Just a day from July, Joel Sherman of the New Your Post has a slew of trade rumors in his Sunday "Down The Line" column.  He writes Seattle Mariners' LF Raul Ibanez is the most likely target to help cure the .599 OPS ails of the Mets' leftfielders.  Also mentioned are similarly-valued LFers like marcus Thames, Randy Winn and Bill Hall.

What can the Mets offer beyond paying the salaries of this group?  Hopefully, Double-A prospects Mike Carp, Nick Evans or Dan Murphy can get the job done.

Aaron Heilman continues to attract interest from other clubs.  Amongst the teams, mr. Sherman mentions are the Red Sox, Diamondbacks, A's and Cubs. The first three are teams that will be tied to every quality player in July, but the A's seem to be an especially good fit as they have an abundance of outfielders now that Ryan Sweeney appears to be fulfilling the hype attached to him for most of the 21st century.  Could second-year OF Travis Buck for Aaron Heilman work?

Finally, Joel Sherman reports the word on the street from the San Diego Padres have the team in sell mode with RF Brian Giles and SPs Randy Wolf and Greg Maddux as the most interesting players available.  How about Giles for Heilman?  Can the Mets withstand another public relations fiasco like the one that attended the last time the Padres received a Mets reliever (Heath Bell) if Heilman recovers away from Flushing?

On June 10th, I find myself increasingly frustrated with my inability to select harmless middle relievers in 2008. That is difficult to admit as I have spent years grabbing relievers right before they become the closer. As the first step in trying to dispel my belief that projecting middle relief efforts are essentially random, I decided to take a look at the worst BABIPs for relievers who have thrown 15 or more relief innings this season without making any starts.

From this list of especially unlucky BABIP relievers, I see some familar, crooked-number-runs-and-hits-and-walks-allowing members of my pitching staffs - Rafael Betancourt (.400), Jason Grilli (.385), Jamie Walker (.404), Aaron Heilman (.341), and Russ Ohlendorf (.333). Those are four relievers who are in, or were in, the AL and on my team. Missing is Mariner's Left-handed BABIP nightmare Eric O'Flaherty who managed a .483 BABIP in just under seven innings of work. This seems to help explain the disaster that my AL-Only staff has suffered.

My NL-Only is a little harder to pinpoint though. Heilman did a lot of extra damage because I have Johan Santana and Oliver Perez which gave Heilman extra leverage to damage my team when he allowed their inherited runners to score. Despite that, the BABIPs of Manny Acosta (.277), Justin Miller (.314), Oscar Villareal (.233) don't really provide the comfort of blaming bad luck that the AL does.