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Welcome friends and baseball fans to another edition of This Week in Small Market Baseball. This week, we tackle the Pirates, the Nationals, the A’s, the Twins, and the Cleveland Indians, so let’s jump right onto the diamond and hit the bases.

- Pirates’ starter James McDonald is having a solid season despite his team’s offensive struggles. He is 2-2 on the year with a 2.42 ERA and 39 strike-outs over 44.2 innings pitched. Still, the 27-year-old righty deserves better, as he’s allowed 3 earned runs or less in all 7 of his starts and has taken a loss or a no-decision in 5 of those. He can blame the offensively challenged Pirates who are last in Major League Baseball with only 89 runs scored in 32 games. You can’t win a lot of games when the offensive can’t give you at least 3 runs scored.

- Just when I was ready to admit that Bryce Harper had become the mature player that I had previously said he needed to grow into, he proves me right. His leap to the majors has been successful, minus the power that will come, but his ability was never the question. He has shown the need to become more professional and on Friday night, he showed why he still has a long way to go. Harper took a strike-out badly and decided to take his frustration out of the dugout wall. The only problem was that this was the one time he didn’t have good bat control, and the bat rebounded off the wall and clocked him in the melon. The subsequent wound required 10 stiches to close up and cost Harper a little bit of the luster from his star. Hopefully it is a lesson learned because Kevin Brown and Amare Stoudemire are horrible role models for a young player.

- Think the Tigers are wishing that they had waited out Brandon Inge’s struggles? The third baseman, now with Oakland, has 4 home runs and 17 RBI in 10 games since joining the A’s.  More impressive is the streak he is on, with 4 RBI or more in four of the last five games he’s played. Inge is still batting only .197 on the season, but he’s been a solid boost for an A’s line-up looking for a power bat.

- At 29-years-old, Joe Mauer should be entering the prime of his career, yet he is starting to look like his best years are behind him, with a .274 average and just 7 extra-base hits in his first 113 at-bats. Since signing the biggest contract in club history prior to the 2010 season, Mauer has played in just 250 games, hitting .308 with a total of 13 home runs and 120 RBI. Granted, he’s had trouble staying healthy through the last two seasons, but his lack of power makes paying $23 million a season to an Ichiro type hitter a bit much. It was a contract that the Twins needed to sign in order to show the fans that they were committed to fielding a winner, but six more seasons at that rate may be a big chunk to swallow for a team that cannot afford to make those kinds of mistakes.

- Watch out folks, but the best trade in the entire off-season may have been the Indians acquisition of right-hander Derek Lowe from the Braves. Cleveland sent minor-leaguer Chris Jones to the Braves for Lowe and $10 million to offset his salary prior to the 2012 season, and Lowe has made them look brilliant. The 38-year-old is 5-1 with a 2.47 ERA for the first-place Indians. Causes of concern include the fact that batters are hitting him at a rate of .303 on the season and he sports a meager 2.7 strike-outs per nine innings pitched, but Lowe is also getting a solid 2.33 ground-outs to air outs. He may not keep it up throughout the season, but it may almost be safe to say that the Indians are getting their $5 million worth.

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As a staunch Red Sox fan, there is a certain amount of relief in knowing that I have another outlet in which to pour my love of the game than the lackadaisical play of the current group at Fenway Park. With a 4-9 home record and an 11-15 record overall, it is good to know that there are other teams out there worth talking about to help me take my mind of Boston's suffering.

So with that in mind, let's get started with this week's edition of...(insert low, echoed voice here)...This Week In Small Market Baseball!

- Think the Yankees want to reconsider their big offseason move; the trade of Jesus Montero to Seattle for Michael Pineda. While it has already been driven into the ground about the loss of Pineda for the season due to a torn larbum, there has been little to nothing said about what Montero has done for Seattle. All the young Catcher/Designated Hitter has done thus far is lead all rookies with 28 hits and he is second to only Yoenis Cespedes of Oakland in home runs and RBI by a rookie. I would say that Seattle definitely comes out of this deal the clear winners. My only question is what did Seattle know before hand? You may need hitting badly, but you don't trade a stud pitcher in his youth unless you know something.

