MLB Bullets Turns Down The Music

My walk-up song would definitely be "You're Having My Baby." Just to mess with the pitcher's head.

• The Rangers seem to be the American League's version of the Braves, in that they may not find 25 healthy guys to start the season with. I mentioned the injury to Jurickson Profar last time. Now former Cubs catcher Geovany Soto will miss 10-12 weeks with a torn meniscus in his right knee.
• Even more concerning, Yu Darvish will not make his opening day start with a stiff neck.
• Rangers GM Jon Daniels is "moderately concerned" about Darvish's injury. Tanner Scheppers first major league start may end up being his first opening day start as well.
• Richard Durrett wonders if there is an "Opening Day starters" curse on the Rangers.
• Evan Grant talked to Daniels who said that spring training had been "with the exception of injuries . . ." and then never finished his sentence. That's like saying that with the exception of all the characters who were in the Mafia, I really enjoyed The Godfather. Grant lists all the injuries the Rangers are dealing with at this time.
• In an ESPN insider article, Buster Olney writes that this may be a lost season for the Rangers ($)
• Ken Rosenthal says that if all the injured players come back when they're supposed to, the Rangers will be OK, but he doesn't expect that to happen and thinks the Rangers could be in real trouble.
• One guy who won't be starting for the Rangers is former all-star closer Neftali Feliz, who is coming off Tommy John surgery. He be pitching on opening day, but it will be for Triple-A Round Rock.
• The Tigers are still trying to replace Jose Iglesias without signing Stephen Drew, so they traded Steve Lombardozzi to Baltimore to get Alex Gonzalez.
• David Schoenfield thinks that the Tigers didn't have a backup plan in case Iglesias got injured and now their scrambling to replace him.
• The postmortem of MLB's trip to Australia has started. Sports Illustrated asked an Australian sports columnist to offer his thoughts, and he thought the games were a success, although in unexpected ways. Among many other things, he mentions two things that I noticed in the coverage leading up to the games. One, the Australians were fascinated with how much money baseball players made. And two, they absolutely loved being able to keep foul balls. Even if they didn't get one themselves, they loved the very idea that fans got to keep the balls that went into the stands. Everyone loves catching a ball, but for the Australians, this was novel and wonderful.
• Corey Irwin is an Australian-American who offered his thoughts on the game for Fox Sports. It wasn't as new to him as he was already a hardcore Dodgers fan, but he said the games were emotional and personal for him.
• Athletics Nation has a recap from a Dodgers fan who made the trip to Sydney. Why would Athletics Nation have a recap from a Dodgers fan? They're just that cool over there.
• The Hardball Times has an in-depth history of baseball in Australia and what the future might hold. Included is a picture of the Claxton Shield, which is like the Stanley Cup for Australian Baseball.
• The other big news coming out of Australia was Yasiel Puig's back injury, that caused him to leave in the ninth inning of game two. The good news there is that an MRI showed no damage.
• So in a story that I'm sure we're going to hear about again and again this season, Puig went out to a nightclub Sunday, just hours after returning from Australia and exiting with the "back injury."
• In any case, Dodgers manager Don Mattingly had a talk with Puig and says everything is good now.
• In what may end up being big news, MLB and the MLBPA are expected to hammer out a new drug agreement this week. The new rules, which presumably would take effect immediately, would increase the penalties for a first or second offense while lowering the penalties for "inadvertent" violations.
• For the first time in 15 years, the Yankees do not have the highest payroll in baseball. That honor now goes to the Dodgers.
• The Tigers announced that they have ended talks with Max Scherzer on an extension, meaning he will almost certainly be a free agent at the end of the year. Jay Jaffe has a look at what Scherzer is worth and the risks and rewards for both parties in going to free agency.
• Craig Calcaterra wonders what the Tigers were trying to prove by publicly announcing that they had broken off talks with Scherzer. The only conclusion he can come up with is that the Tigers were telling their fans that Scherzer is being greedy and don't blame us if he's a Yankee next year.
• The Red Sox are still working with Jon Lester to get an extension done by opening day.
• Ex-Cub Scott Baker has opted out of his contract with the Mariners.
• And Randy Wolf asked to be let out of his contract with the Mariners, despite having made the opening day starting rotation. The reason why he asked out is that the Mariners asked him to sign an agreement that would allow Seattle to release him after 45 days and not owe him any more money on his contract. (h/t Hardball Talk)
• The Rays released Erik Bedard and announced that former Cubs farmhand Brandon Guyer has made the opening day roster.
• The Twins traded Vance Worley to the Pirates for cash. It's hard to judge a deal right after it's made, but I think the Twins come out big winners in this one.
• S.L. Silk talks to his son's high school baseball coach whose playing days ended when he was hit in the head with a line drive 14 years ago. They talk about how it affected him and still affects him to this day.
• Matt Harvey (mostly) got his wish and will do his rehab work in New York. He will go down to Florida to train and do a minor-league rehab stint before he rejoins the Mets.
• Here's an interesting web site with a list of all major league ballplayers born in Cuba. With Alex Guerrero playing in Australia, the list is now 178 names long.
• It was a short stay for Guerrero as he's been optioned to Triple-A.
• Phil Rogers announces that the Cardinals have already made the playoffs for 2014. If I were a Cardinals fan, that would both annoy and worry me.
• The Phillies are giving away free tickets to random fans on the street. That's a lot nicer than resorting to Groupon.
• Jorge L. Ortiz looks at the growing number of American ballplayers who are bilingual and how it can build bridges between domestic and foreign teammates. Apparently, Nate McLouth's Spanish is so good that he likes to mess with the heads of his Dominican teammates by telling them he's from the D.R. too.
• Grant Brisbee thinks that ESPN's attempt to quantify "clubhouse chemistry" is worthy of all the Grant Brisbee-mocking that he can manage. Complete with Ted Nugent references. And farting.
• Everyone wondered why the sabermetric-oriented Athletics spent so much money on relievers this winter. People wondered if they had some sort of new metric but the truth is a lot more banal.
• Some scouts are worried that Derek Jeter's final season may be more horror story than fairy tale.
• The real and more interesting fictional origins of the nicknames for Hall of Fame players.
• Baseball returns to Montreal this weekend.
• Pirates catcher Tony Sanchez has picked his new walk-up song. It's "Let It Go" from the Disney movie "Frozen." I'm going to applaud Sanchez for being original.
• Finally, and speaking of walk-up music, Shane Victorino is upset that MLB has limited walk-up music to 15 seconds. He's mad because that doesn't give him enough time to do his performance of the "Toreador Song" aria from Carmen as he walks up to the plate. Not really, but it's something equally stupid.

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