall for $3.8 million, but is only hitting .163 in 29 games so far this year.

The Jays caused heads to be scratched by signing Eckstein while they already had McDonald. Now they don't like either of them? Too bad NFL rules don't apply where one guy plays offense and one guy plays defense. As for who that new shortstop might be? Well I assume that Jimmy Rollins is off the table. Other than that, your guess is as good as mine. I'm not sure there's a shortstop out there that would be available for Burnett while making Jays fans forget the two they have at the same time. Perhaps a better idea would be to trade Burnett for Adam Dunn ... but that's only because I want to see if Dunn either retires on the spot or chokes J.P. Ricciardi.

As I mentioned over the weekend, the Toronto Blue Jays had to place Shaun Marcum on the disabled list due to some problems with his elbow. More specifically, the fact that it had been hurting him the past few weeks. Marcum was scheduled for a visit with the famous Dr. James Andrews on Monday to find out what exactly was wrong, and to see how long he's going to be out.

He got some good news, as it doesn't appear that Marcum is going to miss too much time.

During an examination in Birmingham, Ala., Andrews confirmed Marcum was suffering from strained ligaments around the elbow and forearm. The injury wasn't deemed to be severe, and Andrews gave Marcum the go-ahead to begin a throwing program as soon as Saturday.

According to the team's website, there's still no established timetable for Marcum's return. He is eligible to be activated from the 15-day disabled list in time for Toronto's July 4-6 road series against the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, but it's more likely that the Blue Jays will take extra precaution, meaning Marcum could be sidelined until around the All-Star break July 14-16.

While it's good news that Marcum will not be needing surgery and that it's an injury that should heal with rest, it still comes at a bad time for the Jays. They had lost seven in a row before beating the Pirates on Sunday, and have lost 14 of their 19 games in June to fall behind everybody in the AL East. Considering how well everyone else in the division has played this month, by the time Marcum makes it back to the mound, Toronto may be completely out of the race.

"It's your fault. It's all your fault."

Later, Willie, John, John, and not Ozzie. You were all bums.

Now that Cito Gaston has re-emerged from whatever cave he's been in the last eleven years to return as manager of the Toronto Blue Jays, and put J.P. Ricciardi's job in serious jeopardy (okay, so Ricciardi is probably the one who put his job in serious jeopardy), he has to be wondering if he'll have any starting pitchers left at the end of the season. The way A.J. Burnett is begging talking, odds that he won't be a member of the Blue Jays after July 31 are looking pretty good. Jesse Litsch has followed up his 7-1 start to the season by going 0-3 with a 6.46 ERA in four starts this month.

Then there is that whole Roy Halladay taking a line-drive off his head incident on Friday night against the Pirates. Halladay left the game immediately and underwent a CAT scan. The scan showed no broken bones, and Halladay hasn't been experiencing any headaches or other signs of a concussion, so it's looking like he won't be missing his next scheduled start.

The same cannot be said for his teammate Shaun Marcum, who has been placed on the disabled list.

Marcum, second in the American League with a 2.65 ERA, was to fly to Florida on Saturday to be examined by Dr. Steve Mirabello. Marcum will also see noted orthopedic Dr. James Andrews on Monday.

"Hopefully, we'll get good news and then after 7-10 days of a rest period, we'll make a decision and go from there," Blue Jays pitching coach Brad Arnsberg said.

Marcum says that he's been experiencing pain in his right elbow the last few weeks, but that hasn't seemed to stop him from pitching well over that span. Gaston has made no announcement as to who will take Marcum's place in the rotation, the team called up outfielder Adam Lind to take his place on the roster, and they'll probably just bump A.J. Burnett up a day to take Marcum's place on Tuesday.

I've long wondered why Cito Gaston never got another shot as a major league manager after being fired by Toronto in 1997. He might not have been the second coming of Whitey Herzog in the dugout but the guy won big and mediocre managers got recycled with great regularity. That said, I'm surprised that he's back managing the Blue Jays and it has to do with the guy in the general manager's office.

J.P. Ricciardi, like mentor Billy Beane, has tended toward managers that pretty much pushed the buttons he ordered them to push. Gaston isn't of that school. Richard Griffin of the Toronto Star writes that his hiring came from over the GM's head and was a move by team president Paul Godfrey to help flag the fortunes of a team that's lost a lot of local support.

Make no mistake, the hiring of Gaston was not the embattled GM's idea. The statistics-driven, micro-managing Ricciardi likes his managers to be beholdin' to him – see Carlos Tosca and John Gibbons, two men never considered to manage elsewhere, but given the chance of a lifetime with the Jays. Gaston is not J.P.'s type: a proven winner more popular than J.P. himself. He is, however, nostalgic president Godfrey's type.

