With the season one-third gone now, it’s become pretty clear which players were only slumping and which players actually just suck at baseball. And yet on every team there is at least one player which for foolish reasons, whether it be an over-developed sense of loyalty, a case of GM-player man-love, a reputation for grit and hustle, or a bloated contract, the team just hasn’t been able to pull the plug on yet. In this post, we have a look at each team in the National League with an eye for the one player who really needs to be cut as soon as possible.

Dodgers – RP Guillermo Mota: This guy looks permanently broken: he gives up too many hits, he doesn’t strike enough guys out, and he walks too many batters. His WHIP is an appalling 1.79 and he needs to be shelved somewhere.

Giants – 1B Travis Ishikawa: The main job of a first baseman is to hit, so when your first baseman is the worst hitter on your team, you are doing something wrong.

Diamondbacks – CF Chris Young: Chris Young was supposed to be one of those guys whose power and speed would somehow make of for his complete lack of any ability to get on base.  Well, now you have a guy whose power and speed have fallen off, but who is even less able to get on base.  It is unbelievable that Young is still on pace for well over 500 at bats this season despite his .220 OBP. He needs to be working out his suckiness in the minor leagues.

Rockies – 3B Garret Atkins: I’ve been advocating that the Rockies trade Atkins for two years now, while there was still some perception that he was a good player, but they waited too long, and now he’s basically untradeable. Few players have benefited more from Coors Field than Atkins, and Atkins also had the benefit of his personal peak coinciding with the Rockies high profile Series run in 2007. But he was always an extremely inadequate defender at third, and now his bat has disappeared as well, even at home.

Padres – 2B David Eckstein: GM Kevin Towers calls David Eckstein the MVP of the team so far this year. He couldn’t be more wrong. Eckstein was only barely adequate defensively and offensively when he was at his peak about 5 or 6 years ago, and now at age 34, he’s pretty much got nothing left.

Cardinals – SP Todd Wellemeyer: Todd Wellemeyer shows that maybe there are limits to what pitching coach Dave Duncan can do. Kind of. Actually, it’s pretty amazing that the Cardinals have gotten as much out of Wellemeyer as they have, considering he was nobody’s idea of good starting pitcher material. But with Mitchell Boggs waiting in the wings, there’s really no reason to keep Wellemeyer around.

Brewers – 3B Bill Hall: Bill Hall couldn’t hit his way out of a paper bag right now. Sure, he hit 35 homers back in 2006, but he’s done nothing at all since then, and he still has no real position defensively. For some reason, Hall still has the image of a youngster who is still developing, but when you actually go look at his age you find out he is already 29 years old, and what you see, which right now is total suckage, is probably what he really is.

Cubs – RP Aaron Heilman: Heilman was once a highly touted prospect, and did manage to throw up a few good seasons, but it’s becoming more and more clear that he’s just not all that good. Nothing about his peripherals suggests that anything is particularly wrong. His velocity is the same as ever, as are his FB/GB rates, his home run rate, his K/9 rate etc., and his BABIP is a very modest .299. Heilman simply walks too many batters, posting an unsightly 6.26 BB/9, and until that changes (if ever), he needs to be in AAA somewhere until he can learn better control.

Reds – SS Alex Gonzalez: Gonzalez was once an elite defender at shortstop, which meant that his extremely weak bat could be somewhat justified, but now he is no longer anywhere near that class, and his bat seems weaker than ever at .209/.250/.302. He needs to be cut.

Erstad is still playing?

Astros – OF Darin Erstad: Yeah, I know, Erstad is supposed to be this super-gritty former football player (except he was only a kicker), but we are a decade removed now from his last actually good season in 2000, and I’m almost surprised to see that he is actually still on a major league roster. He’s hitting .137/.211/.196.  Why is this man still anywhere near a baseball diamond?

Pirates – OF Brandon Moss: Lots of people have mentioned how one good side of trading away Nate McLouth was that it has “cleared playing time for blocked prospect Andrew McCutchen.”  But hardly anyone mentions that one of the players who was allegedly “blocking” McCutchen is Brandon Moss, a corner outfielder who has been playing every day this season despite posting a .310 OBP and only a single home run.

Marlins – 3B Emilio Bonifacio: The fact that Emilio Bonifacio, who has no business being in a major league lineup at all, is actually batting leadoff for the Marlins, despite his .294 OBP, is an indictment of the entire Marlins coaching staff and front office.

