After his stellar start against the Dodgers tonight, allowing only one earned run in seven innings of work, Diamondbacks starter Billy Buckner has a 2.37 ERA in three starts against Los Angeles so far this season.

Against all other teams the rest of the year, however, his ERA is an unsightly 7.85.

It’s official: the Rockies and Diamondbacks are leaving Tucson and moving to a spring training facility on an Indian reservation.

The new complex, which will feature an 11,000-seat ballpark and 12 practice fields, will be designed by HKS Architects and located in the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community. HKS also built Camelback Ranch, the new spring training home of the Dodgers and White Sox. And I’ll admit, begrudgingly, Camelback is a beautiful park.

If you live in Tucson, like I do, this is a total bummer. It’s an even bigger bummer for this guy.

The Pima County Sports and Tourism Authority is still trying to bring the Baltimore Orioles and Japanese teams to Tucson. But I’m not holding my breath.

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.

So apparently there is a certain, extremely rare situation in which it becomes necessary for a baseball team to make four outs in an inning rather than three.

In well over 20 years of watching baseball, I had never seen this rule in action, or even heard of it, until today’s game between the Dodgers and the Diamondbacks.

The rule comes up in a certain case in order to satisfy two other rules. First of all, as we know, when a ball is caught on the fly, runners cannot leave their bases until the ball is caught, after which they may attempt to advance at their own risk in what is known as tagging up. If a runner leaves his base too early, he may be put out by the defending team throwing to the base he left too soon. And second, if a runner crosses home plate before the third out of an inning is recorded, his run counts, unless the out was a force out.

Where these two rules may come into conflict and thus necessitate a fourth out is in the very specific situation in which a runner is on third base, another runner is on either first or second, there is exactly one out, and the batter hits a line drive which looks like it is going to be a hit but is instead caught on the fly by a fielder.

In this case, it may so happen that the runners, believing the ball will be a clean hit, start to advance before the ball is caught, and that the runner on third crosses home plate before the fielder throws back to the base where the other runner started from.

In this case, most baseball fans, and even most baseball players, would assume that the inning is over and that the run did not score, because three outs were recorded, and the runner on third base left illegally before the ball was caught. However, they would be wrong.

This is where the two other rules mentioned above come in. While it is true that the runner on third left his base illegally, he is not considered out until the defending team throws back to third base. Meanwhile, because he crossed the plate before the third out, his run is considered to have scored.

Therefore, the defending team is required to throw to third base and make a “fourth” out in order to prevent that run from counting, in what is known as the “fourth-out rule” (in actual scoring practice, the runner on third takes precedence and is considered to be the third and final out, where as the earlier throw to the other runner’s base is not considered an out, so in the end only three outs were recorded).

You can look it up – it’s part of Major League Baseball rule 7.10.

So anyway, in yesterday’s game, it was the top of the second inning with the visiting Dodgers at bat and one out, with Andre Ethier at third and Juan Pierre at second when Dodgers pitcher Randy Wolf hit a lined smash up the middle which was snagged in a very nice play by Diamondbacks pitcher Dan Haren, who then whirled and threw to second baseman Felipe Lopez who tagged Pierre as he attempted to scramble back to second in what was apparently an inning-ending double play.

However, Ethier had broken on contact and had crossed home plate before Pierre had been tagged out. Even though Ethier had advanced illegally before the ball was caught, the Diamondbacks players, thinking the inning was over, walked off the field without ever throwing back to third base to record the “fourth” out, and thus when Joe Torre came out to argue, the umpires correctly awarded Ethier’s run to the Dodgers.

While Torre himself had never heard of the rule, and even the umpires at first seemed uncertain about the call, it turned out that Dodgers bench coach Bob Schaefer alerted Torre because he had seen a similar play decades before while coaching in the minor leagues back in 1983.

The Diamondbacks’ lease at Tucson Electric Park contains at out-clause: The Dbacks can leave if there are ever fewer than three teams playing in Tucson. This winter, the White Sox bolted to Glendale, where they’ll share a facility with the Dodgers. That leaves two teams in Tucson — the Dbacks and the Rockies.

Now the Dbacks acknowledge they have talked with Casa Grande about moving spring training sites and would prefer having three other teams in Tucson for better competition.

D’backs president and CEO Derrick Hall spoke this morning near Tucson Electric Park as the team had its first full-squad workout.

