MLB Bullets Says It's Incredibly Hard

I can't tell you how tempted I was to put "Stan Musial Pornography" in the URL. I probably cost us a lot of hits by deciding against it.

• The Yankees honored Derek Jeter in a pre-game ceremony. You probably heard about this. Or maybe you were too busy watching some other sport over the weekend to play attention.
• Ken Rosenthal notes the whole ceremony was "weird," since Jeter still had 22 games to play this season. Nice, but weird. He noted even Jeter called the experience "strange" and "odd."
• Jay Jaffe found the excess of the celebration the only way to deal with the awkwardness of it all. And he thought it was a tribute worthy of a legend.
• One of those there to honor Jeter was his friend Michael Jordan. Ian O'Connor says that Jordan could not have survived New York the way Jeter did. Chicago says that's fine by us.
• Daniel Barbarisi looks back at a defensive "boot camp" that Jeter undertook in the minors to turn himself into a major league shortstop. Your opinion of how successful that effort was depends on how big a Yankees fan you are. But there's no question being able to get Jeter's bat in the lineup at shortstop was a huge advantage for the Yankees for many, many years.
• Bob Nightengale says that he, and everyone else, now realizes that the end of Jeter's career is very near.
• And that's because the Yankees aren't likely to make the playoffs. After all that pomp and ceremony, the Yankees went out and lost to the Royals, 2-0. The Yankees are now 4½ games out of the final wild card and will have to climb over three teams with three weeks to play.
• After the game, Jeter took a call from the husband of a mortified reporter who forgot to block all calls during Jeter's press conference.
• David Ortiz says that when it's time for him to quit, he's just going to quit. He doesn't want the fuss.
• The other big news was that Rangers manager Ron Washington resigned on Friday, citing an "off-the-field personal matter" that he needed to attend to. Washington said the resignation had nothing to do with his team's poor record, nor was it related to drug use.
• Bob Nightengale looks back at Washington's managerial career and praises him for his love and dedication to baseball.
• Steven Goldman says that Ron Washington was a good man but a bad manager.
• While acknowledging Washington's mistakes (many of them high-profile, like leaving Nelson Cruz in that World Series game), Jay Jaffe says that Washington deserves to be judged by his record, which is very good.
• I find it ironic that Washington is probably best known for saying something he never said: "It's incredibly hard."
• While Wash may be gone in Texas, the Rangers are talking about giving GM Jon Daniels a long-term extension.
• With the firing of Astros manager Bo Porter and Washington's resignation, Mariners manager Lloyd McClendon finds himself as the only African-American manager in the game. McClendon thinks MLB needs to do a better job connecting with African-Americans.
• In a video, Ken Rosenthal says that the Mets are trying to decide whether or not to bring back manager Terry Collins next season.
• C.J. Nitkowski has some advice for all managers: Relief pitchers are liars. As in "You OK to give me an inning today?" and the reliever whose arm is falling off will say "Sure thing, skip."
• Dave Cameron has a vote this year for NL Manager of the Year. If you've got a good way of evaluating the job managers do, he'd like to hear it, because he's got no idea how to tell a good manager apart from a good team.
• It's not quite the advice Cameron was looking for, but Richard Justice has seven rules for being a good General Manager.
• Justice also examines how Jack Zduriencik built a winner in Seattle, even if it did take quite a long time.
• Tony LaRussa is looking for a new GM for the Diamondbacks. He says he's looking for someone well-versed in analytics.
• Jon Heyman says LaRussa has already talked to former Marlins GM Larry Beinfest and will meet with others later in the week.
• Jerry Crasnick asks what's the next step for both the Diamondbacks and fired GM Kevin Towers.
• The Brewers collapse continues as Milwaukee has now fallen to third place.
• Jonathan Lucroy says despite their sinking fortunes, the Brewers are still better than the Cardinals.
• Speaking of Lucroy, he hit his 48th and 49th doubles of the season against the Cardinals on Saturday. That's a new record for doubles for a catcher. Still doesn't make the Brewers better than the Cardinals.
• David Schoenfield thinks that while the Cardinals might not be as good as they used to be, they're good enough to win the NL Central and maybe even the NL Pennant.
• The Athletics are only two games ahead of Seattle and 2½ games ahead of Detroit for a wild card spot. If the A's fail to make the post-season, it will be an unprecedented second-half collapse in the wild-card era.
• Rafael Soriano is out as the Nationals closer. They'll go with the dreaded "closer-by-committee" for now.
• The long and difficult journey that Steve Pearce made before finding a home with the Orioles.
• Jayson Stark says that Rule 7.13 (The "home plate collision rule") needs to be clarified before it results in a disaster in the postseason.
• Yu Darvish is being shut down for the season. This is not helping the disastrous Rangers season.
• A potential big blow to the Royals' postseason hopes came when pitcher Danny Duffy left Saturday's game after only one pitch.
• Paul Konerko, who has already announced his retirement at the end of the season, is out with a fractured bone in his left hand. Konerko says he's going to go out on his shield and that he'll play again before the end of the year, even if it's just to take three pitches in a pinch-hitting appearance. They'll probably just schedule an extra game at Wrigley and he'll hit a home run.
• R.J. Anderson looks at how pinch-hitting differs from being in the lineup. And how it doesn't.
• In an ESPN Insider piece, Buster Olney runs the numbers about how down offense is lately. He credits/blames analytics, that are giving pitchers and fielders spot on scouting reports on each and every hitter.
• The NFL is dealing with more than 20 players suspended for some kind of drug use to start this season already. Sportswriters have already termed this the NFL's "steroid era" and Congress has called on Roger Goodell to testify and explain himself. Writers are also calling for lifetime bans of steroid users, having the record books altered back to the "pre-steroid" era and vowing to never vote to induct any NFL player even suspected of using PEDs into Canton. Oh yeah. None of that is happening. In fact, they're just saying "it's no big deal."
• And finally, a letter to the editor of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch described Cardinals games as nothing but "baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and pornography." And Stan Musial is crying from heaven. Amen. We Cubs fans couldn't have said it better ourselves.

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