ESPN MLB

We think of spring training as a time when the palm trees sway in the breeze, when sunshine brings the boys of summer out of hibernation, when every team has hope -- or at least a convenient case of amnesia.

But this spring training, you won't just find those customary springtime dreams hanging in the tropical air. You can also expect to find some real, live, juicy trade rumors.

"I really think," said one NL executive this week, "there will be a little more [trade] activity in spring training than normal. You've got some interesting names out there -- and a lot of guys who are out of options who are decent players."

So who are those guys? Here's a list of five players whose names are already being floated -- and could legitimately get traded between now and Opening Day:

•  Joe Blanton

If there's one thing the Philadelphia Phillies desperately want to avoid this year -- besides running into Chris Carpenter again in October -- it's writing a luxury-tax check. And more and more, it appears their only hope of escaping that fate is to trade Blanton, who will make $8.5 million this season.

So it was no shock to hear this week that they'd already begun calling around, letting other clubs know he was available. If they can move him before spring training and not have to eat a significant chunk of his salary, it might enable them to bring back Roy Oswalt -- although Oswalt's continuing quest for a contract that pays him in the neighborhood of $10 million could make that a moot point.

But teams that have spoken with the Phillies say they're looking to trade Blanton whether they pursue Oswalt or not, because moving him this spring would give them the financial flexibility to address other needs during the season and, with any luck, dodge the luxury-tax man.

There are rumblings that they have at least mild interest from teams, such as the Pittsburgh Pirates and Baltimore Orioles. Nevertheless, there's next to no chance they can deal Blanton before clubs get a chance to see him pitch this spring. After all, would you deal for a guy who just spent 127 days on the disabled list because of elbow trouble (and never did have surgery) without seeing him throw first?

Exactly. So we can almost guarantee this man will be a Rumor Central attraction all spring.

•  John Lannan

Thanks to the miracle of arbitration, Lannan will make $5 million this season. And with the Washington Nationals' signing of Edwin Jackson, their trade for Gio Gonzalez and the return of Stephen Strasburg, they don't especially need the guy.

So the Nationals are already dangling Lannan to every team they think has even a remote need for a 27-year-old left-handed innings-eater. Among the clubs who appear to fit that mold: The aforementioned Pirates and Orioles, plus the Boston Red Sox and New York Mets.

It doesn't figure to be easy to build a market for a guy with a 1.42 career WHIP, a $5 million salary and zero winning seasons on the back of his baseball card. But when we asked an exec of one team that had spoken with the Nationals if they appeared committed to dealing Lannan this spring, his answer was: "100 percent."

•  A.J. Burnett

All of a sudden, the New York Yankees have too many starting pitchers. What a concept. So if there's any prayer of moving Burnett, who has $33 million coming over the next two years, this team will jump at it.

The good news is that Burnett still has a live enough arm -- and four consecutive seasons of 32-plus starts -- to be intriguing. The bad news is that he'll make $16.5 million in each of the next two seasons. And he's the only qualifying starter in baseball who has racked up ERAs over 5.00 in each of the past two seasons.

But where is he going? The Yankees would never do business with the Red Sox or Mets. And while Burnett would seem like a fit in Baltimore (where he has family ties), the Orioles and Yankees have hooked up for precisely one trade of major league players in the past two decades.

So that appears to leave the Pirates, a team that seems to have legitimate interest in him. And the Yankees are said, according to sources, to have targeted Garrett Jones as an answer to their quest for a left-handed-hitting outfielder/DH type.

However, the Pirates have told several teams that inquired about Jones that they're not inclined to move him. And the Yankees have been telling other clubs they won't chew on a huge percentage of Burnett's salary if they don't get a useful player back. So this could easily drag on into spring training -- and beyond.

•  Bobby Abreu

An executive of one NL team predicted recently: "There's no team in baseball more likely to make a deal this spring than the Angels."

It's not all Albert Pujols' fault, but Pujols' arrival did set off a ripple effect that leaves this team with too many first-base/outfield/DH guys to fit on one roster, let alone one baseball field. So somebody has to go, and Abreu sure seems like the most logical player to move -- if the Los Angeles Angels can find a team to take him.

