MLB Bullets Salutes Fashion

This is the last MLB Bullets of the offseason for me, as all hell is going to break loose for me tomorrow night when the minor league season gets underway. So to save time and get all my articles written, this is going to be the last MLB Bullets that includes verbs. I hope you understand.

I guess the Cubs will just have to settle for finishing the season 161-1 this year.

• Normally I try to start this thrice-weekly column with some breaking news, controversy or injury that will have a big impact on baseball. And don't worry, we'll have all of that. But let's start today with the beauty of Opening Day. If you haven't looked at SB Nation's extensive season preview, be sure to take a look. It's like one of those gorgeous magazines that you used to pick up at the grocery store back in the 1980s or 1990s but without all that pesky paper. Or the ability to draw funny mustaches on Willie McGee. Although I bet some of you know how to do that anyway.
• Jay Jaffe has five thoughts from a fun Opening Day.
• David Schoenfield is twice as good as Jaffe as he has ten thoughts about Opening Day.
• Kostya Kennedy writes that Opening Day in Cincinnati is still something special.
• Rob Neyer looks over all the Opening Day rosters and admits that there are a lot of players he's never heard of.
• Baseball America steps in and tells you who some of those players you've never heard of actually are.
• One last story from spring training before we get to the games that count: MLB set an attendance record for spring training games this year. Much of that was due to the huge crowds at Cubs Park.
• The Angels celebrated Opening Day by signing Vladimir Guerrero to a one-day contract so he could retire as an Angel.
• They did this in a big on-field ceremony that should have been a happy occasion. But then Guererro threw the ceremonial first pitch to Angels hitting coach Don Baylor, who is the only other Angels player to have ever won the MVP Award. But in reaching for the pitch, Baylor broke his femur. He had surgery on the leg yesterday. Let me repeat: He broke his leg catching the ceremonial first pitch. Honestly, if I didn't already know that Baylor used to manage the Cubs, I would have been able to guess it anyway.
• Ryan Braun returned to Milwaukee and got a huge round of applause from Brewers fans. This made a lot of people in the media very unhappy.
• Grant Brisbee points out that it's the nature of fandom to support the players on your team, no matter what they've done, so stop saying there is something wrong with Milwaukee. He points out that fans of other teams have cheered known PED users as well.
• Now the butcher's bill. Jose Reyes lasted all of one at bat before injuring his hamstring and going on the DL.
• Jayson Stark writes on Reyes and the Blue Jays: "Here we go again."
• Mets closer Bobby Parnell blew a save on Opening Day and was promptly put on the DL with a partially torn medial collateral ligament.
• Cliff Corcoran notes that this turn of events apparently makes Jose Valverde a closer once again.
• Remember when I said that Clayton Kershaw was going to miss the Dodgers' (United States) Opening Day game with a back injury, but that it wasn't going to be serious? Well, about that. Kershaw is going to miss at least all of April and maybe more. He will undertake a "submaximal throwing program" which I'm sure is a name that the Dodgers got from a random injury name generator.
• Brian Wilson blew a save too, and he's heading to the DL with an elbow injury. Remember, Wilson has already had Tommy John surgery twice. If he needs another one, that might be all she wrote for Wilson. At least he's back playing with the Beach Boys again.
• Mark Saxson writes that all that pitching depth the Dodgers acquired this offseason is needed earlier than expected.
• Bryan Kilpatrick says the Dodgers can survive without Kershaw for a while. Although the article was published on April 1. . .
• With Kershaw injured, Mike Axisa thinks that Jose Fernandez might take his crown as the best pitcher in baseball.
• Opening day was special for Fernandez. Not only did he start and pick up the win, but more importantly, his grandmother was able to watch him pitch in the major leagues for the very first time.
• The Rangers have apologized for allowing a statue honoring the fan who fell to his death three years ago to be overrun with trash on Opening Day.
• The Astros had a happy Opening Day as they slapped around the Yankees pretty good in a 6-2 win. Richard Justice thinks the joy and enthusiasm the Astros showed was a glimpse into a better future.
• David Schoenfield thinks the Astros are still bad and have a long way to go before they get good. He also says just losing and collecting draft picks isn't enough to build a winner.
• The loss got Derek Jeter's final season off to a bad start. Steven Goldman wonders if Jeter, like Mike Schmidt 25 years ago, might just hang it up mid-season if he doesn't think he can play anymore. I can imagine a lot of angry people in the MLB and Yankees marketing department if that happens.
• Wallace Matthews looks at how Jeter became a Yankee and wonders how his career would have been different had he been drafted by the Astros.
• Ian O'Connor thinks that unless CC Sabathia gets his act together, it might be a long season in the Bronx. Thus ruining Derek Jeter's farewell, because that's more important than the Yankees actually winning another pennant, apparently.
• The Mariners also won on Opening Day. Todd Dybas says the Mariners are expecting Robinson Cano to carry the team to the playoffs. Cano says he doesn't need to do anything different that what he's always done.
• Tom Verducci thinks the mega-contracts given to Albert Pujols, Miguel Cabrera and Cano may not be as dumb as people think they are. He also says that they're a sign of the health of the game.
• It only took two days, but the new replay system is under fire. The Diamondbacks scored a run on a botched call at the plate because Giants manager Bruce Bochy had used his challenge earlier in the inning, so the play could not be reviewed. And the failed challenge looked like it should have been overturned anyway.
• Jon Paul Morosi writes that the compromise rules banning home plate collisions are unclear and confusing, even to the umpires.
• The Indians were a bigger problem than their stadium for the Athletics on Opening Night. But the stadium is a problem.
• The only problem the A's had last night was the weather, as Oakland was rained out at home for the first time since 1998. Rickey Henderson, Kevin Mitchell and Tom Candiotti were on the A's the last time they were rained out at home. Also, the plumbing still worked.
• Tigers manager Brad Ausmus wants his team to run more. Matthew Murphy studies whether or not that's a good idea for a traditionally slow team like the Tigers.
• Fully 26.1 percent of major leaguers on the Opening Day roster were born outside of the United States.
• Jorge Arangure Jr. goes in-depth and explains how the Red Sox found Xander Bogaerts in Aruba. I mean, of course they found him in Aruba because if they looked for him in Costa Rica they wouldn't find him because he lived in Aruba. But why they were looking in Aruba in the first place. It involved a self-described "beach bum" scout and an Australian scouting director who was determined that prospects from outside of the traditional baseball playing nations not get overlooked like he almost was.
• Because you can never get enough mocking of Boston Globe columnist Dan Shaughnessy, let us now mock his pronouncement that today's Red Sox game is a "must win" game for the club.
• The Red Sox then went to the White House where they were honored for their World Series title. David Ortiz took a selfie with President Obama.
• Finally, the rest of the team chickened out (or maybe never intended to wear them in the first place) but only Jonny Gomes wore the most awesome jacket in the history of jackets to the ceremony. He said he did it because "I'm a pretty patriotic guy."

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