Griffin also mentions that Ricciardi's flap with Adam Dunn is fueling the fire that will claim his job in short order. That embarrassment, coupled with his failure to win enough games, looks like the straw that broke the camel's back.

It's a slow Saturday afternoon and you know what that means: it's time for an update on everyone's favorite baseball soap opra: As the Dunn Turns. When we last left our characters, J.P. Ricciardi said he was very sorry for saying out loud that he thought Adam Dunn sucked. Adam Dunn, however, wanted nothing to do with Riccardi's apology.

"He apologized to me, the organization," Jocketty said. "He wanted to talk to Dunn. I don't think Dunn wanted to talk to him."

[...]

"I'll probably see him in Toronto (next week)," Dunn said. "Sorry doesn't fix it. He wasn't talking about baseball. Say I stink all you want. I'm OK with that. He was criticizing me as a person."

Now, Riccardi was clearly out of line here. And I've already said that I thought that his apology left a lot to be desired. The one thing that kind of sticks with me, though, is that stuff like this gets said about Adam Dunn all the time. Now maybe it happens because he's a huge guy that plays the outfield like a moose on rollerskates and only bats .240 or .250 every year, or maybe it happens because there's actually something to it. Honestly, I don' t know. It's just something that's worth noting.

Perhaps with three managers and a GM getting the axe in one week, JP Ricciardi feels a little bit of heat. He probably should because barring a miraculous second half, he's probably going to be looking for a new job come October. Whatever the reason, he's rethought his stance on Adam Dunn just a bit and decided to apologize to the Reds' slugger today.

"It's my fault, I take full responsibility for it," Ricciardi told The Globe and Mail newspaper of Toronto on Thursday. "I tried to get Adam's phone number from the Reds ... and if he wants to talk to me, I'll talk to him and apologize personally. But I apologize to him and the Reds. I need to be better than that. I let my guard down".

I love that the apology is, "I need to be better than that," and not, "I was wrong." So, basically what JP is saying is, "I still think you suck, but I shouldn't have said it out loud." Now that Ricciardi's put all this behind him, he can help focus on what's really important: hiring retread managers and trading for awful relievers that were probably about to be released anyways.

The news that has come down from the Toronto Blue Jays that John Gibbons and his coaching staff have been relieved of their duties (read: fired) comes as no surprise ... as J.P. Ricciardi had recently been given the go-ahead to fire Gibbons from upper management.

Here's the surprise: Cito Gaston, the man who led the Jays to back-to-back World Championships in '92 and '93, is back at the helm as Blue Jays manager. He was already with the club as a special ambassador and special assistant to the CEO (read: stay around the ballclub in case we need a new manager, maybe) so the transition will be somewhat smooth. The fact that Gaston, who was relieved of Blue Jays managerial duties himself in 1997, has gone this long without landing another manager's gig is puzzling. He's had plenty of success with the Jays, and should command instant respect in the clubhouse ... especially following the somewhat combative Gibbons.

Managing in the A.L. East has become an exponentially tougher challenge with the Yankees and Red Sox having become perennial beasts, and the Rays emerging this year as a legitimate winner. Gaston may be taking on an impossible chore. We wish him well much the same.

I'm sure many of you are confused as to why Blue Jays GM J.P. Ricciardi would go ape-nuts on Adam Dunn out of the blue, as am I. The incident, for which Ricciardi has apologized for (coincidentally after the Jays were no-hit by Dave Bush for seven innings and Ricciardi realized he might need to trade for Dunn after all and wants to make sure Adam isn't still a bit ticked off), seemed a bit odd.

But perhaps, if you will give me a little leeway to speculate (all right, maybe more than a little), something written at the bottom of the Globe and Mail article gives a bit of insight as why Ricciardi irrationally attacked Dunn. He had some stuff on his mind:

Ricciardi will rejoin the team today in Pittsburgh for a three-game series against the Pirates, under increasing pressure to sever ties with manager John Gibbons. Ricciardi would say only that "the team is not playing well" and would not tip his hand beyond that, but sources say he has already been given the go-ahead from club president and chief executive officer Paul Godfrey to fire Gibbons.

The last time a blurb like that came out, it was the beginning of the end for Willie Randolph. So could it be, and it's a stretch, that Ricciardi, faced with the decision to fire his manager, let some bubbling emotions boil over? After all, firing a manager can be stressful. Let's just hope that if the deed is done for Gibbons, at least it's done at an hour that the press can still make their deadlines.