I posted this in one of the other diaries, but thought it might be worth it's own diary since it adds something new to the whole TLR/Albert situation. Lboros, if you'd rather keep the number of diaries on this topic limited, I apologize and feel free to delete this.

Anway, I was just listening to Kevin Kennedy on XM's MLB channel, and he gave a slightly different report than what we've been hearing. Here's the gist of what Kennedy just said (and my apologies if this has already been noted, I did a very brief skim of the comments so far):

Kennedy was in the NL dugout for the 9th in order to get on the field to do Fox's post-game show. As he was going to the dugout, Kennedy passed Pujols in the tunnel and noted that Pujols had a serious look to him, so Kennedy assumed he was going down to hit off the tee and get ready to pinch hit. Then, after the NL got closer, Joe Pettini went down in the tunnel to get Pujols, but couldn't find him. Kennedy says that Pujols was not actually at the tee, but instead had gone into the clubhouse and already had his shirt off. Kennedy's guess was that Pujols actually would have pinch hit for Orlando Hudson, but because of the delay in finding him Pujols wasn't ready in time to pinch hit at all.

Obviously, Kennedy might not have known exactly what was happening and some of his info might be incorrect (or I may have just misunderstood part of it -- but I'm pretty sure I've summed up his talk correctly), but if this is true then it adds another dimension to this whole situation. Like Kennedy said, it puts at least some of the blame on Pujols at that point. Sure, maybe Tony should have communicated with him a little better, but I'd be much more inclined to give Tony a pass if the real reason Albert didn't hit was that he'd just assumed he wasn't going to play.

8-player deal with the Reds giving up Felipe Lopez, Austin Kearns, and Ryan Wagner for Gary Majewski, Royce Clayton, Bill Bray, Brendan Harris, and Daryl Thompson.

I don't know much about the last three Nats guys, but I really don't understand this deal from the Reds perspective. They're giving up 3 young, decent to good players for some guys that don't seem to be able to really help them much this year. Just the downgrade at SS alone is enough to make me wonder why the Reds agreed to this.

Here's the link: http://mlb.mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/news/press_releases/press_release.jsp?ymd=20060713&content_id=1554 994&vkey=pr_was&fext=.jsp&c_id=was