Talking Points: Baseball’s all-time clubhouse cancers

1

Robert Knapel of bleacherreport.com has put together his list of the 30 worst clubhouse cancers in baseball history. These are the guys who have a negative impact on a team and get traded often because they cause trouble every place they go.

Seven of the 30 bad boys spent time with the Seattle Mariners. In fact, relief pitcher Oliver Perez is with the M’s this season. The six ex-Mariners on the all-time troublemaker list include Milton Bradley, Carlos Silva, Carl Everett, Vince Coleman, Rickey Henderson and Jose Guillen. Guillen was with Seattle in 2007 when he hit .290 with 23 HR and 99 RBI.

Among others on the top-30 list are Manny Ramirez, Carlos Zambrano, Vicente Padilla, Gary Sheffield, Albert Belle, Barry Bonds, Sammy Sosa, Ty Cobb and Rogers Hornsby.

2

Atlanta left-hander Paul Maholm is the Week 1 winner of Major League Baseball’s Jamie Moyer Award for getting hitters out with s-l-o-w pitches. Chase Utley of the Phillies took a seat last week after taking a 58 mph third strike from Maholm, who has an ERA of 0.00 this season.

3

With the NFL 2013 draft just 14 days away, zillions of mock drafts are floating around the blogosphere.

Examining many of these mocks, here is a scenario for the first five picks that appears plausible: 1) offensive tackle Luke Joeckel of Texas A& M to Kansas City; 2) quarterback Geno Smith of West Virginia to Jacksonville; 3) defensive tackle Sharrif Floyd of Florida to Oakland; 4) defensive end/outside linebacker Dion Jordan of Oregon to Philadelphia; and 5) offensive tackle Eric Fisher of Central Michigan to Detroit.