As the non-waiver trading deadline approached in the 2011 season, the Texas Rangers had a slim lead in the American League West and sought a relief pitcher to bolster their bullpen corps. They knew that Koji Uehara was available in Baltimore, but they also knew that the Orioles would demand a high price.

The high price had a name – Chris Davis, a young first baseman, who had played in parts of four seasons with the Rangers and had been pretty impressive.

“We had a very valuable asset in Uehara, who at the time we made the trade was striking out nearly twice as many (47) as he was giving up hits (25),” recalled Andy MacPhail, who was the chief of the Orioles’ baseball operations at the time. “The Rangers needed him. We had made trades with Texas before, and we felt they were the team with the most talent and was a good place to go shopping.”

It was a good shopping destination because the Orioles wanted Davis.

“His minor league numbers spoke for themselves,” MacPhail said. “He was in a situation with Texas where they couldn’t give him enough at-bats. We had an opportunity for him.”

However, Jon Daniels, the Texas general manager, was reluctant to include Davis in the trade, MacPhail said. But Pittsburgh saved the day and the trade.

The Pirates, MacPhail said, were willing to take first baseman Derrek Lee and pay the $2 million remaining on his contract. The Pirates, not accustomed to contending, were 3 ½ games from first when they made the trade, figuring Lee would provide production for their offense.

However, in spite of Lee’s .337 batting average, 18 runs batted in and 7 homers in 28 games, the Pirates plummeted to 24 games behind. The trade, on the other hand, opened up first base for Davis.

“We didn’t take long to make a deal,” said MacPhail, who gave the Rangers Uehara for Davis and pitcher Tommy Hunter.

“All you had to do was look at his minor league numbers,” MacPhail added, explaining his interest in Davis. “Wayne Kirby was our first base coach, and he had been with Texas and knew Davis well.”

Playing his first full season last year with the Orioles, Davis exceeded the minor league numbers MacPhail referred to, hitting 33 home runs and driving in 85 runs. He is on his way to exceeding those numbers this season.

In fact, the 27-year-old left-handed hitter has joined Miguel Cabrera, last year’s Triple Crown winner, and to a lesser extent Mike Trout in dominating offense in the American League.

Entering Saturday’s games, those three names appeared more than any other in 16 offensive categories that Major League Baseball publishes daily for each league. Several examples:

• Total bases – Cabrera, Davis, Trout 1-2-3
• Extra-base hits – Davis, Cabrera, Trout 1-2-4
• Runs – Cabrera, Trout, Davis 1-2-3
• Batting average – Cabrera, Davis, Trout 1-2-9
• Hits – Cabrera, Trout, Davis 1, 3, 6
• On-base percentage – Cabrera, Davis, Trout 1-4-6
• Slugging percentage – Davis, Cabrera, Trout 1-2-5
• Home runs – Davis, Cabrera 1-2
• Runs batted in – Cabrera, Davis 1-2

Is there a Triple Crown winner in there?

Last year Cabrera became the first Triple Crown winner since Carl Yastrzemski in 1967. If the offensive orgy produces another Triple Crown this season, it will be the first time for consecutive Triple Crowns since Frank Robinson and Yastrzemski in 1966 and ’67.

Cabrera’s feat last season demonstrated that nothing can be done these days without provoking criticism. If the baseball writers don’t get the voting for most valuable player or Cy Young wrong, they are wrong for continuing to define the Triple Crown as batting average, home runs and runs batted in.

I haven’t paid much attention to the ideas the critics propose as substitutes for the Triple Crown staples, but as with some of the new statistics, the critics seem to have different ideas. If we adopted all of the ideas, everyone would probably have his own personal Triple Crown.

Last season Cabrera had to work hard to get his Triple Crown. He edged Trout by four points for the batting title, .330 to .326; he hit one more home run (44) than Curtis Granderson and Josh Hamilton (43 each) and in his biggest edge, he drove in 139 runs to 128 for Hamilton.

