The Baseball Beat: June 21

Another week in the books and teams are moving closer and closer to the trade deadline when they'll have to make the ultimate decision of whether they're buyers or sellers. This year it will be tougher than ever with the fifth playoff spot causing more teams to think they're in it.

The Milwaukee Brewers continue to flounder in inconsistency. The starting pitching has been tremendous over the past few weeks but the bullpen has been every bit as bad. The bullpen has blown three games in the past week alone. Two in KCMO and one on Tuesday night at Miller Park against the Blue Jays.

Speaking of the Blue Jays, their banged-up pitching staff was just what the doctor ordered to wake up a sleeping Brewers' offense. The team launched six HRs in the series and scored 24 runs. I'd love to see more of that going forward.

Here are some other things on my mind this week:

• Nationals SP Stephen Strasburg earned yet another win last night against the Tampa Bay Rays, improving his record to 9-1 and has 110 Ks on the year. The Nats' flamethrower has been outstanding this year since having Tommy John at the end of the 2010 season and missing all of 2011. The interesting thing to look out for in the future is the innings limit of 160 the Nats had placed on Strasburg before the season. This was done to protect Strasburg for the future, but the Nats probably didn't think they'd have this great of a chance to make the post-season.

• Brewers' OF hit home run number 20 on the year yesterday against the Toronto Blue Jays and yet, he has lost his ability to get votes for the All-Star game. This is clearly the dirty work of all the H8ers out there who believe he was on the 'roids. I hoped we had moved on from that H8ing with his numbers being so much better than last year's. Guess not. There's clearly more evidence that he didn't dope than there is that says he did use PEDs.
• Atlanta Braves SP Brandon Beachy was the NL leader in ERA with a 2.00 earned run average in 81 innings. Unfortunately, for both Beachy and the Braves, the young man will undergo Tommy John surgery to repair a torn UCL. Modern medicine will have him back, better than ever, in six months probably.
• Roy Oswalt will make his first start for the Texas Rangers tomorrow (Friday). The Rangers signed him a few weeks back and has made a few starts in the minors since. He hasn't faired all that well but that was merely getting the rust out. He should help the Rangers' rotation that was missing a decent fifth guy. Scott Feldman was downright awful.

Good enough.

-Big Money