Valley Sports

Major League Baseball’s trade deadline came and went Friday without the Diamondbacks making a deal.
Why?
Well, there was interest in starters Doug Davis and Jon Garland, but none of the offers blew the socks off general manager Josh Byrnes. While Davis and Garland are veterans who eat up a lot of innings, they’re not on the same level, obviously, as a Jarrod Washburn, Cliff Lee or Jake Peavy, so other teams aren’t willing to give up elite prospects to get them.
The Diamondbacks also received inquiries about closer Chad Qualls, but they were reluctant to trade him and empty the bullpen after dealing set-up man Tony Pena to the Chicago White Sox. Also, should Qualls have a good season next year and then leave as a free agent, he likely would be a Type A free agent and Arizona would would get two draft picks for him.
Now, just because the D-Backs didn’t do anything Friday doesn’t mean they’re done dealing. Byrnes expects more players to clear waivers than ever before because so many clubs are reluctant to take on money; that could precipitate a trade of either Davis or Garland sometime in August.
So how does this shape the D-Backs in 2010?
Well, a lot depends on what happens to Brandon Webb, who may need surgery on his bothersome right shoulder. If Webb does have surgery, forcing him to miss a significant portion of the 2010 season, it’s unlikely the Diamondbacks would pick up his $8.5 million option. That would give Arizona the financial flexibility to keep Garland, who will make $10 million, or re-sign Davis.
But, if Webb needs only minor surgery and will be ready for the season, the Diamondbacks could say goodbye to both Davis and Garland and look for a cheaper starter in free agency to pair with Webb, Dan Haren, Max Scherzer and Jarrod Parker, who is expected to make the jump to the big leagues from Class AA ball.
Webb will meet with specialist Dr. Keith Meister on Sunday, and there’s a possibility he could have surgery on Monday if necessary.

Coach Ken Whisenhunt and quarterback Kurt Warner addressed the media early Friday afternoon after the club’s first workout. A few highlights:

* Whisenhunt said Brian St. Pierre and Matt Leinart will share snaps with the second-team offense. Whisenhunt told St. Pierre he would have a chance to unseat Leinart as Warner’s backup, although it’s expected that Leinart will hold onto the job.

* Defensive end Darnell Dockett seems at ease about his contract situation. One possible reason: Whisenhunt said general manager Rod Graves sat down with Dockett before camp to explain the club’s thinking process.
“I’m glad to see he’s focused on us trying to get back to the level of play we were at last year,” Whisenhunt said.
* Warner, who underwent arthroscopic surgery on his left hip in March, is still experiencing some pain in the area. He said doctors told him it could take anywhere from six months to a year for him to be pain-free.
“I don’t have any regrets on the surgery because it’s definitely something that is going to be better for the long haul,” he said. “As far as the pain, it’s definitely better now than it was before the surgery, but the pain is still prevalent. It doesn’t come on as fast. I can do some things that I couldn’t do before, but when I do have the pain, it’s very similar to what it was before the surgery.
“That part is frustrating, but again, talking to the medical people and having them telling me this isn’t out of the ordinary, especially with as much as I have done in a short period of time. You have to deal with that as it heals. But as a player, you go into surgery and you just expect to step out and be a lot better than you were before.
“So, it’s a process, but there are things that have happened, especially in the last three, four weeks, that have been encouraging to me that some things are getting better and you are optimistic that that is the case. It’s just going to take a little more time to heal.”
Although the hip isn’t expected to cause him to miss any playing time, it will be interesting to see just how many snaps Warner gets in the preseason.