Bonifacio whiffs again

Mets – C Omir Santos: It’s a joke that the Mets actually traded away Ramon Castro to clear a spot on the roster for this guy. It’s going to be fun watching as the numbers left over from his fluky hot start rapidly sink toward the Mendoza line.

Braves – OF Garrett Anderson: I laughed out loud when I heard that the Braves signed Anderson in the offseason, and I pretty much haven’t stopped laughing since.  The poor old guy has a .289 OBP to go along with a -15 UZR/150 in left field. At this point you could probably drag Bernie Williams out of the recording studio and run him out there for better production.

Nationals – CL Joel Hanrahan: You can anoint a guy your closer, sing the praises of his “live arm,” and run him out there in save situations as much as you want, but that doesn’t mean he is going to pitch like a closer, just because you really really want him to. In what may be the worst bullpen of all time, no reliever has done more damage in more high leverage situations than Hanrahan. His 1.90 WHIP (for an alleged closer!) pretty much says it all.

Phillies – P Chan Ho Park: Park has looked finished for years now, at least when you look at his peripherals. He managed to reinvent himself as a serviceable reliever in the pitcher-friendly NL West last season, fooling the Phillies into taking him on, but it’s kind of an understatement to say that his game does not play well in Citizen’s Bank Ballpark. The Park-as-starter experiment was basically doomed from the get-go, but ironically, Park has pitched even more poorly this year as a reliever than he did as a starter. This man should be enjoying his retirement somewhere, not getting thrown to the wolves every other night.

Clearly, grit pays off.

San Diego Padres infielder David Eckstein was able to snag himself a hot baseball wife in Ashley Drane, a television starlet whom he married back in 2005.

Although Eckstein may well have had difficulty finding a hot wife who was even smaller than himself, he was fortunate to meet the petite Ashley, who stands in at 5′2″ and a mere 100 pounds.

Although Ashley has yet to land a major television or film role, she has made numerous guest appearances on TV shows and played supporting roles in a handful of films. To date she is best know for a recurring role as “Muffy” on the Disney Channel show “That’s So Raven,” and as the voice behind one of the main characters in the recent CGI Star Wars film Star Wars: The Clone Wars.

More pics after the jump.

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Today is inauguration day and to celebrate the occasion we’ll present the final two in our series of baseball-related Obamicons. First up is David Eckstein who, according to an in-depth study of grit, is the 11th grittiest player of all time, while his 2002 season was the second grittiest season ever.

What is grit? The aforementioned study looked at statistics like times hit by pitch, fewest number of intentional walks, and stolen base inefficiency. But the truth is, grit is one of those intangible qualities that is hard to define but, like pornography, we know it when we see it. And when we look at Ecktstein, we see grit. Lots of grit. And if there’s one thing we’ll all need to pull ourselves out of the mess our country’s in right now, it’s an Ecksteinian amount of grit.

Eckstein is the grittiest player of his generation because he’s white, he plays hard, he’s white, he’s short, and he’s white.

And what’s that all over his uniform? Is that dirt? Is it pine tar? Is it tobacco juice? No, baby. That’s grit.

This is one of a series of posts in which we throw cold water on each team’s pathetic offseason twiddlings while spraying champagne all over their ingenious winter machinations.

The Toronto Blue Jays have been stuck in a funk lo these last few years. They compete in a tough-as-nails division, dominated by two big-market teams, and they only crack the top two when something goes horribly wrong with one of those teams (such as when the Red Sox experienced disastrous injuries in 2006, allowing the Jays to beat them for second place by one game). And last year, despite heading into the season with a promising lineup, they themselves suffered injury after injury, apparently cursed by a vengeful swamp hag. Yet despite this, they managed to hang around second place in the AL East through the first half of the 2007 season, as the Yankees were similarly blighted. Unfortunately for Toronto, the Yankees then suddenly remembered, “Holy s—, we’re the New York f—ing Yankees!” and started winning again. And the Blue Jays finished the season 13 games out of first place.

What did the Jays do this offseason to try and break out of their perpetual state of mediocrity? The signed David Eckstein. Now, David Eckstein, though often treated as little more than a punchline by the average blogger, is not actually terrible. However, he’s not actually that good, either.

