Yu Darvish, Rangers. Here’s what he said at the All-Star Game: “Liking Texas and signing a deal are two different things. … It’s all business.” Translation: If the Rangers struggle at all over the next two weeks, the right-hander (6-8, 3.49 ERA) will be shopped before he becomes a free agent. (Oh, and Cole Hamels could be had, too.)
Lance Lynn, Cardinals. Rarely sellers, the Cardinals are trying to make that determination, and Lynn is in the big middle of it. After a self-described “dead arm” resulted in his ERA ballooning from 2.69 to 3.86, Lynn (8-6) has consecutive quality starts. “I said earlier this season that I would like to be here for a long time,” Lynn told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “That hasn’t changed. It’s a business. I know how it goes. We control what we control. If the other teams win it could change. I have control of what I do — where I throw the pitch.”
Marco Estrada, Blue Jays. Team president Mark Shapiro is taking calls after a bad first half (though he says he still thinks the Jays are talented enough to contend). Estrada’s 4-6 mark and 5.17 ERA would mean a team is taking a risk, but he might benefit from a change of scenery and then walk at season’s end.
“So when I heard that, I said, ‘Okay, kill him ‘Bron.’ I like that. I like to see somebody destroy Charles Barkley like that. Then I stepped back and I said, ‘Okay, that’s a little too far ‘Bron.’ Then I thought about it again and I was like, ‘Hmmm. That’s an accumulation of stuff.’ Hey, may the best man win, and I think ‘Bron won that one.”
Judge Green has slammed his gavel, and he doesn’t see any way Barkley can come back with an appeal.
“Listen, in the day and age we live in, if it was some real dirt, then we would already know about ‘Bron.”
