When it was declared the Cubs were actively shopping Milton Bradley this offseason, I thought about where Milton Bradley might head, and my brain rendered no snap judgment: Bradley doesn’t necessarily scream “good fit” anywhere.

But if there was a place he was once a “good fit,” it was with the coaching staff and players during his time in Texas. And, according MLB.com’s T.R. Suillivan, there’s a chance he may head back there.

A month ago, it seemed impossible that the Rangers would bring back Bradley. Now there seems some hemming and hawing.

The Rangers know that the Cubs are eager to unload Bradley, who has two years and $20 million left on his contract. They know there is a possibility the Cubs could pick up a sizable portion of that contract, a must if the Rangers are going to get involved.

If you think about it from the Rangers’ perspective, it makes sense: he was huge for their lineup in ‘08, he “fits in” there, and if the Cubs are picking up the brunt of his remaining contract, they get him at a bargain. Not a bad deal.

Sullivan also reports “club officials aren’t expecting it to happen,” but I chose to ignore that part.

HT: Circling the Bases/MLB Trade Rumors

On Sunday, the New York Times Keeping Score column argued this:

If a tipping conspiracy were in place, one would expect that Rodriguez and rival middle infielders in games he played to have hit better in low-leverage situations than in high-leverage ones. Using a fairly loose definition of high leverage as a L.I. above 1.5 and low leverage as below 0.7, the data provide a resounding answer: either no tipping was going on or it was pathetically ineffective.

Contrary to his reputation as a choker, Rodriguez was actually at his best when the game was on the line as a Ranger. According to data compiled by Sean Forman of Baseball-Reference.com, his combined on-base and slugging percentages (O.P.S.) from 2001 to 2003 was 1.076 in high-leverage situations, compared with 1.017 for medium leverage and .982 in low leverage. Opposing second basemen and shortstops showed the same pattern. They registered an .899 O.P.S. when leverage was high, .825 when it was middling, and .817 when it was low. Unless Rodriguez’s behavior was even more nefarious — tipping only when it mattered most — the numbers give no reason to believe he was involved.

At first brush, this makes sense. Even if you still believe A-Rod did tip pitches, it seems clear it was ineffective for him, as well as his benefactors. But, these numbers don’t tell the full story; they only compare low-leverage and high-leverage situations. And what this does is assume that every single time there was a low-leverage situation (the game was not close in the late innings), A-Rod was tipping pitches. There’s no way to know this. If he was only doing it every here and there in blowout games, it’s still entirely plausible opposing teams — as well as A-Rod — were getting on base and slugging at a high rate, it’s just when you average those numbers in with other low-leverage situations, they don’t come out to a higher OPS than the high-leverage situations. One would need to compare the at-bats there was pitching tipping and the at-bats there wasn’t pitch tipping to see if it was effective or not. Because Selena Roberts got a bunch of anonymous tips and there isn’t anything concrete on which games this specifically happened in, there really is no way to do this.

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On Saturday, Bobby Jenks threw behind Ian Kinsler in retaliation for the last time the Sox played the Rangers, and more than a fair share of South Siders got plunked by Texas’s pitchers. But, Bobby made sure not to actually hit the dude, because it was a 3-2 game in the ninth, and that would have been a bad idea to put a runner on base in such a situation.

As you may have heard, Jenks admitted that yup, he did throw behind Kinsler in an effort to protect his teammates. It was refreshing because this rarely happens; a pitcher usually just plays dumb in such a scenario. Good on ya, Bobby.

But see, even though he didn’t hit Kinsler and really had no intentions of doing so, it seems that because Bobby was so candid in his response, the league is reviewing the matter — which likely would not have happened had Jenks kept quiet about it.

“I’ll not do it (throw behind a batter) again, but if there’s something on my mind, yeah, I’ll say it,” said Jenks, who said Monday he hadn’t been contacted by MLB. “But again, I wasn’t trying to hit him. If they’ll investigate that, they’ll see that. It wasn’t a dirty pitch. It wasn’t up. It was right at his butt. That’s all I can say.”

Let this be a lesson to you kids out there: Lie at all costs.

Alex Rodriguez faced two serious allegations recently. 1) That he used steroids. (Yawn.) 2) That he tipped pitches to opposing teams. The common reaction to that second piece of news — and also my reaction — is, “DUDE. So not cool.”

