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.

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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 …

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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 …

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