MLB Bullets Wasn't Made For These Times

Heading back home today.

• This is nominally a Cubs story and if Russ wants to use it for Cub Tracks tomorrow, he should. But Carlos Portocarrero looks to Google (the company, not their product) to see if there is a way to identify and quantify "makeup." In particular, Portocarrero looks at the Cubs recent draft choices and wonders if Theo and Jed haven't discovered some method for identifying high-makeup players who can be expected to exceed their skills.
• We've already covered the resignation of Phillies manager Ryne Sandberg around here. Meghan Montemurro writes that Sandberg saw that the Phillies needed a change and decided to exit on his own terms.
• Bob Ford writes that Sandberg was always a bad fit for the Phillies.
• Andrew Simon says Sandberg never had a chance.
• Rob Neyer collects some "famous last words" of managers who resigned or were fired by their teams at midseason.
• David Schoenfield says that the next issue for the Phillies is for new team president Andy MacPhail to put his stamp on the team. He thinks MacPhail will reveal his hand when he hires a new GM. (Oh, and Ruben Amaro Jr.'s departure is a foregone conclusion.)
• Ken Rosenthal thinks that those who expect MacPhail to be the same "traditional" and non-analytics executive that he was with the Orioles, Cubs and Twins just might be surprised.
• Actually, the first thing they Phillies needed to do was make sure Max Scherzer didn't throw back-to-back no-hitters. When the Phillies broke up the no-no in the sixth inning, their broadcasters took the credit for jinxing Scherzer.
• AJ Cassavell ranks the top ten MLB pitchers based on his assessment of their likelihood of throwing a no-hitter.
• They're all more likely to throw a no-hitter now that Giancarlo Stanton will miss the next four-to-six weeks after breaking the hamate bone in his left hand.
• Rob Neyer thinks baseball is just a little less fun without Stanton.
• Archie Bradley heard the words that no pitcher ever wants to hear: "Go see Dr. James Andrews."
• Johan Santana has abandoned his comeback bid with the Blue Jays.
• With Kris Bryant and Joc Pederson neck-and-neck for the award so far this season, Jonah Keri looks back at close Rookie of the Year races from years past.
• Astros pitcher Brett Oberholtzer was ejected after throwing at Alex Rodriguez.
• After the incident, the Astros demoted Oberholtzer to Triple-A.
• Jeff Sullivan demonstrates that it's not enough to just have good players to win a pennant. Teams also need to have "good bad players." That is, the worst players need to hurt the team as little as possible.
• Tim Healy says that the Yankees have a problem with CC Sabathia.
• Andrew Marchand thinks that Yankees hurler Masahiro Tanaka really is more of a number 2 pitcher than an ace and that fans should adjust their expectations accordingly.
• Christina Kahrl thinks the Angels need to make a trade if they want to win the AL West this season.
• Neil Weinberg says the reason that Joey Votto is having a comeback season isn't that he's being more aggressive at the plate this year. Because he's not.
• The White Sox gave Robin Ventura the "dreaded vote of confidence."
• Pitchers are striking out more batters, but it's taking them more pitches to get each strikeout.
• Joe Lemire looks at how valuable is the pitcher-versus-hitter data that always gets mentioned by broadcasters. (Hint: not much.)
• Two months after several contentious matchups with several bench-clearing incidents, the Athletics and the Royals faced off without incident.
• Finally, if you think you've had a bad day at work, at least you're not Kingsport Mets manager Luis Rivera. Rivera forgot to list his bullpen pitchers on the lineup card he turned in to the umpire so he had to use position players to throw the final five innings of a loss the Bluefield. And I'm happy that I wasn't working the Mets minor league beat that night.

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