MLB Bullets Has Gone International

I've got nothing to go up here. Some of you are probably grateful.

• I'm going to start with an article about international scouting that you should all click on and read. Ben Badler writes about the new reality in the Dominican Republic and Venezuela means that teams are agreeing to deals with players as young as 14 and are scouting kids as young as 12. MLB rules say that players can't sign until they turn 16, but that rule is universally (if unofficially) ignored. Is this a bad thing? Not so much for the kids, who get guaranteed money earlier and can informally train with their future team. You can guess what it means for major league teams. Or you could just click on the link and read it yourself. Lazy, lazy, lazy.
• On that subject. here's a look at top Twins prospect Miguel Sano, and his background in the Dominican Republic.
• Since Sano is out for the season after Tommy John surgery, we might as well get to the butcher's bill early. Josh Hamilton is going to miss 6-8 weeks with a torn thumb ligament after sliding into first base.
• Ken Rosenthal says this is Hamilton's own fault for sliding head-first into first. It doesn't sound like Hamilton disagrees much.
• White Sox outfielder Avisail Garcia has a torn labrum and will miss the rest of the year.
• Top Twins prospects are having no luck this season. The number one prospect in all of baseball, Minnesota's Byron Buxton, won't play until May because of a wrist injury suffered in spring training.
• The Rays' Matt Moore has a torn UCL and is currently weighing his options. He might try rehabilitation, but most likely he'll have to undergo Tommy John surgery. If he does, he'll be the 12th major leaguer to have the surgery already this season.
• Dr. James Andrews says that it's not a coincidence that the number of TJ surgeries are climbing.
• I hope that's all the major injures for the past two days.
• MLB announced that they will rename the awards for relievers after Mariano Rivera and Trevor Hoffman. Presumably, this will get someone to care about them.
• Jim Caple thinks we have enough awards in baseball already and wonders where it will all end. However, I do like his idea for naming an award after Nick Punto. Although maybe it should be the Eric Sogard Award, since Sogard is the true face of MLB.
• Michael Pineda missed two seasons with a torn labrum, but was very impressive in beating the Red Sox in only his second game back.
• Excuse me, Michael. Just what exactly do you have on your hand while you're pitching that gem?
• Pine tar, maybe?
• The Royals' Yordano Ventura throws really hard. In fact, he hit 102.9 on the radar gun in his start on Tuesday, which is a record for a starting pitcher according to the Pitch f/x data, which goes back to 2008.
• Speaking of oddball records, the Indians Danny Salazar struck out ten batters last night before getting pulled from the game with two outs in the fourth inning. No pitcher in the past 100 years had struck out ten batters and not pitched out of the fourth inning before Salazar did it.
• Here's another one. David Ortiz set the "record" for the slowest home run trot since they started tracking these things in 2008.
• Mike Schmidt wants to use "force fields" to call balls and strikes instead of umpires. If Schmidt really means the Pitch f/x system and not actual "force fields," then he doesn't sound crazy.
• For the second time, an Astros game got a 0.0 rating in the Houston TV market.
• Craig Calcaterra thinks the talk of the Athletics or Rays moving to Portland is far-fetched.
• Paul Goldschmidt is 13 for 24 with seven home runs lifetime off of Tim Lincecum. Is that good? I guess not if you're a Giants fan.
• Jeff Sullivan looks at the data and tries to figure out how Goldschmidt is doing this.
• Jerry Crasnick says the early returns on Jose Abreu is that he's going to be pretty good.
• Ben Reiter agrees with Crasnick and adds that Abreu's six-year, $68 million contract may be one of the biggest steals in the game.
• Will Leitch looks back at the "true HR king" controversy and wants Albert Pujols to break Bonds' record so we can stop arguing about this.
• Frank Thomas thinks the balls are juiced this year. Then why is the number of home runs actually down this April?
• Ben Lindbergh thinks that the new economics of the game is going to make it very difficult for the Yankees to get good again any time in the near future.
• Peter Gammons writes that when you list the top catchers in the game, don't forget to include Jonathan Lucroy.
• Brian McCann is struggling at the plate, but he's having a big impact behind the plate for the Yankees.
• Here's another Derek Jeter article about something or other. I'm guessing it says good things about him. Click on it and find out.
• If you say you don't enjoy watching Billy Hamilton play baseball, you don't enjoy baseball. Here's how Billy Hamilton created a run all by himself, including scoring from third on a sac pop up.
• Paul Lukas gives some Indians fans equal time to explain why the team should keep Chief Wahoo.
• The Red Sox pushed for changes in the PED rules in part because they were upset that Jhonny Peralta played in the playoffs last season.
• Tyler Kepner says both the Yankees and Red Sox gambled on outfielders this offseason, The difference is that the Yankees gambled a lot more money on Jacoby Ellsbury than the Red Sox did on Grady Sizemore.
• Larry Walker bowled a perfect 300.
• Bryce Harper put on a "disguise" and punked some fans with some questions about Bryce Harper.
• Finally, with Rick Monday over 2000 miles away in Los Angeles, the Braves knew they could get away with lighting the American flag on fire with their "patriotic" fireworks. They claim it was an accident, but I just have one question for the Braves: Why do you hate America?

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