SO IS REDS MVP ZACK COZART. He drove in four last night.

SO IS REDS MVP BRANDON PHILLIPS. He drove in all six last night. To some of our loyal flock here, that means mostly that he was damned lucky all those people got on base in front of him. To others, it means that without BP (and, yes, those others) The Club loses, 2-0.

Guess which camp I’m in, win fabulous prizes chosen just for you.

RBI matter, K? They matter the same as runs scored, because each is equally dependent upon the other, ...

Puig remained on the ground for a few minutes and the cameras showed that his nose was bleeding, but he wiped away the blood and stayed in the game. Pretty sure I would have stayed in the fetal position for good 36 hours had I taken a 92 mph fastballs to the face.

As an added bonus, Zack Greinke hit Miguel Montero with a pitch to leadoff the next half-inning, presumably in retaliation. Both the benches cleared and there was a lot of yelling, but nothing more. It was over within a minute and ...

In 1985 the players, in a rare major concession to the owners, agreed to change the arbitration eligibility from two years of major league service to three. After the union’s younger members expressed their outrage at the change, the union, in the 1990 negotiations, got the time needed changed.

The 17 percent of the players who had the most service between two and three years would be eligible for arbitration. They became known as the Super 2’s. In the last negotiations, in 2011, that ...

Maybe the benches won’t clear anywhere today.

I accept responsibility for those two uhh three uhhh four uhhhh five days.

Andy Pettitte locked up his 250th career win this past weekend against the Mariners. It now could be said the win also locked up his Hall of Fame candidacy, something that many thought was dead and buried after his retirement in 2010.

The naysayers will point out how Pettitte is the anti-Hall of Famer. He is good, not great. He is more a model of consistency than dominance. You could even point out the advantages ...

Jonah’s top 20.

Boogie with Stupid.

We’ve been discussing Ian Stewart and his complaints about still being in the Cubs organization in this FanPost, but there’s new information Tuesday afternoon that I believed warranted a front-page post.

In the Tribune, Paul Sullivan summarizes the issue and quotes general manager Jed Hoyer:

  Triple-A Iowa third baseman Ian Stewart faces a fine and possible suspension by the Chicago Cubs for his Twitter rant about his status in the organization.

  But he will not be ...

Part one of a three-part examination of the Red Sox advance scouting system.The Red Sox are smart. What makes them smart isn’t a sabermetric slant. It’s a willingness to find and use any information they can find which can give their players an edge. 

Here’s part two: Information overload has transformed the nature of advance scouting.

This isn’t exactly how Gerrit Cole wanted it, but the 2011 No.1 overall draft pick finally gets what he thought he deserved a couple of months ago — his first major league start today for the Pittsburgh Pirates.

....

Cole will face the visiting San Francisco Giants, plugging a hole in what has been a solid Pirates rotation but has been hit by injuries to Wandy Rodriguez and Jeanmar Gomez.

The former #1 draft pick throws in the high 90s, but he hasn’t been missing bats this season: 47 Ks ...

Skates punk: Tales of terror.

Smith was hitting better than .300 in early June 1983, but his drug use was intensifying.

“I did cocaine and pot mostly and I was even starting to drink,” Smith told the Associated Press in March 1984. “That was a bad sign because my father was an alcoholic and still is. I saw what it did to him and I had stayed away from that. But avoiding alcohol left me wide open to drugs.

“I started in high school in Los Angeles … It progressively got worse. The ...

Washington Times, June 11, 1913:

Rossiter [Pennsylvania] claims to have staged a world’s record baseball game in number of runs, hits, errors, and umpires in the contest here yesterday between Upper and Lower Rossiter for the championship of the town.
...
At any rate, the Lower Rossiter team was victorious in the sixteenth inning, the score being 112 to 98. The game consumed five hours, and fifty-seven players were used by both sides.

During the game 42 home runs, 53 triples, 73 doubles, and 74 ...

In The Beginning Was The End…

It is June 10 and Ryan Howard has seven home runs in 231 trips to the plate. Seven home runs used to constitute a good week for the slugger. Among full seasons, his previous low for home runs on June 10 was ten in 2010. His .185 isolated power this year is 90 points below his career average and his .306 weighted on-base average nearly matches his output last year when he was hobbled by his Achilles.

The biggest and most obvious change is that Howard struggles ...

“Buck Buck”, “Johnny on the Pony”...we used to just call it “####### Pile-On”.