Before Saturday’s games, Cabrera had a huge lead with a .377 batting average to .330 for Davis, Davis led Cabrera in home runs, 28-24, and Cabrera was ahead of Davis in r.b.i., 81-74.

However, Davis narrowed the r.b.i. gap (to 81-79) and increased his home run lead (to 30-24) Saturday night, slugging a pair of home runs and driving in 5 runs against the Yankees.

With approximately half of the season left, there will be plenty of games and at-bats to change the look of the individual and collective races. In addition, the more candidates there are the less likely any one of them will finish the season ahead in the three critical categories.

The presence of Cabrera and Trout in the races is not surprising, considering their performances last season. Davis, though, had not been expected to participate at the level he has in the first half. MacPhail thinks he might have figured out the secret behind Davis’ success.

“What I subsequently learned,” he said, “was as an East Texas kid he came under a lot of pressure to perform. He probably benefits from getting away from Texas.”

PIRATES REVISING CALENDAR AND RECORD

Only once before had they made it close. In 1971 the Pittsburgh Pirates gained their 50^th victory on the first day of July. Their 3-0 win over the New York Mets gave the Pirates a 50-29 record. It would take the Pirates another 43 years to win 50 games before the calendar turned to July.

In what is developing into a fairy tale season, Major League Baseball’s Ugly Ducklings, the team that has endured 20 successive losing seasons, have won 50 games before July for the first time in their history.

Their 2-1 victory over Milwaukee Saturday night put the Pirates 20 games over .500 (50-30) for the first time since they ended the 1992 season 30 over (96-66). Their record was also the best in the majors and had them leading the National League Central.

Their previously earliest 50^th win came appropriately behind the hitting of Roberto Clemente and Willie Stargell, who would go on to be elected to the Hall of Fame, and the pitching of Dock Ellis, who would gain not fame but infamy.

The 2013 Pirates achieved No. 50 with their eighth straight win, their longest winning streak of the season, and their longest since a 10-game streak in 2004.

CASTING AN ALL-STAR BALLOT FOR A PHENOM

The other day Yasiel Puig, the Los Angeles Dodgers’ phenomenal rookie, played in his 23^rd major league game. It was the same number of games he played in the minor leagues last year in his first professional season.

Twenty-two-year-old rookies aren’t supposed to get to the majors and exceed their minor league performances, especially their first-year minor league performances. Bur I figured a comparison would be interesting. It turned out to be more interesting than that.

Puig had 82 at-bats last year in the minors, 89 in the same number of games this year in the majors. These were his various averages:

YEAR	BATTING	ON-BASE %	SLUGGING %	OPS (On-Base + SLG)
2012 Minors	.354	.442	.634	1.076
2013 Majors	.427	.457	.708	1.165

Puig’s performance has prompted a debate over whether Puig should be named to play in the All-Star game. On Saturday’s Yankees-Orioles game on Fox, Joe Buck and Tim McCarver spent an inordinate amount of time debating the question.

Buck said yes, McCarver no. McCarver’s primary point was that Puig has been in the majors less than a month, and his selection would deprive a more deserving player of being picked for the game.

I normally wouldn’t care, especially because I haven’t cared about the All-Star game since Commissioner Bud Selig foolishly and fraudulently linked it to homefield advantage for the World Series in an attempt to help boost FOX’s ratings.

But I’ll make an exception and say Puig should be selected. Not only that, but he should go into the game as early as possible, as soon as one of the outfielders who doesn’t really want to be there can be taken out.

Puig is a genuine phenom, and Major League Baseball should be proud to show him off. If he goes into the game after the third inning (the earliest he can under the rules) and he remains in, viewers might stay tuned to watch him. This exhibition game, after all, is about viewers, isn’t it?

But maybe I’m not giving the commissioner enough credit. Maybe he has thought of the idea and has sent instructions to manager Bruce Bochy. If he hasn’t, this one’s for you, Bud.

NO COMMENT, NO DISCIPLINE

Last week I wrote about Brian Cashman’s obscene outburst at Alex Rodriguez for tweeting that his surgeon had said he was physically cleared for playing baseball. Since Selig often disciplines players for comments that they make publicly, I wondered if he would fine or otherwise discipline Cashman, the Yankees’ general manager.

