Notes, quotes and comments

For all the chatter about all the suitors for Milton Bradley — that the Cubs could get the likes of Pat Burrell or Mike Lowell for the temperamental outfielder — when the deal came down, it was for Carlos Silva.

The former Twins mainstay went 5-18 with a 6.81 ERA in his two seasons with Seattle. Good luck with that, Cubbies.

* One of my minor delights this offseason has been the increasingly frequent times that an agent overplays his hand and winds up hurting his client. A couple of examples this week:

• Cliff Lee says he "thought we were working out an extension with the Phillies. I thought I would spend the rest of my career there." The Phillies GM, Ruben Amaro Jr., says: "We made what we thought was a pretty substantial offer ... Like I said before, I just didn't feel comfortable that we were going to be able to get to the finish line. And so we ended up moving toward the Halladay situation." Translation: Lee's agent asked for so much the Phillies ran away.

• Johnny Damon has said all offseason he wants to remain with the Yankees. But his agent — Scott Boras — has insisted on a three-year, $39 million deal, which was too long and too rich in the Yankees opinion. Now the Yanks have signed Nick Johnson to be their primary DH. Johnson replaces Hideki Matsui, and Curtis Granderson fills the outfield slot formerly held by Damon. And the Yankees get younger and cheaper. Upshot: Damon won't be where he wants to be, and — assuming Boras was dragging out the Damon talks to make it look as if the Yankees were a possible suitor for another LF client, Matt Holliday — that mirage appears to have faded also.

* Falling apart around their ears: Tony Oliva got trapped in a bathroom in the Twins' Metrodome offices Wednesday when the door handle came off. Moving day is next week. I bet they can't wait.

Pitching to Pujols (and other stuff)

On Friday, the Twins (specifically Glen Perkins and Joe Nathan) got Albert Pujols (right) out – or at least kept him from hurting them. On Saturday, they (specifically Kevin Slowey) didn't.

Ron Gardenhire has it exactly right: "Just make better pitches. Keep the ball away from him. If you want to just (intentionally) walk him every time up, I think that's embarrassing baseball. That's ridiculous baseball. If we have the same situation tomorrow, I hope that my pitcher makes better pitches so I don't have to put four (fingers) up every time."

Slowey has it right, too: "I don't know if looking back you should say we should have walked him. For me, looking back, I need to make a better pitch in both situations."

No question, the margin for error is less with Pujols than with probably any other hitter since Barry Bonds was in his prime. But he's "only" hitting .328. (With considerable power, of course.) He can be pitched to. Slowey didn't do it very well.

* The latest odd development in the Milton Bradley-Lou Piniella saga is that the Chicago Sun-Times printed (most of) the excrement expletive the (sometimes) volatile manager used in his Friday confrontation with the (often) volatile outfielder and the defusing response from Bradley. Piniella publicly apologized to Bradley for the insult Saturday. And the Cubs complained that the White Sox stadium staff shouldn't be leaking what's said in the visiting clubhouse.

My take, at an extreme distance, is that Bradley wants to be a nice guy but hasn't figured out how to do it. Given time and distance, he says the right things. In heat of the moment — that's another matter. Playing in a major market, for a team whose fans have expectations of success and stronger expectations of disappointment, doesn't help.

*Poll stuff: Of the offered bullpen trade options offered, five votes (35 percent) went to getting LaTroy Hawkins; three votes (21 percent) perfered the status quo; two apiece (14 percent) opted for Danys Baez or Takashi Saito; and one each (7 percent) for Matt Capps or Cla Meredith. Fourtenn total votes.

New poll is up. And, yeah, it's inspired, sort of, by the pending Monday print column — and more strongly by an offshoot of that column that will be posted here later.

Quotes, notes and comments

* That was the very definition of pitching efficiency Friday from Jose Mijares: One pitch, two outs.

Mijares hadn't pitched in a week. On July 19, his previous outing, he faced three hitters and didn't throw a first-pitch strike to any of them (and gave up a homer to Jeff Keppinger in the process). His appearance before that, June 16, he pitched on inning, giving up two hits and a walk but no runs. And that outing followed a spell in which he was used five times in eight days.

Sometimes Ron Gardenhire's bullpen usage seems to follow this pattern — use a guy hard, then ease off when he shows signs of breaking down. The problem comes when the easing off comes too late, as with Matt Guerrier last season.

* What a surprise: Milton Bradley had a temper tantrum Friday. What a secondary surprise: Lou Piniella reacted:

"I told him to take his uniform off. He threw his helmet and smashed a water cooler, water flying all over. I just told him to take his uniform off and go home. I followed him up into the clubhouse, and we exchanged some words."

Bradley (above) is not the only Cub to bash water coolers; Carlos Zambrano and Ryan Dempster have too. Piniella — notorious for his short fuse — doesn't really seem the guy to calm things down, and there've been times this season when he's joked about it.

* Alex Rodriguez is being described as a shell of the player he once was. How much of it is the hip — remember, the surgery this spring was not a complete correction of the problem, but an attempt to get him back on the field for this season, with another surgery to come — and how much is the fact that he's about to turn 34 (and may be off the juice) is a matter of conjecture.

His OBP (.389) and SLUG (.487) aren't nearly as bad as his batting average (.227), and since the Yankees started making an effort to give him days off and started enforcing limits on his batting practice, his numbers have picked up (.333 BA over his past 10 games. Of course, he's been facing National League pitching, and that's probably had something to do with his surge.

Still: The Yankees have 10 more years to go on that contract.

*David Ortiz's stat line for the season remains ugly, but his baseball obituary appears to have been premature. His slash line for June: .311/.386/.705. Again, however: NL pitching.

Meanhile, teammate Mike Lowell — who had the same hip problem as A-Rod — is also running into problems, and the attempted solutions include an injection of an artifical lubricant and a reduction in his playing time.

Milton "Boo" Bradley

Milton Bradley, signed by the Chicago Cubs to a three-year $30 million deal during the offseason, is not having a good year.

It got worse Friday against the Twins.

He did have a two-run double. But he also ran into an out (trying to advance to third on a grounder to third); lost a fly ball in the sun (which resulted in a run for the Twins) and, most embarassingly, lost track of the outs and threw the ball into the seats after Joe Mauer's sac fly.

That brain cramp cost the Cubs a couple of base but no runs. And it got Bradley — hitting all of .224 on the year — roundly booed by the Wrigley Field crowd.

From Cubs manager Lou Piniella: "Do we have to go over the math? One, two, three. I don't know what else to say."

The headline from the Chicago Sun-Times: "Lost and dumbfound"

From the blog "Bleed Cubbie Blue" : "Baseball 101: Milton Bradley needs to go back to class." (And Al Yellon, a guy I happen to know from years in a now-defunct historical simulation game together, is quite fair to Bradley in dissecting him.)

As bad as Bradley's game was, it pales next to the disaster that befell former Twin Luis Castillo, now with the Mets. He dropped a popup with two outs in the ninth inning, allowing the tying and winning runs to score.

"E-Mazing" was the front-page headline of the New York Post. "Amazing Disgrace," said the Daily News.