The other major move made by the Jays this winter was the acquisition of Scott Rolen in a one-for-one trade of third basemen, sending Troy Glaus to the Cardinals. Rolen, pissed off at Tony La Russa, waived his no-trade clause to get out of St. Louis. Glaus, whose tender feet didn’t enjoy playing half their games on turf, was just as happy to leave the Rogers Center. When healthy, the two are remarkably similar in their offensive output, but Rolen has struggled to stay on the field since a collision at first base that left him with nagging shoulder problems. Then there’s the question of how hard Rolen will play—certainly, La Russa got the impression he was dogging it. (But perhaps Eckstein, the intangibly gritty gamer that he is, will inspire similar intestinal fortitude in his fellow infielder. There. There’s your David Eckstein joke. I hope you enjoyed it.) At least Rolen will be an upgrade, defensively. But it’s the contracts carried by each of these men that render the deal a bit of a puzzle. As Paul put it in a recent email, “Glaus had one year at $12.75m left on his deal. So they sent him away and got back Rolen who has three years and $33m left. Why would you paint yourself into a corner like that when you had the ability to lose payroll?” Why indeed? And in a year when third basemen were either commanding lucrative contracts (A-Rod, Mike Lowell) or functioning as the centerpiece in the winter’s biggest trade (Miguel Cabrera), and you, J.P. Ricciardi, wanted to trade Troy Glaus, why would you trade him for a Scott Rolen when you could have gotten a couple of decent prospects with upside?

The Jays win just enough, apparently, to keep the FO from admitting defeat and deciding to rebuild. Yet they lose too much to make the playoffs. So they’re stuck. They’ve got one bonafide ace in Roy Halladay and a good No. 2 in AJ Burnett. The back of their rotation is better than most—and at least their 3, 4, and 5 pitchers are all young. Closer BJ Ryan, who had Tommy John surgery in May, says he’ll be ready to go by Opening Day. But even if Lyle Overbay and Rolen can both bounce back offensively this year, their lineup will still lack sufficient on-base, top-of-the-order types, and they could use another power bat. Their defense? No real complaints (though Eckstein is a downgrade at short). In fact, despite the holes in their roster, the Jays have enough youngish, decent talent—guys like Halladay, Burnett, Alex Rios, Vernon Wells, Aaron Hill—that if their farm system were stocked, they might have a chance to make a good run at the Wild Card in the next couple of years. But will the farm provide?

The Jays have some decent prospects in their system, but none are close enough to the bigs to help out in the near future. In fact, the organization’s most exciting youngsters can’t even drink legally. The best of these is outfielder Travis Snider, who just turned 20 on Groundhog Day. Baseball Prospectus describes him as “one of the top hitting prospects in baseball” who projects for “legitimate MVP-level numbers” in the future. That’s the good news. The bad? His flaws make his plate approach sound a bit like JD Drew to me (”could use more aggressiveness at the plate…currently works himself into poor hitter’s counts while letting not perfect–yet perfectly hittable–pitches go by”) and the hulking 245-pounder is not fast (he got caught stealing nine times in a row last year). In a perfect world, he’d be “a number-three hitter on a championship-level team, and a perennial All-Star.” However, he has yet to play above low-A ball. For better or for worse, he still has a ways to go. And after Snider, what has Toronto got? A talented 18-year old third base prospect (Kevin Ahrens); a solid, middle-of-the-rotation type lefty making the transition from a closer to a starter and aiming for AA ball by the end of the summer (Brett Cecil); a 19-year old with power but no natural defensive position position who has played all of 49 games in the Gulf Coast League (John Tolisano); and a good catching prospect who still strikes out too much (J.P. Arencibia).

All this leads me to believe that the Lansing Lugnuts will be a great team to watch this year. I wish I could say the same for the Toronto Blue Jays.

