MLB Bullets Is Still At It After All These Years

Spanning the globe to bring you the constant variety of bullets.

• Tuesday night's throw by Yoenis Cespedes was the talk of baseball Wednesday morning. Rob Neyer says that the throw has a lot of competition for the greatest thrown of all time.
• David Schoenfield compared Cespedes' throw to his list of the greatest throws of his lifetime.
• No really. Today's big story is outfield assist porn. Marc Normandin has his list of the greatest ten throws on video. NSFW if you work with a lot of people who try to score from first on a double.
• Alan Nathan takes the time to explain the physics behind Cespedes' throw. It's guaranteed to make Bob Ryan throw a tantrum.
• Then the next night, Cespedes did it again. Not quite as impressive a throw as the first one, but pretty darn good nonetheless. Included is a handy flowchart for runners to determine if they should run on an Athletics outfielder.
• Brandon Phillips decided that if Yasiel Puig (PUIG!) wants to challenge Cespedes for the best Cuban arm in the majors, he wasn't going to be a victim. And then he bowed to Puig in deference to his abilities.
• More great plays in the outfield. Coco Crisp isn't going to throw out too many runners, so he contributes by robbing Josh Hamilton of a home run. But the fireworks at Angels Stadium went off anyway.
• So far, Kendrys Morales is hitting in mid-season form, despite having missed the entire season until now.
• Jon Taylor examines why Dallas Keuchel has been one of the best pitchers in baseball this season.
• The best free agent signing this past offseason appears to be Tim Hudson. Mike Axisa show how Hudson is using the split-fingered fastball to have what might be his best season ever.
• Don't look now, but the Nationals are in first place in the NL East.
• The Cardinals aren't in first place. Hal Bodley writes that the Cardinals are convinced that the team will turn things around any day now.
• It's nice talking about things on the field rather than off the field for a while. But turning to the off-the-field stuff, because of an agreement the Red Sox had with John Lackey when he signed with Boston as a free agent, the Red Sox have Lackey under contract for next season for the major league minimum. Buster Olney (ESPN Insider Only) says that the clause, which kicked in when Lackey missed a season due to injury, was fairly negotiated and should not be a cause for controversy. Although he does add that all the controversy seems to be coming from his fellow reporters and that Lackey hasn't said a word about it.
• Carlos Marmol went AWOL from the Reds Triple-A team.
• Rob Neyer thinks that baseball executives are underpaid. I can't figure out how Billy Beane is going to be able to exploit that market inefficiency, but I guess he'll try. Fire himself and hire another executive at a much higher salary. Nah, that won't work.
• The draft is now over. Here's the annual list of relatives who got drafted. Only one Cubs draftee on the list.
• He didn't get drafted, but Olympic speed skater Eddy Alvarez signed as an undrafted free agent witht he Chicago White Sox.
• C.J. Nitkowski says that it's time the National League adopt the DH.
• Yordano Ventura has a healthy elbow, pitching better than ever and the Royals couldn't be more happy.
• Matt Harvey doesn't have a healthy elbow, and he's finally coming to the realization that he's not going to pitch in the majors this season. Harvey had been insisting that he would come back from Tommy John surgery early.
• The Phillies had Darin Ruf checked out a second time and they found that he broke his wrist colliding into a wall back on June 3.
• Stephen Drew may have an MRI on his strained oblique.
• The Indians activated Nick Swisher and put Jason Giambi on the DL. Giambi is suffering from being "an old guy who we can't believe is still on our roster."
• Of course there's a Texas Ranger heading to the DL!  Tanner Scheppers becomes the 20th Ranger to hit the DL this season. I think that means their next one is free.
• When Bryce Harper gets healthy, Ryan Zimmerman is moving back to third base from left field.
• Anthony Castrovince says that Pirates fans need to be patient with Gregory Polanco.
• The Diamondbacks sent Trevor Cahill down the minors. All the way down to the minors as he's heading to High-A Visalia.
• Dave Cameron finds that always taking a first pitch isn't the same winning strategy that it used to be.
• Here's a trip back memory lane for some of you. Here's 75 covers of The Sporting News with Hall of Famers on the cover.
• Paul Lukas has some more baseball uniform trivia, like "Who were the first team to wear a batting practice jersey?"
• The Hall of Fame has the earliest film of Babe Ruth in a Yankees uniform from spring training in 1920. The actual film can be found at this link.
• Finally, Howard Megdal has a profile of Mike Hessman, who recently hit his 400th career minor league home run. That's not a record, but of the other seven who have hit over 400 minor league home runs, four were in the Mexican League (which, while officially part of minor league baseball, is a different animal entirely) and the other three did it before World War II when the minors were, again, quite different than what they are today. Apparently, when Hessman hit his 400th home run, no one told The Sporting News, or at least what's left of it. Megdal asks Hessman about what keeps him going and while he's not ready to hang up the spikes yet, he is interested in managing one day. I hear there's an opening in Visalia next season.

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