Written by Brian McPeek

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All kinds of mish-mash from the Cleveland sports world over the last three days. LeBron said he is going to "keep his options open". The Indians traded Carl Pavano. Syndric Steptoe and Rex Hadnot suffered serious injuries at Browns training camp. And the Indians continue to give at bats to AAAA players in favor of guys who actually may be core players in 2010. Peeker hits on it all in The Weekend Wrap ... and also gives us his weekly dose of Jamey Carroll man-love.

Loads of Etcetera 

• Let's get this out of the way early this week, shall we? For the umpteenth week in a row Sean Smith failed to throw a pitch at the Major League level while Jamey Carroll homered, doubled and drove in three runs on Sunday. Carroll's two-out double off Jose Contreras was the biggest hit of the ball game as it came against a guy who historically gives the Indian fits and it gave them the lead in a game they had trailed 3-0.

Carroll raised his average to .295 and his OBP to .387 on the season. I am a certified, 100% heterosexual male with a wife of 20 years and three kids. But Jamey Carroll makes my life better every day he wakes up.  

God bless ‘The Midget'. 

• What exactly are the Indians hoping to find out by giving Major League at-bats to Wyatt Toregas and Chris Gimenez? If it looks like a Triple-A player, hits like a Triple-A player and brings nothing more to a lineup than the average Triple-A player, well, in all likelihood it's a Triple-A player. I know the brain trust is now scared to death that any player that leaves the organization will go on to have a mediocre Major League career like Brandon Phillips has had, but just let it go. That ship has sailed.

Once again I will say that the Tribe benefits more from giving Andy Marte all the rope he needs to hang himself and by bringing Matt LaPorta to Cleveland for an extended look. I'm not going to rail on about it again. It's just clear to everyone but the people making the decisions for the Indians.  

As to Marte specifically, I implore the Indians to stop playing ‘Lineup Roulette' with the kid and pencil him in every day in the same spot in the lineup. The last thing I need is for Marte to be unceremoniously dumped this off-season, go to a shitty team, have a couple of hit two hit games in a season in which he hits .233 with 11 HRs and 52 RBI and hear the same sorry lot of people cry about him (after each of those rare two hit games) not getting his opportunity here. 

He's here. Let him do what he's going to do. He'll make the decision a lot easier to make one way or the other if you just give him those consistent at-bats. 

• I hear people talking about the unexpected treasure that Carl Pavano turned out to be as an Indian. That he surpassed expectations and was more than they thought they were getting.

I don't know.  

Less than 10 wins as an Indian, an ERA of well above 5.00 and a few missed starts because he was fatigued was pretty much exactly what I expected from Carl Pavano. I feel a bit cheated in that he wasn't here long enough to be hated by a large number of his teammates or the fan base. I thought there was a solid chance of that happening at some point. It would have been entertaining if nothing else. 

• Browns receiver Syndric Steptoe suffered what appeared to be a torn labrum Saturday and is out for the season.

Who the hell is going to step up now and make up for that one catch per game that Steptoe delivered?  

Yes, I had to look up his 2008 stats. Because I honestly don't recall any of his catches and none of them produced any points. I was actually surprised to he had 19 receptions to tell the truth. 

Steptoe's agent, Jerome Stanley, blamed Browns coach Eric Mangini for his client's injury because Mangini had the Browns practicing in a driving rain. At the time I'm writing this it doesn't look like Mangini will consider moving training camp to San Diego to eliminate such potential dangers.  

• I'm far more concerned about the apparent loss of Rex Hadnot for whatever amount of time he's forced to miss. Initially the concerns were that Hadnot had torn his ACL when he was taken off the field Thursday after rookie David Veikune fell on him. But later tests revealed the injury is to Hadnot's MCL which would reduce the time he's out from a whole season to maybe six weeks.

Messing with a team's offensive line is jacking around with a car's engine. Those guys make the offense go and having to move people around is not the ideal way to build familiarity and a cohesive, effective unit. They Browns may still need to do that with Hadnot missing up to six weeks. But it beats losing the guy for the year. 

Jerome Stanley, who is not Rex Hadnot's agent, blamed the Hadnot injury on Mangini drafting a hard-charging Hawaiian and for not conducting basically 40 walk-throughs in training camp like Romeo Crennel did. 

Okay, he didn't actually do that but Jerome Stanley should shut up and work harder in trying to secure a higher class of clientele. 

• LeBron James telling the world he's going to ‘keep his options open' rather than sign an extension with the Cavaliers right now should be as shocking to most people as the revelation that water is wet.

From a common sense perspective, LBJ should keep his options open. He has leverage right now. He can apply organizational pressure right now in terms of making sure the Cavs are doing everything they can to get him a coveted championship ring. 

Throw in the fact that the kid is the world's biggest diva and what else did you expect him to do? I had put the odds at 9-1 against him signing that extension earlier in the summer. I'll put the odds at the same 9-1 that LBJ is a Cavalier 4 years from now. 

You can argue that he makes the organization's job easier in bringing in talent of he signs that extension. But it doesn't matter today. The free agents the Cavs could acquire they did acquire. This is a better basketball team today than it was after the Game 6 loss to Orlando a couple months back. Players are all about money and playing time. If you can't guarantee them more of each than another team does then you're just not getting them if they have a choice. 

And if that one in ten chance hits and LBJ goes somewhere else, well, then he deserves what shit he gets from Cavalier fans. Dan Gilbert has done just about everything humanly possible to cater to James and build this team around him. Gilbert has done nearly everything humanly possible to increase James's status as a global icon and entrepreneur as well. From taking LeBron to millionaire business meetings to opening up the Chinese market to LBJ with a partial sale (about 15%) of the team to Chinese investors, Gilbert can't do much more than bring in exceptional complementary talent and increase James's exposure world-wide. As distinguished TCF columnist John Hnat said to me, "Gilbert didn't sell 15% of the club to the Chinese in order to open the Asian market up for Darnell Jackson". 

If LBJ wants to walk away from that like an ungrateful punk then so be it. I don't think he will. But until the hour comes that he has to sign that contract extension you can bet that Team LeBron will be wringing every breath of life and publicity out of the situation.