MLB

COMIC RELIEF

The A's pen is loaded with characters who need no warmup act.

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He's a 15-year vet, but Embree looks much older.

The AL's fourth-best bullpen ERA through May, Oakland's mostly young and mostly anonymous relief corps has been the key to the club's surprising first-half success. Asked to introduce his 'mates, Alan Embree, a 15-year vet who describes himself as "the highest-paid babysitter in the world," offers a scouting report. Is this thing on?

Huston Street, RHP, 24
(12 saves in 14 chances)
"I compare him to another great athlete with his last name: Picabo Street. They have the same body type. He and Andrew Brown are always playing chess, and it's like watching the Geico commercial with the cavemen, pretending they're smart. It's a big façade."

Andrew Brown, RHP, 27
(Opened the season with 16 straight scoreless innings; recently missed three weeks after an appendectomy)
"I call him Homeschool, because he was homeschooled. He was the homecoming king and queen of his high school. King and queen? Yeah, he was the only one there."

Keith Foulke, RHP, 35
(Lefthanded hitters are 4-for-27 against him)
"He's our Oscar the Grouch, the guy from Sesame Street. He's all-veteran, all-business."

Joey Devine, RHP, 24
(Righthanders are hitting .184 against him; currently on the DL with elbow inflammation)
"He's new this year, so I don't have much on him yet. But he seems like the maverick type, the cowboy, the quiet little gunslinger. I call him Devine Intervention, because he got called up when Foulkie hurt his neck earlier this year."

Dallas Braden, LHP, 24
(Has allowed no extra-base hits vs. lefty hitters)
"That Afro makes him look like a mix between Richard Simmons and Tom Glavine. With all the tats, he's part Allen Iverson, too."

Santiago Casilla, RHP, 27
(Team-best O.83 WHIP; sidelined until mid-June because of elbow soreness)
"His nickname is Willy, but I have no idea why. When we need salsa lessons, we go to Willy. Plus, he's the only guy I've ever met who warms up in the bullpen wearing his jacket. I saw that early in the season in Anaheim and I thought, We're still in Southern California, right?"

Alan Embree, LHP, 38
(Team-best 10 holds)
"I'm the teacher/camp counselor, here to provide stability. When someone gets offtrack, I'll talk to him about it. But we have great chemistry, so basically, I'm just a retread. I keep getting recycled, though."

TOTAL RECALL

How is Chipper Jones batting better than .400? He's using his head.
By Travis Haney

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Chipper's just using his head.

Say you're headed to trivia night at your local bar and you can select one big-name athlete to help out the team. Do yourself and your buddies a favor and bring along Chipper Jones, because once the longtime Braves star registers something, it sticks—for good.

That's true with a lot of subjects, but especially baseball: scores, pitchers, dates. Jones even remembers specific pitches on specific counts from at-bats a decade earlier. "It's pretty freaky," says Braves catcher Brian McCann. "He's got a very, very high baseball IQ."

And that's not just a fun fact about Larry Wayne Jones Jr., the first pick in the 1990 draft. The Rain Man bit is a big reason he's become the best switch-hitter since Mickey Mantle in his prime. But at the advanced baseball age of 36, how is it that Jones is now enjoying the best extended tear of his career? Through May, he was hitting .413 with 12 homers and 35 RBIs. Jones says he isn't satisfied unless he gets two hits a night—which means he's leaving the ballpark happy more often than not.

He credits renewed health (he's suffered foot, ankle, knee, hand and oblique injuries the past three-plus seasons) and good luck, plus having dangerous switch-hitter Mark Teixeira for lineup protection. But there's also a cerebral connection. A decade ago, Jones relied on natural ability alone; he has come to discover, though, that his brain means as much as his bat. "I go to bed thinking about the next night's pitcher," he says, "and I wake up with a game plan."

Using June 23, 2006, as a starting point, Jones tops the majors in batting average (.363) and slugging percentage (.652). Yeah, that's ahead of such superstars as A-Rod, Big Papi and Albert Pujols. In the summer of 2006, Jones had a 14-game extra-base-hit streak he still can't explain. He was sixth in MVP voting last year after batting .337 in 134 games. The recent numbers are fogged only by the fact that, because of those nagging injuries, he's had about 150 or so fewer at-bats per season than his big-hitting peers. Because of those injury-littered seasons, some "experts" were throwing dirt on his career. Now he's tossing it back in their faces. "I've seen him excellent," says manager Bobby Cox, "but he's in another league right now."