I asked Pat Courtney, the senior vice president for public relation, if Selig would comment on my question.

“I did talk to him about it the other day,” Courtney replied, though too late for that column, “and we simply do not comment on conversations that we do or do not have with our club officials.”

Nor do they announce if a club official has been disciplined, unless he is suspended, and that doesn’t happen too often.

So Brian Cashman would like Alex Rodriguez to shut up. Theo Epstein showed Ian Stewart what it cost him for not shutting up. All general managers and baseball executives would like their players to shut up. They pay them to be seen, not heard.

The time has come, however, for these executives to get a taste of their foolish reactions to players’ public comments.

Cashman, who apparently thinks he’s Superman by diving out of airplanes and climbing the outside of buildings, unleashed an obscene outburst at Rodriguez Tuesday night after the recuperating third baseman had tweeted that the surgeon who had operated on his left hip had told him he could begin playing.

In Cashman’s view Rodriguez was as wrong for tweeting that news as Stewart was for his public criticism of the Cubs and their manager, Dale Sveum. The difference was the Cubs suspended Stewart, a minor leaguer making $2 million this season, for violating a loyalty clause in the uniform player’s contract.

The Yankees took no disciplinary action against Rodriguez; Cashman just told him publicly and harshly to “shut the (blank) up.”

If a player had made a similar comment publicly, I feel certain that Commissioner Bud Selig would at least fine him, if not suspend him for a game or two. I sought to get comment from Selig through his spokesman but heard nothing from either one of them.

Selig was not involved in the Stewart matter because the third baseman had been sent outright to the minor leagues, which meant he did not have union protection in spite of his $2 million major league salary.

“No doubt if he had been a major league player a grievance would have filed,” a union lawyer said. “It was a heavy handed suspension.”

Indeed it was. The Cubs reached far and wide to find an excuse to take the action they did. What they found was the loyalty clause in the uniform player’s contract, paragraph 3(a).

The paragraph, however, says nothing about speech or criticism of the team or the people who run it. The clause talks about the player agreeing to perform diligently and faithfully, keeping himself in first-class physical condition and obeying training rules and pledging himself “to the American public and to the Club to conform to high standards of personal conduct, fair play and good sportsmanship.”

Are we supposed to believe that Stewart violated “high standards of personal conduct?” By expressing his views?

The suspension cost Stewart $109,000 of his $2 million salary. Having released him, the Cubs will pay him the remainder of his salary. Larry Reynolds, Stewart’s agent, said the two sides made no agreement to execute the release.

“They fined him 10 days pay, released him and he gets the rest of his contract paid,” Reynolds said by telephone. “The biggest thing was to get his release.”

Some media outlets reported that Stewart’s suspension was upheld, but he didn’t challenge it so there was nothing to uphold.

Rodriguez and Cashman wound up discussing, if not resolving, their verbal skirmish in a clear-the-air telephone conversation that A-Rod initiated before the Yankees’ game Wednesday night. Their talk came after Hal Steinbrenner, the team’s managing partner, told Cashman that the way he handled the matter was “an issue,” MLB.com reported.

Rodriguez triggered the incident by sending a message to followers of his Twitter account, telling them that his surgeon, Dr. Bryan Kelly, “gave me the best news – the green light to play games again!”

Cashman had previously denied a newspaper report with similar news and apparently was irate that Rodriguez announced the news himself. When it comes to injury and rehabilitation, the Yankees have a lengthy history, dating to at least the early 1970s, of lying. If they’re going to lie or at the least manage the news, they can’t have players disclosing information.

When Cashman learned of A-Rod’s Twitter message, he told ESPNNewYork, “Alex should just shut the … up.”

Cashman did not return a telephone call seeking comment, but meeting with reporters at Yankee Stadium, he said, “Ninety-nine times out of 100, I roll with it pretty good. I didn’t roll with this one well at all. I popped. I sounded off. Reality TV at its best.”

