MLB Bullets Stops For A Bite

I don't think that's what they mean by a Cuban sandwich.

• And then there was one. Shortstop Stephen Drew agreed to a pro-rated $14.1 million, one-year contract with the Red Sox, the team he played for last year. Essentially, he takes the qualifying offer minus about $4 million for the time he's missed. That leaves Kendrys Morales as the only unsigned free agent.
• Jon Heyman thinks both sides did well in this arrangement. The Red Sox got a player they needed and while Drew lost out on $4 million, because he wasn't with the Red Sox all season, they will not be able to make a qualifying offer after this season.
• Ken Rosenthal says the Red Sox succeeded because they got the phone player they needed without having to sign a two-year contract.
• David Schoenfield thinks that Drew is only a minor improvement of the team.
• Following up on last time's big story, new Diamondbacks chief baseball officer Tony La Russa says that if his hiring puts added pressure on the team to succeed, that's a good thing.
• Ken Rosenthal wonders what personnel changes are in store for the Snakes, or even if GM Kevin Towers can keep his job.
• Will Leitch says there is no way Towers and manager Kirk Gibson can work under La Russa.
• This one is a bit on the bizarre side. Dodgers minor leaguers Miguel Olivo and Alex Guerrero got into a fight that resulted in Olivo taking a bite out of Guerrero's ear. I figure Olivo thought this would be the only way his name would be mentioned in the same breath with Mike Tyson and Luis Suarez.
• Mark Saxon thinks the Dodgers aren't playing with any urgency right now. Maybe they would if their backup catcher was still around to bite the ears off of any slackers.
• Jon Paul Morosi thinks the next two weeks are critical for the Dodgers, who will need to start winning or make some changes. Except they can't make any changes because no one on the team worth trading has a contract that can be moved, says Morosi.
• Ken Rosenthal says the Cardinals aren't going to make a move just to make their fans happy. They're confident in the team as it is presently constructed.
• Rob Neyer thinks that not only are the Athletics good, they are the most interesting team in baseball. They don't always play baseball, but when they do, they prefer to play in a crumbling, sewage-filled rathole.
• Brandon Moss is a big reason for the A's success. Moss is a former top prospect who turned his career around when he learned to ignore some bad advice he got in Pittsburgh.
• Richard Justice says the Angels are back and hot on Oakland's trail.
• The Indians are doing their own version of Moneyball over in Cleveland.
• Howard Megdal looks at the reasons behind Johnny Cueto's success this season. Perhaps this article would be more timely if I didn't post it the morning after he got shelled by the Nationals.
• The Red Sox aren't the only team that signed a shortstop. The Marlins signed Miguel Tejada to a minor league deal. Tejada is still serving a 105 game suspension for amphetamines.
• Instead of going straight to the Butcher's Bill, lets first praise healthy ballplayers. Cliff Corcoran has a list of ten contemporary "Iron Men." No, Robert Downey Jr. is not one of them, smartypants.
• CC Sabathia is out until at least July after a stem-cell procedure on his knee.
• Jonathan Bernhardt says the Yankees pitching was already stretched to the limit before Sabathia hit the DL.
• Cliff Lee is going to the DL with a left elbow strain. It's the flexor tendon, not the UCL, so he's not looking at Tommy John surgery.
• Good news for the Padres and Andrew Cashner. The right-hander is not going to need surgery on his elbow.
• Matt Harvey is pushing to come back from Tommy John surgery early and pitch sometime this season.
• In an ESPN Insider article, Paul Swydan writes the Mets front office are sabotaging the team.
• It's looking like Chris Sale will come off of the DL this week.
• Successfully employing the changeup has been the key to success for Braves pitchers Ervin Santana and Gavin Floyd.
• Rany Jazayerli looks at one of the best relief pitchers in the game, Brad Ziegler. If you're saying "Who?", Jazayerli says that's because we don't appreciate submarine pitchers like we should, and he goes in depth on the advantages of throwing from down-under.
• I wasn't going to go into this, but since they're talking about it on the MLB Network, I guess I should. Boston Globe writer Bob Ryan did his best Murray Chass "You kids get off my lawn" rant and said that sabermetric people don't really enjoy the game. Except he just wrote "stats" because he doesn't understand what "sabermetric" is. Of course, he's never lowered himself to ever actually having a discussion with one of these people, or he'd find out that most of them watch six or seven games a day, which is more than Bob Ryan watches in an entire month, I'd wager. But of course, they can't enjoy it.
• David Schoenfield has a summary of some of the reactions to Ryan's piece. You can google more if you want.
• Matt Snyder says that the NL needs to adopt the DH.
• Or maybe the AL just needs to get creative with pitchers at the plate. As it turns out, former Royals pitcher Zack Greinke is out-hitting every current member of the team so far this season.
• Chris Martin was working in a warehouse in 2010. Four years later, he's the lead singer of Coldplay he's a key member of the Rockies bullpen.
• Do you want to drink beer aged in wood from maple baseball bats? Of course you do.
• Someone misspelled "Arlington" on a Prince Fielder bobblehead. Maybe they thought he played for the "Barves."
• AHHHHHH! I can never unsee this! The Tigers look like Tigers. The horror, the horror.
• Finally, in Kansas City, some fans have revived an old tradition. They come to the game dressed in their "Sunday Best" on Sundays. Because if they did that on Saturday, it would just be silly.

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