MLB Bullets Wants To Get Back To Baseball

Leave it to the Cubs to find a silly way to sort-of knock A-Rod off the headlines. It's like I'm back in law school. OK, I never went to law school, but I did got to graduate school in history and I spent a whole bunch of time studying the history of various laws, meaning I spent a ton of time in the law library. So I feel like I went to law school at times.

I just want some pants. A decent pair of pants.

• I'm going to lead with Alex Rodriguez anyway, because I want to get him out of the way. As expected, Rodriguez filed suit in federal court against Major League Baseball and the Player's Association to try to get him season-long ban overturned.
• The suing of the Player's Association is what has people the most upset. Some players took to Twitter to register their unhappiness. At least Brandon Snyder, Tom Koehler and Ryan Webb did. Seriously? I'm sure there have got to be bigger names than those three who are willing to speak out. Or are there? I'm sure there are. Maybe just not on Twitter.
• Jon Paul Morosi thinks Rodriguez has destroyed any good will he might have had left.
• Joel Sherman points out that pretty much every other known PED user has been at least partially forgiven and let back into the game, but that Rodriguez's ego and/or denial of reality has killed any hope of a second chance for him.
• Mike Vaccaro says that Rodriguez is being selfish and ungrateful by suing the Players Association and that his comments criticizing the late union head Michael Weiner were "deplorable."
• Craig Calcaterra, who has the advantage of actually being a former lawyer, says that if Rodriguez wants the arbitrator's decision overturned, he has to sue the union and allege the process was illegally stacked against him.
• Calcaterra also says that the lawsuit did not impugn Weiner's character and that criticizing the late director's actions in the case is not "out of bounds."
• As part of the lawsuit, the entire arbitration decision was entered into evidence in court, so we can now read the whole thing. Wendy Thurm has read it and, also being a former lawyer, says that the logic that arbitrator Frederic Horowitz used to suspend Rodriguez for a full year was "absurd." Now before you think Thurm is in Rodriguez's corner, she's pretty much arguing that the suspension had to be either 50 games or a lifetime ban, based on the CBA and the arguments presented before him.
• Getting back to Calcaterra (and really, as lawyers those two have the most legal-oriented takes on the decision), he agrees that Horowitz twisted logic to get to a 162 game ban. Both Calcaterra and Thurm are worried this decision sets a precedent to give the Commissioner's Office new powers with little accountability.
• Allen Barra looks at the lawsuit and is horrified by the tactics of MLB in this case. He does think Horowitz made a fair decision based on the evidence before him, however.
• But he's not nearly as horrified as Tim Marchman in Deadspin, who calls MLB's behavior "immoral"(and other things I'm not going to repeat here) and says MLB's behavior in this case is why Donald Fehr fought drug testing for so long.
• Bob Nightengale thinks that there will be a backlash by players against MLB's tactics in the Rodriguez case. He's already seeing that develop, even if that's not translating into any support for A-Rod.
• Scott Boras thinks that MLB is wrong to go after players and not the "pushers." The result of this case tells potential PED distributors that they can always cut a deal and go free, so there's no reason not to sell PEDs to baseball players.
• Buster Olney says that MLB has to fight dirty if it wants to win the war against PEDs. (ESPN Insider) He also makes a way too long Civil War analogy.
• Ken Rosenthal is more worried that the lesson from the Rodriguez case is that "drug testing is futile" because the cheats are always ahead of the tests.
• Rob Neyer responds to Rosenthal and says that just because testing can't catch 100% of cheats doesn't make it a "failure."
• It has come out in the aftermath of the decision that Rodriguez could have walked away with a 50 game suspension had he agreed to one last spring, before MLB started digging into the records of the Biogenesis Clinic.
• One last legal note before we go on to the other stuff. Jack Clark has asked for Albert Pujols' defamation suit against him to be dismissed.
• So now onto Clark the Cub. The Cubs are upset with some of the fan backlash against the new mascot.
• Some of the weirdest criticism of Clark is that he's not wearing any pants.
• Grant Brisbee looks at the pants issue and notes that more MLB mascots go pantless than wear pants. But most importantly, he examines the five creepiest mascots in MLB and notes that four of them wear pants.
• David Schoenfield looks at the ten worst MLB mascots ever. He says Clark doesn't come close to making the list.
• Even if you don't like Clark, here's something that will make most of you happy, even if it is, again, an ESPN Insider article. Dan Szymborski lists six top "bounceback" candidates for 2014 ($) and three of them are Cubs. (Hint: They're Edwin Jackson, Anthony Rizzo and Starlin Castro.)
• For those who didn't believe the report from earlier in the week that the Yankees, Dodgers and Angels were the finalists to sign Masahiro Tanaka, the Angels said that they have not met with Tanaka and were not scheduled to meet with him. GM Jerry DiPoto won't say one way or the other if they're interesting in Tanaka however. Maybe he means "I met with his people, but not with him." Or maybe they really aren't pursuing Tanaka.
• Jonathan Berhardt thinks it's easier to say which teams don't need Tanaka's services than which ones do, but he does list several that need him more than others.
• All the other free agent pitchers are waiting on Tanaka.
• Dallas Braden, unable to come back from multiple shoulder surgeries, has retired.
• Rod Barajas also retired and will be the Padres new rookie-ball manager.
• Michael Young says he's considering retiring.
• Bud Selig says he's still going to retire at the end of the year and he's considering a "Mariano Rivera-type tour of all 30 major league parks." Giving fans of all 30 teams a chance to show their love and appreciation of Bud Selig? What could possibly go wrong?
• Selig thinks the tour will be "emotional." Yeah, but maybe not the emotions you expect.
• The Mariners signed John Buck, giving important lineup protection to Robinson Cano.
• Tony Plush is back! Nyjer Morgan signed a minor league deal with the Indians.
• You know what else is coming back? R.B.I Baseball! Seriously, they shouldn't touch the graphics at all.
• How much better will the Tigers defense be in 2014?
• In a Dominican Winter League game last weekend, Jordany Valdespin was pulled for a pinch-hitter. So he quit the team.
• Gabe Kapler tries to weigh the pros and cons of a football versus a baseball career for Heisman Trophy winner Jameis Winston.
• The quest to save a huge treasure trove of minor league data and memorabilia.
• Finally, we actually have some video from an actual game. From down in Australia, Tyler Massey, a Rockies farm hand, did his best Rodney McCray impersonation and ran right through the outfield wall. Did you know that down in Australia, they run the bases clockwise rather than counter-clockwise? (h/t Big League Stew)

And tomorrow will be a better day than today, Buster. I'm also being told that thing about the bases in Australia is just an urban legend.