gil meche's agent says gil meche is a hot commodity --- half the teams have made contact, blah blah blah. @#$##$ agent-generated buzz. . . . but we do hear from other sources that the cardinals might be interested in this guy. meche is cut from the carpenter mold: big boy, throws hard, nasty stuff. like carp, he was drafted high (22d overall), reached the big leagues young (20) with ace-like potential, struggled, and got hurt --- blown shoulder. that injury required two surgeries to fix and kept meche sidelined for a year and a half; he has stayed healthy since his return four years ago.

if the shoulder is fixed, the pitcher still is not; here the similarity to carpenter ends, and the likeness to jason marquis begins. after nearly 150 big-league starts, meche still apparently lacks a plan for getting hitters out --- either that, or he's unable to execute one. jeff sullivan at the great mariner blog Lookout Landing recently posted an excellent review of meche's 2006 season; excerpts:

probably meaningless; he was pitching pretty well against al clubs too at that time. in any case, the month of interleague play (june) was the only one in which meche managed to keep his era under 4.00; he was at 4.78 or higher in 4 of the 6 months last season.

another fine mariner blog, USS Mariner, seems to have spoken for the majority of seattle fans in this post:

one other item: ken rosenthal reports that baltimore is shopping rodrigo lopez, a pitcher the cardinals reportedly tried to get at the trade deadline last year. lopez had a terrible year --- 5.90 era in 189 innings --- and hasn't been very good his whole career; had one good season, whoop de doo. he is in his last year of arb eligibility, so he won't come cheap (prob about $4m) and can walk at the end of the season. the orioles have a hole in the outfield; the brewers supposedly have offered kevin mench for lopez. one can imagine st louis offering encarnacion for the guy, but i hope they don't; lopez looks like another problem, rather than a solution. the orioles (who, with the acquisition of jaret wright, now have six starting pitchers) also might dangle kris benson; he's sort of the pitching equivalent of juan encarnacion --- a reliably, hopelessly average player. benson is under contract for $7.5m this year, with an option at the same price for 2008; we'll have to see how the market develops, but he doesn't look like much of a bargain at this point and hence doesn't seem to meet the cards' needs.

i doubt the orioles would view encarnacion any more favorably . . .