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Alex Rodriguez went from first base to third on a foul ball. On his way back to first he crossed over the pitcher’s mound. A few minutes later Dallas Braden gave him hell.

You know.

THE Dallas Braden?

What, you’ve never heard of him?

Dallas Braden has played part or all of four seasons in the Major Leagues for Oakland. He’s got some skills … and apparently some balls … for standing up to A-Rod. But he also has an all-time career record of 16-21 with an ERA of 4.55.

He’s getting better. He’s 2-0 this year with an ERA under 3.00.

But let’s take a breath here. It’s good to see the Athletics showing some fighting spirit. On the other hand, he’s cussing out Alex Rodriguez, who has just a bit more baseball-cred than the 26-year-old A’s hurler.

“I’d never quite heard that,” Rodriguez told the media afterward. “Especially from a guy who has a handful of wins in his career.”

Zing.

I’m no fan of A-Rod. I think he’s a self-absorbed jackass. But when it comes to all of baseball’s unwritten rules this one has to be one of the most obscure. I wouldn’t doubt that Rodriguez hadn’t heard of it. Not that I’m the end all, but I certainly hadn’t heard of it either.

Furthermore, one would guess that in showing up A-Rod he’s probably going to do nothing more than make sure the Yankee third baseman is even more in the zone than normal the next time they meet.

I guess at the end of the day I respect that Braden has some moxie. But I’m not sure that moxie was mixed with the best of judgment, at least in this particular case.

Roy Halladay pitched a five-hit shutout for the Philadelphia Phillies tonight and for the Atlanta Braves it almost wasn’t a fair game.

Halladay was on all night long, there was no question about that. He was really only challenged, according to the ESPN announcers, in one inning when the Braves had the bases loaded.

What impressed me even more was how the Phillies played around him in their 2-0 win.

I didn’t watch the whole game. But in the couple innings I did, second baseman Chase Utley made a fantastic diving stop of a hard ground ball. Had it squirted into centerfield the Braves would have scored at least two runs.

In the ninth inning, a slimmed down Ryan Howard dove to his right and snared another shot that appeared to be a base hit. He then flung the ball to Halladay covering first for yet another gem.

Earlier in the game Troy Glaus hit a deep fly to center that Shane Victorino timed, leaped for and caught with his glove over the fence, saving Halladay yet again.

The Phillies, the closest thing Major League Baseball has to a dynasty at the moment, and Halladay, probably the league’s best pitcher, appear to be made for each other at the moment. The pitcher is clearly motivated to take his game up another notch to make his first run into the playoffs.

And Philadelphia isn’t going to have to score many runs for him to win a heckuva lot of games if the team keeps playing defense for him like they did tonight.

So far he’s 4-0 with ERA and WHIP both below 0.90. He won’t be able to keep that up, but expect 22 or 23 wins for Halladay and something in the high 90s if not more for the Phightin’ Phills. It’s early and a lot could change, but I think that’s the best team I’ve seen so far in 2010.

One of the things I love about the first week of the baseball season is that DirecTV provides its MLB Extra Innings package on a trial basis. So, while I was trying to keep up with the day job at the same time there was plenty of channel surfing going on this afternoon.

I watched parts of probably three-quarters of the games. How much time I spent was largely determined by players I have on various fantasy baseball teams. One guy I wish I had on more is Atlanta rookie Jason Heyward.

Heyward has been most experts’ Spring Training Golden Child, both for his athletic skills and his solid personality. I’ve never met the man so I can’t speak to his attitude. But I watched his first at-bat against Chicago today. The 20-year-old rookie shook off any nerves he might have been feeling and took a couple pitches. He then ROCKED a pitch several rows deep into right-centerfield for a no-doubt homerun in his first Major League at-bat.

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We’re about an hour away from the 2,743rd nationally televised Yankees-Red Sox game in the last 18 months or so. This one will kick off yet another Major League Baseball season.

While I’m frequently critical of MLB’s less-than-stellar competitive balance situation and of the leadership displayed by both MLB itself and the Major League Baseball Players Union, I can’t help but be excited to see the season get underway.

Among the reasons this year, my home team, the Twins, move into a new ballpark and they spent the money to put together a truly competitive-looking team this year. By all reports, Target Field is fantastic in everything except its corporately-paid for name.

I haven’t spent a great deal of time studying divisions and the like this year but I’ll fearlessly make some predictions just for the heck of it.

AL East – Yankees
AL Central – Twins
AL West – Seattle
Wild Card – Tampa

NL East – Phillies
NL Central – Cardinals
NL West – Rockies
Wild Card – Braves

Yep, the Braves outlast the Dodgers for the Wild Card in the NL, sending Bobby Cox out with a playoff appearance … and another playoff series loss.

World Series – Phillies over Yankees

Yep, the Yanks didn’t go as crazy with the money this offseason but last season’s spending keeps them good enough to win the AL again this year. But the Phillies win their third straight NL pennant and head toward dynasty status with their second title out of the three.

Have fun everyone. Enjoy the season.

The good news–apparently, four months ago (also known as the heart of the NFL Season), Bud Selig realized that a) baseball needed more parity, and b) his efforts (if he’s made any) weren’t going to cut it.  So he named a 14-person “special committee for on-field matters,” promising that all topics would be in play and “there are no sacred cows.”

Unfortunately for baseball fans, Selig apparently found 14 people even more stupid than himself to be on the committee.

