Bright Spots?

June came in just about as badly as May left, worse, if you consider the fact that we didn't even have good starting pitching today.

Is there a bright light in all this? How can we stay positive when our entire line-ups seems determine to swing at the first pitch they see when they have runners in scoring position? How do we stay positive when our players seem unwilling and unable to bunt or take pitches? How do we stay positive when we have a new line-up every day?

Simple: trades. Let's face facts, even with Carmona (and now Miller...AGAIN) on the DL, we still have depth at the starting job. And there are plenty of teams out there who need pitching.

Bright Spot #1: The Orioles are in last place in the AL East. The longer they sit down there, the better the chances that Brian Roberts will be available for the right price.

Bright Spot #2: Jeremy Sowers pitched 7 innings today in Buffalo, giving up 1 earned run. His ERA is 2.08. The better Sowers does in Buffalo, the greater his trade value. The optimist in me would love to deal him instead of Laffey, but the realist thinks that Laffey's MLB performance makes him more likely to go. Still, Sowers' number indicate that at least he'd be able to step up and keep the rotation performing at the same level.

Bright Spot #3: The Rockies are still in last place and don't appear to be going anywhere any time soon. This means that Garrett Atkins should be available for the right price.

Bright Spot #4: Grady Sizemore's sudden burst of power. I'll get to that in a minute.

Bright Spot #5: Pronk on the DL. Whether he gets better and comes back like the Pronk of old or not, he needed to be removed from the line-up (not that we have anyone better to replace him).

So going by the numbers, Garrett Atkins would seem to be the best pick-up for the Tribe. He's hitting .313 with 8 HR, 30 RBI, and 28 runs. That's pretty impressive and I doubt I could make a case for anyone else. But I'm going to and it will sound at least a little irrational, but follow me.

By comparison, Brian Roberts is only hitting .267, has only 4 HR, only 18 RBI, and has scored only two more times, giving him 30 runs. However, he does have 14 stolen bases, compared to known for Atkins.

Atkins currently has just 9 walks to his 35 strikeouts. Roberts has nine more strikeouts, but also has 30 (yes, 30) walks.

Here's the kicker: Atkins currently bats 4th for the Rockies. Roberts is the lead off man for the Orioles.

Looking at Roberts' numbers, they're actually very similar to Grady's, aside from the fact that Sizemore now has 11 HR and Roberts takes more walks.

In other words, we get Atkins we get a good power bat to add to the middle of a line-up that doesn't exactly get on base a lot.

We get Roberts, we get a lead off batter who takes a lot of walks. Then we can move Grady's power down the order to, say, #3. And while Francisco is still getting a hit every game, he's not hitting for power and probably never will. So we go something like this:

Roberts
Francisco
Sizemore
Martinez

That's a pretty nice top of the order. Granted, it would all go to hell after that unless people start to improve, but there you go. I think adding Roberts would actually improve the line-up more, even though his numbers are less than Atkins.

And, hey, maybe there's a chance we could get him for Sowers and one other player (most likely Peralta, but at this point I'm fine with that).