Cashman, though, will not be disciplined for his outburst. Had Selig commented for this column, he would most likely have said that. Why would I discipline him, the commissioner would very likely have responded.

Well, for one thing, I could have told him, Cashman has made a national joke. His telling A-Rod to “shut the (blank) up” was the highlight of David Letterman’s monologue Wednesday night.

“Girls, girls, girls,” Letterman said. “You’re both beautiful.”

Continuing the fun Cashman had provided with his outburst, Letterman said, “There’s a better chance of getting A-Rod to drive in runs in October than to get him to shut up.”

Jokes aside, I think by now players should have become wary of their (mis)adventures with and on Twitter. They are like children with new toys. Whether Stewart should have been suspended or Rodriguez ridiculed, why do players feel the need to send messages on Twitter?

They are professionals so let them act like professionals. Major League Baseball and individual teams have social media rules or guidelines, but players should be intelligent enough and have enough self-discipline to keep away from potential problems.

Maybe Major League Baseball has rules for use of social media because it knows its players wouldn’t be able to avoid the Twitter temptation. Players have to be saved from themselves.

Even if that is reality, though, it’s no reason for clubs and club executives to punish players for speech.

The San Diego Padres are such an anonymous team that the players aren’t even household names in their own households. Yet the Padres provided one of the primary highlights in one of the biggest event-filled weeks of the season.

Reaching .500 and above for the first time since the first 11 days of the 2011 season, the Padres emerged from seemingly nowhere and snatched second place in the National League West, on one day positioned only one game behind first-place Arizona. They entered Sunday’s games in third with a 38-37 record, three and a half games behind the Diamondbacks.

Another stunning development featured the underachieving Toronto Blue Jays, who mounted a 10-game winning streak, matching Atlanta’s early April run as the longest in the major leagues this season.

The Blue Jays’ 37-36 record before Sunday’s game was their first over .500 since last July 29. Their six-game division deficit was their smallest since April 24, and they had finally begun resembling the contender their flurry of winter activity and ensuing franchise record $118 million payroll made them out to be.

The Kansas City Royals offered another highlight of the week, winning six in a row for their longest winning streak of the season and reaching 34-34 two days before the Padres. The Royals, though, lost their next four games, undermining their surge.

The Padres look like they have the best chance to capitalize on their June burst. If they are part of the race, division or wild card, in the second half of the season, they could trace their turnaround to that week in June.

Their success, however, extends beyond that week. In the 25 days May 28 through June 22, the Padres compiled the best record in the National League, 16-9. They were the only team in their division with a winning record in that time.

And who are these no-name Padres?

Yonder Alonso, Jesus Guzman, Jedd Gyorko, Everth Cabrera, Pedro Ciriaco, Logan Forsythe, Yasmani Grandal, Eric Stults, Kyle Blanks.

OK, maybe these names will be more familiar:

Andrew Cashner, Will Venable, Chris Denorfia, Cameron Maybin, Nick Hundley.

All right, one last chance:

Clayton Richard, Huston Street, Chase Headley, Carlos Quentin, Edinson, Volquez, Jason Marquis.

The Padres have several players on the disabled list, but this would be the starting team when everyone is healthy: Alonso at first, Gyorko at second, Cabrera at short, Headley at third, Quentin in left, Maybin in center, Venable/Donorfia in right, Grandal or Hundley catching.

Many people probably heard of Grandal’s 50-game suspension for a positive steroids test before they knew of him as the Padres catcher. They were most likely more aware of Randy and Todd Hundley as major league catchers than they were of San Diego’s Hundley.

But known or not, the Padres’ anonymous players have produced for them. Ciriaco, their substitute shortstop, for example, was hitting .216 in 28 games when San Diego acquired him from Boston June 14. In his first seven games with the Padres, the 27-year-old Dominican hit .400 (8-for-20) with a triple, a home run and three runs batted in.

When the Padres, with their $72 million payroll, 25^th among the 30 teams, need a replacement part, they pick up a Ciriaco, not a Vernon Wells or a Kevin Youkilis, as the $229 million New York Yankees did.