Chris Russo of SiriusXM Radio tweeted: “The truth is Ryan Braun is a cheat, we already knew he was a cheat, and he threw that tester under the bus to save his own rear end. Truth.”

Anthony Witrado of The Sporting News, a former Brewers beat reporter, was asked on Fox Sports Radio if Braun was guilty of using PEDs.

“Yes, and I’ve thought so since the news first came out,” Witrado said. “I thought that this denial ...

Oathbreaker!

After the game, Maddon came out swinging against Lackey.

“So he intentionally hit him when he did, there’s no question in my mind that he did, and the sad part is that I’ve always considered Lackey a good teammate, but right there he can get one of his own players hurt,” Maddon said.

“I really did sense among the group of Red Sox that they were totally not into that moment because they knew it was inappropriate to hit Matt on purpose, and furthermore because one of them can ...

It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane, it’s OMNICHATTER!

This’ll help grease his path to the Friendly Confines, I reckon.

Chris is on an eight-team pace for 2013.

Nelson, 27, appeared in seven games for the Halos but received just nine plate appearances, collecting three singles. The Angels were the third team for which the former No. 9 overall draft pick has played this season, as he also saw time with the Rockies and Yankees before being designated for assignment by each of those clubs as well.

Post ‘em as you got ‘em

Blow-Up: At the dazzle and madness of oldsters today!

CSNPhilly.com’s Jim Salisbury has a very wide-ranging interview today with Philadelphia Phillies GM Ruben Amaro Jr. which touches on pretty much every issue with his baseball 64 games into the season. Amaro admits that they simply haven’t gotten the production they expected to get out of their veterans, citing Ryan Howard’s very poor output (related) as well as injuries to Chase Utley and Carlos Ruiz.

RAJ admits that Ben Revere has ...

A-Rodzilla?

Apparently there was a team interested in acquiring Alex Rodriguez during the offseason, prior to the Yankees disclosing his hip injury and long before the Biogenesis scandal.

Japan’s Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks contacted the Yankees “through an intermediary” in November to express an “interest in obtaining” A-Rod, according to the New York Times.

New York chose not to return serve due to Rodriguez’s injury, which likely would have ended talks right then and there, the ...

As David O’Brien notes in a column posted earlier today, the Braves could use the 26th-man rule that allows teams to temporarily add an extra player for double-headers. However, that would only temporarily address the issue of finding room for Beachy in the rotation. It’s a decision that has Fredi Gonzalez pacing.

The obvious solution is to nurse Beachy back along via the pen, though the dearth of lefties out there might indicate Paul Maholm as the better pen arm (Alex Wood ...

Well, at least he didn’t call him Hatchet-Face.

Bautista looked at strike one, tried to check his swing but couldn’t on strike two then swung at strike 3 in the dirt. After he swung at strike three he had a few choice words for the home plate umpire. He then tossed his bat, helmet and elbow pad on the field in protest before leaving.

Once Bautista was thrown out, Grieve had this to say…

“You turn into a cry baby when you act like that. Go sit down and look at the pitch and then apologize to ...

Washington Times, June 10, 1913:

[Ty Cobb] stole third yesterday with [Donie] Bush already there ahead of him.
...
[Washington catcher] John Henry was so frightened at the deed that he stood transfixed. He simply couldn’t understand it, at all.

So Henry started on the hot foot for third. He was going to get either Bush or Cobb and didn’t care much which. Cobb scooted back toward second [and was safe]. Yes, Henry didn’t get either of those Tigers.

Unfortunately, it seems like this sort of thing ...

In the summer of 1976, when I was a mere pup, covering the first of what would become 16 Olympic Games — nine summer, seven winter — I had my first brush with the effects of performance-enhancing substances.

I was shopping for souvenirs in the Olympic Village’s Adidas store, and I suddenly found myself surrounded by ... dudes. German dudes.

Only they weren’t really dudes at all, but rather, judging from their ID credentials and warmup suits, female swimmers from the GDR, East Germany. ...

That would be GWRBI…which we always assumed stood for RBI’s given up by Gary Wheelock.

When most people think of the 1980s, they think of Smurfs and Members Only jackets. But of course, as baseball fans, we think of the game-winning RBI. Right?

OK, maybe not.

...On Friday night, when A’s third baseman Josh Donaldson practically beat the White Sox all by himself with a sixth-inning grand slam in a game that ended 4-3, he jumped into a tie with Reds second baseman Brandon Phillips for the 2013 ...