That's especially the case if Kendrys Morales is healthy enough to DH, because that would wipe out Abreu's only real hope for playing time. The Angels don't have any need or any reason to play him in the outfield.

Ideally, they would love to trade him for more bullpen inventory. But an official of one club that spoke with them reports "they'd do it for a middling prospect, just to move the money" -- which happens to be $9 million, if you're ringing your personal cash register at home.

Abreu, who turns 38 next month, can still draw a walk, steal a base (going 21-for-26 last year) and slap a ball up the gap. But he slugged a career-low .364 last season. And one scout who has seen a lot of him said this week: "He doesn't drive the ball much anymore. He's not very good in the outfield. And he makes a ton of money. So I really don't think he'll have much of a market."

•  Jeff Niemann

The Tampa Bay Rays have been listening to trade proposals for both Niemann and Wade Davis for months now. But they actually appear less likely to move either of them than they were three months ago. When the offseason began, they thought they might have no choice but to trade a pitcher to fill their offensive holes, because the prices on the free-agent market seemed likely to soar beyond the means of a team whose entire roster made less than half as much money last season ($39.1 million) as the Yankees' starting infield ($78.5 million).

But that's not how it worked out. The Rays were able to scrape up enough loose change in the piggy bank to sign Carlos Pena, Luke Scott and Jeff Keppinger. And now, teams that have spoken with them report they're back to telling other clubs they'll still listen -- but they're not actively looking to move any of their starting-pitching depth.

If they do trade any of their starters, though, Niemann figures to be the guy. He's about to turn 29 this month. He just took his team to arbitration. And he's become only a back-of-the-rotation or long-relief option for a club that can roll out David Price, James Shields, Jeremy Hellickson and everybody's favorite phenom, Matt Moore.

At $2.75 million, he's only getting pricey by the Rays' standards, not by the standards of clubs looking for pitching. So he's a guy well worth keeping an eye on this spring. And that shouldn't be too hard, considering he'll be the only 6-foot-9, 260-pound behemoth on the field.

Other names who could get traded: Gavin Floyd (White Sox), Koji Uehara (Rangers), Jake Westbrook or Kyle McClellan (Cardinals), Mark Trumbo (Angels), Brandon Inge (Tigers).

If you really needed to see Mariano Rivera break the "all-time" saves record to anoint him as The Greatest Closer ever, we need to ask you this question immediately:

What the heck have you been watching for the past decade and a half?

This man would have been The Greatest Closer Ever if he'd retired a week ago, or a year ago, or even five years ago.

He's a special man, with a special gift and a special pitch. And he's been riding that pitch and that gift to a level of dominance we shouldn't need a record -- any record -- to pay notice.

But sometimes these historic moments cause us to take a step back and admire men like this, and their unparalleled feats, in a whole new light. So let's do that now, as Three Strikes salutes the brilliance of Mariano Rivera:

Strike One -- Beyond Compare Dept.

There's no better way to measure any player than to compare him to his peers. Except in The Great Mariano's case, does he even have any peers?

He now has saved 602 regular-season baseball games. Not a single other active pitcher is within 100 of him. Or 200 of him. Or even 250 of him. Seriously.

The No. 2 active reliever in career saves is Francisco Cordero -- who is 279 saves behind, with 323.

So what does this mean? It means that Rivera has an incomprehensible 86.4 percent more saves than the CLOSEST active reliever. That's 86.4 percent.

And if your first thought is, "Has any other record-breaker in this sport towered over his "peers" quite like that?" We now have an answer:

No way.

We swapped a bunch of emails last week with loyal reader Chris Isidore on this topic -- and he got so fascinated, he went looking for somebody, anybody, who had a greater margin at the time he broke any other prestigious career record. And nobody turned up. Nobody.

• Babe Ruth? Nope. Back in 1921, when he set the career home-run record with his 139th, that was only 63.5 percent more homers than Home Run Baker (85), who ranked No. 2 at the time.

• Rickey Henderson? Sorry. When he swiped his 939th base in 1991, that was only 47.4 percent more at the time than Tim Raines (637). In fact, Lou Brock had a greater margin (50 percent) over Bert Campaneris 16 years earlier when he set the record Rickey eventually broke.

• Pete Rose? 'Fraid not. When he set the all-time hits record with his 4,190th in 1985, Rod Carew was at 3,030 (a 38.3-percent gap).

