Outside the Confines: Snakes on the lame

If you would have told me the last time I wrote Outside the Confines on Sunday night that the Cubs would drop three of four to the Mets and still gain a game on the Brewers, I don’t think I would have believed you.

Do you think Arizona manager Torey Lovullo has ever just lost it on a team flight and said “I’ve had it with these [censored] Snakes on this [censored] plane!” I bet if Lee Elia was managing the team, he’d have said it already.

• The Diamondbacks lost to the Giants Thursday afternoon, setting a modern record with 23-straight losses on the road. The D-Backs have not won on the road since April 25 when Madison Bumgarner threw his “not a” no-hitter against the Braves. Arizona’s also lost 14 in a row home and away.
• Gabe Lacques explains just how and why the Diamondbacks have been this bad.
• Rays pitcher Tyler Glasnow has a partially-torn ulnar collateral ligament and he blames MLB’s crackdown on foreign substances for his injury.
• Jay Jaffe looks at the options for Glasnow around treatment and examines some of the evidence that foreign substances may have contributed to his injury. For one, Glasnow’s spin rate hadn’t changed much in his last start.
• Diamondbacks pitcher Zac Gallen isn’t happy about MLB’s crackdown and insinuated that MLB executive Michael Hill encouraged Marlins pitchers (like Gallen at the time) to use foreign substances to increase spin rate when Hill was the Marlins’ general manager.
• Hill denied the charges and took a shot at Gallen and his agent, Scott Boras, without mentioning either by name. (The Athletic sub. req., but here’s a non-paywalled but less detailed account of the same story in USA Today.) That caused Boras to return fire and demand that commissioner Rob Manfred explain the crackdown and why MLB is doing it now.
• Several more pitchers, including the Yankees’ Gerrit Cole, also are demanding explanations from the commissioner’s office.
• If you care, retired pitcher David Wells is angry about the foreign substance crackdown as well. So is retired pitcher Jeff Nelson.
• Michael Baumann wonders what kind of an impact this new crackdown will have on the game when it is fully implemented?
• Jayson Stark says that while MLB is working on sticky substances and spin rates, they’re going to have to go after pitcher velocity next. (The Athletic sub. req.)
• The good news on the pitching front is that the MRI on the shoulder of Mets ace Jacob deGrom came back clean. The Mets are considering him day-to-day at the moment.
• And more good news concerning Rays minor league pitcher Tyler Zombro, who was seriously hurt after getting hit in the head with a come-backer on June 3. Zombro took to social media to thank all that have helped him and offered their support. (Warning: there are some pictures of his stitches and scars after brain surgery on that link if that kind of stuff bothers you. No blood and guts though.) He says he’ll be back on the mound one day.
• Bradford Doolittle writes that all the injuries suffered by the White Sox this season haven’t seemed to have slowed them down.
• Joon Lee writes that the Red Sox are about to get a big boost with the return of pitcher Chris Sale.
• Nick Selbe writes about how a balanced team has led to success for the Athletics.
• The Yankees traded first baseman Mike Ford to the Rays for a player to be named later and $100,000.
• The Dodgers traded pitcher Dennis Santana to the Rangers for a minor league pitcher.
• Padres outfielder Tommy Pham wants MLB to step in and stop fans who are taunting him over his off-season stabbing that nearly killed him. Pham was the victim in that case.
• The folks at MLB Pipeline have the top leadoff-hitting prospects for each MLB team.
• Mike Petriello outlines the trade needs of every contending team. One guess what the Cubs need.
• Ben Clemens examines the best bunts of the year.
• The Yankees turned a 1-3-6-2-5-6 triple play last night against the Blue Jays. You don’t see that every day because it had never happened before.
• Keith Law takes a look at the impact that dropping college baseball has had with some of the schools that eliminated the sport during the pandemic. (The Athletic sub. req.)
• Rays outfielder Randy Arozarena threw his bat at a pitch and turned it into an infield single.
• And finally, I assume most of us remember the incident in 2003 when then-Pirates first baseman Randall Simon hit one of Milwaukee’s Racing Sausages with a bat. Matt Monagan connects with Mandy Wagner, the woman inside the costume, after all these years. Wagner thought the whole thing was hilarious at the time, but was kind of upset at all the attention it got. But she did get a free trip to Curaçao out of it and a great story to tell for years.

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