Of course, the buzz number these days for Jones is 400. He's about to join the 400-homer club (he had 398 through May). And then there's the Ted Williams watch, even though it's still early in the season. The mere mention of hitting .400 draws a chuckle from Jones. Check back in August, he says.

Fair enough. After all, he's baseball's Rain Man, not a fortune-teller.

LEAST OF THE EAST

By Ian Gordon

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Jae Seo still thinks he can help the Tigers.

Winners of a record nine championships, the Kia Tigers are considered the Yankees of Korean baseball. But with two last-place finishes in three seasons (not to mention a decadelong title drought), the Tigers seem to be experiencing the Stump Merrill era. The team recently acquired four former major leaguers in hopes of a quick fix, but the quartet is
not living up to its pedigree, and the Tigers are languishing again. It's not all bad news for ex-big leaguers in South Korea, though, as journeyman outfielder Karim García leads the league with 15 homers. Of course, he plays for Lotte. Here's a look at the Kia Four.

José Lima, RHP
(2–3, 5.82 ERA in 43 1/3 IPs)
Last seen: In four starts with the 2006 Mets, the bachata-singing Lima went 0–4 with a 9.87 ERA.
Local take:
"José Lima will never be known for consistency as Britney Spears is never to be associated with common sense." —The Korea Times, two days after the 35-year-old Lima allowed six runs in one-plus innings against the Hanwha Eagles.

Hee-Seop Choi, 1B
(.208 with 4 HRs and 30 K's in 120 ABs)
Last seen: Choi, who's 29, hit .240 for the Cubs, Marlins and Dodgers, then returned to his hometown team after failing to make the Rays' 40-man roster in 2007.
Local take:
"Pitching to him is easy. His swing is long, and his reaction is slow."
—Samsung Lions manager Dong-Yol Sun

Wilson Valdez, SS
(.221 with 1 HR in 156 ABs)
Last seen: In 41 games for the Dodgers in 2007, the utility man hit .216 and slugged a whopping .270. Still, they had high hopes in Korea.
Local take:
"Valdez could be a power threat to protect Choi and Lee Hyun-Gon at the heart of the batting order, with the smallish Gwangju stadium a haven for hitters."
—The Korea Times on Jan. 3, shortly before the 30-year-old Valdez's contract was purchased.

Jae Seo, RHP
(2–3, 3.71 ERA in 51 IPs)
Last seen: The Rays banished him to Triple-A last June after he started the season 3–4 with an 8.13 ERA.
Local take:
"I am behind my prime, but it will turn out that I still have fuel remaining in me."
—Seo, who's 31, upon signing a one-year, $1.6M contract in December.

OUT OF RIGHTFIELD

By Jorge Aranguré Jr.

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Ryan Ludwick got a fresh start this season.

Two months after suffering a stress fracture in his left hip in 2002, Ryan Ludwick could barely make it down the aisle at his wedding. But it was the subsequent seven-month layoff, during which his career seemed to be slipping away, that nearly cost him his marriage.

"They told me there was a possibility I'd never play again," says Ludwick, who at age 29 is one of the breakout players of 2008. After bouncing around the Oakland, Texas, Cleveland and Detroit organizations, he's found a fresh start in St. Louis. "There were a lot of days I came home and wasn't a nice person," he says. "We had some points where it was really hard on us."

A six-inch titanium rod helped fix the hip, but in September 2003 Ludwick tore up his right knee in a collision. Two years and two surgeries later, he was batting .191 at Triple-A Buffalo when he was hit by a pitch that broke his right wrist. He considered retiring, but his wife, Joanie, wouldn't let him.

"We didn't put in the effort to get through all these injuries and all these traumas for you to quit," she told him.

Ludwick hung in, hit 28 homers for Triple-A Toledo in 2006 and signed a minor league deal with the Cardinals. Now he's in rightfield at Busch Stadium and battling Albert Pujols for the team lead in homers and RBIs. "When I was younger, I always worried about sticking in the big leagues," Ludwick says. "After all the injuries, I told myself, 'What do you have to lose?' Last year was the first time I got consistent playing time, and I proved to myself I could do it up here."

And how's the marriage? Well, Joanie and Ryan are expecting their first child in December.

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