“If you had your preference you’d either have four teams here in Tucson, where you can draw from the fan base here, or have a one- or two-team complex up in the Valley where you can draw from your fan base there,” Hall said.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with Hall’s tactic, it’s a variation on the “Boras.” Super-agent Scott Boras likes to make exhorbitant contract demands, then when a team signs one of his players that team can say, “At least we got him for a fraction of what Boras was originally asking.”

Hall says he wants four teams in Tucson, but really he wants to move the Dbacks to a fancy new facility in the Phoenix burbs where he can sell tickets for twice as much money. He’s greasing the wheels for a Tucson departure. The reality is Tucson needs three teams, but now the goal is four. Hall just raised the bar. Nicely played, Derrick.

Close, but no cigar...

For a team two games over .500, the Arizona Diamondbacks were awfully close to winning the division; a fact that belies competitiveness, and rather is evidence of how awfully mediocre those teams that play in the NL West were in 2008.

It actually comes as a surprise, since this same Arizona team had captured the division in 2007, winning 90 games in the process. Looking back at what I wrote before the start of the 2008 season, they were poised to repeat as NL West champs barring, oh, I don’t know, a lapse in pitching, or a below average offense. Or the emergence of worthy contender.

How about two outta three? Though the D-backs featured two of the better pitchers in Brandon Webb and Danny Haren, and a venerable, but solid, Randy Johnson, they eventually missed the playoffs due to great pitching from Dodgers (Who led the league in ERA). Sure the rotation didn’t exactly collapse (fifth best ERA in the league), but it wasn’t good enough to stave off a Dodger resurgence.

If we were to point the finger, however, I’d start with the offense. Their numbers were plain average, hovering near the middle in nearly all offensive categories; and while its true that their 2007 numbers weren’t that much better, even in the mediocre NL West, merely league average won’t do. (If it’s any consolation, the Rockies had a much better offensive season and missed out on the playoffs too).

As far as the pitching is concerned, their 2008 numbers were slightly better compared to a year before. In 2007, they were fourth in ERA (4.13), as opposed to fifth last year (albeit, with a 3.98 ERA); but again, that wasn’t enough to get them over the playoff hump.

I’d hate to attribute a D-back demise solely to the fact that the Dodgers improved a bit, but the evidence seems to suggest that Arizona sat back, waiting for a better offensive performance, and didn’t quite expect the Dodgers to lead the league in pitching.

The major need this offseason, then, was solidifying the rotation. The D-Backs do have a young Max Scherzer waiting in the wings, but GM Josh Byrnes wanted to ease him into his first full season by signing a third or fourth-slot starter.

OM NOM NOM ... Mr. Innings-eater

Given the economic situation most teams find themselves in this offseason, however, Byrnes had limited room to operate. After being unable to resign Randy Johnson, Byrnes sought out Randy Wolf and Jon Garland , both of whom initially turned him down. Money was evidently so tight that while the D-backs resigned Tony Clark, they declined to even offer arbitration to Adam Dunn, fearing he’d accept.

But nowhere was the money issue more at evident than with the Randy Johnson situation. They couldn’t even take up the Big Unit on his offer of a home-town discount late last year. But then they eventually signed Jon Garland to a one-year $6.25MM deal, with a mutual, $10MM option for 2010. So what changed?

Some context, as Nick Piecoro explains: In mid-November, the Diamondbacks were confident that they would get draft picks for Adam Dunn, Orlando Hudson, Juan Cruz and Brandon Lyon. By the time December rolled in, the financial landscape was bleak, thus the decision not to offer Dunn arbitration, while thinking their other draft pick cost obligations would be at or around $10MM.

The D-Backs originally offered Johnson a deal thought to be between $3MM and $5MM, though the Big Unit was seeking around $10MM. Johnson was willing to sign for $5MM less, and waited until the very last day he could to file for free agency, before finally giving up and singing with the Giants for $8MM.

Fast forward to this past week and with Hudson and Cruz still unsigned, the draft pick situation is yet to be resolved. They might get a higher round pick depending on where either veteran signs.

Since Byrnes already addressed some of the other needs, trading for reliever Scott Schoeneweis and replacing a departing Hudson with Felipe Lopez, it made sense to use the money that would’ve been used on Johnson and on the pending draft-picks, and sign Garland.

D-Backs fans are taking the Garland singing with some optimism, setting nostalgic attachments to the Big Unit aside, and realizing that the younger, more durable pitcher is a better option at the back of the rotation.

And yet, I’m not sure if its enough to get back into the playoffs.