• Cy Young? Not even on the same radar screen. The all-time wins record was only 366 when Young broke it in 1903. So he was only 11 percent ahead of Kid Nichols, who was at 329.

In fact, Isidore found only one other gap that was higher than 38 percent. That was Walter Johnson's pad of 57.5 percent over Grover Cleveland Alexander when Johnson set the all-time strikeouts record in 1921.

Now we recognize it's almost laughable to use the term "all-time" to describe this saves record when, in fact, the save rule has only existed for about four decades. But all of Rivera's "peers" have been doing their thing in this same, save-crazed era he's been pitching in. And of the seven other active relievers with 200 saves or more, six are in their 30s and five are age 33 or older.

So it's hard to look at ANY other active pitcher in the game and think he has a realistic chance to break this record. And that, friends, is saying something.

Strike Two -- To The Whip

You know the biggest problem with this record? It's that it's causing us to celebrate a guy for compiling one of the most overrated stats in the history of Stat Land.

Not that saves are not particularly misleading in Mariano Rivera's case, but they can sure be dubious in general. So let's look elsewhere in our quest to define this man's greatness:

At WHIP, for instance.

Rivera has been pitching in the big leagues for 17 seasons now. And he's done something that ought to be impossible in this day and age. Check this out:

Innings pitched: 1,209
Baserunners (via hits and walks): 1,207

So what's his career WHIP? You can round it off to 1.00, but if you head far enough right of the decimal points, it's actually 0.9983. Loyal reader Aaron Heider has been tracking this for us for more than a year. And the more we think about it, the more we realize it's the most underappreciated stat on Rivera's whole encyclopedia page.

Try to comprehend this. Try to digest what it means to make more than 1,000 appearances, face more than 4,000 hitters and still somehow allow fewer baserunners than innings pitched.

Among all the pitchers who ever worked more than 1,000 innings in the big leagues -- and there have been more than 1,100 of them -- you know how many other men have had a lifetime WHIP of 1.00 or lower? Exactly two.

One was Addie Joss (0.97). He threw his last pitch in 1910.

The other was Big Ed Walsh (0.9996). He packed it in back in 1917.

In other words, this was achieved once by two guys who pitched, like, a century ago. And then NOBODY else did it -- until Mariano Rivera came along.

Only two pitchers from Rivera's approximate era have even come close -- Trevor Hoffman (1.06) and Pedro Martinez (1.05). Might as well start chiseling their Hall of Fame plaques right now.

Even if we lower the bar to 500 innings, we can find only one other modern reliever with a WHIP in Rivera's area code -- the underrated Billy Wagner 0.998 -- in 903 innings.

Next lowest by any active reliever: 1.108, by Joe Nathan (in 726 2/3 innings).

Next lowest by an active reliever with 1,000 innings or more: 1.304, by Arthur Rhodes.

Are we all in agreement that WHIP tells us infinitely more about any pitcher's level of dominance than his saves total? Of course, we are (meaning all those who disagree are now free to leave us and get back to work on their fantasy synchronized-swimming roster).

And if we are, isn't this debate officially over? Correct answer: Yessir.

Strike Three -- Useless Domination Dept.

In other news …

• In 10 of Rivera's 17 seasons, he's had an ERA under 2.00. Next most by any relief pitcher in history (in seasons of 50 innings or more) is six, by Wagner and Hoyt Wilhelm. The only pitcher in any role with more seasons with a sub-2.00 ERA: Walter Johnson (11).

• Rivera is headed for his eighth season with a WHIP lower than 1.00. The only other relief pitcher ever to do that: Wagner (also eight). The only starting pitcher in history with more seasons under 1.00: Johnson (nine).

• In all these years, Rivera has blown only 72 saves -- in 674 opportunities. That's two fewer blown saves than our old amigo Dan Plesac had in his entire career -- in 242 opportunities.

• In 15 trips to the postseason, Rivera has held the best hitters on the best teams on earth, in the most important games of his career, to this remarkable slash line: .176/.213/.229. When we went searching for any active hitter who hits like that, you know who we came up with? Zach Duke (.176/.205/.217). Yeah, he's a pitcher. When we confined that search only to active position players, we got Drew Butera (.172/.209/.252). In other words, when the Yankees have sent this man to the mound in October, he's turned EVERY hitter he's faced into the equivalent of a good-fielding, light-hitting back-up catcher, or a pitcher with a half-decent clue about what that piece of ash is used for. Unreal.

