Outside The Confines: Ouch

Good morning.

• Rangers ace Jacob deGrom has a torn ulnar collateral ligament that will need season-ending surgery. Whether it’s Tommy John surgery or reconstructive surgery isn’t known yet, but either procedure will sideline deGrom for the rest of the season.
• Bob Nightengale writes that the Rangers took a gamble on deGrom and lost. deGrom was only six starts into a six-year, $185 million free agent deal that the Rangers gave him despite his sketchy health history. Nightengale also reports that the Rangers do not have insurance on deGrom’s contract.
• Bob Nightengale notes that elbow injuries are on the rise among pitchers and no one quite knows why.
• Hannah Keyser has a piece on Rays pitching coach Kyle Snyder and how helping pitchers deal with injuries is part of his job. Snyder draws upon his own injury-plagued career to try to help the players avoid injuries in the first place and then deal with them physically and mentally when they do happen.
• Zach Crizer looks at how the split-fingered fastball is making a comeback in baseball. The pitch had long been discouraged as it was believed to lead to injuries.
• The Yankees have placed outfielder Aaron Judge on the injured list after he ran through the bullpen fence at Dodger Stadium, although Judge and the Yankees avoided a worst-case scenario of a fracture. Also, while it was believed that Judge had run through an open gate, he actually ran through a closed gate, breaking through it in the middle. The Dodgers have reinforced that gate in hopes that it won’t happen again.
• The Nevada state legislature adjourned without agreeing to a stadium bill for the Athletics to move to Las Vegas. That doesn’t mean the project is dead—the governor is expected to call a special session to deal with the project. But certainly its chances of passing are looking more questionable than they did two weeks ago.
• In more money matters, Daniel Kaplan and Evan Drellich summarize what all we’ve learned in the legal battle between Diamond Sports Group and MLB. (The Athletic sub. req.)
• Most of you are probably familiar with this stuff already, but in case you’re not—or you’re just curious how these issues are being presented to a non-baseball audience—Mark Leibovich writes the inside story in The Atlantic about how the “nerds who nearly ruined baseball” are now trying to save it with the rules changes this season. Leibovich does get a lot of comment from those in the commissioner’s office (like Theo Epstein and Morgan Sword) about what they’re trying to do with the new rules.
• Jesse Rogers has a piece on record payroll disparity in MLB.
• Craig Calcaterra ripped Rogers’ piece apart as owner propaganda in his newsletter yesterday. It’s behind a paywall and I figure if you are a paid subscriber, you’ve already read it. But I’ll give you the money quote if you don’t subscribe.

Which makes all of this just the latest in a decades-long pattern in which MLB-friendly writers drop columns which Rob Manfred, like Bud Selig before him, can and will later use as evidence that the league’s economic system is broken and that the players need to accept salary controls of some kind to resolve it all. Indeed, Manfred could not have written a better piece of owner/league propaganda if he tried.

I suppose only weird old baseball labor deadenders like me remember that columns like this have appeared, like clockwork, after the dust settles on every Collective Bargaining Agreement as the league begins to gear up for the next round of negotiations a couple of years hence.

• Gabe Lacques writes that the Padres, Mets and Phillies spent a lot of money this past winter and aren’t seeing much return on their investment yet. He looks at what’s gone wrong for those three teams and their chances to turn their fortunes around.
• On the other hand, the Diamondbacks didn’t spend much at all and are legitimate contenders in the NL West. Arizona’s early-season excellence has surprised everyone—including the Diamondbacks, writes Bob Nightengale.
• After last night’s Marlins game, Luis Arraez is now hitting .401 on the season. Christina De Nicola has some background on the chase and is keeping a running total of his batting average.
• Michael Baumann evaluates Arraez’s season and his chances of finishing the season over .400.
• Mike Axisa also looks at the possibility that Arraez hits .400.
• As someone who watches a lot of Cubs minor league games, I’ve already come to hate Reds prospect Elly De La Cruz from his time with the Dayton Dragons, Chattanooga Lookouts and Louisville Bats. But now that the Reds top prospect has been promoted to Cincinnati, Jonathan Mayo has what to expect out of De La Cruz.
• R.J. Anderson has three things to know about De La Cruz, “baseball’s most interesting prospect.”
• Here’s how De La Cruz found out he was getting promoted.

• R.J. Anderson also ranks his top 25 prospects in the game. Pete Crow-Armstrong is in there.
• Alden Gonzalez looks at how Shohei Ohtani has gotten even better as a pitcher. (ESPN+ sub. req.)
• An early prediction of the All-Star Game rosters.
• David Adler looks at the Cy Young Award race in both leagues.
• One pitcher not in the Cy Young Award race is the guy who finished third in American League Cy Young voting last year, the Blue Jays’ Alek Manoah. Manoah was sent down to the Florida Complex League to work out his problems.
• Jay Jaffe looks at Padres’ outfielder Fernando Tatis Jr. and his return from his “lost” 2022 season.
• Dan Szymborski looks at how much possible contract extensions with Mitch Keller and Oneil Cruz would cost the Pirates.
• Andrew Baggarly looks at Jacob Heyward, the 27-year-old brother of Jason, and how he’s chasing his major league dreams as the manager of the Giants affiliate in the Arizona Complex League. (The Athletic sub. req.)
• Broadcaster David Cone remembers his 1988 ghost-written column that became bulletin-board fodder for the Dodgers in the National League Championship Series that year. Cone admits that the blowback got to him.
• And finally, this is a great piece from Brittany Ghiroli on the lives of the interpreters for the Asian players. (The Athletic sub. req.) As she quotes Shohei Ohtani’s interpreter: “speaking is only about ten percent of the job.”

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