All A-Bordick!

Dave Paisley

Wow. All of sudden, Mike Bordick makes the trek from overrated hack journeyman shortstop to slugging savior of the Mets. That's quite a transformation in just a week or so. Of course, at age 35 Bordick is having something of a career year, and may well end up breaking the .800 OPS barrier for the first time in his career. Hardly unprecedented, but probably more of a fluke than a genuine late-career improvement.

Bordick's lifetime OPS now stands at .684, while this season's tally is a whopping .844. And with 17 home runs to date, he's well past his previous career high of 13.

The Mets, though, are probably the only team in baseball that can truly appreciate Bordick's suddenly developed hitting talent. After years of watching Rey Ordonez redefine the term "all-glove, no-bat," even Bordick's lifetime OPS is a significant boost. Throw in this year's extra 150 points of OPS and all of sudden Bordick is just the rent-a-player the Mets need.

And they gave up very little to get him. Melvin Mora, one hot month and a cool chant aside, is an aging journeyman and unlikely to be the answer to any question you care to ask. The minor league throw-ins aren't likely to amount to much, either. The Mets' big dilemma, if they don't already know it, is that even (perhaps especially) Bordick's offense will open the eyes of faithful Mets fans to the possibilities of a shortstop that isn't an offensive sinkhole. To illustrate the point, consider the chart below, following the recent performances of Bordick and Ordonez.

Bordick's recent surge is interesting, as is the continuing ineptitude of Ordonez with the big wooden stick. And, by the way, Bordick's offensive surge started a year after he arrived in Baltimore, so park effects can't explain it all away.

With Ordonez signed for another three years and due back next year, do the Mets dare revert to that level of offensive ineptitude? Attempting to sign Bordick isn't the only option, of course, with Alex Rodriguez potentially out there. But even a bottomless checkbook is no guarantee of landing him, while Bordick will probably be duck soup to sign.

The other intriguing trade of the weekend, also involving the Orioles, was that of Charles Johnson to the White Sox. Johnson, like Bordick, is showing vastly improved offense this year. However, unlike Bordick, this has been long expected. Two years ago, Johnson was getting steadily better when he was abruptly traded to the Dodgers for Mike Piazza. His offense plummeted to zilch and he was hastily dumped by the Dodgers in favor of Todd Hundley.

With a lifetime OPS of .729 prior to this season, Johnson's .934 so far this year may seem to have come out of nowhere, but it's not out of line with expectations a couple of years ago. After all the shuttling around he's done, he should fit right into the White Sox' catcher slot. Harold Baines doesn't hurt either, but he also doesn't help much. Last time I looked, the Sox had a pretty good DH, so Baines will be nothing more than a left-handed pinch hitter and maybe an opportunity to rest a guy once every couple of weeks. His offense has really dropped off this year, and it may well be time to hang it up.

But the White Sox really don't need more offense -- what they do need is pitching. With Eldred probably gone for good and Kip Wells demoted to AAA, they have nothing past the big three of Sirotka, Parque and Baldwin, and even those guys probably aren't good enough to get them past round one of the playoffs.

Unfortunately for them, the pitching "haves" beat out the pitching "have-nots" to the best pitching available -- Andy Ashby and Denny Neagle -- in preemptive strikes earlier in the trading season. I don't exactly count Curt Schilling in that group, due to his ability to veto a trade to just any old team. For some reason, I always believed that Andy Ashby's mediocre performance this year wasn't for real. A good part of it was just lousy offensive support, so I'm not surprised that he's flourishing with the Braves.

Finally, do you think that maybe the Reds are kicking themselves for dumping Denny Neagle so soon? They are clawing their way back into contention more because the Cardinals are faltering big-time (losers of five straight as of this writing), than through their own ability, but whatever the reason, they could end up closer than they believed a couple of weeks ago. Right now, I doubt they have the horses to keep up, though.

Now we have only until 4 p.m. Eastern time to figure out who else is desperate enough to pull the trigger on a deal. Juan Gonzalez to Seattle? Whoever would have dreamed that one up?

Dave Paisley has just completed his C++ course, and will now begin coding Peter Gammons Baseball, where the teams with the clubhouse leaders win all the games. Ask for the secret code that gives your team nine Gary DiSarcinas at drdjp@strikethree.com.

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