• Finally, there's one more modern stat that speaks volumes about any pitcher, and that's Adjusted ERA-Plus. And what's Rivera's Adjusted ERA-Plus for his career? How about 205 -- meaning he's pitched more than 50 percent better than your average pitcher. Just to put that in perspective, the only active starting pitcher who has ever had an Adjusted ERA-Plus that good just for one SEASON is Zack Greinke, who hit 205 on the nose in his 2009 Cy Young season. And the only active closers who have had more than TWO seasons with an Adjusted ERA-Plus that good are Nathan (with five) and Jonathan Papelbon (with three). Rivera? He's had 12. But if we head back to the career list, as Chris Isidore points out, the next best Adjusted ERA-Plus by any pitcher in history is 154 -- by Pedro Martinez. There are 575 pitchers within 50 points of Pedro -- but NOBODY within 50 points of Mariano Rivera.

So what most people are saluting at this historic moment is this man's save total. But what we prefer to salute is the astonishing career that produced all those saves. And friends, there has never been another career like it.

That's a case that should have been closed a long, long time ago -- long before this man collected Save No. 602, anyway.

As the Derek Jeter countdown ticks toward 3,000 hits, is it OK to change the subject?

Look, nobody loves debating whether this man is one of the most overrated or underrated players in history more than me. I did, after all, write a book about that once (shameless book-plug link). But there's other stuff to talk about.

And I would never dismiss the importance, to the Yankees, of the clear reality that Jeter isn't the same player he used to be. But there's other stuff to talk about besides that, too.

The reason is this: What Derek Jeter is now -- as a player, as a hitter -- has very little to do with how he got to the precipice of 3,000 hits.

You know what got him here? Greatness. That's what.

Pure, relentless, machine-like greatness. For a decade and a half. Nonstop.

Very, very, very few players -- and fewer shortstops -- have had the kind of career this man has had, where every season looked just about exactly like every other season. Until the last two, anyway. And that's what it takes to get a man into the 3,000-Hit Club.

But for some reason, as Jeter completes the journey to one of the most important milestones of modern times, we haven't focused enough on that aspect of Jeter's march to 3,000 hits. So let's change the subject, OK?

STRIKE ONE -- JUST 17 DEPT.

He arrived in the big leagues on May 29, 1995. He arrived to stay in September 1995. So this is only Jeter's 17th season in the major leagues. And you know how many players since 1900 have reached 3,000 hits in 17 seasons or fewer?

Just five -- and now him.

See if you've heard of these other five men:

Pete Rose, Stan Musial, Hank Aaron, Ty Cobb and Paul Waner.

And if you'd like to see how many hits some other great players had in their first 17 big league seasons, check out this list at baseball-reference.com. It was a list that really put this feat in perspective for me.

STRIKE TWO -- THE 190-HIT CLUB

Take a look at Jeter's career numbers. Now check out the hit column. Maybe Jeter didn't quite crank out 190 hits or more in every season of his career. But it was close.

He's done it 10 times already. And the list of players who have had 10 seasons of at least 190 hits since 1900 is another very cool group. Here it is, according to Lee Sinins' Complete Baseball Encyclopedia:

1. Pete Rose, 13
2. Ty Cobb, 12
T3. Stan Musial, 10
T3. Derek Jeter, 10
T3. Ichiro Suzuki, 10

If you're hanging around with those dudes, you could hit, friends. It's that simple.

But this guy wasn't just slapping singles for all those years. If you want to limit the list to seasons of 190 hits and a .400 slugging percentage, only Rose, Cobb, Musial and Jeter had at least 10 years like that.

And how many other players had at least 10 seasons with 190 hits, plus double figures in both home runs and stolen bases?

Not ONE.

Just Derek Jeter.

You could look it up.

STRIKE THREE -- IN SHORT ORDER DEPT.

Finally, there's one other thing we ought to mention: This man did all this as a shortstop.

