MLB Bullets hates baseball

I don’t really hate baseball, but it’s such a cruel mistress.

• Angels pitcher/DH Shohei Ohtani has a grade 2 strain of the ulnar collateral ligament and he will miss “significant” time if not the rest of the season. And that’s even if he avoids Tommy John surgery.
• Stephania Bell breaks down what all this means. There are some pitchers, such as Masahiro Tanaka, Garrett Richards and Adam Wainwright, who have avoided Tommy John surgery with such a diagnosis. But TJ is more likely than not and even those three pitchers missed a huge chunk of time.
• Jon Tayler writes about how unfair this all seems to everyone except Mariners and Astros fans.
• Michael Baumann also laments the loss of Ohtani with a particular emphasis on what the loss means for the Angels.
• Bob Nightengale writes that not only is this terrible news for the Angels, it’s terrible news for baseball. For once, Bob hits the nail on the head.
• If you want more bad news, Nationals pitcher Stephen Strasburg went on the disabled list with “shoulder inflammation.” OK, the good news there is that he probably will only miss a few weeks. Probably.
• The aforementioned Yankees pitcher Masahiro Tanaka went to the disabled list with a hamstring strain.
• Yankees general manager Brian Cashman explained that the Yanks plan to replace Tanaka with internal options although they were always “open” for a deal.
• And Mets ace Noah Syndergaard missed a start with a swollen finger. Hey, the bad news is getting progressively less bad!
• Mets outfielder Yoenis Cespedes suffered a “setback” on Saturday in his return from a quad injury. Manager Mickey Callaway explained that the team has to play guys with injuries or they wouldn’t be able to field a team and that explanation did not go over very well.
• The Mets released first baseman Adrian Gonzalez. And yet shortstop Jose Reyes, who is the second-worst player in baseball (more on that in a bit) and has a domestic violence suspension in his recent past, is still employed by the Metropolitans.
• On that, the Mets reportedly want Reyes to retire so they can give him a big sendoff. If that’s not prime #LOLMets, I don’t know what is.
• Maybe a better example is that the Mets still think there is a major league future for a 30-year-old, weak-armed left fielder who is hitting .241 in Double-A with four home runs and is striking out in nearly 40% of his at-bats. And there probably is a major-league future for him because the Mets need some reason for fans to buy tickets. (To be fair, while Tim Tebow is awful, that’s at least two steps better than I thought he’d be. Impressive, but only to a point.)
• Reyes isn’t the worst player in baseball because that title belongs to Orioles first baseman Chris Davis. Davis is so bad this year, in fact, he’s “on-pace” to have to worst season in modern baseball history. David Schoenfield looks at Davis’ season and the current holder of that title, Jim Levey of the 1933 Browns.
• Tom Ley asks why the Orioles are going to let Davis have the worst season of all time, when actually he knows why. Is it because he won the Heisman Trophy?
• Jay Jaffe follows up on his piece from earlier this season about Diamondbacks first baseman Paul Goldschmidt having trouble hitting velocity. He’s still having problems.
• There was one trade as the Brewers acquired infielder Brad Miller from the Rays for outfielder Ji-Man Choi. The Brewers traded Choi just a day after he hit a pinch-hit grand slam.
• Former major leaguer Mat Latos is trying to work his way back by pitching in the independent leagues, but he started a brawl after throwing three pitches up and in.
• Braves pitcher Anibal Sanchez had over $100,000 worth of jewelry stolen from his hotel room while he pitched.
• More crappy news. Noted food celebrity Anthony Bourdain died on Friday by his own hand. I can’t say how much this has bummed me out and others have written better tributes to Bourdain than I ever could. But among all his other things, Bourdain was a big baseball fan and he would occasionally work baseball into his shows. Also, be sure to watch the video of Andrew McCutchen interviewing Bourdain in 2013.
• Jon Heyman reports that Blue Jays pitcher J.A. Happ could be in great demand at the trade deadline.
• Zach Kram notes how the Indians revolutionized bullpen usage in their pennant-winning 2016 campaign, but now the team is in bad need of a completely new bullpen.
• But Indians starter Corey Kluber hasn’t walked a hitter since May 8. Hey, that’s good news!
• More good news. The Mariners are actually good this season and Grant Brisbee (along with many M’s fans) don’t know what to think of that. My brother-in-law is a big Mariners fan. I should ask him what he thinks.
• Jeff Sullivan looks at what teams are getting the calls behind the plate and which teams aren’t. He writes “Thinking about the Cubs for a moment, it’s hard to imagine a worse combination than Tyler Chatwood and Willson Contreras.”
• Bradford Doolittle looks at the problem with shifting and how pitchers throw fewer strikes with the shift behind them. Sometimes, the analytics have to acknowledge that these are human beings and not simulacrums.
• Sometime in the next week or two (hopefully three or four), the Cardinals will become the seventh team to win 10,000 games. Or they already did that nine years ago. Derrick Goold looks at the issues surrounding when to start counting Cardinals wins. Honestly, I don’t have a problem if the Cardinals consider themselves to have been founded in 1882 rather than 1892. It was the same team. The Cubs have a shakier, but still somewhat valid, claim to being founded in 1871 rather than 1876. The Braves claim on 1871 is a bit stronger, but still shaky. The Reds claim to have been founded in 1869 is totally bogus, however. That was a completely different team that folded. We don’t play these “The Baltimore Ravens were never the Cleveland Browns” games in MLB.
• Travis Sawchik looks at how Dodgers pitcher Scott Alexander got his first ever start (since rookie ball) in an “opener” situation. Short story, he told bullpen coach Mark Prior he’d be willing to do it if the Dodgers were thinking of it (they weren’t) and Prior passed it up the chain and eventually the coaching staff decided to try it.
• David Schoenfield looks at the unlikely heroes lifting the Dodgers out of their early-season slump. Is that more good news? I guess as a neutral, which I try to be when I’m writing Bullets. At least I do sometimes.
• Here’s a great story about Omaha Storm Chasers broadcaster Danny Baarns and his quest to reach the majors as a broadcaster. Honestly, it’s probably harder to reach the majors as a broadcaster than a player. There are a lot more openings for players. As the article states, I-Cubs broadcaster Deene Ehlis has been in Des Moines for 28 years.
• Here’s a story I just love. Paul Lukas teamed up with the Syracuse Chiefs to make the Chiefs the “Syracuse Devices” for one game and Lukas goes through what the whole process is to make something like that happen. These promotions are a lot more than just ordering some new jerseys. (Is that a good story? I think it is!)
• The Brewers shot a promotion that recreated a scene from “Dumb and Dumber” and even got a big thumbs up from star Jim Carrey. Again, a positive story! It’s almost like I saved them to the end to leave people with a more positive feeling!
• And finally, I absolutely love these kinds of stories. A man from Austria fell in love with the Colorado Rockies and made his first trip to America to see them play at Coors Field. Seriously, the guy had never seen a baseball game before last year and now he never misses a game, even though they start at 2 a.m. his time. He’s even got a Austrian National soccer jersey with “Ottavino” (in honor of Adam Ottavino) written on the back! And now he’s dragged his whole family to America for a baseball vacation. How wonderful is baseball for something like that to happen? Maybe I don’t hate baseball after all.

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