The Dodgers have designated Scott Van Slyke for assignment. I'm mentioning this for three reasons:
1) Not much happened today.
2) It just seems cosmically weird that the Pirates' former center fielder has a son who's a hulking first baseman, and that he's old enough to have played eight years in the minors by now. (Okay, the younger Van Slyke also does play some outfield, albeit in a corner, and he evidently isn't horrible at it, so that's somewhat reassuring.)
3) After I posted about the Joel-Hanrahan-to-the-Dodgers rumors yesterday, I had a couple people ask about Van Slyke as a possible trade target. Well, now the Pirates could have him for pretty much free if they want, but even so, I'm not sure they'll be interested. They already have a hulking right-handed first-base type in Gaby Sanchez, and left-handed versions in Garrett Jones and Clint Robinson.
And while Van Slyke's hitting numbers have, at least superficially, been excellent, it's hard to take them seriously because he's been old for his leagues and because the ballpark in Albuquerque plays so crazily. (The age-relative-to-league thing is also true of Robinson, of course, which is one reason he, too, was DFA'ed.) Van Slyke also apparently doesn't have the quickest bat, which caused Baseball America to leave him off its list of the top 20 Southern League prospects even though he had a great year for Chattanooga in 2011. There may be a pretty good player, or at least a pretty good role player, in there somewhere, and if the Pirates want to grab him, fine, but he's not the best fit in terms of their roster construction, and he's probably not worth the headache that would cause.