My friend Brian Kenny got me to thinking this week how rare it is to inject that little subplot into the 3,000-hit conversation. So let's inject it right now.

How many members of the 3,000-Hit Club spent most of their careers as a shortstop? Precisely two -- Honus Wagner and Calvin E. Ripken Jr.

And while the list of shortstops with sustained stretches of offensive excellence is longer than that list, it isn't a whole lot longer.

There's no easy way to measure that sort of thing. But the statistic that comes closest is adjusted OPS-plus, because it adjusts the numbers for eras, ballparks, etc.

So through the miracle of the baseball-reference.com Play Index, I ran this list of most seasons with an adjusted OPS-plus of 110 or above by shortstops in modern history.

No shortstop in history had more seasons like that than Wagner (13). But after him, the leader board looks like this:

Jeter 11
Arky Vaughan 11
Luke Appling 11
Barry Larkin 10

Wagner, Vaughan and Appling are already in the Hall of Fame. Larkin should be standing at the podium 12 months from now. And you know where Jeter is heading one of these years.

Brian Kenny and I also talked on his radio show about how many shortstops had a 10-season stretch you would rank above Jeter's 10 best seasons (1998-2007). The only names that even made it into the conversation were Wagner, Vaughan, Ripken and Alex Rodriguez. And A-Rod didn't really play 10 full seasons as a regular shortstop, so he probably shouldn't count.

Larkin was close, but didn't stay anywhere near as healthy. Alan Trammell and Robin Yount were slightly behind. Ernie Banks would have surpassed Jeter, but he didn't play 10 full seasons at short. Guys like Lou Boudreau, Vern Stephens and Joe Cronin were in there someplace. And then there was Ozzie Smith.

He wasn't in the same area code as Jeter offensively. And even if you factor in defense, there was no 10-year stretch in which the Wizard's wins above replacement total beat Jeter's greatest decade.

The way Derek Jeter played baseball over those 10 years doesn't resemble the kind of baseball he's playing now. That's indisputable.

But as this guy stands on the verge of becoming the first Yankee in history to accumulate 3,000 hits, it's time to take a step back and salute the career that made all this possible. Really.

We'll have plenty of time to debate what the rest of Derek Jeter's career will look like. Is it OK if we resume that debate once hit No. 3,001 arrives? Sure it is. Trust me on this.

STRIKE ONE -- NO AGONY OF DEFEAT DEPT.

The e-mails have been flying in since I wrote last week that I'd rate Andy Pettitte as Not Quite a Hall of Famer. As always, you folks have been doing your research!

An e-mailer I'll identify only as Gene wrote in with this amazing tidbit:

In the history of baseball, with one bizarre additional exception I'll mention in a bit, only two pitchers with 10 or more winning seasons have never had a losing season: Spud Chandler, and Andy Pettitte.

Chandler had exactly 10 winning seasons, Pettitte had 15; both had one season that were neither winning nor losing seasons, Chandler in '44 went 0 and 0, and Pettitte in '08 was 14-14.

Great little tidbit. And I tried my best to check this out. But here's the problem I ran into:

According to the fabulous 2011 edition of Lee Sinins' Complete Baseball Encyclopedia, 144 different pitchers have had at least 10 winning seasons -- if you don't care whether they were starters or relievers, or how much or little they pitched.

Now maybe there's somebody out there who has the time to check all 104 of them to see if they ever had a losing season. But I'm not one of those somebodies. So I decided to answer a slightly different question:

I concluded I needed a minimum number of starts. So I looked at all seasons in which a pitcher made three starts or more. And I learned something astounding.

Andy Pettitte is one of 20 starting pitchers in history who have had at least 15 winning seasons (of three starts or more). But …

He's the ONLY pitcher in history with that many winning seasons but NO losing seasons.

Of the other 19 names on that list, just two of them only had one sub-.500 season -- Grover Cleveland Alexander (0-3, in his final season) and Eddie Plank (6-7, also in his final season). Then there was Pedro Martinez, who went 0-1 in just one start (plus one relief appearance) in his debut season of 1992 -- and didn't have another losing season until he went 5-6 for the 2008 Mets.

But Andy Pettitte? Not a one. The closest he came, aside from that 14-14 season, was an injury-riddled 6-4 year for the 2004 Astros. Pretty cool.

