MLB Bullets Settles Down In Miami

I watched zero minutes of basketball yesterday. I promise I will watch some today. But unless it's a school that me or my wife went to, I'd just rather watch baseball. Even exhibition baseball.

• The Marlins and outfielder Christian Yelich agreed to a seven-year extension worth $49.5 million. There is a club option for an eighth season. It should go without saying that Scott Boras does not represent Yelich.
• Mike Oz thinks this was a smart move by the Marlins.
• Craig Edwards thinks the deal is "a winner for both sides."
• Anthony Castrovince points out that with this move, the Marlins have locked up their outfield through the 2019 season.
• The third outfielder, Marcell Ozuna, can't become a free agent until 2019. But he is represented by Scott Boras and he's in no rush to sign a long-term extension. Ozuna says he does what Boras recommends.
• Zachary Levine compares the way the Astros are locking up players to long-term extensions to the way an insurance company would manage risk.
• Jon Heyman has an update on the Hector Olivera sweepstakes. The Braves have offered four years and likely for $40 million. Heyman says that's behind other, unnamed teams that have offered five years and $50 million. Olivera reportedly is waiting for a six-year offer.
• The Brewers picked up the 2016 option on manager Ron Roenicke's contract.
• MLB is taking a page from English soccer and has decided to start every game on the last day of the season at the same time. Of course, there's only one time zone in England, but the plan is to start all games at 3 pm Eastern. So the Cubs game at Milwaukee will start at 2 pm central, and so on.
• Matt Wieters, who missed most of 2014 with Tommy John surgery, is taking a break from catching because of elbow tendonitis. He can still DH.
• Brady Aiken, last season's number one pick in the draft, left his start for IMG Academy after only 12 pitches. Scouts from every team but the Astros (who presumably won't be allowed to draft Aiken again) were in attendance. Uh oh.
• Barry Svrluga writes of how the tough winter has made work difficult for the groundskeepers of teams in the Midwest and Northeast. (h/t Hardball Talk)
• Back down in Florida, Jon Paul Morosi reports that the injury to Blue Jays outfielder Michael Saunders may have been caused by unsafe field conditions. The Blue Jays have not practiced on that particular field since Saunders was injured.
• Morosi also says that the burden is on Pete Rose to prove that MLB would be better off with him than without him before commissioner Rob Manfred acts to reinstate Rose.
• Rob Neyer has come around to thinking that Rose should be reinstated because the ban no longer serves any purpose. Neyer also cites the Paul Hornung and Alex Karras precedent that I've always maintained is Rose's best argument.
• Commissioner Manfred also says that MLB is likely to play an exhibition game in Cuba in 2016.
• Ben Lindbergh says that no, you're not imagining it. Pitchers are more likely to get injured in March than any other month. So it's not just Szczur who should beware the Ides of March.
• Anthony Castrovince tells fans how much they should worry about injuries suffered this spring training.
• Jon Heyman says that even though the Giants look bad this spring, no one should count them out this year. Except 2015 is an odd number, Jon. You forgot about that.
• Matt Snyder has a message to fans: STOP WORRYING ABOUT WINS AND LOSSES IN SPRING TRAINING. They're meaningless. Really, that can't be emphasized enough.
• Tony Blengino explains why it made sense for the Athletics to sign Billy Butler.
• Rays owner Stuart Sternberg says that the team will recover from losing their general manager and manager this winter. He did say that losing Joe Maddon was more surprising than losing GM Andrew Friedman. Well sure, since you didn't bother to sign Friedman to a contract.
• Jon Heyman writes that Jayson Werth is hoping to put an "interesting" winter behind him, which included both shoulder surgery and a stint in jail. Hey, orange is the new eyeblack.
• Bryce Harper deked a runner, threw him out at second base and his manager (and other people) disapprove of this. Letting Matt Williams run the Nationals is like putting a goat in the cockpit of an F-15.
• Speaking of goats, the new name of the New Britain Rock Cats is  . . .(drumroll). . . The Hartford Yard Goats! The new name starts when the team moves to Hartford for the 2016 season.
• Roger Clemens has settled the defamation suit brought by his former trainer, Brian McNamee.
• Umpire Joe West very calmly threw A.J. Pierzynski out of a game on Wednesday.
• Jon Paul Morosi writes about the improving state of European baseball. A European all-star team split an exhibition doubleheader with a Japanese all-star team.
• Craig Calcaterra tries to come to terms with how his kids became Dodgers fans. (Calcaterra and his kids live in Columbus, Ohio, in case you didn't know.)
• Dan Uggla played four games for the Giants last summer. He went 0 for 11 with a walk and six strikeouts before getting released. No matter. He's still getting a World Series ring. Yes, Uggla says he doesn't deserve one but he's not turning it down. You wouldn't either.
• David Schoenfield, in honor of March Madness, remembers the baseball career of Danny Ainge. I actually remember that BYU upset over Notre Dame in 1981. I'm not sure I would have known Ainge was a baseball player if the announcers hadn't mentioned it, however, since I doubt I'd seen more than one or two Blue Jays games in their entire history to that point. Maybe none.
• Just in case you're not tired of it already, Will Ferrell went on David Letterman and talked about his time in the major leagues. (Notice that SB Nation has an autotag for Will Ferrell. Just in case he stages a comeback. Yet Kyle Schwarber doesn't have one.)
• The Rangers will offer a food stand this year that has nothing but fried foods in it. Also, a stand with nothing but bacon. How they don't have a stand with nothing but deep-fried bacon in it, I don't know.
• It's that time of year when teams release wacky commercials. (And why haven't the Cubs done this?) Here's one where we find out what happens when Fernando Rodney shoots an arrow.
• And finally, that one is good, but this one is better. What happens when Adrien Beltre plays duck-duck-goose? Nothing good, no doubt.

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