Tireball.com

With almost 40 games down the baseball season is rapidly approaching the panic crunch. Teams will have to decide whether they will continue and try to win their division or start to face the reality that they just weren’t very good this season.

Players on the other hand are trying to figure out why their just aren’t producing this season and will be looking for reasons for their current teams to continue to pay them mega contracts for little production.

We’ll go ahead and take a look at a few of the recent moves that signal that this time of the season is indeed upon us.

Calling up a pitcher who hasn’t been productive since 2001

Forget Shawn Estes being productive in 2001. The man hasn’t even pitched in 25 or more games since 2004 and that season he was 15-8 but that was more of a result of his teams offense as Estes had a 5.84 ERA a 1.62 WHIP and the league hit .291 against him.

Estes has only once posted an ERA below 4 in a full season of work (1997 when he was 19-5 with a 3.18 ERA) and his inning and two-thirds out of the Padres bullpen this week makes a whopping 7.2 innings pitched in the last two years.

Estes may have 99 wins for his career but 22 of them came in his first two half seasons making Estes a far below average pitcher this decade.

Releasing a superstar due to a slow start

Ok so maybe JP Riccardi did say he probably acted a little two hastily in releasing Frank Thomas from the team but that’s not going to get the 40-year old slugger who hit 26 home runs and drove in 95 last season back on his club.

The Blue Jays had Thomas on their roster and season and more then anyone else should have known that Thomas had been a bit of a slow starter the last couple of seasons. In 2006 with the Oakland A’s Thomas started out cold but finished the season with 39 homers and 114 RBI his best numbers since 2003.

Even at 40 Frank Thomas can still hit and he’s showing Riccardi and the rest of our friends north of the border that as he’s hitting .271 with an OPS some .120 points higher then his time with the Blue Jays.

Sending supportability ace pitcher to the bullpen only to move him back to the rotation

The San Fransisco Giants could not have expected Barry Zito to put up the same numbers he did in Oakland but in fairness no one out there on the web could have even predicted a guy who has an annual salary of almost $20 million to be this bad.

Zito started the season 0-6 and the San Fransisco Giants responded by announcing they were moving the 2002 Cy Young award winner to the bullpen. It was a hot topic all over the internet and television you may recall.

After a few days of Zito in the pen the Giants realized they didn’t have much to replace him with and after what amounts to a missed start Zito was back out on the mound 11 days later taking a loss to the Pittsburgh Pirates after one of his better starts in which he allowed just two runs over five innings.

Retiring

So you think Barry Zito had it bad. Try being Matt Morris who after five starts this season and four losses decided to head to retirement. Morris had a 9.67 ERA with the Pittsburgh Pirates this season and wasn’t much better last year going 3-4 with a 6.10 ERA in 11 starts for the club.

While Morris wasn’t making Barry Zito money he was making in excesses of eight figures and hadn’t been productive since 2005.

Inciting a brawl over a pitch not even close to you

Seattle Mariners first basemen Richie Sexson charged the mound Thursday night after a pitch from Texas Rangers starter Kason Gabbard was a little high. Now the pitch wasn’t even close to Sexson but Sexson a guy who stands 6′8″ and weights in the neighborhood of 240 pounds didn’t care he charged the mound all the same.

Following the game Sexson summed up his actions by saying that the pitcher on his team (Felix Hernandez) had hit a few batters and he knew retaliation was coming. He said “you black out for about five minutes afterwards”.

Whatever Sexson is saying I’m not buying. Sexson has been awful at the plate for the past two seasons and this season is hitting just .202/.294/.420 which sadly is an improvement over last seasons line.