MLB Bullets gets in the swing of things

Good morning, baseball.

• Another free agent falls off the board at a bargain price. The Twins have signed first baseman Logan Morrison to a one-year, $6.5 million deal. There is another year at $8 million that kicks in if Morrison gets 600 plate appearances, plus a few other bonuses that could bring the deal to $16.5 million.
• Anthony Castrovince thinks that signing Morrison is nice, but the Twins still need to add a major free agent pitcher if they hope to compete in the AL Central in 2018.
• The Red Sox are expected to announce their deal with outfielder J.D. Martinez today. The deal had been delayed by “something” the team found in their physical of Martinez. But it seems that language has been put in the contract about whatever that was that was acceptable for both sides.
• The Reds have signed outfielder Ben Revere to a minor-league deal.
• The Reds also signed pitcher Oliver Perez to a minor-league deal. Seriously, moms and dads out there. Teach your child to throw left-handed.
• Free agent outfielder Jose Bautista would like to play for the Rays. Bautista makes his home in Tampa and the team needs a DH.
• The Dodgers and Mariners faced off against each other in a Spring Training game yesterday, and for the first time ever, brothers Kyle and Corey Seager played in the same game. Kyle is seven years older than Corey, so they never even played in a game together as kids.
• Here are the two brothers with Kyle’s infant daughter that drives the “Aww” factor up to 11. Spring Training is made for stuff like this.
• Cardinals minor league pitcher Daniel Poncedeleon pitched in Spring Training yesterday. This is maybe a bigger deal for me, because I remember this incident very well. Poncedeleon was pitching for the Memphis Redbirds last summer at Principal Park in Des Moines when he was hit in the temple with a line drive off the bat of Victor Caratini. It was a very scary incident and Poncedeleon had to undergo emergency surgery and spend a couple of weeks in a hospital in Des Moines. I’m extremely happy to see him on the mound again.
• Our worst fears for Rays top prospect Brent Honeywell were confirmed over the weekend as the right-handed pitcher will need Tommy John surgery.
• Phillies third baseman Will Middlebrooks suffered a serious ankle injury when he collided with left fielder Andrew Pullin in yesterday’s Spring Training game. How serious isn’t known yet, but it looked bad and he had to be carted off the field.
• MLB has decided that all baseballs need to be stored in a climate-controlled environment. I’ve seen some pitchers (OK, Brandon McCarthy) complain that the balls can feel different in different cities. This is an attempt to combat that.
• Buster Olney thinks that the players should get together and come up with their own ideas to speed up the pace-of-play. Olney reports that most of them are balking at the ones proposed by commissioner Rob Manfred.
• Tim Kurkjian thinks that strength is an underappreciated skill in baseball.
• Gabe Lacques looks at Joey Votto and Robinson Cano as they try to stay on top of the game as they enter their mid-30s. Father Time is undefeated, but sometimes you can keep him away for a while.
• Tim Brown went to the memorial event for former Padres general manager Kevin Towers.
• With all the talk about launch angles and hitting, Jeff Sullivan thinks that Christian Yelich and Eric Hosmer do not need to change anything about their swing. Both players have been chided for hitting the ball on the line or on the ground too often, resulting in too little power. Sullivan believes that the downsides of these two hitters changing their swings outweighs the benefits.
• The Angels have announce that they are lowering their outfield fence in right field by ten feet and Jim Finch analyzes what impact that move will have.
• The Astros are the betting favorites to win the most games in 2018.
• Mike Lupica makes the case that Max Scherzer is the best pitcher in baseball.
• Mike Axisa has some positional changes to watch for this spring.
• Kate Morrison has a quick look at the AL West teams in Spring Training.
• The Dodgers impasse on getting their games on cable and satellite systems across Southern California is now entering its fifth season with no end in sight. The team has at least announced that five games will be shown over-the-air on KTLA.
• Rachel McDaniel looks at how people have been complaining about the business of baseball for at least 150 years.
• We’ve mentioned in this space before about how the mother of Athletics outfielder Stephen Piscotty is suffering from ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s Disease. Piscotty is dedicating this season to raising money for ALS research.
• Blue Jays teammates Curtis Granderson and Gift Ngoepe are both playing in Toronto for the first time this season. But Ngoepe first met Granderson 11 years ago when Granderson traveled to South Africa on a goodwill tour for MLB. Both players talked about that experience, which was big for both players in different ways.
• Some umpiring changes this season as Stu Scheurwater becomes the first Canadian umpire since Jim McKean stopped umpiring in 2001. Dale Scott has officially retired.
• Paul Lukas looks back at some big moments in the history of putting names on the back of uniforms. This isn’t just about baseball, but all North American sports.
• A prep school in Connecticut has discovered a long-lost interview with Babe Ruth from 1943.
• Sunday’s Astros/Cardinals game was delayed because a car couldn’t get off the field. All it needs is for someone to play “Yakety Sax” to this gif.
• Finally, Phillies reliever Pat Neshek has been a pretty good pitcher throughout his career, but every pitcher has one hitter that they just can’t get out. For Neshek, that appears to be his three-year-old son who smashed a line drive off Pat that hit him . . .well, I’ll let Pat’s son tell you where he hit his father.

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