“There are certain players we’re not going to get so we have to do it a different way,” Josh Byrnes, the San Diego general manager, said in a telephone interview Friday. “That’s the story line of baseball. There was a book and movie about that. Teams have to operate differently.”

Billy Beane, the model for “Moneyball,” the book and movie Byrnes referred to, has said he has moved on from his Moneyball days, but his, Oakland team has a $69 million payroll, just behind San Diego’s in the payroll standings, and the Athletics have been first or second in the American League West all season.

“Like a lot of people, we’re trying to figure out how to stay in the race and possibly win the division,” Byrnes said. “Everyone in the division has flaws.”

What does he see are the Padres’ flaws?

“Our starting pitching,” he said, “although ours has been better lately, is still a work in progress. We’ve had guys going deeper and contributing in games. That wasn’t happening earlier in the season.”

Byrnes wasn’t prepared to predict a division winner. “It’s always been a hard division to predict,” he said. But he cited a carryover development from last season that is worth watching.

With manager Bud Black providing leadership and inspiration, the Padres had a 57-46 record in approximately the last two-thirds of last season. In that stretch, only the San Francisco Giants, en route to the division title, had a batter record (61-42) among the division’s five teams.

“We played the last two-thirds of the schedule pretty well,” Byrnes said. “We brought back the same team. Over the last calendar year we have a decent winning formula.”

The Padres have pleased their fans. “One of the most gratifying things I’ve heard recently,” Byrnes said, “is it’s a fun team to watch.”

If Black can inspire the same kind of play in the Padres the remainder of this season, the no-names could provide more fun and gain a name – division champions.

The Padres’ ownership is as anonymous as their players. The team has endured ownership turmoil in recent years.

John Moores, who became the owner at the end of 1994, wanted to sell the team, and Jeff Moorad, a former player agent, wanted to buy it. They entered an agreement under which Moorad and his group would purchase 100 percent of the Padres over several years.

When the time came for Moorad to take control of the club, Major League Baseball blocked the sale, not satisfied apparently with Moorad’s financing.

Ron Fowler, a major figure in the beverage distribution business, is the Padres’ executive chairman. His group of owners assumed control of the team last August.

Included in the ownership group are Brian and Kevin O’Malley, sons of Peter, the former Dodgers’ owner, and Tom and Peter Seidler, sons of Peter O’Malley’s sister, who was also an owner of the Dodgers.

BLUE JAYS READY TO START SEASON

How relatively remarkable was it for the Blue Jays to win 10 games in a row, 10 games in 12 days? They needed 23 days to gain their previous 10 victories.

As satisfying as that streak might be, though, general manager Alex Anthopoulos isn’t letting himself get excited about it and possible ramifications.

“There are 90 games or whatever left,” Anthopoulos said. “That’s a lot of games. All the teams get streaky. You have a 5-game winning streak, or you lose 8 out of 10. Last year we fell apart the last two months after we were in the wild-card race.”

Last season the Blue Jays fells out of the wild-card race almost before it started. On July 28 they were sixth with a 51-49 record, 4 games behind Oakland for the first spot and 3 ½ games behind the Angels for the second spot.

The Blue Jays had plenty of time to catch up but a lot of teams to pass. They were unable to do either, losing their next 6 games and 40 of their last 62.

“I don’t know,” Anthopoulos said when asked in a telephone interview last Friday if he thought the Blue Jays could sustain their newly discovered winning ways. “I don’t even want to try to analyze it.”

I will note for the sake of perspective that the Blue Jays ran their streak to nine and then 10 games subsequent to our conversation.

“Give me a month; then I’ll tell you,” the cautious general manager added. “We’re starting to pitch well. We probably won’t maintain the numbers out of the bullpen and the starters’ 2 e.r.a. We’re not going to sustain that. But I knew we weren’t as bad a team as when we were losing.

I’d just rather wait and see.”

