Today's Notable Baseball Happenings

This day in baseball featured a two important announcements, a milestone home run, and a bizarre occurrence. Sorry, next time I'll have to be a little more vague.

Since the two announcements actually have to do with the success, or lack of, for two teams, I'll lead off the order with them.

1. Joba off DL - The Yankees have decided that the starting rotation puts too many innings on the young and fragile (if fragile means one that can thrown 100 mph) rotator cuff. To reduce Joba's workload for the remainder of this season and the start of the next, he has been moved to the bullpen, where he will act as the 8th inning setup man. While I agree that this is the correct spot for Joba to pitch from, I think that Joba and his young arm are too valuable to use this year. I mean, come on Yankees, face it: you are not going to make the playoffs this year. So there's no reason to put more innings on a young arm like Joba's.

2. Kent DL'd after surgery on left knee - Not too much of a mystery here, the man has been playing for a long, long time. As mean as it is to say, I tend to root against Kent and others of the sort because of my loyalty to the Giants. However, in past articles I have predicted that the Dodgers will make the playoffs. This is why the injury to Kent hurts me just a little. Kent has been one of the biggest RBI men for the Dodgers, so we'll see how LA does without him in the lineup. The Dodgers are optimistic that Kent will be back in around two weeks, if not as a 2nd baseman then at least as a pinch hitter. And it looks like the NL West will be a close race, one that I still believe the Dodgers are going to win.

3. ARod tied for 12th in career HR's - Congratulations to ARod, who today smashed his 548th hr of his career to tie Mike Schmidt for 12th on the all time hr list. ARod, in his first year of a ten-year contract with the Yankees, appears to be finishing the season off on a high note. And if he manages to pass Barry Bonds some time in the future, that 10 year contract could be worth as much as $300 million. I've got to say that this man is amazing; I mean he's only 33 years old and is already passing legendary players' career marks. At least the Yankees believe he has many more productive years, 9 to be exact.

4. Hidden ball trick? - At least not intentionally. During the Cubs game today at Wrigley Field, Hunter Pence lined a triple into the ivy. Yet while center fielder Jim Edmonds dug out the Pence-hit ball, another popped out of the ivy as well. Although no confusion ensued, the occurrence was nonetheless amusing. I'm just surprised that this has not happened more often. On another level, outfielders could even try hiding a ball in the ivy to dig out when a home run was almost robbed or a ball actually does get stuck. Officials suspect that the ball was hit into the ivy during batting practice.

That's it for today. I'm most interested in hearing your opinions on Joba, since its the only topic that merits much discussion.