FLAGSTAFF — The Cardinals completed a 90-minute workout here Friday morning for their first official practice at training camp at Northern Arizona University.
Some news and notes from the practice:
– Observers said it was the largest crowd the Cardinals have had for a first-day workout since moving to Arizona. Fans were lined up five and six deep beyond the practice field.
– Quarterback Kurt Warner wowed the crowd when he was 5-for-5 in the target throwing practice from about 30 yards. Larry Fitzgerald also drew some oohs and ahhs with a one-handed catch along the sideline.
– The most notable development was that quarterback Brian St. Pierre received some snaps with the second-team offense. Coach Ken Whisenhunt said in the spring that St. Pierre would have a chance to compete with Matt Leinart for the No. 2 job behind Warner.
– As for Leinart, he said he reported to camp weighing 227 pounds, the lightest he’s been since college. He credited the weight loss of about five pounds to the mixed martial arts workouts he did in the offseason.
“I feel really good and I feel strong,” Leinart said.
Although he has virtually no chance to unseat Warner, Leinart said he’s in a better place now than he was at training camp last year when he came in as the starter.
“It’s actually a lot less stressful,” Leinart said. “I want to play and I want to start, obviously, more than ever. But last year was so up and down it was like a roller coaster. Nobody knew what was going to happen. There was a lot of pressure on me to perform.”
– Veteran Bryan Robinson was receiving most of the snaps with the first team at nose tackle, with Gabe Watson running with the second team and Alan Branch the third team.
– Finally, defensive end Darnell Dockett was asked how long it took him to get over the Super Bowl loss to Pittsburgh.
“Til this morning,” he said.

Wide receiver Anquan Boldin was much more pragmatic Thursday about his unresolved contract situation.
While he’s still clearly not happy the Cardinals have failed to renegotiate his contract, he softened his words from a year ago, when he accused the organization of lying and criticized coach Ken Whisenhunt for taking too active a role in negotiations.
Instead, Boldin said he was going to focus on football and not let issues beyond his control darken his mood. He did leave open the possibility of re-signing with Arizona, a change from last year when he said would never play for the club again once his contract was up.
Boldin also declined to say why he switched agents, going from Drew Rosenhaus to Tom Condon, although it’s believed he thought Condon might have a better chance of getting a deal done than Rosenhaus, whose public and sometimes abrasive tactics can turn a team against his clients.

First-round Cardinals draft pick Beanie Wells, the 31st overall pick, remains unsigned, and it’s unknown whether he’ll be in Flagstaff for the team’s first two workouts Friday.
General manager Rod Graves has said negotiations with Wells are progressing, and the parameters of a deal might have been set when Pittsburgh signed the 32nd pick, defensive tackle Evander Hood, to five-year, $8.7 million contract thatl includes $6.1 million in guarantees.

The football gods still love the Arizona Cardinals, it seems.
Just before the Cardinals were to run their conditioning drill Thursday, rain pelted the grass field at Northern Arizona University. Had it kept up, coach Ken Whisenhunt might have been forced to cancel the run.
Instead, the skies parted just long enough for the Cardinals to get their work in.
The result: Every player passed his prescribed time for the six 50-yard sprints. Most notably, third-year nose tackle Alan Branch, who may be facing a make-or-break year with the organization, was among the first linemen to finish.
Branch checked in at 332 pounds, just where the Cardinals wanted him and a big change from last year, when Branch was overweight and ineffective.
“I was very pleased with the guys’ reporting weights and the conditioning test,” Whisenhunt said. “One of things we said last year (about Branch) is that he showed flashes but it was inconsistent. At least coming in this year he started ahead of the curve. He did an outstanding job with his weight and he looked very good in the conditioning test. I hope that’s a good sign.”
Branch is expected to battle Bryan Robinson and Gabe Watson for the starting nose tackle position.