Acquisitions: Rod Barajas, C; David Eckstein, SS; Marco Scutaro, 3B; Buck Coats, RF; Scott Rolen, 3B

Losses: Josh Towers, SP; Troy Glaus, 3B

Projected Lineup, Rotation, and Closer:

SS David Eckstein, 33 years old, 3 homers, .309 avg

1B Lyle Overbay, 31 years old, 10 homers, .240 avg

RF Alex Rios, 27 years old, 24 homers, .297 avg

DH Frank Thomas, 39 years old, 26 homers, .277 avg

2B Aaron Hill, 25 years old, 17 homers, .291 avg

CF Vernon Wells, 29 years old, 16 homers, .245 avg

3B Scott Rolen, 32 years old, 8 homers, .265 avg

C, Gregg Zaun, 36 years old, 10 homers, .242 avg

LF Reed Johnson, 31 years old, 2 homers, .236 avg

SP1 Roy Halladay, 30 years old, 225.1 IP, 3.71 ERA

SP2 AJ Burnett, 31 years old, 165.2 IP, 3.75 ERA

SP3 Dustin McGowan, 25 years old, 169.2 IP, 4.05 ERA

SP4 Jesse Litsch, 22 years old, 111.0 IP, 3.81 ERA

SP5a Shaun Marcum, 26 years old, 159.0 IP, 4.13 ERA

SP5b Gustavo Chacin, 27 years old, 27.1 IP, 5.60 ERA

CL BJ Ryan, 32 years old, 38 saves with a 1.37 ERA in 2006; he had 3 saves and 2 losses, with a 12.46 ERA in 2007.

Grade: D

What the Blue Jays have assembled here is not a bad team—if they played in the NL Central. Though the Toronto brass has promised to rebuild many times, they’ve yet to actually do so. I’m not asking for a drastic fire sale; they just need to stop acquiring mediocre hitters in their 30s. If they could face up to reality and unload a couple of their older players this year at the trade deadline, they could conceivably end up with some prospects who could actually help them in 2009 or 2010. But hoping for the two teams ahead of you to suddenly collapse—especially when those two teams have healthy farm systems and way more revenue than you do—is not a strategy.

Looking towards the future of the division, with the Devil Rays ascendant and the Orioles finally starting a rebuilding process of their own, if the Jays keep on their current path, they will soon be recalling their days in third place with fond nostalgia.

-Hot Offseason Action Index-

I know we are supposed to be talking all Mitchell Report, all the time, but I just wanted to take a moment out to ask: is anyone besides me surprised that David Eckstein just signed with the Toronto Blue Jays for only 1 year, $4.5 million?

I mean, for weeks it has been widely reported that Eckstein has been seeking a 4-year, $36 million dollar contract, and has been comparing himself favorably to Julio Lugo. I’m not sure anyone really expected Eckstein to get that kind of money, but it seemed reasonable to expect that he would at least get something in the ballpark of $7-8 million a year.

While it’s true that Eckstein has been sort of a running joke in the sabermetric community, it seemed reasonable to assume that someone would give him more money than Paul Lo Duca. After all, this is a guy who is legendary for his “intangibles,” “character,” and “grit,” beloved by the mainstream press, was a key member of two World Series winning squads, has a World Series MVP on his resume, and batted a career high .309 last season.

Although Eckstein did have some injury woes last season, appearing in only 117 games, he seems to be perfectly healthy now, and I figured that SOME team would give him a reasonably excessive contract, especially given the always high demand for middle infielders.

All in all, I’d have to say this is actually a pretty smart deal for the Blue Jays, given the price. Although incumbent shortstop John McDonald was one of the better fielding shortstops in baseball last season, he was absolutely abominable at the plate, maintaining his horrendous career 4:1 K:BB ratio while posting a seppuku-worthy .279 OBP and hitting only 1 home run all season.

Eckstein can be expected to improve on McDonald’s OPB by almost 100 points, so even despite the hit the Jays take on defense, he represents a huge upgrade at shortstop, at an extremely modest price. And with only a one-year deal, the Jays are not locked in to Eckstein’s later-30s decline years, and can look for an even better option at short next offseason.

So even though the Blue Jays are typically thought of as a “Moneyball” type team which would not be expected to sign anti-Moneyball poster-boy David Eckstein, cheers to JP Riccardi for pulling of this very reasonable, even ingenious move.

Think of it this way: the Red Sox are going to pay Julio Lugo $10 million next season. Was Eckstein really so crazy to compare himself to Lugo? Given that Lugo and Eckstein are actually about the same on most defensive metrics, who would you rather have batting in your lineup? 32-year-old Eckstein and his .351 career OPB plus 5 million extra dollars, or 32-year-old Julio Lugo and his career .333 OBP, minus $5 million?