MLB Bullets Says A Rocky Mountain Bye

It's officially the final weekend of the Summer as Fall starts on Sunday.

• It comes as no surprise to anyone, but Todd Helton announced that he would retire at the end of the season. It seems like the right time to announce it as it gives the Rockies and their fans a chance to officially say goodbye but not enough time to set up all the hoopla of the Chipper Jones or Mariano Rivera farewell tours that Helton seems to want to avoid.
• Tracy Ringolsby says that Helton was meant spend his whole career with the Rockies, even if there were three times in his career that he almost became a Padres, Athletics or Red Sox player. In the end, Helton will be one of only 25 players to have a career of over 2200 games and spend it all with only one team.
• Tom Van Riper of Forbes.com says that Helton was a better ballplayer than Rivera. It his curse (or maybe blessing, in his case) to spend his career in Denver and not New York.
• In any case, David Schoenfield says that Helton falls just short of being worthy of Cooperstown. He compares his career to Don Mattingly's.
• He hasn't played since 2011 and now Vladimir Guerrero has made it official. He's retired.
• It wasn't meant as a tribute to Big Daddy Vladdy, but it was one anyway. Corey Dickerson hit a double on the bounce.
• In more retirement news, Mark Kotsay announced that he'll hang it up at the end of the season. So he too can get a big sendoff from the . . .who does Kotsay play for now? The Padres? But seriously, Kotsay was never a star, but he had a 17 year career filling holes in the outfield for teams, including some pretty good teams. He even got a World Series ring for the 1997 Marlins, although he was a rookie that year and was not on the postseason roster. He played in a League Championship Series three times, always on the losing end.
• Mariano Rivera awarded a win, and not a save, in a game he entered with a one-run lead in the ninth by an official scorer using a rarely-used rule. This is going to cause a major controversy in forty years when someone is looking to break Rivera's career saves record.
• Former Cardinals pitching coach Dave Duncan says he's not retired and he wants to work in baseball again. He just doesn't want to be a pitching coach anymore. His wife, whom he quit as the Cardinals pitching coach to be with as she battled brain cancer, succumbed to the disease last June. His son, Chris Duncan, whom you probably remember playing for the Cardinals, is also fighting brain cancer.
• There's a new home run champion in Japanese baseball and it's Wladimir Balentien! This time, the Japanese seem excited that a gaijin has broken Sadaharu Oh's single-season home run record.
• Jerry Crasnick retraces Balentien's career and how he went from top prospect, to disappointment to Japanese star.
• Speaking of Japan, David Lennon of Newsday reports that major changes are coming to the posting system this offseason. It looks like Japanese players will be able to choose between as many as three teams. (h/t CBS's Mike Axisa)
• Tim Rohan in the New York Times outlines what Dr. James Andrews is going to do when he examines Matt Harvey this week and what Harvey's choices are.
• Anthony Castrovince of MLB.com says we really don't know what causes injuries to pitchers or how to prevent them, but our knowledge is improving every year and maybe one day . . .As Bill Baer points out, we really don't know that pitch counts or innings limits do any good.
• From the chutzpah files: The NFL wants you to know how much a problem concussions are . . .in major league baseball. Next up, the NFL wants you to know that calling professional sports teams "Braves" or "Indians" is offensive to Native Americans.
• The Nationals are finally starting to play the way we all expected them to, but it may be too late, writes Tom Verducci.
• Roy Halladay isn't happy about the Philadelphia media. I wonder what would give him a bad impression?
• I'm not ranking other teams broadcasters, but some that stand out to me as good are the Twins, Giants, Diamondbacks and the Mets. Mets pitcher Shaun Marcum strongly disagrees with me about the Mets announcing team. He does have a lot of time on his hand since he hasn't pitched since July 6. I'm sure Ron Darling will stand up and listen to a pitcher with a 1-10 record and a 5.29 ERA.
• Cleveland has played their way back into contention in both the Wild Card and AL Central races. Despite this, Progressive Field is mostly empty. David Lengel of the Guardian thinks that it's because despite all the wins, the Indians are a pretty boring team.
• The Rangers are sinking fast and it's hard to keep out the negative thoughts and the ghosts of 2012.
• The Tigers are struggling, although they started with a much larger margin for error than the Rangers did and should still win the division. Jon Paul Morosi wonders if they'd be better off shutting down Miguel Cabrera for the rest of the regular season so that he can get healthy for the playoffs. It seems unlikely that they'd risk that before the Indians and Royals were mathematically eliminated from the AL Central race.
• The odds are very much against the Royals making the playoffs, but Morosi thinks they could be very, very dangerous if they make it in.
• Greg Holland has 42 saves for the Royals, but he's still pretty much anonymous, writes John Perrotto.
• Christina Kahrl says that even if the Royals are destined to miss the playoffs, Kansas City is getting something it hasn't gotten in a long time: Meaningful baseball in September, Is that worth Wil Myers? Probably not, but we don't know yet.
• This is kind of cool: All 50 Chris Davis home runs in one gif.
• He's not going to win the AL MVP, but Josh Donaldson is happy just to be the Athletics MVP. I'd be a lot happier about that had the Cubs won the World Series in 2008.
• Twins owner Jim Pohlad says the team's performance is an embarrassment. He vows to open the purse strings to get the Twins back into competitiveness this offseason, but he won't be giving major long-term deals to anyone.
• Bill Shaikin thinks Sacramento mayor Kevin Johnson should be the next commissioner of baseball. Two thoughts: No and No. He'll never get the job and he'd be lousy at it.
• Carlos Gonzalez will need finger surgery. Just don't ask him to show you the finger he needs to have the surgery on.
• The death of a fan who fell at Turner Field last month was ruled a suicide.
• And finally, in honor of it being Friday the 13th last Friday, Tim Kurkjian has all you need to know about superstitions in baseball. Seriously. He's the Carl Linnaeus of baseball superstitions.

And tomorrow will be a better day than today, Buster.