Offseason grade: C+

Additions: Jon Garland, Felipe Lopez, Scott Schoeneweis, Travis Blackley

Losses: Adam Dunn, Orlando Hudson, Randy Johnson, David Eckstein, Brandon Lyon, Chris Burke, Jeff Salazar, Wil Ledezma, Jamie D’Antona, Robby Hammock

Projected lineup, rotation and closer:

C Chris Snyder
1B Connor Jackson
2B Felipe Lopez
SS Stephen Drew
3B Mark Reynolds
LF Eric Byrnes
CF Chris Young
RF Justin Upton

RH Brandon Webb
RH Dan Haren
RH Jon Garland
LH Doug Davis
RH Max Scherzer

CL Chad Qualls

Though the Garland signing was a good move, I think the the whole Randy Johnson affair was mis-managed. I know, I know, a mere two months ago, the D-Backs weren’t expecting the economy to hit them so hard. Which probably also prevented them from making any better/more offensive acquisitions, hence the plus in the grade.

- Hot Offseason Index-

If you look at the Diamondbacks, they are actually pretty stacked compared to most teams, especially given that they only lost the weak NL West by 2 games last season, and the Manny-less (not to mention Lowe-less and Penny-less) Dodgers look sure to take a step backwards next year.

In the rotation they will still have the best 1-2 punch around in Brandon Webb and Dan Haren, with fireballing sensation Max Scherzer looking set to join Doug Davis and a likely returning (and surprisingly effective) Randy Johnson in a solid back end.

Looking to the everyday lineup, the Diamondbacks have good young players at almost every position, with continued improvement being a reasonable expectation for many, including still-on-the-upswing young stars like Justin Upton, Stephen Drew, Chris Snyder, Mark Reynolds, and Chris Young.

The only place the Diamondbacks have a somewhat glaring hole is at second base, where Orlando Hudson is a free agent and seems determined to test the market. But even here, the Diamondbacks have some internal options. In one scenario, they could take advantage of Eric Byrnes returning from a hamstring injury to shift Connor Jackson back to first base from left field, and then move Chad Tracy back to his natural position of third base and shift Reynolds over to second.

Another option would be to hand the job over to Chris Burke, who is still young and talented, but whose star has fallen significantly since his first callup with the Astros.

Then there is also the free agent market, which is not super promising, but still, it would probably not be a terrible idea for the D-Backs to bring in an aging but still capable veteran like Ray Durham, Mark Loretta, or the ageless and ever-.300-hitting Mark Grudzielanek on a one-year deal to provide competition and a backup/stopgap plan.

– What They Need Index –

How do you improve the postseason chances of a team that’s 18th in slugging percentage and and 21st on on base percentage? Answer: You trade for Adam Dunn.

That’s exactly what the Arizona Diamondbacks did today, acquiring the lefty slugger for prospect Dallas Buck and two players to be named later.

It’s no secret that Arizona was in dire need of a bat. With Orlando Hudson now out for the remainder of the season, first baseman/left fielder Connor Jackson was the only big offensive threat in the entire lineup. With the left fielder Dunn joining the team, the Diamondbacks can keep Jackson at first for the rest of the season. Moreover, this allows manager Bob Melvin to take Chad Tracy out of the everyday lineup and use him as a lefty bat off the bench or to spell Jackson or third baseman Mark Reynolds on occasion. The D-Backs will also be getting RFer Justin Upton back from the DL any day now, and should also help give the club a nice offensive boost.

Prior to the trading deadline, SI’s Jon Heyman was reporting that Arizona had at the time offered Tracy to Cinci for Dunn but was unsurprisingly rejected. A couple of weeks and a Manny-to-Dodgers trade later, the Diamondbacks agreed to give up 23-year old Dallas Buck, a righty pitcher with High-A Visalia. Buck was drafted in the third round back in 2006, but underwent Tommy John in 2007 and missed the rest of the season plus the bulk of this one as well. He began his 2008 campaign in Low-A South Bend and had made one start in Visalia thus far. As such, I love this move from Arizona’s perspective. In the deep, prospect-laden Arizona organization, Buck was never considered one of the top prospects. And coming off a major surgery, Buck had missed a great deal of development time for a pitcher his age.

On the Cincinatti side, this one’s a bit tough for me to evaluate. One could argue that they needed to get something for Dunn, who is an upcoming free-agent. However, a hitter of his stature would have probably netted a nice compensation pick or two once he signed elsewhere. So the key becomes who those two “players to be named later” are. And without knowing what kind of offers the Reds had been getting for Dunn prior to the deadline (as I’ve written here before, I’ve never quite understood why there was so little interest in him from contending teams), I don’t know what they missed out on.

But I do think that the race between Arizona and LA just got a little bit more interesting.