- While we're talking about rookies, the Red Sox got to see a trio of rookie pitchers this week; Jarrod Parker (1-0, 1.38 ERA) and Tommy Milone (3-2, 3.69 ERA) from Oakland and Wei-Yin Chen (2-0, 2.76 ERA) from Baltimore. While Millone got shelled by the Red Sox both Parker and Chen were outstanding. Combined with Lance Lynn of St. Louis, Yu Darvish of Texas, and Wade Miley of Arizona, and Major League Baseball may have one of its strongest crops of young pitchers in quite some time.

- Someone forgot to tell the Rays that they lost Evan Longoria for the next 6-8 weeks with a torn hamstring. The AL East stalwart with an attendance problem has been winning without their leader, jumping out to a 19-9 record and have won 8 of their last 10 games. They lead the East by .5 games over the surprising Orioles, while the Yankees and Red Sox fall further behind. Just further proof that the Rays may have the best front office in all of baseball.

- If you missed my post earlier this week, I took some time to give a little bit of praise to Pedro Alvarez of the Pittsburgh Pirates for resurrecting his career. For a guy with so much hype coming into the game, he's finally starting to realize his potential.

- Ron Gardenhire has been a celebrated manager in the major leagues for the Minnesota Twins for years. Now in his eleventh season in Minnesota, it appears like his magic is wearing off, as the Twins are currently mired in last place in the AL Central and have Major League Baseball's worst record 7-19. After years of succeeding on a lower budget, the Twins are now in the top ten in payroll, yet are on the way to their second straight fifth place finish. Could a change be in order for both management and the roster? Was signing Joe Mauer to that monster contract really worth it for a team with the worst pitching in baseball?

- How about those Houston Astros? It appears that Brad Mills finally has this team clicking on all cylinders as they have won 7 of their last 10 and are just 3 games behind the Cardinals in the NL Central. They are currently tied for 6th in hitting and their pitching staff is settling down after a rough start. Maybe the youth movement is paying dividends after all. It is times like these that lend credence to the parity in baseball and will make the trade deadline interesting, as there may be a lot of role reversal in regards to who is buying and who is selling at the deadline.

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Another week of baseball means another week of news across the small markets of the league. This week, I thought I would do something different and skip the lengthy introduction paragraph full of filler and skip right to the tidbits.

Sounds like a plan, right?

-          The Baltimore Orioles continue to defy the odds and are leading the tough American League East division with a 13-8 record. So how do a middle-of-the-pack hitting squad and middle-of-the-pack starter’s ERA pace a power division like the AL East? Simple; the bullpen is 5-2 with a sparkling 1.94 ERA. They are paced by the trio of Luis Ayala, Jim Johnson, and Matt Lindstrom who have yet to surrender a single run as a group.  Buck Showalter’s group will need to get some more offensive out of JJ Hardy, Nick Markakis, and Mark Reynolds (27 K’s in 57 AB’s!) if they want to stay in the playoff hunt for the season, but it looks like Baltimore is serious about taking advantage of the extra wild-card spot in 2012.

-          The high-spending, and under-performing Angels released 38-year-old Bobby Abreu this week in order to make room for Mike Trout. So where does Abreu land? This blogger thinks he would be an excellent fit with the hitting challenged Pittsburgh Pirates. Jose Tabata is showing no signs of learning how to hit major league pitching, so bringing in the professional Abreu would serve wonders in the development of Tabata, Andrew McCutchen, and Alex Presley.

-          Quick, without looking, can you name the major league ERA leader? The honor belongs to soft-tossing Joe Saunders of the Arizona Diamondbacks. The very same Saunders that sat on the free agency pile all winter only to go back to the team that non-tendered him in the first place. He is pacing MLB with a 0.90 ERA and has a solid .186 batting average against. Sometimes cast-aways bite the hook again and turn into a big fish.

-          Looking down the top 10 in the batting average category is almost a who’s who of Major League Baseball. You have perennial MVP candidates in Matt Kemp, David Ortiz, Josh Hamilton, Derek Jeter, David Wright, Paul Konerko, Jose Altuve, Buster Posey, and hot-hand David Freese. Wait, did I say Jose Altuve? Yep, the Houston second baseman is 8^th in the league in average at .359 and is sporting a solid.958 OPS to start the season. With his combination of speed and bat control, he has been a solid fantasy baseball sleeper for teams that took the chance on him.

Thanks for reading this week and keep enjoying the baseball!

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