Now back to that original e-mail. Anybody want to guess that "bizarre exception" our man Gene was referring to? It was a guy named Babe Ruth. Perhaps you've heard of him.

Bet you didn't know that, if you establish absolutely no minimum for games pitched or started, the Babe had 10 winning seasons -- and no losing seasons, or even any seasons of exactly as many losses as wins.

Of course, he was only a full-time pitcher for five of those 10 seasons, and pitched just four times in another. But after he got to the Yankees, he still pitched in one or two games a year in four different seasons between 1920 and 1933 -- and never lost a game. Right, never. That included a COMPLETE-GAME win in 1933 -- at age 38.

I don't even think Pettitte's feat is as amazing as the Babe's, when you really think it through. And by the way, I also don't think it makes Pettitte a Hall of Famer. But I'll give him this: It's a heck of a claim to fame for us trivia-holics.

STRIKE TWO -- THE 200-100 CLUB

Loyal reader Kevin Pugliese also passed along a fascinating Andy Pettitte question:

It appears to me," he wrote, "that if your analysis of Pettitte is correct, he will become the first pitcher with 200+ wins and 100 more wins than losses to NOT get into the HOF. Is this something worth considering amongst all this Pettitte/HOF hoopla?

Well, it's definitely worth considering. But it's also not quite correct. In fact, according to the Complete Baseball Encyclopedia, there are eight 200-game winners who (A) have at least 100 more wins than losses, and (B) aren't in the Hall of Fame:

Now if you peruse this list, what do you find? First off, seven of the eight names on it aren't even eligible for the Hall yet because they all just retired. We'll get to them in a minute.

The exception is Caruthers, who played from 1884-93 (before the mound was 60 feet from home plate) and had several seasons when he played almost as many games in the outfield as he spent on the mound. The Veterans Committee has considered him but never elected him.

But what about the other seven names? The guess here is that Pettitte is NOT going to be the only pitcher in that group who doesn't wind up with a plaque.

Maddux, Glavine, Johnson and Pedro ought to be locks. But Clemens is in trouble -- in more ways than one. And Mussina is no sure thing himself.

So I think we just might be hauling this list out again in a couple of years. At the moment, as Kevin Pugliese points out, there are no eligible pitchers in that 200-100 Club whose careers began after 1900 and are not in the Hall of Fame. But by the time Pettitte's name shows up on the 2015 ballot, that doesn't figure to be true anymore.

At any rate, we should all get the message from both of these e-mails: Andy Pettitte might not have been a clear-cut Hall of Famer. But there's one thing his numbers definitely prove he was:

A winner.

STRIKE THREE -- PACK IT IN DEPT.

Finally, in an unrelated development, this is a note for Bud Selig. The commish, as you know, once owned the Brewers -- and still roots for the Packers. I was thinking of him the other day when the Packers won the Super Bowl. Here's why:

The Packers now have won 13 titles in their history.

The Brewers haven't even won 13 postseason GAMES in their history.

True story. The Brewers have been around since 1970. They've won no World Series -- and won a total of nine postseason games (out of 21 played).

Now let me say to all my friends and relatives in Wisconsin that I understand that could change this year. Gotta love what those Brewers have done with their rotation. Seriously.

But for now, I couldn't help but wonder: Is there any other market like this -- where the local pro football team has won more championships than the local baseball team has won postseason games?

My only qualification here was that the baseball team had to be in existence for at least as long as the Brewers. I then started combing through the records and came to this conclusion:

Nope.

The Rangers would have qualified -- until they ripped off eight postseason wins last year to pass the Cowboys (five titles). But that's it.

Of the 18 other teams that fit, the Expos/Nationals were the only other tough call. They've won five postseason games in their existence -- all while they played in Montreal. But those Montreal Alouettes have won seven Grey Cups -- five of them while the Expos were still in town, eh? So at best, this is a dead heat.

At least the Nationals and Redskins are tied -- at zero -- since the Nationals moved to D.C. Does that count?

But no matter how you break it down, Packers versus Brewers remains the most one-sided football/baseball mismatch in our land.

More titles for the Packers than postseason wins for the Brewers. Wow.

And if THAT doesn't inspire Zack Greinke to go about 27-2 this year, I don't know what will.