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Torii Hunter made some comments recently that raised a few eyebrows, when he called Latino players “imposters” who are not black in a story published by USA Today:

“People see dark faces out there, and the perception is that they’re African-American. They’re not us. They’re impostors. Even people I know come up and say: ‘Hey, what color is Vladimir Guerrero? Is he a black player?’ I say, ‘Come on, he’s Dominican. He’s not black.’ …

While he admitted that it was poor word choice, he declined to apologize for the comments.  And to be honest, I don’t think he has to apologize–in fact, when in the Dominican a few years back, I had a tour guide pointedly tell me that the reason that he disliked the Haitian kids that were begging us tourists for a dollar was because they were black, unlike him.  So I think a lot (if not all) Latino players would agree that they are not black–meaning, as he indicated, that the only problem with Hunter’s statements would be the use of that word “imposter.”

Aside from that, though, I think that Hunter did touch on one subject that is probably going to be an increasing problem with the way MLB is structured–especially if Latino players do actually “Take over [the game],” as Ozzie Guillen said in response to Hunter.

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It’s been what, three weeks since pitchers and catchers started reporting to camps in Florida and Arizona?

And while I’m not following it all that closely yet one thing is conspicuously absent this spring: Things are awfully quiet with the New York Yankees.

This year around this time news of Alex Rodriguez’ past positive steroid test came to light.

Around that time there was also news of the hip injury that cost A-Rod’s the first month of his season, though it also got him out of the spotlight for awhile.

There was a constant buzz through the offseason about how Joe Girardi would do replacing Joe Torre as manager.

Throughout the offseason there was plenty of coverage of the Yankees’ maneuverings through free agency, which amounted to about a half-billion in guaranteed salaries for CC Sabathia, A.J. Burnett and Mark Teixeira during a time when most other teams in the league were pinching pennies.

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What a difference a week makes.

A few days ago I was thinking of writing a post praising the Minnesota Twins for being aggressive and filling nearly every hole in the team’s lineup heading into year one at Target Field.

I never quite got around to that post. And Tuesday morning the Twins’ fortunes took a dramatic turn for the worse when the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported that closer Joe Nathan is likely out for the year with a torn ulnar collateral ligament in his elbow.

In addition to the new ballpark, the offseason acquisitions of Orlando Hudson, Jim Thome, JJ Hardy and the Winter League performance of Francisco Liriano had enthusiasm higher than I ever recall it heading into Spring Training. The mood on Minneapolis sports talk radio  is decidedly more sanguine this morning. The Nathan injury is huge. He had some struggles at the end of the 2009 season but his numbers still put him well among the league’s elite closers.

Inside the organization the Twins did some work to solidify the bullpen late last season and during the offseason. Guys like Jon Rauch (from Arizona) and Clay Condrey (from Philadelphia) join holdovers Matt Guerrier, Jesse Crain, Jose Mijares, and Pat Neshek, who is returning from arm problems of his own, give the team the deepest mid-innings relief corps it’s had in years.

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Brushbackpitch.com last night wrote that the Pittsburgh Pirates continue to be an aimless joke of an organization. They proved that true over the weekend by non-tendering Matt Capps, a reliever who before 2009 had three solid seasons pitching out of the Pirates’ bullpen.

General manager Neal Huntington furthered the ridicule he and the rest of the Pirates organization should receive by blaming the media for the move.

Yes, in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette Sunday, Huntington is quoted saying all trade talks for Capps dried up after the paper reported the week before that there was a possibility the team could non-tender Capps.

Sorry Mr. Huntington. That excuse is pathetic. Every team gets media scrutiny during the winter meetings and throughout the season, most probably more than the Pirates. Making your decisions based on a couple paragraphs in the local newspaper is short-sighted and dumb.

Among his other lines, according to the story: “It’s not that hard to replace a reliever with an ERA of 5.00 or 6.00.”

Do you think some injuries might have had something to do with his struggles last season? Did he warrant a contract somewhere between what he would have gotten on the open market and what the cheap Pirates organization was likely unwilling to pay?

The fact of the matter is this: The Pirates have been pathetic for two decades. They have never been more pathetic and aimless than they are right now. And a blind person throwing darts could have made the personnel moves you have the last two seasons and not missed at as high a percentage.

Pirates fans should be livid by how this organization has been run in recent years. But the sad simple fact of the matter is they are probably too bored or resigned at this point to care.

What a putrid joke.

There are Major League Baseball teams that can only compete for a couple years at a time or every few years because despite Commissioner Bud Selig’s best efforts to play up the league’s new, pretend “competitive balance” they can’t keep all their good players from leaving for large-budget teams when they reach free agency.

Those teams often overlap with other teams that can’t compete because their ballparks simply don’t produce enough revenue to keep up with the Red Sox and the Yankees, who just successfully bought their latest World Series championship.

Finally, there are teams who might fall into either of the previous categories but who really can only blame their own organizational and management ineptitude.

The Pittsburgh Pirates, as we’ve written before and will write again, have once again fallen into that category. The fans in the Steel City have had little reason for nearly two decades to maintain any optimism about this team, despite ponying up a few years ago to build one of the nicest new ballparks in the country.

Two years ago the Pirates were coming off one of the few promising seasons they’d had – they still posted a losing record but they had several young players at key positions entering 2008. By the All-Star Break in 2009 they had traded or otherwise gotten rid of seven of eight position players and several members of the pitching staff as well.

The 2009 season included trading Nate McLouth for prospects among other transactions that moved players around but did little to show the organization actually has a plan for getting better in the long term.

The Pirates’ latest blunder was non-tendering Matt Capps. Capps is coming off a bad, injury-riddled season no question. But for the three seasons before that Capps put up good-to-great numbers as both a setup man and closer. As he heads into his arbitration years he deserved better from the organization than this sudden boot. And the fans continue to deserve better than an organization that seems unwilling to pay anybody to get into their money years with the team.

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