MLB Bullets Are Byrds Of A Feather

Please. Someone end this misery of allergy season. Maybe Marlon Byrd can recommend something for me to take. I wonder how many games Al would suspend me for if I got caught.

• You've likely heard this already, for former Cubs and current Indians outfielder Marlon Byrd tested positive for a PED and was suspended for 162 games for a second offense.
• Cliff Corcoran recaps Byrd's career, which he thinks is now over. Byrd reportedly told his Indians teammates that he also thought his career was over.
• Grant Brisbee wasn't surprised that Byrd was caught using PEDs, and notes that baseball will never stop players like Byrd from trying to cheat.
• Jerry Crasnick says that Byrd won't be the last player to get caught as baseball's issues with steroids will continue.
• Mike Lupica isn't buying any excuses from Byrd or any of the other players who got caught this season.
• As you might guess, a lot of pitchers who faced Byrd are not happy with this development. Dan Haren has a right to be angry -- Byrd hit .417 with four home runs, five doubles and a triple in only 36 career at-bats against Haren.
• Christina Kahrl looks at this development from a baseball point of view and thinks that the Indians are going to have a hard time replacing Byrd.
• Now for people who are going to miss time for conventional reasons. More bad news for the Mets as captain David Wright is expected to miss significant time with a herniated disk.
• The Giants lost Hunter Pence to a hamstring strain.
• Twins outfielder Miguel Sano is out with an injured hamstring. At least one local writer has decided it's because he's "soft." Minnesota-not-so-nice.
• Rays reliever Brad Boxberger is out four-to-eight weeks with an oblique injury.
• And Felix Hernandez is heading to the disabled list with a strained calf that he injured while celebrating a home run. And it wasn't even his home run!
• Madison Bumgarner should celebrate home runs, not King Felix. He hit a monster shot yesterday. Unbelievably, Bumgarner has hit the same number of home runs as Bryce Harper and Mike Trout over the past 190 at-bats. Maybe he needs to move to right field on the days he's not pitching.
• Paul Casella has a recap of some of the interesting facts of the month of May.
• Grant Brisbee talks about what we'd all be talking about today if baseball wasn't played in April. It's a point about how we build narratives about small, possibly random events.
• Brisbee also notes that Clayton Kershaw only walked five batters so far this season, so he examines each and every one of them.
• Barry Bonds talked to Terence Moore and he admitted to having been a jerk. His actual words were "I was a dumbass, I was straight stupid." Bonds blames the pressure of playing in the big leagues for his attitude. Of course, there are lots of stories of Bonds being a jerk in high school and at Arizona State, but hey, at least he's admitted he had a problem.
• Speaking of jerks, Mitch Williams' defamation lawsuit against Deadspin has been thrown out. It's hard to win a defamation suit against someone when everything you wrote was backed up by video and multiple eyewitnesses. But someone is trying to sue Deadspin's parent company out of business, so there is that.
• The Dodgers will not be punished for using laser rangefinders before a game. MLB did reiterate that it is illegal to use them during games, however. Before games is fine, however.
• The Padres are having a lousy season. Their executive chairman Ron Fowler, the top guy in the organization, blasted the team as "miserable failures" in a radio interview. He also singled out pitcher James Shields as an "embarrassment." This motivated the Padres so much that they went and blew a 10-run lead against the Mariners last night. I'm sure Fowler felt better after last night's humiliation.
• Jay Jaffe explains just how bad the Padres are and where do they go from here.
• Tim Brown points out that if the Padres are this bad, and they are, isn't that at least partially Fowler's fault?
• More depressing stuff about the Padres. Andrew Lawrence reports on Tony Gwynn's final days and the addiction to smokeless tobacco that he believed killed him. Even after he got sick, Gwynn continued to use tobacco until the end.
• To rub salt in the Padres wounds, the Nationals are promoting shortstop Trea Turner today.
• The Phillies acquired infielder Jimmy Paredes from the Blue Jays.
• The Phillies have also talked to Ryan Howard and informed him he wouldn't be playing much for a while. Howard was unhappy, naturally, but he say he understood why the Phillies had to make the move.
• Cardinals pitcher Adam Wainwright is struggling this season, but says "I'm not ready to be done." Remember the off-season when Wainwright called up some fantasy baseball show to complain that they had him ranked too low? Yeah. Good times.
• Liz Roscher notes that the Marlins are playing well despite Giancarlo Stanton having the worst slump of his career. Who had Stanton being the 4th best outfielder in Miami behind Christian Yelich, Marcell Ozuna and Ichiro Suzuki at this point of the season? Liar.
• Red Sox shortstop Xander Bogaerts has a 26-game hitting streak. Didn't we just go through this with Jackie Bradley Jr.?
• Robert Sanchez has an in-depth (that's code for "long") look at Dallas Keuchel and his struggles this season just one year after winning the Cy Young.
• Eno Sarris examines what's wrong with Michael Pineda?
• Jayson Stark says that while everyone is talking about all the young shortstops in the game, it's also a golden age for third basemen.
• Jeff Sullivan notes that Jung-Ho Kang can hit a fastball. So much so, that teams aren't throwing him many anymore.
• Good news. The International Olympic Committee has recommended that baseball and softball be reinstated for the 2020 Olympics.
• Noah Syndergaard had an off-day yesterday, so he flew to the Bahamas for a round of golf. Noteworthy mostly because I assume he used Mjolnir to fly there.
• Quarterback Tom Brady was drafted 21 years ago by the Expos. He didn't sign, but he celebrated the moment by making a baseball card with him in an Expos uniform.
• And finally, Indians second baseman Jason Kipnis flattened Ketchup in the on-field hot dog mascot race. Everyone hold your bets. There is an inquiry on this one.

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