That’s because tipping pitches harms teammates and compromises the integrity of the game. Doing steroids is just vanity manifested in the ironic form of really small testicles. No, but seriously, tipping pitches is the equivalent of throwing a game. Which would explain why some teammates of A-Rod’s were a little upset when they found out about it, as relayed by SI.com’s Ted Keith.

R.A. Dickey (great name, greater man, not-so-much on the ballplayer front):

“Oh gosh man.”

Doug Glanville:

“Oh wow.”

And Shane Spencer:

“It was brought up. I overheard it but not from specific people … “

So, as you can see … WAIT — WHAT? It was talked about? This guy might have actually tipped pitches? Allow me to speak for the rest of America when I say: “GRRRRRRR.”

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Relief pitcher Darren O’Day was designated for assignment by the Mets this week. As of yesterday morning, no one had claimed him. So he was at home in Florida, chillin’ out, maxin’ relaxin’ all cool … maybe even shootin’ some b-ball outside of the school. But then he got a call from his agent saying the Rangers had just claimed him.

So he boarded a flight to Memphis, then transferred to one that was going to Toronto, and got off the plane when the Blue Jays-Rangers game was in the eighth inning at 9:45 p.m.

It got crazy from there:

While on the road, the club’s equipment manager usually carries around the jerseys of several players who could possibly get called up, and of course, O’Day was not one of those players. So O’Day was forced to don the jersey of Kason Gabbard — who is currently with Triple-A Oklahoma City.

“Yeah, that’s a first,” O’Day said. “I figured I’d be throwing in the mid-90’s — doesn’t [Gabbard] throw pretty hard?”

O’Day was brought into the game with two runners on base in the 11th inning, and had his first encounter with his manager, Ron Washington, on the Rogers Centre mound.

So how did this game end? O’Day immediately gave up a hit to Kevin Millar and the Rangers lost. Hey, at least he’s in the majors again.

I didn’t watch “Baseball Tonight” last night, and I failed to check yesterday’s box scores until late this morning, so it’s a good thing I have him on my fantasy team. HEY WANT TO HEAR ABOUT MY FANTASY TEAM I KNOW YOU DO. Ian Kinsler is amazing at baseball. Observe last night’s line:

Yes, he hit for the cycle. Yes he had four RBIs and five runs. Yes, through nine games, Kinsler is hitting .474/.524/.947. Exclamation points! That is insane, and I don’t care if it’s a small sample size. It’s the sort of thing that must be celebrated.

Oh, I know what you’re thinking. “Eamonn, would you really care this much if Ian Kinsler wasn’t a keeper on your fantasy baseball team, and you weren’t currently considering getting an Ian Kinsler t-shirt jersey?” How dare you. The answer, obviously, is no.

You may not know who Rick Helling is. He had a somewhat unheralded MLB career, bouncing around to six teams in his 13-year career. Save for the 1998 season in which he went 20-7 and tied for most wins with Roger Clemens and David Cone, he had a kind of typical MLB career. He was good at what he did, but not great.

But Time has just excerpted another bit from Joe Torre’s and Tom Verducci’s The Yankee Years, and Helling appears to have played a role in baseball’s steroid debacle before there really was a steroid debacle. It’s just that no one listened to him. According to Verducci, starting in 1998 and continuing for the next few years, Helling would state his case at the players association board meeting: Guys are taking steroids, and others are following suit to keep up with them. We have to do something about this. It’s not right.

But, because the owners weren’t up in arms about it, and neither were the players, Helling’s speeches fell on deaf ears.

“I understood their side of it, from a lawyer’s side,” Helling said. “Their thinking was, ‘This isn’t anything ownership has asked us for. It’s never been an issue [in bargaining]. So why would we give them something without getting something in return. Why open this box?’

“I was active in the union. I know Don and Gene very well. Still to this day I talk to them. I understand. ‘We don’t want to go down that road if we don’t have to.’ Every year I brought it up. I’d say, ‘This is more of a problem than you think.’ Bud, Gene, Don … they had an idea of what was going on. They didn’t realize how widespread it was. As players, we kind of did know. Whether it was 50% or whatever, I can’t say. It was more than people thought. It was more than Don, Gene and Bud thought. So the thinking was more, ‘If ownership didn’t ask for it, why volunteer it? It’s probably not that big a deal.’”

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