According to a story in the Toronto Globe and Mail, one of the groups bidding on the Phoenix Coyotes wants to play five regular-season games in Saskatoon or Halifax, Canada.
The group, known as Ice Edge Holdings, intends to bid $150 million for the Coyotes. If their bid is accepted and they become owners of the club, they plan to play “home games” in Saskatoon against the Montreal Canadiens, Calgary Flames, Edmonton Oilers, New Jersey Devils and Vancouver Canucks. The NHL would have to approve the set-up.
The group plans to move the Coyotes’ farm team from San Antonio to Thunder Bay in Ontario, Canada.
Also, the paper reported the ownership group has offered coach Wayne Gretzky a long-term coaching contract and ownership stake.
Two thoughts:
1. Moving five games to Saskatoon seems to me to be a slippery slope. If the games do well, and they should, why not 10 the next year and 15 after that? How long before the ownership group, frustrated by losses in Glendale, moves the club?
It will be interesting to see if the group has any buyout clause in a contract with the city of Glendale. If there’s no hefty penalty for moving the club, look out.
2. Offering Gretzky a long-term contract tells me the potential owners are blinded by his star power and thinking more like fans than owners.
What has Gretzky done to deserve more security? One of the biggest problems the Coyotes have had is that no one in the front office has had either the power or the will to supplant Gretzky as coach.
And now Ice Edge Holdings wants to make him even more untouchable?
From here, it looks like the bid submitted by the ownership group headed by Jerry Reinsdorf is much more palatable for Valley hockey fans. It doesn’t include five games in Canada or additional guarantees to Gretzky. In fact, Reinsdorf’s offer, submitted in court documents Sunday, does not appear to offer any role to Gretzky.
The good news: Ice Edge Holdings has yet to submit a formal bid. Let’s hope they don’t. For if they do get hold of the team, it seems like just a matter of time before it heads to Canada - permanently.

The 2009-2010 Arizona State basketball schedule is a lot like brussel sprouts: Both are completely unappealing.
In case you missed it, here are ASU’s opponents at Wells Fargo Arena before Pac-10 play begins:
Western Illinois.
The preseason NIT featuring TCU, Cal-State Northridge and Texas State.
San Francisco
Arkansas Pine Bluff
Baylor
Delaware State
San Diego State
UC Santa Barbara.
And my personal favorite, University of South Carolina Upstate (No, I had never heard of the school, either).
Look, I know scheduling is difficult and far more complicated than just, say, inviting Duke to come on down for a visit, but ASU has to do better than that.
How about a Utah or a New Mexico, a Texas Tech or even a St. Mary’s, which is a perennial NCAA tournament team?
ASU will never build its fan base if it continues to offer such an unattractive non-conference home schedule. The die-hards will go but the casual fan has no interest in that pivotal ASU-Delaware State game.
I don’t expect the Sun Devils to play the toughest schedule in the country. And everybody has a few cupcakes before conference play.
But give fans at least a couple of games they can get excited about.
Then again, maybe USC Upstate has a huge alumni base in the Valley.

Brandon Allen, the first baseman the Diamondbacks received in the trade that sent Tony Pena to the White Sox, is making quite the impression in his limited time with Triple-A Reno.

Allen is hitting .400 with seven homers and 16 RBIs in 12 games for the Aces. Furthermore, he has nine walks to five strikeouts and sports an on-base plus slugging percentage of 1.495, an astronomical number.

It’s just 40 at-bats, but his continued success would seem to give Allen the first shot at seizing the starting first basemen’s job in Arizona in 2010.

He is getting attention for it too, currently residing on the front page of the Baseball America Web site, with a link to this prospect hot sheet article.

The NFL announced Wednesday that beginning in 2010, the draft will be spread out over three days.
The first round will be held in prime time on Thursday night, the second and third rounds on Friday and the fourth through seventh rounds on Saturday.
“We continue to look for ways to make the draft more accessible to more fans,” commissioner Roger Goodell said in a statement. “Moving the first round to prime time on Thursday night will make the first round of the draft available to fans on what is typically the most-watched night of television.”
Boy, the NFL really messed this one up. What the league should have done is give every round of the draft its own prime time broadcast. Stretch it out an entire week. We’ll call it NFL: The Mini-Series.
I mean, who doesn’t want Chris Berman shouting at them seven straight days?