Anthopoulos was right about one thing. The Blue Jays’ bullpen actually gave up an earned run Saturday when Baltimore’s Taylor Teagarden hit a home run against Darren Oliver, but the resulting 0.73 earned run average for the bullpen for the month of June was still the lowest for a month’s worth of relief work in the majors since 1921.

Generally, Anthopoulos hopes he’ll be right about a lot, mainly the moves he made and the money he spent last winter.

He traded for pitchers R.A. Dickey, Mark Buehrle and Josh Johnson and shortstop Jose Reyes and signed outfielder Melky Cabrera and infielder Macier Izturis. The pitchers have not produced as advertised: Dickey 6-8, 5.15 earned run average; Buehrle 4-4, 4.60; Johnson 0-2, 4.38 in 7 starts.

“Buehrle started slow, but in his last eight starts he’s been outstanding,” Anthopoulos said of the left-hander’s 3-2 record and 2.65 e.r.a. in those starts.

Dickey, though, hasn’t shown signs of producing his Cy Young consistent performance of last season. He beat Baltimore Friday night but got away with allowing at least six runs for the fourth time in his last six starts.

Besides the winning streak, the best news for the Blue Jays may be the changing status of Reyes, Out since April 12 with a severely sprained ankle, the shortstop is on a minor league rehab assignment and could return to the Blue Jays this week. They would view that as another winning streak.

AND THIS LITTLE PIGGY GOT NONE

This could be baseball’s version of “this little piggy went to market.”

Over the weekend, Max Scherzer of Detroit gained his 11^th victory against no defeats with an impressive 7-inning performance against Boston, Patrick Corbin of Arizona failed to get his 10^th win without a loss despite a brilliant 8-inning performance against Cincinnati and Clay Buccholz of Boston, also 9-0, didn’t get any because he went on the disabled list with a strained neck muscle.

According to Major League Baseball, this is only the second season dating to at least 1916 that three starting pitchers have begun the same season with a 9-0 record or better.

The other season was 1929. Burleigh Grimes of the Pirates began 10-0 and Tom Zachary of the Yankees and George Uhle of the Tigers each began 9-0.

WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN WITH COLE

The Pirates’ 6-1 victory over the Angels Saturday night moved them two games behind the division-leading Cardinals and gave them a wild card-leading record of 45-30 (.600). More significantly, it put them at a critical crossroad.

Fifteen games over .500, the Pirates were one win from matching their 2012 high of 16 over .500, which they achieved with a 63-47 record Aug. 8. The end of their notorious run of 19 consecutive losing seasons seemed within their reach.

But their reach fell short. They needed to win 19 of their last 52 games to achieve a winning season for the first time since their division-championship season of 1992, but they won only 16 games and finished with a 79-83 record and losing season No. 20.

They obviously have more games left this year than last when they reached a similar juncture, but they can still finish with a winning season by having a losing record the rest of the season (37-50). But that’s negative thinking, and there’s no room for that in the Pirates’ playbook.

Now it’s possible that the Pirates would need even fewer victories the rest of the way had they called up Gerrit Cole earlier than they did.

Cole was the No. 1 pick in the 2012 draft, and the Pirates promoted him to make his first major league start June 11. He won that one, he won his most recent start last Friday and he won the one in between. He has allowed 7 earned runs in 18 1/3 innings for a 3.44 e.r.a.

Maybe he wouldn’t have won any more games had the Pirates started his major league career sooner, but maybe, just maybe, he would have and maybe the Pirates would now be in first place in the National League Central.

But I forgot. Cole needed more work in the minors before the Pirates called him up at the same time – late May, early June – as a bunch of other good young prospects were promoted. They all needed more work. And their teams needed more time to make sure the players would have their eligibility for salary arbitration delayed a year.

Yes, dear readers, it’s all legal, but the practice of ill repute undermines the integrity of the game and cheats the fans.

You might have read a recent e-mail I printed here from a Pittsburgh reader saying he doesn’t mind having Cole’s eligibility delayed because he’d rather that the team has him for an extra year before he could be a free agent. But eligibility delayed could turn out this year to be playoffs denied.